HomeMy WebLinkAbout2016-01-12Meridian City Council January 12, 2016
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:03 p.m., Tuesday, January
12, 2016, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Joe Borton, Genesis Milam , Luke
Cavener, Ty Palmer and Anne Little-Roberts.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Caleb Hood, Sony Watters, Warren Stewart,
John Overton, Mark Niemeyer and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X Anne Little Roberts X_ Joe Borton
X__ Ty Palmer X_ Keith Bird
__X__ Genesis Milam __X__ Lucas Cavener
__X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Okay. I would like to start this meeting by welcoming everyone. Thank you
for being here. We appreciate your attendance. For the record it is Tuesday, January
12th. It's a few minutes after 3:00. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the
pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: On 4-A, the proclamation we will put that on the agenda when the students show up
to receive the proclamation. On 5-E the proposed resolution is 16-1110. On 5-F the
proposed resolution is 16-1111. And on 9-C the resolution -- proposed resolution number
is 16-1112 and that is declaring surplus 1963 GMCA -- GMC fire parade truck and
authorizing the donation of the truck to the Meridian Local 4627 benevolent fund and on
10-A the ordinance number is 16-1668. With that, Mayor, I move we approve the agenda
as noted.
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Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as read. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of December 15, 2015 City Council Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of December 15, 2015 City Council PreCouncil
Meeting
C. Approve Minutes of December 15, 2015 City Council Joint
Meeting
D. Approve Minutes of December 22, 2015 City Council Meeting
E. Resolution No. 16-1110: Adopting Amended Bylaws of Meridian
Arts Commission
F. Resolution No. 16-1111: Adopting Amended Bylaws of Meridian
Parks and Recreation Commission
G. Final Order: Oaks South Subdivision No. 3 (H-2015-0038) by
Coleman Homes, LLC Located South Side of W. McMillan Road
Between N. McDermott Road and N. Black Cat Road Request:
Final Plat Consisting of Forty (40) Single Family Residential Lots
and Five (5) Common Lots on 9.09 Acres of Land in the R-8
Zoning District
H. Irrigation Crossing Agreement with Bureau of Reclamation for
the Amity Waterline Crossing of the Farr Lateral and Watkins
Drain on Amity Road
I. Interagency Agreement with the Ada County Highway District
for: Water and Sewer Improvements to be Included with the
Franklin Road, Black Cat Road to Ten Mile Road Widening
Project and Payment of the Estimated Construction Cost of
$971,000.00 up Front as Required by the Idaho Transportation
Department
J. Approval of Task Order 10014.a to CH2M HILL ENGINEERS, INC.
for the “Well 32 Test and Production Well Design” project for a
Not-To-Exceed amount of $79,750.00.
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K. Approval of Contract Amendment 4 and Assignment of
Agreement for Bulk Ferric Chloride from Weschem, Inc to BHS
Marketing, LLC.
L. Approval of Change Order No 2 to Task Order 10044 to CH2M Hill
Engineers, Inc for the “ WRRF HEADWORKS CAPACITY
EXPANSION – DESIGN” project for a Not-To-Exceed amount of
$42,500.00
M. Approval of Award of Bid and Agreement to AME ELECTRIC, INC
for the “Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility DIGESTER 4
AND 5 PLC UPGRADES” Project for a Not -To-Exceed Amount of
$66,000.00
N. Professional Service Agreement for Traffic Box Wrap Art -
"Creature of a Faraway Land," by Grace Cooper at Eagle Road
and St. Luke's Street
O. Acceptance Agreements for Display of Artwork in Initial Point
Gallery, Meridian City Hall
1. Reba E. Robinson, January 8 to February 5, 2016
2. Michael Rusnack, January 8 to February 5, 2016
De Weerd: Item 5 is the Consent Agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: As stated, 5-E is resolution 16-1110 and 5-F is proposed resolution 16-1111. And
with that I move we approve the Consent Agenda as published and for the Mayor to sign
and the Clerk to attest.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Madam Clerk,
will you, please, call roll.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea .
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
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Item 6: Community Items/Presentations
A. Swear in City Council Seat 1 Anne Little Roberts
De Weerd: Item 6-A is under Presentations and we will have the swearing in of our sixth
City Council member and so I would ask Anne Little Roberts to, please, come forward and
if you would like to bring your significant other, if he would like to stand with you as you
take the oath of office. And, Doug, you don't have to raise your right hand. I just didn't
know if you would be like Jan and say do I need to take the oath as well. It is kind of a
joint thing, though.
Holman: All right. Are you ready? Okay. So, please, raise your right hand and repeat
after me. I, Anne Little Roberts, do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the
Constitution and laws of the United States. The Constitution and laws of the state of
Idaho. And the ordinances and policies of the City of Meridian, Idaho. And that I will
faithfully perform the duties of the office of City Council of Meridian, Idaho, to the best of
my ability during the continuance of my term, so help me God.
(Repeated by Anne Little Roberts.)
B. City Council: Election of New City Council Officers and
Department Liaison Appointments
De Weerd: Okay. Item 6-B is under our City Council. We will have election of new City
Council officers and, then, assign the department liaison appointments and I will go ahead
and run the first part of this. Once you get a Council president I will take -- I will turn that
over to that member of our Council. So, I would entertain nominations for president of the
City Council.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I would like to nominate Keith Bird for City Council president.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. I have a motion and a second to nominate Keith Bird as president of
the City Council. Mr. Bird, do you accept that nomination?
Bird: I would love to.
De Weerd: Okay. Do I have any further nominations? Hearing none, I would close the
nominations for president of City Council. So, Madam Clerk, will you call roll on Mr. Bird
as Council president for the next year.
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Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: So, Council, before I turn this over to our new City Council president, I will ask
you when you speak into your mike eat the mike, because I have been told by a number
of our citizens that they cannot hear you and it is oh so imperative that the citizens of this
fair city hear their City Council members and every word you say. Right, Dean? All right.
Okay. There you go, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Now I would like to open up the nominations for vice-
president of City Council.
Milam: Mr. President?
Bird: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I would like to nominate Joe Borton for vice-president of the City Council.
Cavener: Second.
Bird: Okay. Anymore nominations? If no I -- if not I close the nomination and, please,
call roll, Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little-Roberts,
yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: I see Mr. Bird was a little bit more definitive on his vote for vice-president.
Bird: These are your assignments. Okay. Council, these are your assignments. Get with
your directors of each department, set of times to meet with them. We are here to help
them on budgetary items, policies, stuff like that. We are here to make the city work and
run good, like it has for 50 years that I know of, and you got your committee assignment.
If you can't make one of your committee meetings or something, if you will let me know I
will either cover it or get somebody else if we feel we need to and other than that good
luck. We are going to have a great year and the city is going to have a great year. Thank
you very much for all of your help.
De Weerd: And I will just read into the record, so our departments know who their liaison
is. Anne Little Roberts is the liaison to parks, with the -- the alternate as COMPASS and
as the representative on VRT. Joe Borton is liaison to Fire and Finance and will serve on
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-- as the representative on Air Quality Board and the rural fire commission. Ty Palmer is
the liaison to Information Services and Legal and will be the representative on historical
preservation as ex-officio and the VRT executive council. Congratulations, Mr. Palmer.
Mr. Bird is going to be the liaison to Public Works and the Mayor's Office, as well will be
the representative on the Meridian Development Corporation, the Allumbaugh House
alternate and the Ada County emergency management as the alternate as well. Mrs.
Milam is -- Mrs. Milam will be the liaison over Police and will be the representative on the
Meridian Arts Commission as ex-officio and SWAC also as ex-officio. And, lastly, Council
Member Cavener as Community Development and HR and will serve on the Parks and
Recreation Commission as ex-officio. Those are the assignments, as well the Council
member districts -- Joe Borton will serve in the northwest in District One. Genesis Milam
in District Two, which is the northeast. Anne Little Roberts, which is more central, east
side, District Three. Ty Palmer in District Four, which is the southwest. And Luke
Cavener in District Five, which is the southeast. So, those are the assignments that
Council Member Bird just distributed.
Bird: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Thank you.
De Weerd: Congratulations, Mr. President.
Bird: Yeah.
Item 7: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
De Weerd: Okay. There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 8: Action Items
A. Public Hearing Continued from January 5, 2016 for Eagle
Commons at Overland (H-2015-0024) by Eagle Commons at
Overland, LLC Located Northeast Corner of S. Eagle Road and E.
Overland Road
1. Request: Execute a Development Agreement Required with
the Annexation of the Property for the Purpose of Including a
Concept Plan and Specific Provisions Relevant to the
Development of the Property
De Weerd: Item 8-A will be -- will be delayed until the representatives get here. We did
not let them know that this council meeting started at 3:00. So, they will get here at their
earliest convenience.
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Item 9: Department Reports
A. Information Services: Annual Update
De Weerd: So, we will enter into Department Reports. Item 9-A is under Information
Services, who will give us their annual update.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, you all know me, but for anybody who
may be watching online, I'm Jaycee Holman, I'm the Information Services director.
Information Services has two different departments that I'm in charge of, which is the City
Clerk's Office and IT. So, we are going to start out tonight with Jaycee Jones, who is my
senior deputy city clerk, will be doing the presentation for the City Clerk's Office, giving
you kind of an annual update of what we have done, what we are up to and, then, IT this
year we decided to do just a little bit different approach. Instead of trying to cover
everything that IT encompasses, like both sides of the house, we have a software
engineering side of the house in IT and, then, a network side. We are focusing this
discussion on computer replacements and our computer replacement policy and where
we are at and Dave Tiede is going to handle that for us. I hope -- I know that sometimes
IT stuff can be a little bit tedious. It's pretty in depth. This is an in-depth discussion of how
we got to a five year replacement policy and to the new members on Council, this is
important to you, because you will see that when it comes around to budget time. It's a
pretty sizeable number and it continues to get bigger every single year as we become
more reliant on technology, more things get automated, we have additional buildings in
this city, different locations that we support, more employees, more ways that we interact
with technology. The replacements are just probably going to continue to go up from year
to year. So, rather than you only seeing that big number once a year right before we go
into budget, we really wanted to have this discussion today and help everybody
understand how we got to where we are at with our replacement policy and what our
recommendations are for the future. I hope that you listen and just ask any questions that
you have had throughout your -- your time on Council or as your new time on Council,
understanding that -- what our replacement policy is. We would love for you to ask
questions throughout. So, you don't have to save it until the end, because there is going
to be a good amount of information here and the more questions the better for us. At
least that's what Dave told me. So, without further adieu we are going to start with Jacy
Jones, who is our senior deputy city clerk, and she's going to let you know what we have
been doing in that office, so --
De Weerd: Thank you. And I look forward to hearing the tedious from Tiede.
Jones: Thank you. Sonya, can you pull my presentation up. I promise you don't want t o
hear me talk about computer replacements. Thank you. So, thank you. For our new
Council people, I'm Jacy Jones, I'm the senior deputy clerk for Meridian, and I'm just going
to go ahead and start off with just welcoming our new Council members and we are
absolutely here to help you. So, if you get stuck, you need help, you're trying to find your
packets and you can't, you have got my number. Don't hesitate to call us. That's really
what our office is here to do is support you. So, I'm excited to be here to talk about what
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we have been up to this year. It's been a busy year, but a really good year. So, I'm going
to go ahead and just recap for our new Council members a little bit about our office just for
their information. So, all things clerky. These are just some of the processes that our
office is involved with. Obviously not all of them, but it gives you a pretty decent overview.
Our office acts as a support role to many of the other departments and it's our office that
helps sometimes close the loops for some of our large projects. We have a huge
commitment in our office to customer service and the Meridian Way. It's innate in all that
we do and it's definitely an important thing to all of my staff. So, while each one of us is
definitely a subject matter expert in our specific area, we are also fairly well cross-trained,
so that we can seamlessly transition between roles when necessary as staffing issues
arise. So you know Jaycee. So, Jaycee Holman is our director. We align underneath her
and she's over us and IT. And me Jacy Jones. I manage the clerk's office. I handle daily
operations. I handle what you guys see, your Council packets, contracts, agreements,
resolutions, ordinances and anything like that. So, I take care of your packets and make
sure that those documents are completed and routed and, then, I handle record retention,
which I will talk a little bit more about and I back up Machelle with our records requests
and, then, handle customer service, phones, that type of thing. Machelle Hill is our deputy
city clerk and she manages all things land use for our office. She works really closely with
our Planning Department to complete project files and development applications. She
meets state code requirements for transmitting and noticing and many of the functions
that the state code requires of the clerk's office fall within her tasks. She supports the
city's various commissions and she is the lead right now in our public records request and
she's done a really great job working with citizens and internal staff to keep that process
moving forward. Nancy Radford is our assistant city clerk. She handles all types of
licensing and permits and she knows our licensing code in and out. She's absolutely
fantastic with that and she does a great job relaying that to the public. Nancy actively
engages with our business community regarding temporary use permits and alcohol
applications. She's really proactive and uses historical data to reach out to the
businesses and remind them of our permitting processes and upcoming deadlines. She's
absolutely necessary to the success of large scale events in the city. We have a
committee of staff that meet to talk about those temporary use permits and large scale
permits and I attend those meetings with Nancy and I can tell you that I am there really
just to support her and take notes, because she leads those meetings and really does a
great job coordinating all of that. She also does CenterCal and makes sure that opening
-- a business opening at The Village happens smoothly and all staff keeps apprised of
what's going on over there and she also does customer service, phones, and counter
work. Oh. Sorry. One too many. Okay. Sheree Finch is our assistant city clerk and she
handles passports and, then, passports and, then, some more passports. She is busy all
day long with those appointments and when she's not in appointments she's returning
passport voicemails. She absolutely sets the standard, in my opinion, for what a passport
appointment should be. She treats those citizens with exceptional kindness and I just
appreciate that from her. When she's not in appointments she is returning those
voicemails and I can tell you last Friday we had 30 new voicemails from customers
looking to make a passport appointment. With other passport facilities closed, our call
volume and walk ins increase. A lot of times the post office of Boise State will have to
close because of a staffing shortages there and, then, we oftentimes will absorb some of
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those -- their customer service responsibilities in that way. So, Charlene Way is new to us
this year. She moved from Wyoming to Idaho in 2015 in May and she worked there in
Wyoming for a local school district. We originally hired her as our admin assistant when
Holly Binklee left this past spring. But, then, in 2016 -- FY-16 you guys approved the
enhancement which was allowed for a new position and so Charlene transitioned to that
assistant role. I just want to say thank you up front for approving that and getting us that
extra position. It was desperately needed and we are thrilled to have Charlene. Her top
priority is walk-in customers. With our new counter redesign also approved with the FY-
16 enhancements, it allows really focused attention for those customers that do drive all
the way down to City Hall to interact with us in person and in my opinion if you want to see
customer service done the right way, interact with Charlene. She is positive and smiling
and ready to greet those customers and really make them feel welcome for coming all the
way down and seeing us. So, we are very happy that she is on our team. Charlene
supports Sheree with the passports as well and her position is partially funded by
passports. Our target is 15,000 dollars in revenue this fiscal year from her appointments.
She's also being trained on all processes in our office so that she can back up supp ort
staff as necessary. Licensing tends to be really busy in the late winter, early spring, and,
then, passports is sort of busy in the later summer, early fall. So, she's been trained on
both roles, so that she can support Nancy and Sheree as necessary. And, then, Barb
Shiffer is also new to our office this year. When Charlene transitioned to the assistant
position it left a vacancy in our admin position and Barb moved to our office from
Community Development. She handles room reservations, customer service, and
basically all things admin. She has been trained on accounts payable and how to process
City Council documents, as well as commission support. Barb has been at the city for 14
years and she knows the development process inside and out and having that type of
institutional knowledge from your admin it has just been wonderful for us and she knows
the other half of a lot of our processes. So, being able to ask her questions , get a greater
understanding of sort of the why behind some what we do has been really wonderful and I
think -- thank you. I think anytime that you hire an admin that knows the clientele or your
citizens and your product that well it's just been really -- really beneficial. So, we feel
lucky to have her. So, this is the clerk's office dream team. We have a combined 66
years of City of Meridian municipal experience and customer service is at the core of all
that we do. The Meridian Way is innate in our processes and how we treat others. We
work really hard in our office to empower each other to be and do better, requesting the
status quo and we work hard to be open minded on new ways to serve the public and our
staff and kindness is a big thing in our office. It's not entirely uncommon to see an e -mail
strand going around giving kudos to each other and cheering each other on for a job well
done. So, anytime that you work with a group of people that are competent enough to
support each other and celebrate each other's successes you're really lucky. So, I am
sincerely lucky to work with them. So, the left hand column there is the goals that I
presented last time and I thought I'd give you a quick update on that. Accella citizen
access, we are still working on that and we are actually testing it currently right now with
our liquor catering permits. If testing is successful we can launch that as soon as
February. We are using Accella to transmit development applications all the way through
the process. I think as a city we have made a lot of -- a lot of hard work pay off over this
past year. I think we have seen the city really -- the city employees come together as a
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team to make that program the most effective that it can be. Ryan and Christi in IT have
absolutely supported the city's vision of getting that system implemented and I think it's
been a really good -- a good opportunity to see. Department teamwork, getting that up
and running. So, we did complete the agreement -- catalog project. Holly wrapped that
up before she left and those are completely searchable, so if you ever get curious and
want to know on searchable documents how to find old documents or want some training
on that let us know, because that's ready to go. The second phase of the walking tour did
launch in May and we came in just about 5,000 dollars under budget on that phase. Third
grader tours resumed and we were able to expand them with the addition of Gary and
Darlene Steefs, who are our wonderful volunteers. You see a picture here. I can't thank
Barb enough for finding them. They are wonderful . They wear period clothing and they
have this really fun interactive experience with the kids where they show them h ow the
demographics of Meridian Government has changed in the last hundred years. I think it
just really adds them just an extra layer of sort of awesomeness I guess you could say for
those students. It's been really fun to watch, so -- let's see. PRRs. We talked about
moving public records to a satellite, which we chose not to do. Accella is licensed within,
so the amount of employees who need to be able to work with records r equests would
make that really cost prohibitive. That being said, Duane in IT is developing an app for us
to handle those internally. So, that should launch this year. It's going to be really sleek
and efficient in my opinion. Our IT staff wrote the program for us. We -- it's just absolutely
phenomenal for what we need it to do. So, we are thankful for that. And, then, one of our
goals was to receive a hundred percent for our passport facility inspections, which we did.
So, when we had our passport facility inspected we received the report back and,
obviously, perfect rating. They said that we were fully compliant and had our standard
procedures and guidelines that were well organized and well managed and they made
sure to note that it was our second perfect score in a row, which I love. We have 408
facilities in our region that were inspected around the same time that we were and
following those inspections 66 of those facilities were suspended. Twenty-two were
deactivated. A hundred and eighty-one facilities required reactivation. So, only 138
facilities passed the first time, which I just think really calls out to how great a job that we
do and Sheree was actually called out personally by -- in a newsletter that we received
from our regional facility. And, like I said, I think that she sets the standard for providing
great customer service, but she does a really good job focusing on what -- what it is that
she's supposed to do, which is ultimately keeping travelers safe and she caught a case of
fraud. So, I think that's pretty fantastic. So, let's talk a little bit about some of our other
accomplishments this year. Here is a rough overview of our statistics for the year.
Development applications that we increase -- that we process increased. I think any of us
can tell just by driving around the community right now, development is -- is booming,
which is great. That also increases our public records requests. A lot of the information
that's requested is development specific, people looking for certificates of occupancy or
sewer line connections or -- I mean you name it. GIS-type information. A lot of that is
related to all the new development. We had a 22 percent increase in the licenses that we
received and issued. A 15 percent increase is the passport calls that we received and
responded to. You will notice we did have a decrease in the passport process this past
year and I think some of you might remember in the late spring, early summer, May and
June time period -- April, May, June -- when we lost Paula we also had three employees
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on intermittent FMLA during that time period and we had to close our facility. The
passport side of the facility basically focused on keeping up with the state required
processes, so we were closed for a little while and had our phone actually on auto ring, I
think for the first time ever, which we were thankful that you allowed us to do that to get
through that difficult time period, but we got everybody back to work and feeling better and
we are, you know, off into the summer and back on track. So, we are looking at actually
making up for that decrease this year. So, in 20 15 we, again, used Accella to update how
we process alcohol licenses. In the past a work flow task was made in Accella for each
type of alcohol product sold or consumed at the location, so a full service bar-restaurant,
like the Pinnacle, for example, might have three separate work flows, one for beer, wine,
and, then, another for liquor. Again, Christi and Ryan in IT really helped us to condense
these processes into one, so now we issue one City of Meridian alcohol license and that's
only one record in Accella that we have to maintain and review. So, it does, obviously, cut
down on our time in the clerk's office, but everybody who is in that work flow down the
line, Code, Legal, Fire, Planning, it reduces their workflow as well, because it's one item to
review, versus three, which is wonderful. I have to say that the time period that we
decided to do this was during renewal season, so it's Nancy's busiest time of the year and
she just absolutely rocked that project. She was able to spearhead that for our office, she
worked really hard with IT to help streamline that and, then, she did a great job reaching
out to our applicants and making sure that she updated them and did the public outreach
part of that and community outreach is absolutely a strength of Nancy's and I think we are
-- I'm thankful that she is proactive and keeps our citizens updated and that they have a
really consistent point of contact for our office for those processes. So, here is another
big change our office made this year. In May of 20 15 Machelle had the idea of updating
the style of the vicinity notices that we send for developments. She did a great job
spearheading this project, reaching out to other departments and the public and rece iving
their buy-ins. In the past -- if I can show you this is what you would -- if you live in the
vicinity of a project you would receive three full size back and front pieces of paper in a
specially printed envelope. Not only is this time consuming and expensive to print and,
then, fold and stuff envelopes, the public often saw this a s junk mail and they would throw
them out. So, we weren't -- we weren’t winning at all with this and, then, Machelle had a
brilliant idea to print them on postcards. We were able to condense the information and
put just what's required by code on the notice, all of the other helpful information that we
provide is now online and by doing this alone we save $1.14 per notice, which is so -- it's
fantastic. So, from June until December of '15 we saved just shy of 4,000 dollars solely
on changing our notices. And I love examples like this when a member of our staff is
willing to go above and beyond and look for ways to save money and she did a really
great job. These are so efficient. They print out -- they are perforated, so we are saving
on staff time and supplies and we are beyond thrilled with that update. So, what are we
looking for 2016. As I mentioned earlier, we have changes with Accella citizens' access.
Like I said, we are testing that now and making sure that we apply it in a way that is not
only convenient for us, but ultimately that's for the public. So, if everything goes well with
our testing, we are looking at a February deployment for that. We have a record
management committee now that is -- has been created. We have a record manager
assigned from each department who is in charge of basically knowing in and out their --
that specific department's record retention policy and the records that they have. The goal
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with doing this is that we are able to make the process of how we manage our records
from storage processes to destruction very efficient and consistent across the board. We
have a record retention policy, but by bringing a working group together we are able to
really execute that and make -- you know, put the policy to work and make sure that
everybody knows what their responsibilities are with that and our hope is to make it to
where we have one destruction of records annually. So, as opposed to -- on your agenda
every other month or so you see one or two little tiny destructions, we will do one annually
and work really hard with the record manager, so they know months in advance what
deadlines they have coming up, what records are good for destruction and so that we can
follow that -- that policy really -- right to the tee and get it done effectively. We also want
to renew -- or review and update our fees. This is something I want to look at -- the
changes that we made with alcohol licensing and our vicinity notices this past year, is
saving us money and I'd like to look at ways to pass these savings onto the community.
Our fees for development are based on our staff time and we don't have as much staff
time now, so I'd like to make sure that we analyze that and find a way to reduce costs for
the public. Electronic signature and e-Recording, this is something that I am going to
focus on this year. The state legislature now recognizes e-Signatures and documents, as
does our record retention policy. In our record retention policy an original document is
actually defined by the way that we receive it. So, if we receive a pdf copy of a document
and that's the first contact we have with it, that pdf is actually our original. So, we are
looking for ways to reduce how many times we convert a document from electronic to
paper and, then, back to, then, electronic for permanent storage. There are times that we
print documents for the sole purpose of signing them and, then, we scan them in and
throw the hard copy away, because the electronic form is actually our original. So, it's
inefficient and we have reached out to Ada County recorder's office and they actually work
with a company called Simple File who is contracted with 38 other counties in Idaho that
document -- or, excuse me, that record documents electronically. Essentially we would
upload our document into their system, they transmit it to the recorder and they get it back
-- back to us electronically. Average turnaround time for a recorded document is three
minutes, which is fantastic. Right now we have a courier, we call the courier, the courier
goes to the recorder's office and brings it back later that day. So, it completely halts
processing for us while we are waiting on those documents. So, a three minute
turnaround time would make things quite a bit more efficient for our office. It also looks
like we can save money doing this. Based on just FY-15, we paid that courier $956.99
and had a total of 111 documents. If we used Simple Fi le we could cut that cost down to
530 dollars, which could be an estimated savings of about 425 dollars. So, we could save
money and really increase our efficiencies. We are also expecting an increase in
processing time of passports this next year. Not necessarily the passports that we have in
our office, although from the look of this month we are increasing, but 2006 was the first
year that the state department required passports to go in to Mexico and Canada, so all of
the people that applied for passports that year, especially northern Idaho, you know, for
business people and things, those passports are due for renewal this year and renewals
are handled by mail, so those customers won't be coming to our office, but the state
department definitely expects their processing time to increase. Right now they are at an
average of about four to six weeks, so they are preparing us to just make sure that we
communicate that message to the public that all around it could take longer. We want to
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make sure that travelers prepare well in advance, because a three month turnaround time
could be something that we look at this year. We made some updates to our job
descriptions and those are actually being -- having -- or, excuse me, being processed by
HR now. When you get new staff and your employee's a new position it gives you a really
good opportunity to take a look at job descriptions. We had two of our job descriptions
that hadn't been updated since '06 and two not since '09 and, obviously, much in our
office has changed in the last ten years. So, we are working on making sure that those
are complete and that document is accurate. And, then, the last thing that we have kind
on the horizon that we know about right now is the U.S. Department of State is now
issuing awards for passport facilities, so I just completed our nomination packets for our
facility in the innovation and customer service category. Sent that off basically
demonstrating what it is in our office that I think we do really well. Sheree has created a
lot of really awesome one page helpful FAQ type sheets. The passport form itself is -- it's
long and it has a lot of really tiny print and is very legally worded and so she's taken some
of that and converted it into just much more friendly language and, like I said, I think she
does a really good job with the customer service side of that. So, we have gone ahead
and sent in our nomination and we should hear back the first week of February with the
results on that. If we do receive the award I will let you guys know, obviously. And, then,
the state department will come on site and present that award, which will just be pretty
fantastic, so -- okay. With that I can stand for questions. I know I get a little bit wordy, so I
appreciate your attention and let me know if there is anything else I can answer for you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Jacy. We appreciate you sharing your level of awesomeness.
Council, any questions or comments?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: A comment and a question. First off, great presentation. Thank you so much.
Madam Mayor, I truly believe our clerk's office is one of the best departments that
exemplifies the Meridian Way and in your presentation, Jacy, you talked about exemplary
customer service, strategic planning, innovative thinking. It's really incredible. So, kudos,
Jaycee, Jacy, everybody in the clerk's office.
De Weerd: And cost savings.
Cavener: Well -- which I think is innovative thinking of ways to save money. I appreciate
that. Jacy, at one point you and I had worked on -- on room reservation, policies,
calendar. Would you just mind giving me a quick update as to how that has progressed?
Is it meeting the needs of all of our city employees? Is it meeting the needs of the c lerk's
department?
Jones: Sure. Absolutely. Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, in my opinion it is. We
do Outlook calendar now for internal meetings. Staff is responsible for scheduling the
rooms themselves, which has been really nice. Barb still handles all of our external room
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reservations. But because we updated that policy to narrow the scope of who we rent
rooms to, it has been a very manageable workload for her. At one point, if you remember,
it was almost a full-time job just managing those rooms and we have been able to redirect
some of her attention in other projects, which has been helpful and I think, obviously, our
HOAs appreciate not having to pay that 25 dollar fee to use the room s. The most issue
that we ever had with it is just I th ink staff knowledge and just some internal training with
the IT side of -- of preserving the room using Outlook calendar. But it seems to be going
well.
Cavener: Great. Thanks for the update.
Holman: Could you give them a quick update on early vo ting and --
Jones: Yes. Thank you.
De Weerd: Because I was just going to note there was one thing that was forgotten of our
accomplishments this last year.
Jones: Yes. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Early voting. We worked with Ada County and
will now be a permanent early voting location here at City Hall, which will be fantastic for
our citizens. What also happens with that, though, is the week prior to when early voting
starts through the two weeks of early voting and, then, the week of the actual election,
conference rooms A and B are reserved out exclusively for early voting. Ada County
needs to change the locks. They store their ballots and all of their material here, so to
meet the security requirements we can't have anybody in those rooms duri ng that time
period, which is an okay thing. I mean it's been fine for us just to have that benefit for the
citizens. I think they got a really good turnout from early voting here . It's a really central
location and it's all of Ada County can come, not just, obviously, Meridian residents, so
that's been wonderful -- wonderful addition and we expect -- in fact, I talked with Theresa
at Ada County today, she provided me the dates for all of this year and we are getting
those on the calendar now.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Jacy, I don't have any questions, because every time I had a question you
answered it, but -- in the next sentence or two, so -- but I do -- I just want to compliment
you on your presentation. You're very easy to listen to and enjoyable to have as a
speaker.
Jones: Thank you.
Milam: Just wanted to let you know that. And I'm really excited about the passports and
all of the work that you guys are doing in there and the award, good luck with that. I had
to go to a different facility because of my position to get a passport and it was a really
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horrible experience. So, just to have something even remotely better than that -- really
proud of you guys, so thank you.
Jones: Thank you, Council Woman.
De Weerd: I know I mentioned the cost savings, but I think what makes it extraordinary is
that now that you have realized the cost savings, you're looking to update our fees, so you
can pass that cost saving onto our customers and that is the innovative part of it and
appreciate you looking at both sides of that. That's extremely critical. So thank you.
Jones: Thank you, Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Anything further from Council?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Get my mike turned on. Jaycee, I wanted to actually reiterate exactly what the
Mayor said. That really stood out to me when you said that you recognize the saving and
you want to pass that on. Usually in government when they find savings, it's purely
accidental and they find -- quickly find a way to make sure that doesn't happen again. So,
the fact that you found savings and want to, then, pass that onto the people that we are
providing the services to means so much to me, so thank you.
Jones: Thank you, Council Member Palmer. I think that --
De Weerd: Welcome to the City of Meridian and the way we do business.
Jones: Yes, it is. I think that it really just goes back to the type of team that we have. It's
ultimately our -- our job is to make the life for our citizens easier and every time that we
can make that interaction more positive it makes our lives easier, too. So, it's definitely
critical for us to serve the citizens as best as we can.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Jacy.
Jones: Thank you.
De Weerd; We appreciate your presentation and the wealth of information you shared.
Thank you to your team. Okay. Mr. Tedious. You have a new name now. I'm sorry.
Tiede: I hope not to be addressed Mr. Tedious.
De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. Mr. Tiede.
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Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I am grateful to be here today and excited
to share with you the information that we have gathered on computer replacements. Like
Jacy mentioned, please, feel free to interrupt, ask me questions as we go along. There is
a lot of information here. So, I promise I will try not to put you to sleep. So, to start off
with, I would like to talk a little bit about the history of our computer replacements and
where we came from, where we are at right now. Prior to 2003 our replacements were
kind of handled on the fly as things died. We didn't really have a set policy. We didn't
have an IT department. So, things were kind of different back then. Dependence on
technology was a lot lower. People didn't have near as many computers and the city was
much smaller and so things have changed a lot over the years. In 2003 we got our first
computer replacement policy and that was presented by Terry at the time. The policy was
adopted. We had desktop computers on there for f ive years, laptop computers on there
for five years, and that was pretty much it. That's what we covered at the time. In 2010
we revised that policy, came back to City Council again with a resolution and added MDTs
to that. Also added servers and printe rs and kept those things at the five year
replacement policy and that continues to work for us. As part of this exercise we also
went out to other agencies and sought what they are doing right now. This is just a brief
example of some of the other agencies in this area. The city of Boise -- actually, going
back a step. The first column is whether or not they have a formalized policy or not or
whether they just kind of do it as needed. So, you can see the city of Boise, Nampa,
Kootenai county, which is one of the ones that responded from a state level, all have
formal policies. The other agencies do not. So, you can kind of see where things fall as
far as desktops, laptops, tablets and MDTs. Boise is four years across the board. Ada
County is five and three years. The city of Nampa recently adopted a six year policy
before -- about eight months ago they didn't have a formal policy and they were hurting
pretty badly, so they just adopted that policy and it's made things a lot better for them.
One thing that's interesting to note about them is they do have a much larger IT staff
supporting their computers than we do and that's partly due to the nature of having
computers longer and having more failures and more issues. So, that's kind of reflected in
their numbers as well and that's one thing they hope to address over time. They would
like to get that number down lower, but baby steps. The Department of Admin, although
no formalized policy, they replace their computers on either four or five years for desktop
and laptops and Garden City doesn't have a formal policy, but they are trying to get to a
place where they are replacing things every four years. This is kind of the industry history,
where things have been in the last years. Ten to fifteen years ago we -- in the IT industry
there is a lot of computers going out there. New technology. A lot of organizations
decided, oh, look we have a problem, we have computers failing all the time. We need to
do something about it. And so ten to fifteen years ago a lot of organizations were looking
saying how are you going to manage this, because computers were failing as high as 25
to 50 percent of the time within the first three years and so at that time there was a lot of
organizations that adopted a computer replacement policy. Going back another five or six
years ago, a lot of organizations reevaluated that, because computer failures weren't near
as prevalent. Today we see most organizations somewhere in the three to five year range
and this graph here represents what Gartner has provided -- has statistical numbers.
Gartner is an IT research firm. They go out to a bunch of other organizations and this
represented public and private sector combined kind of. So, they say they have seen the
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industry settle around 4.6 years for desktops and 3.7 years for laptops. So, that kind of
gives you an idea of where other organizations are at. So, this gives you a breakdown of
the cost of our computers and the replacement cost by fiscal year. The graph -- or the pie
chart on the left-hand side is the last five years and the pie chart on the right-hand side is
projected for the next five years. This does not include personnel costs or anything like
that, it is just straight hardware cost with a warranty included in our projected cost. As you
can see last year was a really big year for us. Fiscal year '15. And due to that, because
we are on a five year cycle, fiscal year '20 is also scheduled to be a rather large year.
That was due to increase in services that departments needed. So, we had the
Wastewater Department added the facilities and as part of that they needed to increase
services. They had screens that they needed to add or things that they wanted to do. So,
computers were added as part of that. They had SCADA systems that were expanded or
revamped and part of that was computers. The public safety training center came online
this last year and there was a lot of computers associated with that to keep -- get that
facility up and running. So, again, that's part of those costs and those costs when we
incur them in a fiscal year that means they roll around again when our computers are up
for replacement. So, just kind of gives you an idea of what things look like by fiscal year.
This is a breakdown of what our assets look like for computers. We have roughly right
now about 540 computers. Those include desktops, tablets, laptops, iPads, handful of
Inclines, and then, MDTs. MDTs are mobile data terminals. They are the computers that
fire and law enforcement use in their cars and fire engines. So, on the left-hand side you
will see a breakdown of costs by those various types. You can see MDTS, because they
are fully ruggedized units, they are meant to be in extreme environments of heat and cold
and take a little bit more, you know, harsher environment and also 24/7 use, they are
more expensive. So, you can kind of see MDTs make up almost a third of our total cost of
hardware, whereas desktops are a lot less. This also points out another trend that we
have seen lately. We can see that desktops , which are a unit that sits, you know, at your
desk or where ever is about half of our fleet now, whereas five years ago they were 75 to
80 percent of our fleet. So, as things have progressed with technology and people need
to be outside the office more and more, there has been a bigger demand for mobile and
so we have a lot more people that need a laptop, because they are either out in the field
all day long doing their job or they are at a different facility and they need to be able to
take their technology with them, so they can continue to do what they need to do. Okay.
Now we get into the weeds a little bit. So, this slide is our basis for why we do what we
do. Why we replace computers on a replacement schedule, so to speak. One of the main
driving factors is new software. So, every year there are departments there are business
units within the city that are looking to do something more efficiently and so they look to
software. They look at technology to accomplish that. A lot of the times that technology is
newer and so as they look for new software we have to make sure the hardware supports
that. To give you an idea of what happens when software doesn't meet those
specifications, it's one of two things typically. If we don't meet minimum specifications
when a piece of software is purchased we either need to upgrade so that we can get
support on that software or the software won't function. To give you an idea of how this
worked out for us, the City of Meridian, we have been on a five year replacement cycle for
awhile now and it has proved successful with new software. You have probably heard
about the TriTech project with Ada County, they are going through and doing CAD and
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RMS and whatnot, due to that Ada County and Ada Counter Sheriff's Office ended up
having to replace 400 computers to do that software project and I could go into the
numbers, but that was a mix of fleet vehicles that needed replacement s, desktop units and
laptops. The City of Meridian had to buy zero computers, because we were prepared,
because we had a computer replacement policy that addressed that and that's part of why
Ada County has changed things the way they have, is because they don't want to be in
that same position again. The next one on here is the life cycle software. So, new
software is one thing, but existing software that we are using for daily operations of the
city continues to change and evolve as well. We look at a couple on here like Windows 7,
came around a handful of years ago and eventually Microsoft phased out Windows XP.
What that meant to us is we have to have computers that will support Windows 7. If we
do not, then, we can't maintain the proper security, the proper patches, whatever, to meet
what the city needs for security and operational needs. And so -- just to get back on track
here. Software companies continue to update their software on a regular basis and we
have to make sure that we can maintain a fleet of computers that will run that soft ware,
otherwise, the city will cease to do what they have done as efficiently as they have done it
up until this point. So, the next item on here is failure or unreliable computers . So, as you
probably know, computer failures have gone down significantly over the last years. This is
a graph from Gartner and you can see on the lower green line on the first year the
average failure for a desktop computer right now is around two percent. By year four it's
about 12 percent. Past that it gets even higher. On year five they had it roughly round the
24 percent mark and they don't even look past that. Laptops were significantly higher.
That's just due to the nature of the hardware that's put in them and they are picked up and
moved around -- moved around, et cetera, so they take some more wear and tear. But
laptops on here for the year one was 15 percent, whereas year four was 22 percent and,
then, it went up again dramatically past that. Many of our computers are on 24/7,
especially when it comes to things like wastewater operations, public safety, they have
guys in there all the time and so the wear and tear on that hardware is higher than maybe
some of them in the office, but even those in the office are still operating 40 hours a week.
Some other numbers that we gathered on looking at failures were as follows: An
organization that did a study like -- but they found that 20 percent of all laptops fail after
three years. That's part of how we mitigate that right now is by buying a warranty up front
and I will get into that a little bit more later. Another study found that businesses that were
keeping computers longer than four years were spending on average 427 dollars per
computer for repair costs. That didn't include updates or the impact for IT staff or the
impact to the end user that doesn't have a computer while it's getting repaired. Our costs
are lower than that, just because , again, we have warranties and we try to mitigate that
with that. One thing that we want to do a little bit better and going to start doing here soon
is get some better numbers on our failure rates. For our desktops it's pretty low. I would
say it's probably in the five percent range, but for laptops it's significantly higher and for
MDTs it's even higher. For example, our MDTs that we bought about three years -- three
or four years ago, there is brand called G-Tac, we have had every unit fail at least once
and have to go in for repair and they were past that three year mark and that's again, kind
of one thing that starts -- starts to go south a little bit, so -- okay. Moving on reducing
down time. One of the concerns with having failures or other things is down time to end
users. So, there is, obviously, a cost to IT when something happens; right? We are
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taking away from whatever we are doing to go and help with that personal computer ,
because it's important at that time. It's an emergency. I mean they can't do their job and
so we have customers that slide down on our priority list, because we have to take care of
the most important thing and that's one effect. But we also have our staff time that wasn't
planned for. So, as we have more failures that incurs more staff time as well. On the
other -- on the flip side it affects our customers, which are our end users. W e call them
customers. On average when we have a failure an average end user, when there is a big
computer failure they are usually working somewhere in the two to four hour time of not
being able to use their computer. In some cases this is even more critical and, again,
emergency responders, some of the SCADA control systems for water and wastewater,
having even four hours of downtime can create a lot of really bad problems, as you can
imagine. Moving onto the next section is the slowness and unproductivity of the new
computer -- that new computers can cause for people. Computers, when they are slow,
they can take as much as 50 percent more time to complete a task as when they are fully
operational and functional to the level that we want in performing -- performancewise. So,
for example, if one of our users has a computer and they need to do four hours of work on
that computer in a given day, if their computer has suffered a performance issue, that
means that they may only be able to get three hours o f work done in that same four hour
period, just because of the responsiveness of their computer. They are able to get their
job done and what that means to you guys is typically what that means is the department
sees that as a -- a staffing issue and it becomes a staffing request, rather than, hey, look
there is a problem with their hardware, because they don't realize that's a problem. One
other thing that we have seen as computers start to have performances is it's usually a
gradual thing and so people don't really identify it until it's a really big problem and so it
may affect them one minute a month for one month and the next month it affects them five
minutes and, then, three months down the road it affects them 30 minutes a week and
because it was gradual and they don't understand, hey, look, this is affecting my
productivity, they just think, well, I can't, I have too much work to do and so by keeping up
with the hardware we are able to mitigate some of that. The next item on here is
expensive to maintain. So, due us getting warranties, which I will talk a little bit later, the
expenses aren't as high to us, but one of the things that we have considered is looking an
extended replacement cycle or maybe even dropping our warranties to a regular warranty,
not the five year that we typically get, and that incurs more costs for the maintenance side.
Typically when users have problems they call IT. That's pretty normal. That causes more
staff. That's more resource needs for us and, then, also us going back to them, because
when they are trying to work on things with us they aren't actually doing what they need to
do. On average when we have hardware failure we are looking at one to three hours of IT
time to fix that issue and, again, two to four hours impact to that user. Now, many times
we can give them a spare computer to use -- we have checkout computers -- but if they
are all checked out and none are available, then, at that point they are scrambling trying to
find something else to do their job with. Certain types of computers, like laptops or MDTs,
aren't as easy to do self repairs and so for MDTs specifically we have to send those out
for repair and the impact on those can be drastically higher. Sometimes we have them
out for as long as three to six weeks. In that case we end up downing -- for police we end
up downing a car sometimes, which means they aren't using a car and there is weeks,
because they don't have a computer that they need to do their job with . For fire we
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typically try to get spares in and take them out of other vehicles that aren't being used as a
high priority, like a brush rig and other things. One thing that we notice is when we have
slowness or other things, it's a lot harder for us to track, because it's harder to quan tify
what the impact is to the end user. Like I mentioned before, when users start having their
computers slow down, a lot of the times they don't notice it until it's really, really bad and
they don't know what kind of productivity -- or what kind of productivity loss that caused to
them, so -- the other thing that we have to replace is because parts cost money and as
they age they cost more and they are harder to find. As an example, we had a piece of
equipment that had a piece of -- I mean had a part in it fail and so we went out to find the
part and it literally took us four months to find the part for it and the part was -- I think it
was about a quarter of the cost of the actual piece of hardware that we bought, where as if
it was within the regular cycle, which is usually about three years for manufacturers, the
parts are a lot cheaper. Any questions so far? Again, a lot of information. Okay. Moving
on. Some of the other benefits that we see on replacements comes with standardization,
lowering of cost and reliability. So, here you can see a few numbers. Up on the upper
right-hand side you can see typical repair costs of a laptop or tablet. This is something
they have posted on their website. The costs are pretty high to repair these parts. That
does not include staff time that, you know, could be incurred as well. Down below on the
left-hand side you will see warranty versus repair costs. One thing that we do, because
we are standardized on a five year replacement cycle is we are able to buy computers in
bulk, which helps us a lot. Helps with the warranty cost as well. So, if we get a three year
warranty that's the base for most of our computers and I apologize, that's a little small on
here, but I will try to repeat it. Three year warranty is base for our desktops and laptops.
No problems. If we buy an up front warranty in bulk, then, the cost is significantly lower
than if we purchased it individually. So, as an example, a desktop warranty, if I buy -- go
out and buy a desktop from a manufacturer under contract, so NASPA or WSCA -- or
WSCA and NASPO. The desktop warranty will cost me about 200 dollars, but because
we buy in bulk and we buy it up front, it costs us 80 dollars, which is a lot less. If the
warranty expires and we extend that warranty the cost is even higher, which is
represented on this graph. Desktops are about 300 dollars if they are expired for
warranty. To give you an idea of a typical repair cost that we see, a desktop is right
around a hundred, hundred and fifty dollars for an average repair cost. So, buying an up
front warranty of 80 dollars mitigates that completely and if there is multiple failures, then,
we are even better off. So, it helps us a lot. This graph on the lower right-hand corner is
our cost on buying in bulk, which we can do because we are on a replacement cycle
versus just buying them when they fail. On the left is the contract price for if we just went
out and bought a desktop, the standard model that we are buying right now would be
about 1,500 dollars and for a laptop it would be about 2,500 dollars -- 2,600 dollars. I
apologize. Our cost for a desktop right now, because we buy in bulk and we can order
every year a bulk quantity, is about a thousand dollars. So, it's about a 3,500 percent
savings. For a laptop it's even higher. It's 1,500 dollars versus 2,600 dollars. So, we
save a lot of money by being able to buy in bulk, which, again, goes back to our standard
-- being able to standardize on a five year replacement cycle. So, talking a little bit about
standardization. Less costly to maintain. We don't have to worry about a bunch of
different hardware types. We can be trained in a few that we regularly know and it makes
it a little bit more efficient for us. We get more consistent performance, so we don't have
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people that are saying, well, why does -- why does his run this fast and mine only runs this
fast, which, then, to us when that happens we have to figure out why it is and that incurs
staff time on our part. So, if we don't have those questions, because we are using
consistent hardware, then, it actually helps save us time, which, in turn, also saves the city
money. We don't have to worry about part costs for repairs, because it's all covered under
warranty. In the industry right now for desktops, laptops, tablets, whatever, five years is
the maximum warranty we can get. We cannot go past that. Manufacturers simple won't
offer it and the reason they won't do that is because it's too costly for them.
Manufacturers have stopped making parts, they have stopped supporting it. Most
manufacturers of IT hardware are on a three year cycle. So, after three years they drop
off support of those products. They don't make parts for them. They don't stock parts for
them and so that's why the extra cost past that five year mark when you -- if you don't
have a warranty. The other -- I talked a little bit about cost, so I won't go into that
anymore, but reliability was the other piece. It makes us -- it makes it easier for us to
maintain the machines. It reduces the down time for end users. The hardware meets the
demands of the application, like I talked about before, so we are in a situation where we
found some piece of software that we want to use or a piece of software is updated and it
won't meet those specifications anymore, we are able to maintain those with our regular
replacement cycle and, then, it decreases the cost for us as well. Some other alternative
options that we have looked at to date. Many of these --
Item 4: Proclamation
A. Proclamation for Meridian Future Farmers of America Day
De Weerd: Dave, I'm going to see if I can pull executive privilege right here. Before you
get into the alternative options, we do have our group of FFA students here and while I'm
sure this is riveting to them and I hate to -- you can stay afterwards if you want to continue
to hear the presentation -- if I can just do -- do the proclamation and I really apologize.
Okay. Thank you. And, Council, again, my apologies. I hate to take momentum out of a
presentation, but I was starting to see their eyes glaze over and I did want to make sure
that we will kept their attention. So, I'm going to move down to the podium real quick and I
would ask our FFA students if you will come forward and your advisor as well Mr. Wilder.
You know, I read in the ValleyTimes of the -- the accomplishments of these individuals
that we have here and I really -- I was out of town or we would have done this a lot earlier
and I wanted to make sure that we recognize our FFA students. I have a proclamation
that gives an overview of what we are recognizing today and why we took this opportunity
to give special recognition. There is no doubt that the FFA program that we have here in
the West Ada School District is second to none. Our students learn more than what we
typically think of FFA. They learn leadership and citizenship and communication and --
and just so many different skills and what I think is typically associated with FFA, but our
representatives have done us proud at the national stage as well and that is why I asked
them to be here with us and, then, I will ask if they would introduce themselves and talk to
us about what you received your recognition in and any additional words you would like to
share with us. So, with that said -- whereas being a member of FFA is more than raising
livestock and growing crops, it is developing leadership, character, confidence and
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teamwork, all traits needed to succeed in the classroom and in the real world and whereas
four Meridian FFA teams competed and placed in the top ten at the 88th National FFA
convention with over 64,000 FFA members and whereas the horse evaluation team
placed ninth with gold ranking. The food science and technology team placed eighth with
gold ranking and both the parliamentary procedure and the veterinarian science team
placed sixth with gold ranking and whereas four individual FFA members earned
American degrees, which are awarded to less than one percent of national members each
year for earning at least 10,000 dollars and investing 7,500 dollars in a supervised
agricultural experience or for working 2,250 hours and investing 2,000 dollars in a
supervised agricultural experience and whereas the leadership, training, commitment and
discipline of their FFA advisors and alumni help all FFA members to focus their talents
and passion to become naturally ranked and awarded team and individuals with each
member making valuable contributions to their victory. Therefore, I, Mayor Tammy de
Weerd, hereby do proclaim January 12th, 2016, as Meridian FFA Day in the City of
Meridian -- and this is where I get emotional and I'm sorry. That's not what you're
supposed to do in competition, but since I'm not in competition, but I'm extremely proud of
you and I do call on all of our citizens and our community to join me in congratulating
these young leaders and our Meridian FFA chapter on their remarkable accomplishments
and thanking them for representing our community so honorably at the FFA national
convention. Congratulations to each and every one of you and we want you to know how
proud we are of you and your team members and how much it means to us for
representing our community with such poise and confidence in what you bring to the
competition. So, please, join me in congratulating these young leaders.
Nesbitt: Thank you, Mayor Tammy, so much for this proclamation. It is such an honor to
be here tonight and to receive this. My name is Kristin Nesbitt and I'm the president of the
Meridian FFA chapter and I'm a senior at Meridian High School.
Boyd: Hi. My name is Maddie Boyd. I go to Mountain View High School and I'm part of
the Meridian FFA.
Schmit: Hi. My name is Kyle Schmit. I'm the alumni representative and I attend Rocky
Mountain High School.
Phillips: Hi. My name is Alexa Phillips. I am the chapter reporter and I also was part of
the horse judging team.
Bloom: My name is Madison Bloom and I was part of the vet science team and I'm a
graduated senior currently attending Colorado State University.
Wilder: Well, thank you very much. It's my privilege to work with these students and also
the City of Meridian. Our program, whether you realize it or not, is an actively fast growing
program in our community. It's the largest in the western half of the United States. We
have 11 ag science teacher FFA advisors. So, sometimes we are a forgotten piece, but a
very, very important part and these kids are examples of what our program is about and
what we do within West Ada School District. So, thank you very much, Mayor Tammy.
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De Weerd: On behalf of the City of Meridian, your proclamation. This is your day. So,
please accept our congratulations.
Nesbitt: Okay. So, we are all members of different career development event teams that
attended nationals and we won state and on the first slide is a picture of all the Meridian
FFA members who attended nationals this year. Okay. So, in order to get to nationals we
had to win state first and we had four state winning teams this year and they were
parliamentary procedure, veterinary science, food science and horse judging. And, then,
like Mayor Tammy said, we also had four American degree recipients and the ones that
attended national convention are pictured on the screen and they were Justin Nesbitt,
Jamie Short, Matt Stokes and Mitch Jackson. So, the team that I was on was
parliamentary procedure and that is, basically, running a business meeting and so for the
competition we had to run a mock business meeting. We had to do this in the preliminary
round and semi finals and we also took a parliamentary procedure knowledge test to see
how much overall knowledge we had of the subject and, then, we had a team activity as
well where we had to research different things in Robert's Rules of Order.
Schmit: So, also for our parliamentary procedure career development event, as she
mentioned, we had a preliminary round, but that was also coupled with a test which we
took that combined with our scores in the preliminary and semi final rounds, which we
were in, and we had five of our six members on our team, which earned an 80 percent on
that test, which mean we became accredited parliamentarians. So, basically, that means
we have the knowledge to run a business meeting using Robert's Rules of Order and what
that entails. So, in our preliminary round we made the cutoff, so we went on to the semi -
finals in which we placed sixth place and it was a really great experience and we learned
a lot.
Phillips: So, I was a member of the horse judging team. A lot of basics about horse
judging and so you have -- we had eight classes or horses, so what you judge them on is
confirmation, balance, muscle, things like that you would judge them on and, then, four of
those classes you had to give set reasons on, which is about a minute and a half to two
minutes of memorized reasons why you placed the class the way you did. So, basically,
proving why you placed those four horses the way you did compared to what -- the official
judge. So, you had to explain to them where you did with that and, then, we also had
team activity, which we worked on together on different things like reproduction, teeth,
horse feed, and differing items and different like horse pack and we worked as a team and
so Lauren Anderson on our team placed eighth overall, with a third high individual
performance horse, quarter horses, as anybody knows horse things and stuff like that.
Okay. And, then, so her and Taylor both had gold. I had a silver and Chloe Varley had a
bronze.
Boyd: So, I was a part of the food science CDE and on the CDE we compete with a test
and, then, we -- and that test is about our knowledge over how food is made and what --
and how the -- how food safety is. And, then, we also did a food -- a food team project
where we had to make a product together and, then, we had customer complaint letters,
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aromas, and tastings and we placed eighth overall. Kirsten Forster placed seventh high
individual receiving 400 dollars cash. Clayton Christenson placed ninth high individual,
receiving 400 dollars cash. Zach Putzier and I both placed silver.
Bloom: So, I was a member of the veterinary science team and the veterinary science is
one of the longest ones in the competition. It took us two days to complete all the
activities and the activities included a written test that was really really hard. Math
questions. Practicums, which we had to learn from a packet and, basically, we had to
learn how to conduct veterinary procedures. We had to know how to give intramuscular
injections, subcutaneous under the skin injections. We had to know how to wrap wounds.
We also had to have an knowledge of like handling techniques and, then, we had to
demonstrate them. We had to demonstrate eight of -- four clinical and four like handling
and restraint practicum to judges. Then we did identification. We had 50 parasites, tools,
breeds -- I believe that was it -- to identify and the packet that was given to us had over
200 things and we had to learn and memorize and they only tested us over 50 of them, so
there was a lot of preparation into this. And, then, we also had a team activity that we had
to participate in where we had to set up a veterinary clinic visit, basically, and we role
played. I was the veterinarian and my teammates were a veterinary assistant and owner
and a receptionist and we had to go through the proceedings of having somebody bring a
dog into a veterinary clinic for a senior wellness checkup. So, we worked a lot with
Meridian Veterinary Hospital -- if you guys take your pets there. We worked a lot with Dr.
Higer and he helped us get this prepared so that we could present this in a professional
manner. So, my name is Madison and I did place second overall. I received 1,000 dollars
in cash, which is kind of nice. And, then, my teammates Abby Talbott placed gold and,
then, Jamie Ellis and Kennedy Kirk placed silver.
Nesbitt: Okay. So, overall for the trip, just general background, it was in Louisville,
Kentucky. So, our chapter got to travel there for six days and while we were there we also
got to tour many different horse places in Kentucky. We went to Churchill Downs, which
is where the Kentucky Derby is run and we also went to Kesmarc and the Louisville
Slugger museum. So, overall it was a really fun trip and it was a great experience and it
was such an honor that all four of our teams that competed received gold ranking, which
is the top third in the nation.
De Weerd: Wow. Well, thank you. Thank you, Kristen and to all of you we appreciate
you being here. We congratulate you for your accomplishments and, again, thank you for
representing our community with such poise, leadership, and accomplishment. Thank
you. And to the advisors, hats off, these are top notch -- if you haven't been to one of their
breakfasts, or their auction dinners, please do. They -- as you can see money well spent.
If you don't go you can give them a contribution or donate an auction item; right? There
you go. Well, thank you again for being here and if you need to feel free to leave, so --
Nesbitt: Okay. So, our community appreciation breakfast is February 26th from 6:00 a.m.
to 8:00 a.m. and we really want all of you guys to attend, because it is a breakfast for our
community. So, we hope to see you there.
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Item 9: Department Reports
A. Information Services: Annual Update
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Dave, that's a hard one to follow up and finish up your
presentation, but we -- we will put you on the spot with that. Dave, thank you for allowing
that.
Tiede: Of course, Madam Mayor. Okay. Getting back into our alternative options here.
Some of the alternative options that we have considered to date are cheaper equipment,
which means buying desktops or laptops that are less costly. Studies have found that
failure rates in such equipment is a lot higher, so we have found that 40 to 50 percent of
those units will fail in the first 18 months versus our failure rates of five to probably 15
percent over five years. So, obviously, a big cost if we look at, hey, look, we are going to
be replacing computers every 18 months instead of every five years. Not something we
are very interested in doing at this point. Upgrading computers to extend the life of them
is another option that we have looked at. Studies have found that this is actually more
costly than just replacing the computers, because some of the components you can
upgrade and they will continue to work, whereas other components you can't really
upgrade very easily. That really comes into play with more the mobile devices, so the
laptops, the MDTs, the iPads, whatever. The tablets. A lot of those you cannot simply
upgrade the hardware, you have to send it back to the manufacturer to do that and they
charge a lot more for that. Desktops we can do pretty easily, but, again, it's really just the
ram and the hard drives that would be upgraded, which doesn't address a lot of the
problems with the software applications requiring more updated hardware. Another option
we have considered is cascading computers with areas that may use the computer less,
so lower utilization. The problems -- or the considerations with that is we increase the
amount of deployment that we do, so that incurs more staff doing that. On average -- up
until this year we were looking around four hours per each computer redeployed. When
you look at cascading that number goes up two or three times, because we are going to
have multiple times. With the recent changes in things -- or in some of my staff, we
actually have reduced that, so it's about two hours to replace a computer now. So, those
costs wouldn't be as high. Another option we have considered is sim cards for dumb
terminals and in combination with that is something called EDI , which basically means
instead of the brains of the computer being in the dumb terminal, it's somewhere in a
server room. The concerns that we have with that are the up front infrastructure costs.
So, are servers right now are typically higher end machines that have better mean time
between failures, they don't have as many issues, they are more powerful equipment. To
support a system where we would use dumb terminals or thinclines, that means that we
would need more of that infrastructure to supply that to the end users. Other concerns
with going with that is some things don't work that well and so streaming video or media
over that type of scenario isn't so good. I don't know if you guys have ever been in our IT
training room, but when people have tried to use video up there they have a lot of
problems with stuttering or not working or whatever. Peripherals have issues sometimes
where you can't plug things in and they don't connect right. So, keyboards, mice, pretty
straight forward, but things like scanners or other equipment that require a l ittle bit more
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oomph to them, those don't really work well in a dumb terminal or a thincline scenario.
So, between cascading and thinclines, we still have some concerns as well over higher
administrative costs, because we are not keeping things consistent . Part of why we are
able to run an IT -- or a lean IT staff is because we have the consistency we do have with
our hardware. Introducing more variables means that's more for us to manage and incurs
more staff time. So, something to keep in mind. Another option that has been done in the
past is postponing. So, simply saying instead of replacing a hundred computers this year,
we end up pushing 50 of those and only replacing 50 of them this year. The effect that
that has is all the other things that we have talked about, the compounding effect of those,
plus we are still incurring that cost in another year and so, really, we have pushed that
cost out by a year, but, then, we are incurring a bunch of costs at the same time. Those
costs aren't the same, they are costs of staff time, effects or hardware failures or
whatever, and typically those end up being higher than the cost of just replacing the
machines themselves industry studies have shown. The next slide is looking at the idea
of moving to an extended replacement plan. So moving from a five to a seven year. We
had talked a little about a six or seven, but this is specifically to a seven year. This is the
cost in a perfect world, spread out evenly over five years, you can see it would be about
166,000 dollars a year to replace our computer fleet, 1/5th of it every year. If we looked at
doing 1/7th of that fleet every year and spreading that over seven years, it would be about
119,000 dollars a year. Again, that's completely even, which we are rea lly at at this point,
if you saw the graphs earlier. That means a project annual savings of about 47,000
dollars. But what does that mean to -- what's the impact of keeping those computers an
additional two years? It all goes back to all those things that we have talked about. We
have computers that aren't under warranty, so when they fail we don't have parts, we can't
get parts, we have to go ask for money for them. We will have more failures, because
computers tend to fail more often when they get pa st that meantime between failure that's
produced by the manufacturer. Repair costs will continue to be higher. We will have
more productivity issues, which will impact not only IT staff time, but also the rest of our
user staff time. Just looking at this out of the box and knowing what our fleet looks like
from a computer standpoint, I can tell you that our 50 percent of our fleet that is mobile
based will have a lot of issues after that five year mark. With our MDTs alone we have a
lot higher failure rate after the three to four year mark and I can see just going to seven
years and incurring a cost of at least one, if not two additional staff members by just that
alone, because of the amount of work it will incur on our end supporting all these more
computer problems. So, that's what we found with looking at a seven year instead of a
five year. And part of that goes back to the warranty as well, like I mentioned, being able
to get those parts, being able to get equipment in a timely manner makes a big difference
for us and makes a big difference for our customers when they have something they need
taken care of. So, in summary we are not recommending any changes at this time. We
would like to continue where we are at with our five year replacement schedule. It's
working for us. We have saved the city money. We have saved the city staff time. We
are able to continue to run a lean IT staff. At this point I have -- the IT staff that we
currently have I have three employees that are really the ones th at deal with the hardware
and software issues of computers that are ran by end users. So, if you look at like the city
of Nampa, I'm sure they have quite a bit more than that due to their computer issues and I
don't have exact numbers from them, but -- we will continue to evaluate this annually. It's
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something that we want to bring before the Council and make sure you're aware of.
Obviously, it comes up every year at budget year -- or in budget time. Just something that
we want you to be privy to. We do see a possible need for looking at MDTs being
replaced more often. They have more failures. They are, again, in cars 24/7. They are
exposed to heat and cold and a lot of movement when they go around and they are
bumping around a lot and they have a lot more problems than what the rest of our fleet
does. So, that's something that we want to collect data on and see if that makes sense to
look at something like that. So, over the next year. One question that we do have for the
Council is as things come up throughout the year how often do you want to see increases
to these types of costs. So, I mentioned the example last year of higher replacement
costs five years from last year, because of how much we added and last year alone,
outside of new positions, we added 56 computers, which, in turn, means in five years
there will be that much more computers that we have to replace that budget year. So,
that's the question we have for you is if we see those costs or see that happening how do
you want notified? How often do you want notified? Do you want to see them called out
specifically in budget presentations or budget hearings when departments are putting their
presentations together or their enhancements together? How would you like to see that
information? Would you like to see it more often? Would it be helpful?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: David, I think -- you know, it's been six years since we have looked at the policy. I
think yourself and Jaycee and your staff, along with the Council liaison, should get
together and set up and look at the policy, see what kind of policy we need and what we
want -- we want to be very very conservative, as much as we can, but we want -- we don't
want to -- we don't want to be stupid. We need to make sure that we have product online
for our employees, because if it goes down you not have your time of your staff coming
down and repairing it or replacing it, if we have a replacement, we have that lost time,
because everything is done with technology anymore. So, I think -- I think -- and, then,
maybe you can do this within the next couple of months come back to the Council, at that
time we will be getting into the budget and stuff and see if -- which is -- for the citizens
what's going to be the best way to go costwise, whether to stay with what we have got or
to go to the five year -- however -- whatever you think that's going save overall the city
money. You know, you might save -- like that 47,000, well, if you have a hundred
computers go down -- breakdown, you have spent 50 or 60 thousand to repair. So, you
haven't saved anything. It costs you. So, that would be my recommendation, Mayor, that
we would do that, look at that policy. It's six years old and we have grown so much in six
years that make sure we get a policy in place that will cover us. That's my suggestion.
Holman: Madam Mayor? Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Bird,
that's specifically what we were doing here today is we have gone over that policy, we
have looked at it, and said -- tried to really line out for you all the different ways that this
costs us money and why we think the five year replacement policy is what we stand
behind as far as saving the city money, being the most cost effective, keeping the leanest
IT staff we can have. What we are wanting to commit to for next year, because we see so
much time spent on MDT support and how impactful that is to the emergency services
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when one of those goes down and it shuts down a car, is we are going to really want to
focus on that in the next year and see does the five year work, shall we stay with five
years? Maybe we should go to four, but maybe we shouldn't and come back with that
data for the next year. We wanted to get in front of you before we get into budget and
you're looking at everything from all of the departments and let you know we have looked
at this policy, we stand behind this policy, we are going to continue to look at it annually
and try to bring it up separately outside of the budget process to allow a pre sentation on it.
We probably don't need to go this in depth every year, but I don't know that we have ever
been before you and gone this in depth. So, you understand. I mean -- and this is just a
small part of what IT -- not small, but it's a section of what IT does. So, as we impact this
part, with the possibility say we pushed it out further to six years, seven years, whatever, it
impacts all the other things that we are doing in IT also and my staffing levels that we will
need in there. So, the question, too, I would like to come back to is once a year when we
put those binders in front of you and we see that number of replacements, it's a target that
everybody kind of looks at and goes, whoa, that's a huge number. It is a big number. We
are the one department that if we are not doing our job we shut the city down in about
three minutes, because everybody relies on technology in pretty much everything they do
all day long. So, what we want to know is how can we help throughout the year as you're
making decisions throughout your budgeting process that also goes on during the year
and you add some enhancements or you're building another facility or you think we need
these new employees or we need to redo this building and add some more technology, do
you want to see that called out separately in an enhancement saying, yep, you're
improving this and this is going to add 20,000 dollars every five years to this
enhancement. Would you like to see a quarterly summary where we put together here is
all the things you approved, here is the hardware cost and you're going to see that when
we start the budget process again. We want to make sure that you see when you're
committing to some of these enhancements -- we are calling it out and saying, okay, this
has an ongoing effect. I know it's in the individual line in an enhancement, but we really
want to call it out so you can see that whole number and how would you like to see that
and we don't need that answer right here today, but if you have some suggestions for us
about how you would like to see it, then, we can incorporate that and make some changes
this next year.
De Weerd: Well -- and, really, it's not an enhancement, it's a replacement. It's a
continued cost of doing business.
Holman: Right. It's the enhancement the first time around and, then, that replacement
every five years, so -- anyhow.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
Holman: If you have any other -- I'm sorry.
Bird: Go ahead, Jaycee.
Holman: If you have any other questions for Dave I just --
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Bird: I just got one more thing to say that I think that with -- with your policies when it
comes to budget time you know how many computers -- if we are on a five year -- if our
policy is five years, we know how much we are going to spend every year. You know,
117,000 or whatever. You know, whatever it is. That's just part of the budget and they
are not enhancements, other than if we are buying new ones, I guess, for -- for new
people, but that's -- that's why I -- and I -- Jaycee, I appreciate updating our policy every
year to make sure that we are up to date with the policy. I appreciate it. Thank you,
David.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: A couple questions for you, David. And I'm not aware, so you can correct me.
is there a tool or resource that IT has available to track the amount of hours that a
particular machine is being used? I know that we have probably some of our users that
are heavier users, other users that are probably lighter users. I'm aware of a person in the
municipality east of ours that had an MDT that never once turned it on. I'm not saying
that's happening here in Meridian, but I would like to be able to know if there is some
machines that are being used and maybe those machines do need to be replaced sooner
than later or more -- there is some that aren't being used that could be delayed a year,
maybe even two years. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or if there is a tool
that exists or if you're able to check what the usage is.
De Weerd: Sorry, that person should retire if they never turn their MDT on. Sorry.
Cavener: Maybe he is.
Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener, we do not
currently have a tool that let's us do that, but there are tools available to do that. That's
something we want look at along with how much time we spend on repairs and how much
those repairs cost, impact to user and things. Those are things that we want to start
tracking a little bit better so that we can have more numbers to present.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, additional question. Dave, in your estimation how many of our
employees are use -- utilizing more than one device? I mean there are employees I
assume that are using a desktop, maybe a laptop, maybe a tablet as well.
Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener, I would say
that would probably fall somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, follow up. Twenty-five percent that are using at least -- that are
using more than one --
Tiede: More than one device.
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Cavener: Thank you.
De Weerd: And I will say that that is part of the budget departmental meetings with Todd
and I as we go through the details and your detail tab and the line by line topics and IT
and Finance have got in, we have updated our procedure on mobile devices and there is
greater accountability now to the directors and their authorization of those that have more
-- multiple devices.
Tiede: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener.
On that same note, to follow up on what the Mayor said, we have identified that as a
problem and we are -- we have designed the standard operating procedure to kind of
address some of those issues, but we also have a check sheet, so to speak, that
departments will be filling out and saying -- identifying those needs to try to help us figure
out what are duplicate services that we are providing, so that we can minimize those. But
we are also looking at devices like these that may provide some of those services all in
one unit, instead of saying, hey, look, we are going to issue a desktop and a laptop to do
two of the same functions. So --
Cavener: Great.
Tiede: -- something that we are investigating further.
Cavener: That's great to hear, Dave.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I have a couple questions I think. They are chicken scratch if I can read it. What
percentage of the say desktops -- I was going to ask a general question about all
computers, but I'm kind of curious about the desktops now. That need to be repaired after
like the standard warranty -- during that warranty period -- additional warranty that you
buy, what percentage of computers have to go in for warranty repair?
Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Milam, we do not
actually send machines -- desktops in for warranty repairs. They typically just send a part
out to us.
Milam: Okay.
Tiede: But the percentage I would say we are probably right around -- towards the end of
the life cycle right around the 20 to 25 percent mark is where we are at. But those -- that
is partly due to us having a five year replacement -- or a warranty on those machines. We
do not have the standard warranty. We extend to five years.
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Milam: Madam Mayor, follow up on that. So, I'm assuming that you guys do this process,
did the math and decided that if you paid for those parts yourself on the 20 percent it
would -- it's financially beneficial to not spending the money on all of the warranty on all of
the computers?
Tiede: Looking at the cost up front, because we can't predict what parts will fail. Some
parts are more expensive than others. But looking at that from a broad overview it is more
affordable to buy the warranty up front, because we buy it in bulk. If we weren't doing
that, then, the cost would probably be offset and it would be cheaper to just buy parts. We
also have the benefit when we do the warranty that if it goes beyond our skill level we can
actually have a technician come on site at no additional charge and so that's also part of
that cost that -- or benefit that we get out of that, which would normally be a cost that we
would incur.
Milam: Okay. Madam Mayor, one more.
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Milam: So, in listening to what you have been talking about, it seems like it would make
more sense to move the MDTs to four years, but I'm just curious if there is a way to bump
the desktops to six years and that's why I was asking about the percentage of them that
break down or if there is a six year warranty for a little bit more -- you know to even it out.
Because the blanket five years, obviously, is -- probably isn't necessarily the right thing for
-- when you're dealing with the different types of equipment.
Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Milam, for the desktops,
for pretty much all computer hardware, anything beyond the five year warranty is not
feasible, it's not something that manufacturers offer, so at that point we could potentially
do that, but what costs we would incur beyond that point would kind offset anything that
we think we would save at this point, especially due to the fact that specifically desktops
are a lot less expensive than the other hardware that has higher failure rate s and so if you
look -- one of the graphs I had on there shows that our overall cost -- desktops make up
about a third of that right now, so --
Milam: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Remember to eat your microphone.
Borton: Madam Mayor. David, I think the policy is great the way you presented it. In
particular looking at all of the -- kind of the collateral costs, the down time, more than just
replacing. What I think would be helpful for me -- just annually in the budget book is a
data table that shows for the current year and for the following five years your existing
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inventory, the number of -- within that inventory that would be replaced according to your
policy and, then, the number of new unit s for all new hires, assuming that the proposed
new hires within the budget proposal are included and, then, forecasting that forward you
can show us what those next five years will look like. You can't make any assumptions on
new hires understanding in future years, but you will know the replacement cost of the
inventory and that might give us some sense, if we see things spiking or increasing at an
increasing rate, that we might want to address the five year policy quicker.
Tiede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Borton, that absolutely is
-- would be very helpful and I believe in the last couple of years Todd from Finance has
been including that in the budget manual in the -- towards the back. The only thing that I
don't think is included is the -- it doesn’t specifically line out those ones for new positions.
They are in the enhancements for the new positions, but that's something that we can
certainly add.
Borton: Madam Mayor? Does the binder have that forecast? So, for the next five years
of how that inventory trends?
Tiede: Yes, it does.
Borton: Oh. Good.
De Weerd: See, instant reaction to your desire.
Borton: That's quick.
De Weerd: Anything further? Okay. Thank you, Dave. Greatly appreciate the detail that
you put into the presentation and I would just say a general comment to Council that IT is
really driven and Finance in working together to really get their arms around the
technology cost and having a better understanding of -- of the efficiencies, where they are
needed, using technology and where there is duplication that's unnecessary. So,
appreciate the efforts that -- that you have led in that regard. Thank you.
Tiede: Thank you.
De Weerd: Jaycee, any wrap up remarks?
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Again, just to follow up on the recommendation for
how you would like to see the data throughout the year. I have taken note of what you
said, Council Member Borton, as far as the budgeting manual, but I would like us just to
be able to update you throughout the year on any of the things that happened outside of
the formal budgeting process, different enhancements or things that might happen
throughout the year, how you would like to see that information, because we would be
happy to provide it throughout the year. Okay?
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De Weerd: And -- and I will note that your strategic plan month is November, so some of
this can be discussed at that time and more information brought back prior to budget if -- if
needed.
Holman: Madam Mayor, I believe ours is in December.
De Weerd: December.
Holman: Yes. So --
De Weerd: And what is the timeline on the -- evaluating the MDTs?
Holman: We would like to spend a year gathering some data and come back maybe this
time next year as an update and, then, as we head into the budgeting process that could
be a consideration. We know if we do it we want to make it part of the budgeting process.
De Weerd: Very good. Thank you. Any other questions?
Holman: All right. And I look forward to -- see all the information, Councilman Palmer,
you got a lot to look forward to.
Item 8: Action Items
A. Public Hearing Continued from January 5, 2016 for Eagle
Commons at Overland (H-2015-0024) by Eagle Commons at
Overland, LLC Located Northeast Corner of S. Eagle Road and E.
Overland Road
1. Request: Execute a Development Agreement Required with
the Annexation of the Property for the Purpose of Including a
Concept Plan and Specific Provisions Relevant to the
Development of the Property
De Weerd: He took notes. Okay. Item 9-B is continued from December 22nd. Okay.
We will -- Council, if you will allow me to skip over that, because we have a lot of people
for other agenda items. Oh. Caleb, is our -- okay. Before I even do that -- sorry, staff.
We had an item that we continued -- or postponed and it's under Item 8-A under Action
Items, the public hearing that was continued from January 5th for Eagle Commons at
Overland and I will ask for staff comments at this time.
Watters: Thank you, Madam Mayor. This project, as you stated, was continued from last
week's council meeting --
De Weerd: And, Sonya, if you can, please, pull the mike in front of your mouth --
Watters: Yes.
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De Weerd: Thank you.
Watters: Okay. Since last week's City Council meeting staff and the applicant met with
ACHD regarding the access requirements for this site. I will just go over those real quick.
You should have a memo before you from staff from this afternoon . Apologies for the --
the late timing of it. A quick turnaround from last week's meeting. Basically this is what
ACHD and staff agreed upon for the roads. With the first phase, the Norco, construct
Silverstone north from Overland Road as a local street, with a minimum of 40 feet of
pavement, with three foot gravel shoulders, within a minimum 60 feet right of way, for
approximately a hundred feet, then, tapering to a minimum 30 feet of pavement with three
foot gravel shoulders within a minimum 50 foot right of way to just north o f the creek. And
that is if you can see where my cursor is pointing here for this area. That would allow
Norco to get started and not require them to dedicate additional right of way beyond the
north side of the creek with the first initial phase. Prior to the second phase of
development staff is requesting that the property be required to be subdivided prior to
issuance of any permits. Construct Silverstone to the north boundary as a minimum half
of a 40 foot local commercial street, plus 12 feet of pavement on the east side and
minimum 50 foot right of way. And, then, with that subdivision of the property additional
right of way will be required to widen Rackham Way to local street standards with curb,
gutter and sidewalk. That is unless Rackham Way is vacated in the interim and adequate
access can be provided to the adjacent properties from Silverstone. Staff has modified
the provisions of the development agreement. They are in your memo from staff. Strike
out underline format for the new information. The applicant has submitted a response to
that memo and I can go that -- I can go through that real quick on the items that staff is in
agreement with the applicant and, then, the other items I will let the applicant cover, if that
works for Council. The first is condition number two. They are in agreement, but would
like to stipulate that a buffer would not be required adjacent to South Rackham Way if
Rackham is vacated in the future. Number four. They would like to add the language that
the pathway connection to the south to -- from the -- from the pathway along the creek to
Overland Road may be provided along either the east or the west side of Silverstone Way.
Staff is okay with this change. The applicant is not in agreement with provision eight or
nine and I will let the applicant cover those two. Number 13, which restricts the future
building in phase two on Lot 1 to a single story in height, they would like to not have that
restriction on that lot and that's fine with staff, we could remove that condition. Number
16, the applicant is not in agreement with staff and they will cover that in their
presentation. Number 17 the developer shall dedicate additional right of way along the
west property boundary to widen Rackham. Just, again, specifying unless Rackham is
vacated in the interim. Number 18 requires the developer to construct a six or an eight
foot tall fence or wall on the east boundary of the site and to work with the neighbors on
determining the appropriate fencing height and mate rials. They would like to just provide
a six foot tall fence along that boundary, except for the area that's in the floodway and no
fencing is required in that area. Staff is in agreement with this proposed change. Number
22. Per Meridian City Code the applicant shall be responsible to install sewer and water
mains to and through this development. They would like the ability to attach latecomer
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fees with the upsizing of the utilities and Warren may -- may want to speak to that. Other
than that, that concludes staff's presentation and the applicant will cover the other items.
De Weerd: Warren, do you have any comment at this point?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. No. It's common for us to allow a
reimbursement agreement for upsizing. So, if that's something that needs to happen,
that's okay.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Would the applicant like to make comment? It is now
evening. Good evening.
White: Good evening.
De Weerd: Thank you for being here. If you will state your name and address for the
record.
White: Jason White. White Leasure Development Company. 8385 West Emerald Street,
Boise, Idaho. Madam Mayor --
De Weerd: Thank you.
White: -- Council Members, thanks for the time. Sonya, thank you for the time last week
to meet with ACHD and I was surprised that we were meeting at 3:00 o'clock, so in my
haste to -- to get this out the door, we do agree with number 16, bringing the road circled
on the first phase. As you know, we have kind of been back and forth as to the right of
way, the connecting of the surrounding areas. We feel that our use doesn't justify the
need to provide public access, but we are willing -- we understand that -- that what the city
wants and we want to help accommodate that. I think Mr. Kissler is a pretty prominent
person in the community. He's willing to do what it takes to make a successful
development and something that he is going to be proud to have his name on and his
company's name on. So, what we are proposing as a show of good faith is to go ahead
and dedicate, such as number 16, is how that's outlined and, then, work with property
owners to the north to create a connection and have interconnectivity of that whole region.
The Elk's have called a special board meeting for next week where they are discussing
the whole -- whole issue and I believe, in talking to their representatives, that we have got
the structure to get something done and ultimate -- hopefully we can come to an
agreement and build the ultimate road and what it's going to look -- everyone wants it to
look like out of box, assuming we can come to an agreement.
De Weerd: It would be cheaper, wouldn't it, to do it all at once if they participate; right?
White: Yeah. We are -- absolutely. So, I think most of my comments, excepting number
16 -- and, then, number eight. Number eight and nine kind of go together. I'm sorry, no,
they don't. Number eight we are just not sure -- I forgot which one it goes with, but
Rackham Way, ACHD said, you know, that's -- that's kind of -- they could see that going
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away and them giving up that right of way in the future and so one thought that we kind of
discussed with ACHD was, you know, if we can provide a primary access off of
Silverstone Way, that, then, they would be -- they would be content with a secondary
emergency access, you know, somewhere through our site, so that's something that we --
there is two in there that we would like to explore that down the road if that's possible. It's
kind of -- we have got a little bit of heartburn on doing curb, gutter and sidewalk, as well as
ten feet of right of way on a road that doesn't really go anywhere and ACHD doesn't really
care all that much about. Number nine. Same issue on connection. We have -- we have
spoken with Zamzow's and Mr. Kissler has to pay the latecomer fees on the
improvements to the signal as it ends for the north side and the Zamzow's folks haven't
really responded to Sundance, so that's why it was given to -- to Mr. Kissler when he
bought that land, so it's kind of -- we are more than willing to have them connect, but we
would like for them to chip in. Sixteen we agree. Seventeen that's the Rackham Way and
22, the upsizing is -- we are already doing the work, we would just like to be reimbursed
for upsizing.
De Weerd: Sonya, is -- on number nine, it's just giving an easement, it's not requiring to
build the improvement, but it's just to grant them an easement, so that if Zamzow's was to
pay to connect to the pavement they could? Is that -- that's how I read it.
Watters: Madam Mayor, Council, our code just requires a cross -access be granted to
adjacent properties for connectivity. We don't get involved in the -- the monetary
compensation on that.
De Weerd: And so --
Watters: They do have a drivewa y stub there currently, so staff is just asking that either
right of way be provided currently, so staff is just asking that either right of way be
provided to that stub so they can have access or the access easement be provided.
De Weerd: So, I don't think it's requiring you to develop from their access to where you
would pave, they would have to do that is my understanding.
White: Right. But Mr. Kissler is paying the latecomer fees on the signal, the
improvements that were done years ago when Sundance did it. He's agreed to pay that
and they did -- they did it by quarter. So, the northwest corner, northeast corner --
Zamzow's is the northeast corner, they didn't care to chip in, so if we provide them access
to it they are -- we don't really have --
De Weerd: They are kind of exempt from any latecomer arrangement, is that -- see, we
don't do this normally, so we don't know what any of that means.
White: Right. If they are provided an access easement, there is zero motivation for them
to chip into the kitty to pay for the improvements and the access.
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De Weerd: So, can the city ask for an easement that any financial implications be worked
out with Ada County Highway District on latecomers or sharing responsibility? I -- I know
what you're saying, but we also -- we also require connectivity.
White: Right.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: If it's your easement that you're granting, couldn't the terms include that the
easement is granted for that property in order to have cross-access, the cost of which has
to be born one hundred percent by that owner to install and coordinate with the city? So,
it's the -- the breadth and depth of your easement is as broad as you want to grant.
Hence the cross-access.
White: Right.
Borton: But if it's going to be utilized by your neighboring property to the east, they would
have to incur all costs -- just, for an example, of a way to satisfy the city's conditions, but
still alleviate your concern on having to spend money?
White: Well, the money has already -- already been spent -- or is owed --
Borton: Specifically -- specific to that cross-access, though.
White: Well, no, the access -- you know, when Sundance developed the intersection and
put all the light standards in, they developed it at the ultimate design and they said, okay,
the north side people have to chip in, they are a quarter -- or a half of the north side, so
they passed that along to Mr. Kissler. Zamzow's never really responded to chipping in for
the past expense, let alone going forward and there is really not a whole lot of expense for
them to attach once we go ahead and build it all the way through.
Borton: Okay.
White: I mean we are not against the easement, just as long as they pay their pro rata
share and I don't think Kissler is looking to -- to, you know, blackmail anyone or --
Borton: It's a pro rata share of the easement access or the pro rata share of something
else?
White: Of the cost to get access to that drive aisle I guess is where I'm at.
Borton: All right. That's what I was suggesting is --
De Weerd: Can you, please, move forward.
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Borton: Is the cost of the -- utilizing the drive aisle access and that cross-access
easement is born one hundred percent by the property to the e ast. I don't know how you
have someone pay more than that. It's that or I'm not following your concern.
White: Yeah. I don't think I'm understanding your question.
Borton: If there is concern about agreeing to the cross-access easement because it might
impose a cost upon you --
White: Oh, no, we will have the cost by bringing the road in -- you know, the right of way
of the road and all the improvements.
Borton: A cost specific to the easement. Not a cost associated with a different conditio n.
I'm not following what the concern is with regard to the easement itself.
White: The easement gives them the right to use that access that cost --
Borton: You want them to share the cost of the road itself.
White: Correct.
Borton: Oh. Okay. Not just the cost for the cross-access easement.
White: Correct. Yeah. I'm sorry. The --
Borton: Okay.
White: The easement -- yeah, there really isn't much cost. It's getting to that point.
Borton: The whole road. Okay.
White: Right. So, I mean we are more than willing to continue to talk to them and make
that connection possible, but, you know, they need to come to the table.
De Weerd: So, can the cross-access or the easement be granted with a financial
contribution proportional to the cost of the intersection? I don't know, because I know at
some point the road to the east is -- is going to be left-in and right-out. I would imagine
once they can connect to that -- that light that road is not going to have the same right -in,
right-out as it has right now for Zamzow's. It becomes really important for them.
Hood: So, Madam Mayor, to somewhat answer your question, I don't see a way -- a tool
with this application to condition something on Zamzow's. I don't even know what a
proportionate share would be. I mean we don't know how much of Zamzow's traffic will
use that. certainly I agree I mean they are going to benefit from it, there is no doubt, but
that's been in the plan. I mean you can see from what's on the aerial now that we want
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them to take access from that signal. That's been the plan. I don't know what was worked
out before on getting the intersection -- who participated and who didn't. Certainly if it was
through ACHD, then, Zamzow's should have paid their proportionate share and I don't
know if that was something that Sundance did and --
White: No. I believe -- I believe it was private, because Sundance, you know, did the
lion's share of it. They are the ones that really created t he need to the south when they
-- when they developed Silverstone.
Hood: So, I mean, Madam Mayor, we are talking the initial construction on the road is -- I
mean if you look at the Zamzow's site, you look at their public street frontage, they have
improved that, that's what they abu tted as a public street. We do want them to have
access again to the signal and the maintenance of that will be on the highway district. I
mean the idea is that's a public street. So, I don't -- and it doesn’t sound like that's what
we are talking about so much. The difference between Zamzow's west property boundary
and the east boundary of where ever their right of way is, that should be Zamzow's
responsibility to maintain that drive aisles access in my opinion. I mean that shouldn't be
anyone else's responsibility. That's going to benefit them. But I would go the other way,
too. And say there may be -- depending on what businesses come in here, they may be
able to access Zamzow's, so it's reciprocated and we already have from Zamzow's a
cross-access to this property owner. They can go out on Jade, whatever this -- the other
street is on the other side. So, Zamzow's has already provided to this property owner
cross-access to use that -- their driveway to get through. I don't know how much they
would, but it's there. I mean that's the reciprocal part of that. So, we already have 50
percent of it and we are looking for the other half, whether it be a public street or a cross -
access. But, again, back to your original question or potential solution, we can't compel
Zamzow's to provide any amount of money, they aren't here in front of us; right? So, I
don't know how we -- we as a city say, well, let's conditionally provide this cross -access or
ask them -- require them to participate in the construction of Silverstone Way to the north.
I don't see what -- and you asked about ACHD doing that, I don't think ACHD -- ACHD is
in the same boat, they can't require them to do anything. They are already there.
De Weerd: They are already entitled.
White: To the roadways, not to private property next door.
De Weerd: Yeah, but that will be public.
White: Right. That's what we are working on. I mean we will make best efforts to -- to
work something out with them. I just -- I don't see how that can be a requirement of us to
provide someone else a benefit across our property. So, could that be moved to your best
efforts to agree? I mean if they simply won't -- won't participate, then, why should we --
De Weerd: Because it's required of everyone.
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Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I don't -- maybe -- it sounds like there is a
little disconnect here. It seems like what I was reading in the staff report is the
requirement is to build half of the road, so the other half of that road is go ing to have to get
constructed on somebody else's expense. So, the access point where Zamzow's is taking
access in the picture. There is not a road going to be constructed right in front of that,
because your property isn’t going to build the road all the way across, so that they would
still have to construct it and as we stated there is a code requirement and it is something
that's already been provided to your property to access theirs. So, they are going to have
cost to access the roadway, because of the roadway in front of it -- on their boundary line
won't be constructed. The only part I think that you're being asked to construct was the
intersection portion.
White: And pay for the intersection that was already built years ago.
Nary: I think that's a -- that's a different issue, but I'm just saying that when you're talking
to -- or all this talk about access and the portion of access goes to the edge of the
property and this is a public street, which you have only constructed a portion of, so
someone is going to have to construct the other portion. Right. Unless I'm missing
something from planning. You're not -- it's not completely -- but it is a public roadway.
White: Well, not -- not, it's private property today.
De Weerd: Yeah. But in order to give the entitlement it has to be public and therein lies
the big challenge. These are already built. They are already entitled. They already have
a cross-access and in our code it requires us to require it of others, just like we requir ed it
of them. But if you build your half of the road on the west side --
White: Yeah.
De Weerd: -- they still have to figure out how to get from their access to the road itself
and that will be between ACHD and the other parties that are part of that road
improvement.
White: Right. I -- I disagree. I mean we're having to pay for the intersection, which
Zamzow's has had every opportunity to pay for today and they have been unwilling to.
Now that's on Mr. Kissler, because Sundance is the one hold ing -- holding the keys to
that.
De Weerd: And this was approved years ago and it's -- it's not within our process,
because we are not the road department. It's just a requirement and how all of those
details get worked out is -- is really with the road department.
White: Okay.
De Weerd: I don't know how else to explain, other than we typically don't get into road
discussions. I am really thankful we have an Ada County Highway District at this point.
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White: Right. Right. Okay. So, we sort that out with ACHD then?
De Weerd: Outside of us requiring the easement, how the connecting to the -- the
easement to the roads that you build that's -- that's probably something that needs to be
worked out with Ada County Highway District.
White: Okay.
Watters: Madam Mayor? Excuse me. I believe that the applicant wanted to address
condition number eight, as they were not in agreement, and I think he had his number
switched when he -- when he spoke to that, unless I'm mistaken.
Borton: That's a real big one.
De Weerd: Yeah.
Watters: So, we might want to touch on that before he sits down.
White: Yeah. So, number eight it asks that we will subdivide the property, which we are
agreeable to. We would like to add the words that there will be no additional right of way
as a part of that subdivision. We believe that we are getting close to a dealing with the
Elk's to provide them access all the way through the -- through the property.
De Weerd: Do you want to continue this, since they -- they will be visiting it soon?
White: Well, there is a -- there is six members on the Elk's board and there is a six
member board of trustees beyond that. I don't think in the interest of time with Mr. Kissler
wanting to be open by the end of the year th at we can wait for them to make their
decision, because who knows how long it will take for -- for it to get through all the
members on the board.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: To the remainder of your comment on provision eight, you, then, ask to delete the
remaining sentences after the first and those are the sentences which require the
construction of the commercial street, the one half plus 12, which -- and that's a much
bigger issue and obligation than just the easement itself, which --
White: Right. There are two that Mr. Kissler is willing to provide the right of way up the
creek as a show of good faith that he's willing to work with the Elk's to get it there and,
then, we will deal with -- with them and the right of way to be dedicated as we can come to
an agreement. So, it will -- it will come in cross -- cross the creek and, then, we will -- it
will be private over to Mr. Kissler's building. The tenant that we had on major A is -- is no
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longer there, so we are not quite sure what we are going to do with that section, so it's
kind of -- it isn't going to work. Wanting to get him up and open and we figure if we show
that we are willing to dedicate the right of way south of the creek we are willing to get it
done with the Elk's, but there has got to be just compensation for the right of way.
Borton: Madam Mayor? So, on the slide that's here, the first phase reference in the lower
right corner that speaks to the construction of the 40 foot local commercial street, plus 12
feet of pavement on the east side --
White: That's in number 16?
Borton: I'm reading number eight from the condition. Unless I'm reading them --
White: Right. Number 16 -- what was added there talks to what -- what will be built south
of -- of the creek.
Borton: Okay.
White: Number eight is -- I guess was written before and it's kind of a blanket -- built the
road all the way up --
Borton: Okay.
White: -- which we will build the southern, what, third at this point and, then, you know,
deal with the Elk's on the right of way and the road and ultimately we -- we want to build
the whole thing up front and get it done and everyone will smile and we will --
Borton: Okay. Thanks.
Watters: Madam Mayor, Council? If I may, the -- the provisions in the development
agreement regarding the construction of the streets are verbatim from ACHD's
requirements. So, I would hesitate to change any of those.
De Weerd: Nice. Thank you for making that comment. Right when we thought we might
be somewhere you just threw a wrench in it. So, you could just, basically, say list
requirements as -- requirements as stated by Ada County Highway District and we just
kick the can down the road and tell them you go fight with ACHD on this, because they
are the road department.
Watters: For everything beyond the first phase, yes.
De Weerd: Uh-huh. Yes.
Hood: And, Madam Mayor, if I may. I mean I think if you envision a different solution you
could certainly propose that and we could continue the dialogue at ACHD. If you don't
want it to be a public street we could take that forward and, listen, our Council in the DA
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didn't require that to be a public street, ACHD, now what do we do? But I wouldn't make
any quarantines. I don't want to mislead anybody that says no additional right of way can
be -- the city doesn't require right of way. If ACHD wants to require right of way we can't
stop them, but we can carry that message forward. I mean if that's what you all want to do
is say, boy, a public street shouldn't be here, we are going to take it out of our
requirements as a city? That's one thing, but I just want it to be clear, that doesn't mean it
may not be a requirement. It may be a requirement of somebody else.
De Weerd: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, I get that. Do you get it?
White: I do, but I also -- in researching this that the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution --
the end of it says nor shall private property be taken for public use without just
compensation. So, we are trying to avoid that, because I think we can get to a solution
with the Elk's -- we are showing that we will -- we will provide access into the site across
the bridge and let us go from there and deal with it with the Elk's. Before we are required
to dedicate right of way with no compensation, the Elk's won't come to the table to -- to
make a deal.
De Weerd: Okay. But you understood what Caleb just said, we can recommend all we
want, but we are not the jurisdiction that makes that decision. We can recommend that
they don't require that, but we can't enforce it, because it's their requirement.
White: Okay. Can we leave it on them then?
De Weerd: Absolutely.
White: Perfect.
De Weerd: I can say that, because I don't make the motion or vote.
Nary: Madam Mayor? Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I mean I thing the only thing I can see in
number eight is regards to that right of way question is it says additional right of way is
required between Overland Road and the creek to insure parcels east and west of
Silverstone Way of access to the public street. Since we don't have a traffic study and we
don't have future uses and we don't have any subdivision of the property, it could say
may, because we don't know what's going to be required, but we can envision something
is going to be required, because this DA is going to run with the land, whether your -- you
own it or not and so -- but that's the best notice we can provide to people, because, as the
Mayor stated, we aren't the road agency, but on 16 this was the conditions that ACHD
was willing to live with at this point in time to allow you to move forward with this project
because the way this property is today you have an annexation -- you have a requirement
to have a subdivision and you have a requirement to have -- either build what was
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proposed in 1995 or ask to amend it. So, if you want to amend it the Council's option is
not grant your amendment and require you to build what was already envisioned in '95
and require you to sign the development that was proposed in the ordinance that you
bought it under those conditions. So, this is an attempt to get your project moving, but we
cannot leave out those right of way conditions, because you or some other future owner
needs to know what they are and so we can't remove them without causing a future
problem for someone else and that's what -- that's what we are trying to avoid.
White: Right.
Nary: The other option is the Council could simply deny your request and de-annex your
property.
White: Right. Number 16 just talks to the southern third of it and we are in agreement
with that. Continuing right of way we will get it worked out with the Elk's.
De Weerd: All I can say is you're in front of the wrong body on most of this. All we can do
is -- is present the findings and, then, a lot of this needs to go to Ada County Highway
District for the details that you're asking for.
White: Right. Okay.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: David, your comments, looking at paragraph eight, would that say that the
applicant -- in the first sentence the applicant shall subdivide the property, comma, and
Silverstone Way shall be constructed in accordance with all requirements set forth by
ACHD? No?
Hood: That could work, too. I mean this is getting into the details, because that's what
they gave us. But you could leave it more generic than that. Certainly.
Borton: It's going to officially go to them as part of the subdivision.
Hood: When a subdivision is submitted a lot of these questions will be answered. This is
more of a heads up of what you most likely are going to -- can expect when phase two or
a subdivision comes in. So, it's more -- yeah, more of a heads up than anything. So, you
could take some of the specificity out of some of the dimensions and those types of
things.
De Weerd: Which kicks the can down the road to the authorities that make the decision --
that just enforce whatever decisions they make are part of this condition.
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Hood: And, Madam Mayor, no one asked me my -- but I wasn't in my previous comments
advocating for a private cross-access. I do personally think it makes sense to have a
public street stubbed and we require public stub streets all the time. So, I just didn't -- I
wanted to clarify my previous comments, but if you decided not to, I wasn't telling you that
that's what we should do necessarily, but -- but if you so choose that's what we would do
is staff would react and carry that message forward.
De Weerd: Aren't you glad you ran for City Council. Okay.
White: Anything else?
De Weerd: Any other questions for the applicant?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam.
Milam: At this point I honestly don't where we are, because we were talking about one
and, then, back to another and, then, well, this was okay, well, that part of this is okay, so I
need somebody to summarize where we are at and -- hopefully somebody can clarify that
for me at some point. This is a public hearing, so somebody else may want to say
something.
White: Right. Are you going off of my response letter or Sonya's letter? I think Sonya
was addressing my response.
De Weerd: Are you suggesting -- just trying to move this along -- is you would do the full
improvement to -- to the ditch or to -- in the first circle --
White: First phase?
De Weerd: The first phase.
White: Yeah. The bottom roughly third of Silverstone Way across the creek. Correct.
And, then, the northern two-thirds we would --
De Weerd: The northern two-thirds you minimally would like to have a private road, so
you can minimally improve it, but that could be -- we could capture the -- what you have
agreed to in phase one and phase two as Councilman Borton suggested and
incorporating the requirements by Ada County Highway District and leaving the details of
that up to you and the road authority.
White: Perfect.
De Weerd: Okay. That was my summary.
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Milam: Thank you.
De Weerd: That's a for instance. You can do whatever you want. Thank you.
White: Thank you.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: The possible solution on number eight would similar language be appropriate in
paragraph 17 with regards to whether or not right of way should be dedicated along
Rackham Way, being an ultimate determination made by ACHD?
De Weerd: Yes.
Watters: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Sonya.
Watters: Councilmen. Councilman Borton. Number 17 really can be handled quite
simply by just adding unless Rackham Way is vacated. If it's vacated additional right of
way isn't necessary either way. I believe that the only real issue we have is number eight
and we could easily modify that to just say that the applicant shall subdivide the property
and comply with ACHD standards for road improvements and, then, number nine
regarding the cross-access ingress-egress easement to Zamzow's, I'm not sure that we
resolved that one. It is a code requirement. I don't know that there is any other option on
that one. But other than that I think, as staff stated previously, I think staff and the
applicant is in agreement with the other changes that they have requested.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Sonya, how about number -- UDC -- oh, number 13.
Watters: Staff is fine with that not being limited to a single story and just complying with
the height limitations of the district.
Bird: And how about the standards -- they don't agree with the standards of design or
current setbacks. They don't agree, then, we have -- wait a minute. I misread it. Excuse
me.
De Weerd: I think the only other question is the height of the fence or were you in
agreement?
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Watters: We are in agreement.
De Weerd: Okay. To six feet.
Nary: Madam Mayor? Could I ask a question on number nine. There is a portion of that
that talks about ingress-egress easement as a common -- as required by code. There is a
sentence there that says: Or right of way for Silverstone Way may be dedicated where
the driveway stub is located and right of way is different than that and normally we don't
require right of way I don't recall. So, is that particular sentence necessary to accomplish
the code requirements or is that additional --
Watters: It meets -- Madam Mayor, Mr. Nary, it meets the intent of the code. Rather than
granting a cross-access easement, the easement would not be necessary if right of way
touched their boundary where their driveway is located.
Nary: Okay.
Watters: So, it's just an option for that to shift to that boundary.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Council, further information needed from the applicant or staff? If not, I would
entertain a motion to close the public hearing.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we close the public hearing on H-2015-0024.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to close the public hearing on this item. All
those in favor say aye. Did I hear all ayes? All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Ty, this is where you make your motion.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I'm going to leave this one to the attorney on the Council.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
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Borton: I'm not certain if a motion needs to -- for staff spell out on each numbered item.
We have captured the general consensus on the vast majority of them through the staff
and applicant comments to and including the amendment to paragraph eight making
reference to ACHD's requirements ultimately directing the standards and needs of
Silverstone Way. I think Mr. Hood's comment with regards to it being a public street to
and through the property makes sense. The argument, though, will ultimately be waged
at ACHD. With regards to the cross-access easement, I don't see sufficient grounds in
what's been presented to exclude that code requirement from this project. So, I think
staff's recommendation with regards to paragraph nine should remain in and the cross-
access ingress-egress easement be provided to the property to the east. There is no
concern over the additional option of a second way to accomplish that same goal. So, I
think staff's condition -- proposed condition number nine in the January 12th
memorandum seems appropriate. So, for the purpose of making a motion, I will so move
that the development agreement approval slash modification be approved to include those
conditions as addressed by the applicant and staff in the staff memorandum of January
12th and the applicant's response letter of the same date and to include staff's
recommended paragraph -- or recommended provision in paragraph nine.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion by Council?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: On number 22, while we allow the latecomers fee on our utilities, are we responsible
for collecting or is he?
De Weerd: Warren, what is the standard practice in these situations?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I wasn't -- didn't know I was going to
have to talk on this, but I believe the way that that happens is we collect it and, then, on a
quarterly basis we reimburse it back to the original developer.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Go forward and take it to ACHD.
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White: Thanks.
D. Public Works: FY2015 Engineering Project Close-Out Report
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. We concluded the discussion on Item 8-A. We are now
under item -- we will delay the strategic plan update, so we can get to Public Works, so
the majority of our audience can go home. Item 9 -D is under Public Works with the -- is
that the best order, Warren? I guess --
Stewart: Yes.
De Weerd: -- most everyone is here for --
Stewart: The majority can go home. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thanks for
your patience and we will try and make this as quick as we can, although there is a fair
amount of stuff we have to cover. Per the city's purchasing policy we are required come
back on an annual basis report to you on the projects -- the capital projects or the
infrastructure projects that we complete each year. We are going to try and do this by
summarizing really quickly the water, wastewater and recycled water capital projects that
we completed in 2015. You will have the opportunity to hear from many of the staff
members regarding the work that they did on closing these projects up. We are also
going to take a little time at the end of our presentation to talk about a few other key
accomplishments. Only four. We will make it as brief as we can. But they are important
in I think providing some educational opportunities to the new Council members for one
and also highlighting some things that you may not hear about as a strict follow -- if we
strictly follow the purchasing policy, but I think you will find them beneficial. First of all, I
want to talk a little bit about the team that you will be hearing from tonight. These are the
members of the engineering staff, most of which have presented to you before, although
there is two new ones. Last year Dean Stacey and Derrick Nelson were new to the staff
and because they were new they didn't complete any projects. I'd like both of them to
stand up if they would, just so you know who they are. They are going to have the
opportunity to talk to you tonight. We have been very fortunate in acquiring both of these
individuals. They have been really excellent additions to our staff. They have done a
fantastic job for us. The agenda will go as follows: We are going to talk -- the water group
is going to get up and talk for a little bit and, then, the wastewater group and, then, Austin
is going to get up and talk to you about the streetlighting projects. Before they get going I
just want to highlight one thing that we are very proud of -- or I'm very proud of the staff
about. Six years ago -- about six and a half years ago when I first came to the city we
managed budgets in the -- the capital budgets in the six, seven million dollar range for
both water and wastewater. This past year -- and we had an execution rate of about 46
percent in getting those projects completed on time, on the time frame that we had
originally planned and so forth. This year we actually managed the largest capital budget
that we have ever managed, because we have a great deal of infrastructure being put in
the ground as a result of the growth that we have got, as well as our new NPDES permit
requirements. And in spite of the fact that we handled the largest budget ever, we also
achieved the highest execution rate ever. A little over 85 percent execution, which,
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essentially, is an indicator of basically asking for only what we need, getting that
infrastructure built on time and in budget. So, I wanted to commend staff of what they
have done. They have had an excellent year. They are going to share that information
with you and without any further adieu I will turn the time over to Kyle. He can introduce
the water stuff.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Radek: Madam Mayor, Council Members, Kyle Radek. I'm going to start with the water
supply projects category and we completed several projects in this category and I'm going
to talk about the first one. Well 16-B and C pumping facility was the culmination of a
series of projects intended to replace the lost capacity in the original Well 16, which was
taken offline in 2012 for uranium levels that were above maximum contaminant levels.
Construction contracts included a new test well, two new production wells of differing
chemistry and, finally, the pumping facility equipped to blend water from two wells to
optimize water quality. So, this is actually a -- this is one that I talked to Council about a
couple times before, because this is the first project where we have successfully done
this. We have put two wells in the same place, different depths, different water chemistry,
and blended them together to optimize water quality. The contracts associated with this
project were 565,000. We had 42,000 dollars in change orders for net changes, which
were all additional work and making the total 607,000 dollars. Well 18 and 26 evaluation
and reconstruction projects are a continuation of our pro-active approach to maintain and
improve our supply wells, which are critical infrastructure. In 2014 the water division
started to manage these projects, rather than engineering, but we want to include them in
this presentation just so you knew that this -- this kind of activity was going on. The Well
18 effort included installation of a liner to exclude areas of the well screen and improve
water quality. It's been pumping that way for several months and has shown that that
change has created better water quality and it's proven effective. The Well 26 evaluation
was the third ten year evaluation we have done at a well that was equipped with a poly
vinyl chloride or plastic well casing and as with the first two the casing showed v irtually no
signs of aging, providing more support for this choice of material in our current well
construction standards. I believe we are still the only municipality in the state that as a
normal practice uses PVC casings. We have found in the past that sometimes steel
casing lasts as little as ten years before it's Swiss cheese and needs to be repaired. So,
really, improvement in materials from that respect.
Worthington: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Clint Worthington.
De Weerd: Hi, Clint.
Worthington: This -- this next project is the Well 21 iron and manganese project. The
filter project. This is the city's first water filtration system that was completed to improve
water quality by removing iron and manganese from the water supplied by Well 21 into the
distribution system. Iron and manganese removal is important in order to provide
adequate chlorine residuals in a distribution system without the recipitation of the iron and
manganese particle, which is what results in our brown water that we get. This treatment
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facility uses a green sand filter media and has been successful at removing 90 to 95
percent of the iron and manganese from the water, which has completely cleared up any
brown water from this site. The original contracts for the project were 587,000. We had
33,000 dollars in net changes, for a total of 620,000 dollars. Next is the SCADA system
upgrades. You guys have seen this for a few years now. This project consists of
replacing old SCADA components, such as PLCs, panels, radios, antennas, as well as
adding new components to increase our capabilities of monitoring and controlling
equipment. The projects have created improved radio communications, fiber link
operational control and provided for a faster, more reliable and efficient means to monitor
and control system facilities. These 2015 projects completed here are -- they complete
our SCADA upgrades at well sites. Our focus now is being on the TRVs for this year.
Original contracts for these upgrades were 330,000 dollars. We had 7,000 dollars in net
changes, for a total of 337,000 dollars. Next is the fiber optic line project. We installed
fiber optic conduit and cable between City Hall, the water division, and the wastewater
resource recovery facility. The dedicated fiber optic line between these three locations
has improved the speed and reliability of communications with SCADA systems and
enabled better troubleshooting and communication between engineering staff and water
and wastewater operations staff. Original contracts for the project are 229,000 , we had a
3,000 dollar change -- net change, for a total of 232,000 dollars. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Blake: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, my name is Brent Blake, I'm a project
manager for the engineering division. I'd like to talk to you tonight a little bit about the
water main and sewer main replacement program that we have going. Some of you may
remember we started this about five to six years ago and I think we have been reporting
on it ever since then. Basically, the program consists of strategically replacing water and
sewer mains within the city that are -- are mostly aged and mostly located within the older
portions of the City of Meridian. I was fortunate enough to manage two of those sewer
main replacement projects this year. The first one I did was called Northwest -- Site 12-B.
During this project we abandoned approximately 2,000 feet of eight inch sewer main that
was located in -- in the backyards of residential properties between the Cherry Avenue
and Cherry Lane area. A new sewer main was constructed within the public right of way
and approximately 5,800 feet of sewer service line was re constructed on private property.
Original contract price was 509,000 dollars. We had no net changes. So, that was the
total contract price of that project. The other project I did was Northwest 8th Street sewer
trunk project. Again, that entailed the abandonment of 2,200 feet of trunk line, which is 18
inch sewer main located within an easement again in residential backyards between Pine
Avenue and Cherry Avenue. We, again, constructed a new sewer main within the public
right of way, approximately 2,500 feet of new sewer service lines and the original contract
price was 345 on this project. We had 134,000 dollars worth of total changes or net
changes, bringing the total contract price to 479,000 dollars. So, that's a significant
amount of change orders. The primary reason for that huge amount of a change order on
this project was due to the fact that ACHD made us -- made our contractor -- required our
contractor to rebuild a good portion of the roadway along 7th Avenue. Since then -- or in
light of that -- that change order, we have negotiated with ACHD management -- you
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know, came up with a new coop agreement that really entails us providing ACHD with our
plan set prior to construction and, then, they will look at that and correlate our project with
their road projects and really if it needs to be rebuilt they will come in and pay for a portion
of the rebuild of that project. And so with that --
De Weerd: Brent, I think Mr. Bird has a question.
Bird: Yeah. I didn't -- no, I want to make a statement. This affected -- it goes right by my
house and I want to say --
De Weerd: You need to speak into --
Bird: This affects -- this goes right by my house and I have got to tell you that whatever
contractor you had out there -- and I don't remember -- was -- never delayed traffic, did a
great job. He went right down the middle and he come in on all of us. Everything was
taken care of. Our sod put back in place and everything. I can't say enough about that
contractor. Very, very good job. Thank you.
Blake: Yeah. I was highly impressed, too. And thank you for that comment. Not only
that, but I -- I think we -- our inspection team was fabulous on that project. They put in a
lot of extra, you know, overtime on that and just a lot of -- of thought in what they were
doing on the whole project. So, mainly Morgan Jones and Brad Tanley on the -- on the
12-B project as well.
De Weerd: Well -- and I guess my comment is more for Warren or whomever, because I
guess does ACHD set a precedent that we have to pay when that's their job and when
they do a road project in half and want us to replace infrastructure, can we just tell them
that that's their cost?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council --
De Weerd: I guess that was rhetorical, but --
Stewart: Yeah. Well, we would love to, but -- yeah. It didn't work that way. But we -- with
the new agreement that Brent referred to, we have taken very proactive steps to insure
that we work more cooperatively with ACHD to prevent this kind of thing from happening
again.
De Weerd: That's good to hear. Thank you.
Bird: Just got a question --
De Weerd: Oh, Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Warren, who is responsible -- when they come in and redo from the street to the
house and the pavement there, who is responsible to make sure that pavement is
replaced right? Is it us as utilities or ACHD?
Stewart: So --
Bird: They come in and th ey had to replace from -- from the main out in Pine Street to a
house there on about the 600 block of Pine and they come back and they patched it, but
I'm telling you it's a big bump right now and it's going to get worse. We need -- they need
to get out there and redo it. I mean go -- go drive down it -- West Pine, Warren, and you
will see what I mean. And I don't know whether we report it to you or we call ACHD.
Stewart: If it's -- if it's part of a project that we have done, then, it's most likely a warranty
issue that we can -- we can asked the contractor to address. So, typically, we have the
trench width that we take out and any other trenches going on the service lines, we are
required as a part of our project to replace those. In this particu lar project what happened
is the road itself was in such poor repair that as they started to run trucks and equipment
and stuff on the road, ACHD came and said you need to replace the whole road and we
were like, uh, that's not --
De Weerd: That was convenient.
Bird: This is just a replacement. You had something in there. Let's get it taken care of
before I -- before my little tractor gets lost down there.
Stewart: All right. Thank you.
Skoro: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, hi, my name is Emily Skoro and I was the
project manager on the 2015 sewer manhole retrofit and line repair project.
De Weerd: Thank you, Emily.
Skoro: Due to the constant wear and tear on the existing sewer collection infrastructure
we have maintenance required annually. Deteriorating manholes at locations are
identified through CTTV inspections and regularly scheduled maintenance. This project
included structural repairs to manholes to eliminate infiltration, trench and line repairs,
repair of protruding services and structural repairs and coating of manholes with
excessive corrosion. Cost was originally -- the original contract was 63,000 with negative
4,000 dollars net changes, for a total of 59,000 dollars.
De Weerd: I'd loved to say let that be an e xample.
Stacey: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'm Dean Stacey. First time addressing
you guys. Last year the only project I did was a demolition, so at least this year I got to
build stuff. First project I want to talk to you about was water main replacement in the
Lock Meadows in Loftridge. It consists of replacing about 1,320 feet of water main from
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six inch main to an eight inch and installing two additional fire hydrants in the cul-de-sac.
The reason we want to do that was the age of the piping, as well as increasing flushing
capabilities into a cul-de-sac and fire department access. Original cost was 115,000
dollars with 2,000 dollar changes, for a total of a 117,000 dollar project. The next
waterline replacement project I had was for Lindhurst and Penwood. Another small
project. Replaced 314 feet of four inch water main with new eight inch main. In this
project we replaced all of the three-quarter inch service lines with new meters that the city
provided to the contractor and we also installed a new fire hydrant as well at the end of
the cul-de-sac. The original contract price was 62,000 dollars, with no net changes. The
third waterline replacement project I accomplished last year was Antilles Court. Again,
replaced 541 feet of water main that was smaller than needed. We went from a six inch
water main to an eight inch. New services again from the water main to existing fire
hydrants and, then, installation of one new hydrant at the end of the cul -de-sac. It was a
77,000 dollar contract with no net changes.
De Weerd: Thank you, Dean. Hi, Austin.
Petersen: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'm Austin Petersen and I was a
project manager on the water and sewer improvements that were constructed in
conjunction with the Meridian interchange project. As I'm sure you have noticed, that
project is now complete and with that project ITD relocated 350 feet of existing sewer
main to allow for the new retaining walls and in conjunction with the project we installed a
new 18 inch sewer line and a 30 inch casing going underneath Meridian Road and
installed a new water service for the landscaping and irrigation. The total cost to the city
in the original contract was 187,000 dollars and there were no net changes. Thank you.
Stacey: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, guess I get to come up and talk to you
gain. This -- this part of the process is for water and sewer main extension. We had one
project that was completed for -- for extension and that was the Locust Grove from Black
Rock to Reflection Ridge. For this project we installed 5,450 linear feet of 12 and 16 inch
water main south along Locust Grove. We added five new hydrants and we also went
along Mary Lane on South Locust Grove and connected into the Black Rock Subdiv ision
to connect the water system in zone -- zone five to make it a more robust system.
Original contract price was 393,000. We had 7,000 dollars in change orders, for a total of
400,000. Next up is Clint Dolsby.
Skoro: Hi. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we had the following ways with our
project was improved operations, safety, functionality, and esthetics of the system. I was
the project manager for the aeration basin control upgrades project at the wastewater
research and recovery facility. To improve the existing -- existing aeration system the
engineering operations staff determined that installing modulating actuators to each of
their zones would increase the aeration and nitrogen removal efficiencies of each of the
four aeration basins. The original contract price was 164,000. A net change of 1,000, for
a total 165,000. I was also the project manager for the aeration basin PLC upgrades.
The City of Meridian uses PLCs to control the SCADA system. PLCs are, essentially, the
brain of the process, taking information and processing the information and making it work
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for the system. Many PLCs were outdated and no long er allow for full aeration into the
SCADA system. This project updated the existing PLC hardware and software to the
established standards. Original contract was 52,000 with no net changes. Thank you.
Dolsby: Good evening, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Clint Dolsby, assistant
city engineer. I'm standing in for the former employee David Allison, who actually
completed these next several projects that I am going to give the close out report for
them. The first project is the administration building and operations building retrofit. This
was the construction of a new 12,000 square foot admin building at the wastewat er
resource recovery facility, as well as the retrofit of the old administration building into
operation space. Their operators had far outgrown the space that they were in before, so
we remodeled the old building to house the op eration staff. The original contract for this
project was 3.5 million. Net changes of 67,000, for a total contract of 3.62 million. Next
project is the lab building expansion. Due to the requirements in our new NPDES permit
that we will speak about in a few minutes, we needed t o do a major expansion to the lab
at the wastewater resources recovery facility. We accomplished a 6,000 square foot
expansion, which provided the space to conduct the testing that's required in the new
permit. The requirements have gone up three fold fr om about 9,000 samples to about
30,000 samples that we are going to have to deal with out at the plant annually. So,
original contract for this was just over three million dollars. Net changes is 53,000. For a
total of 3.085 million.
De Weerd: So, Clint, can you talk to the net changes in the previous slide what -- was
some of that cost due to the footings on the -- the asphalt or the integrity of -- did we have
to go back and do something on that?
Dolsby: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, so for the administration building
there was 12 change orders under a thousand bucks, which were things like a fire alarm,
roof framing change, you know, decreased owner provided furnishings, some elevator
electrical issues. Then we had some slightly larger changes, which were like a floor
conduit, some new bearings for roof trusses. Some of the larger changes on that one
were main line realignment out in the yard. These are over 5,000 dollars. Millwork
revisions and some unsuitable soil removal. T he changes I think you might be thinking of
was in the maintenance shop where we had a bust on the elevation of the foundation itself
that was -- that was to be corrected. I will go to the next slide. You will see that notice of
changes on this are higher. Part of the changes on this maintenance shop project was a
32,000 dollar change that was reimbursed by the design engineer for a bust on the
elevations of the building itself. We were getting ready to pour the foundation and realized
it was too low, so -- I believe it was, so they had -- or, no, it was too high. I'm sorry. It was
too high, so they came out with a couple different solutions. The solution the city chose
maybe wasn't quite the solution that they would have preferred, because it was a m ore
expense and we thought it was the best solution for the city , because it brought the
maintenance shop to the correct grade and, you know, when you are out there for years to
come it will be -- it will look like it's at the right level and you won't always wonder why it's
a little bit higher than everything else, so --
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Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Clint, I think what she was talking about was where the concrete started flaking off
-- flaking and they had to come back in and re -pour the foundation. That was the
laboratory building, wasn't it?
Stewart: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Warren.
Stewart: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, there was an issue with the
concrete in the foundation of the laboratory building actually not coming up to strength in
the time frame that it was supposed to come up to and there was a proposal brought forth
by the contractor to do some additive treatments to foundation and ultimately that was
acceptable. We got the concrete up to strength and everything was okay. But the city
didn't incur a cost change associated with that, other than perhaps there was some minor
cost from other sub consultants that were delayed as a result of that.
De Weerd: Okay. And for our two new Council members that any of these changes come
through in change orders that are explained to Council at the time, so these have all been
explained at one time if you just can remember them, so --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: And you can see where I stand on that one. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Clint, who was -- who was the architect on that -- our buildings out there?
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, the architect on the
admin and lab was Walt --
De Weerd: Lindgren.
Dolsby: -- Walt Lindgren and the architect on the maintenance shop was CTA.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Dolsby: So, the next project is the maintenance shop, which I briefly outlined. It's the
construction of a new 12,000 square foot maintenance shop out at the wastewater
resource recovery facility to provide adequate space to maintain all of the plethora of
equipment that we have out there and out in the collection system. Prior to this they were
operating out of garage bay and the old dog pound, so it was really beneficia l to get them
a maintenance shop that was what we needed. So, original contract was 1.31 million.
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The net changes add up to 178 million -- or 178,000 -- sorry. I hope not 178 million. My
apologies. But 74,000 --
De Weerd: Just seeing if we were listening; right?
Dolsby: Yeah. -- was additional work, so the total is just shy of 1.5 million for that project.
Next project is storm water improvements and asphalt repairs. Historically we have had
drainage issues at the plant and ponding around the wa stewater plant, so in an effort to
correct those issues, as well as address some substandard asphalt and some areas we
wanted to add asphalt around the plant, we put forward this project. The original contract
for this was 377,000. The additional work which was, basically, just additional asphalt that
was added to the contract was 68,000, for a total of 393. These next two projects are
both related to improving the frontage and entrance to the wastewater resource recovery
facility. The first one is -- was built to widen the entrance to the road. It will help not only
with the RV dump, but I think with just the aesthetics when you drive by and just ease of
coming in and out of the wastewater resource recovery facility. Original contract for this
was 115,000, net changes of 4,000, for a total of 119,000. This next one was the
landscape frontage improvements at the wastewater resource recovery facility, which also
included a new sign out in front to identify the facility. Original contract for this was
100,000, net changes of 2,000, for a total of 102,000 dollars.
Nelson: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Garritt Nelson. I'm going to talk to you
about the safety upgrades at the wastewater resources recovery facility. In 2014 an audit
was conducted at the wastewater facility that identified several safety improvements that
were necessary for maintenance and operation. With this project in 2015 we designed
and constructed new stairs to access the sampling bridge on Five Mile Creek. We also
added a platform and access to digester number three, some miscellaneous safety
railings around the complex and stairs and hatch support for our sledge pumps number
three and four. The original contract was 85,000. We had 11,000 dollars in net changes
related to some design modifications on that access to digester three and a new ladder to
the roof of that digester, for a total of 96,000 dollars. Our next project is our SCADA lift
station upgrade at landing lift station. With this project our city staff installed new pumps.
We completed site improvements and added new SCADA control and communications
equipment to the lift station. Our original contract was 100,000 dollars. We had just under
a thousand dollars in net changes, for a total of 101,000 dollars.
Petersen: Madam Mayor, we had one capital street lighting project this year, Linder and
Cherry Sandalwood roadway lighting project phase two. This project included the
installation of five new LED streetlights that were 35 feet tall along Linder Road north of
Cherry Lane. This project was a priority project. It's a walking route for three nearby
schools and the original cost was 35,000 dollars and there were no net changes.
Bird: Warren, are you going to summarize for us? Thank you.
Stewart: We are almost there. So, in summary, we completed 23 projects for a total
contract value of 12.2 million dollars. There were approximately 560,000 dollars in
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changes total, making -- bringing the contract total -- project total cost up to about 12.8
million. Our change order percentage this year was slightly higher than we have had in
the past several years, but it was still under five percent and anytime you can have a
program like this where you do, you know, almost 13 million dollars worth of work and
maintain a change order percentage less than five percent, the industry standard says
you're doing pretty darn good. So that's how we -- that's how the capital project piece of
the presentation tonight turned. I think the staff has done a great job this past year. I'm
very proud of them and the work that they have done and the way they have done and the
way they have accomplished their work. We are going to take just a few moments and
talk about four other items that you wouldn't normally hear about in a project close out
report and I'm going to turn some time over -- I think Kyle is up -- is that correct? No.
Clint. Clint's up first.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I wanted to give a quick update on the
NPDES permit for the wastewater resource recovery facility. This is a new discharge
permit that we are expecting to be issued soon for the wastewater resource recovery
facility. So, this permit went out to public comment in July, had a 90 day comment period,
which closed October 21st. Right now it's in EPA's hands. They are developing what
they call a response to comments, which means they have to take each and every
comment they receive from us and anyone else that decided to comment on the permit
and they have got to respond to thos e, you know, they will probably address a certain
number of them, a certain number of them they won't. Once they are done with this they
will send the permit back to DEQ with their response for comments so DEQ can certify the
permit as well, which that process probably is going to take an additional 30 days, then, it
will go back to EPA for a final certification and be posted as a final permit and 30 days
from that date it will become effective. So, right now we are anticipating -- and this is just
our best guess of when it will happen that it will be sometime this spring that it will be
posted as effective.
De Weerd: Any other questions or comments for Clint?
Bird: Not at this time.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Stacey: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is a really neat thing to talk about
today, well abandonment. We actually -- I actually performed three well abandonments
this year. Two of them were for drainage wells downtown Meridian and the third one was
for the Meridian Heights Well No. 1 as part of the well -- as part of the Meridian Heights
annexation. The requirement was that the city would go ahead and abandoned that well.
To go with the drainage wells -- drainage wells were originally drilled in downtown to lower
the groundwater levels in an effort to reduce sewer main infiltration and local basement
flooding. In recent years the sewer systems have been upgraded to such an extent that
they don't have any infiltration issues and because of that the two drainage wells needed
to be abandoned. They have been active for several years and have been exposed to the
environment and in order for us to do our due diligence to insure water protection we went
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ahead and gained a contract and had them abandoned. The project consisted of verifying
the depth of the wells. They were both about 65 feet deep and, then, we back filled the
well casing with Bentonite grout chips, so it would expand and seal the well and, then, the
well was -- was capped below grade and, then, the surrounding concrete ma nhole was
removed and, then, we backfilled with soil and, then, put new grass on top. So, walking
through the neighborhood where you would see a manhole previously is just going to be a
grass area, you would not know that it's there. For the Meridian Hei ghts Well, it -- it was
mostly abandoned earlier today. We had to process -- the contractor was out there
pumping grout into the well casing, so as we speak it's -- the grout is starting to cure and
we are protecting the environment again. The project co nsisted of removing a 5,000
gallon expansion tank inside of the well house and removing -- we had to remove two
trees for access in front of the well house and, then, we abandoned the well. So, with that
once that's done our engineer is going to go ahead and issue a notice to IDWR that we
did our due diligence in abandoning the wells and --
De Weerd: And that one will be done, uh?
Stacey: Yes. Yes.
De Weerd: Yea.
Radek: Just to add one little comment on that Meridian Heights Well, that's one -- you
have heard us talk about this before, where we perforate the casing and pressure grout
and we -- we force that grout into there, because we are pretty sure that these older wells
that there is area around the outside of the casing that doesn't have any material in it and
if there is that's going to allow water to move from one part of the aquifer to another part of
the aquifer to another part of the aquifer and that's something we don't want to have
happen. So, as of like 2:00 o'clock today or somethin g, we had eight yards pumped in
and the casing volume was six yards. So, we have already gone two yards of -- of grout
outside the well casing and we are taking bets as to how far we go. So, I'm going for 20.
So, I'm going to talk about test wells that we have done this year. Test wells represent
year one of a three year project to do a test well, production well, and pumping facility.
You normally wouldn't hear about the -- the project completion and the dollar amounts
until the end of the project, but we -- we did do test wells this year and we wanted to share
the results, because they are -- they are quite informative. Current Council members may
have heard some of this stuff before. This is probably new to the new Council members.
When we do a test well -- I guess if you look at the -- if you look at the graphic on the right
side of the slide you see a representation of what the ground is like under the City of
Meridian. We have layers and layers and layers of alternating sand and gravel and clay
and sand and clay and sand and clay and sand and gravel and clay and -- and in the sand
and gravel that's where the water is and the clay separates those layers of sand and
gravel and the water in our aquifer system generally moves horizontally through those
sand and gravel layers, not down. And so consequently the chemistry of those different
layers is very different. So, in the case of Brent Blake's Well 29, which this is a schematic
for, we did eight zones and right down here we have a color change, a chemistry change,
and we know that below those zones we are going to find the contaminants that we don't
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like in our system like manganese, iron, Hydrogen Sulfide, you may get s tinky water,
ammonia. So, those are the places where we know there is lots o f water, but if we get
water from there we are probably going to end up with a million dollar treatment plant and
treat that water. And, then, up above that is the water that's -- that's oxygenated water
that's maybe hard water, but doesn't have those problematic, aesthetic contaminants in it,
but may have uranium in it, which is one of our shallow -- shallow water contaminants.
Now, in the case of this well what we found is starting with the first zone and going all the
way down, all of that water is of excellent quality. We don't have any regulated
contaminants that are of concern in those -- in those upper levels. So, you might look at
this and go, well, I guess you don't need to do test wells, you should just go down and get
some wet water and it's going to be good. Well, let me tell you about Clint Worthington's
test well. It's the one on the right. It's got 13 zones, but if I can use this example and say
Clint has a couple zones lower and a couple zones higher than this, in the case of -- and
that was out at Reflection Ridge. In the case of that well -- I'm going to have to have a red
pen here, because we started testing these and we found too much uranium, too much
uranium, way too much uranium, an incredibly large amount of uranium and, then, we
found two zones down here that had less uranium and a very -- it was a thin -- this was a
thin zone in the case of that Well 30 and there was a thin layer of clay. So -- so, here is
Well 30 target aquifer. Without a test well you have no idea what's a bove you and what's
below you. With a test well of this kind you know what's above you, what's below you,
what you can do if things start to change in the future, as in Well 25. Let's say we start
pumping this aquifer and it starts drawing in different zones of water. Well, we know we
can come down here and we have already done a blending well, which we told you about
our completion tonight. We know that there is water in different places, different chemistry
we can blend, so -- so I guess what I'm saying is the value of a test well is -- is very high
to us and, then, we are not going to have Clint Worthington doing more test wells, we are
going to have Brent Blake doing -- or maybe Dean Stacey has got the next one. So,
maybe he will have -- he will have better luck like -- like Brent did.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: So, Kyle, once you -- you do your test, you go in and fill the -- the penetration
up and do you dig in that same area or --
Radek: Madam Mayor, that's a great question. These wells -- we should call them
monitoring wells -- test and monitoring wells, because we leave these wells in place, but
they are already sealed up. So, the wells are open to the sand and gravel areas and they
each have their sand and gravel pack around them, but the rest of the areas are all sealed
up, so they are each individual wells that -- that don't allow any commingling of water
between zones. So, they can stay there and, then, what we can do is we -- we have -- in
fact, I think last summer I told you ab out our monitoring report. We have been monitoring
these test -- these wells for quite a long time to see what's happening with our water
supply in the aquifer system. So, we will -- we will retain the test well and, then, about 50
feet away from it is where we will drill our production well and there is a slope strike and a
dip to the -- to the layers of sand and gravel, but in 50 feet you're not going to see much
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change, so maybe a foot different at the most. So -- so we know we are going to run into
those same layers 50 feet away and so that's what we do with our production well.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Well, Kyle, I'm glad you explained all that, because I was wondering which one of
you or Clint was going to shoot off the most fireworks. The y look like fireworks tubes.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Quick question. Kyle, how deep did you go on the -- on 13? You say you went a
little deeper.
Radek: Councilman Palmer, Madam Mayor, Clint can help me out with this. We had
more tubes as you can see in the -- in the drawing. There were 13 tubes. We went down
I believe a thousand, nine hundred and sixty feet, and, then, we came back. So, we came
-- we actually did go down further, but we came back up and our firs t test zone in Well 30
was also around 800 feet deep. Yeah. Thirteen zones in that one. We knew -- we knew
that Well 30 area was a problematic area for uranium, so if we wanted shallow
groundwater and we didn’t want uranium, we had to be pretty picky ab out where we were
going to get it from.
Palmer: No oil, uh?
Radek: No oil? Councilman -- Councilman Palmer, interesting question. We have -- we
have never found any volatile organic contaminants in any of our test wells, such as oil or
petroleum products. Our aquifer system is such that it -- it protects itself a little bit. It has
those -- all those clay layers that keep contaminants from going down and, then, as I said,
the water in our aquifer generally isn't going down, it's going sideways a nd it's being
recharged far upstream and for a contaminant like that that is, in fact, throwing products
as heavy -- as lighter than water, it's pretty unlikely to end up in our -- in our well system.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Either that or Perf, which you do have --
Radek: Perchloroethylene. Perc.
De Weerd: Perc.
Radek: Right. And that -- yeah, that has been introduced in the aquifer system through
an illegal act of dumping and that's why you had a west Boise area drilling concern that
there is a plume of Perc that's moving through the aquifer to the north and east of
Meridian in general.
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Palmer: The oil comment was a joke, but it had a fascinating response, so I do appreciate
that.
Radek: If there is no further questions about the test wells, the last thing we wanted to
talk about is our engineering project manager database. We have recently developed a
new tool for planning and tracking spending on your capital projects and we wanted to just
share with you a little bit of information about it, because we are pretty excited about using
it. We had developed it and the city is supporting it in house. Nick Ferris with IT has done
a phenomenal job helping us develop the database and provide in some cases today, in
fact, realtime support for any problems that we come up with, so kudos to him. Project
managers have controlled their data. They can see the data of other project managers for
coordination purposes. The database communicates with finance's contract managed
database, so it checks to see if the PO that we are talking about and is the PO that they
think they are talking about. It also communicates with MIP to see if the project number is
correct. So, that's going to really help us when you get to the end of the fisc al year and
we are like we think we spent 400,000 dollars and, well, no, you spent 430,000 dollars, we
will be able to figure out what that problem is real quick. It also communicates with GIS
and so we can take our projects and map them on GIS and not just put a -- a dumb shape
on the GIS map, but a shape that means something, that somebody can click on it and
find out who the project manager is and when that project is expected to be built and how
much money is intended to be spent on that project and th ings like that. The database is
also available to users from other departments, so they can find out information if they
want. Here is an example of a stream that -- that is in our database that's a project
information screen. I'm going to zoom in a little bit so you can see this particular project
Well 27 treatment -- so this is information that would be available to anybody who wants to
access the database and this is just one of the tabs and one of the key components of the
database is the commitments, the project manager really create and -- and spend off
commitment. That's when they come to you and -- when they want a contract for design
and a design for construction, that's what you see being approved at Council. So, here is
the commitments on this project and this database will allow the project manager to put in
an estimated commitment as well, which communicates to other people that he intends to
spend certain money. And here is an example of the GIS -- a GIS screen shot that shows
the different years and the different times of projects that we are going to be doing. We
can use the -- we can do the symbology and GIS in a hundred different ways, but in a
nutshell it's a -- it's a great communication tool, not only within our department and to
other departments, but to agencies like ACHD and ITD, it should be a definite advantage
for us in coordination. So, with that we are ready to stand for questions on anything.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: I just want to say, Warren and staff, Kyle, all you guys -- this was a great
presentation. I certainly appreciate it. It pretty well shows us what we did, what it cost,
and how we did it and I certainly appreciate that. Thank you.
De Weerd: Any other comments from Council? I'd like to thank you all, too. Thank you
for your patience in lasting through the agenda prior to this and just our heartfelt thanks in
being good stewards. I know when you come for budget adjustments it's not always -- I'm
sure you don't look forward to it, but this -- this shows you the progress that was done in
just a year's time. That's pretty amazing. So, our heartfelt thanks to all of you and your
diligence. Thank you. Okay. So, that was the close out report.
E. Public Works: Budget Amendment to Reallocate $900,000.00 for
the Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility Capacity Expansion
Project
De Weerd: Item 9-E is a budget amendment and I will turn this to Warren and, then, we
will get back to our regular agenda. Clint.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, what you have before you is a noted
increase budget amendment in the amount of 900,000 dollars for the wastewater capacity
expansion project. This amendment will allow the design of this pro ject to be completed
on schedule this summer. The reason for this amendment -- really, the reason behind it is
the timing of the city's budget process that we went through last summer. The two million
dollar enhancement that we had approved last summer f or the design of this project that
was presented in July was based on preliminary information that we had on the design
budget for this project, since we were in the process of finalizing the capacity study and
alternative evaluation and also the scope of this project. Between now and -- between
then and now we have been able to get a much more clear definition of the final scope
and fee for this project, which is reflected in this amendment and the task order that is the
next item on the agenda. This project -- the capacity expansion project will be designed
for a flow of 15 million gallons a day at the plant that's in compliance with the interim limits
in the NPDES permit. So, with that I will stand for any questions.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Clint, is this 900,000 that's being reallocated is for design or is it to -- for part of the
2.5 million?
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Bird, this is for design
only. It's for the -- to fill in the gaps for the rest of that 2.4 million that we are asking for on
the next item. Also there is a little bit of contingency in here. That contingency is not
included in the task order, it's just a little bit of extra funds that we have in this amendment
so that if we run into something during design we wouldn't necessarily have to come back
with another amendment.
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Bird: Follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Bird: What you're telling me, then, is going onto the next one, that you're looking at the
design could be as high as 3.4 million.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Bird, the design
contract right now is 3.187 million.
Bird: So, you would need this 900,000 period for the design?
Dolsby: Yes.
Bird: And what is the total -- what is going to be the -- what is the estimated total cost of
this job?
Dolsby: Construction costs are estimated right now between 30 and 35 million.
Bird: Okay. But it is all the design.
Dolsby: Yes.
Bird: This will do the whole complete --
Dolsby: The entire design, a hundred percent. Yes.
Bird: That's still down ten percent, so --
De Weerd: Any other questions from Council?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Just a quick one. Can you summarize what's the -- what portion of the final
design exists now that wasn't originally contemplated? I know that the two million was
kind of a placeholder. The 900,000 increase is substantial and -- can you summarize
what that was comprised of?
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Borton, the two million
dollar number was a number that was pretty preliminary that we came up with in the
middle of last fiscal year before we had really characterized the project. At that time we
weren't sure if there would be -- like, for instance, one or two primary clarifiers, maybe one
to two secondary clarifiers and we came to the conclusion we needed two of each. We
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thought maybe we needed two or three aeration basins. We really need four to reach the
interim limits.
Borton: Madam Mayor? Did the completion of the preliminary design work help drive
finalizing the final design cost or are they tied together or no?
Dolsby: Usually they are tied together. We had a pretty dang good idea of what the cost
of the whole design project was going to be by the middle of summer, but we had already
presented the enhancement at that point.
Borton: Okay. Madam Mayor? The second question was a portion of the reallocation
proceeds were 650,000 dollars for a different pr oject, the name escapes me, that came in
under bid it was referenced. That's a big underbid. What was that from?
Dolsby: That was the UV disinfection project. We did get a very favorable bid on that job.
The engineer's estimate was higher than the bi d by a pretty significant portion, so we
could utilize some of that savings for this project. And that project is about halfway done -
- a little over halfway done with construction. They will be done in July.
Borton: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Has the engineer been able to explain the variance on that?
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, there was some mix up in their estimate
that they provided us. They included some equipment costs that were accounted for
somewhere else on some of it.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Thank God it was over, instead of under.
Borton: Madam Mayor, one last question. This reference as an amendment to a task
order, is it -- is it really a new task order in the sense of -- I'm looking at task order
amendment number one and number two, and trying to determine what changes there are
to necessitate the cost?
Dolsby: Yeah, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Borton, it is,
essentially, a new task order to finish the design.
Borton: Okay. It's not altering one of the earlier ones?
Dolsby: No.
Borton: Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
De Weerd: Or I think we should take to task purchasing that -- for this whole debacle.
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Watts: The reason that we -- we classify this as an amendment, the original change -- the
original task order did anticipate 2.1 or 2.5 million in the original task order, so the task
order was issued for 440,000 and in the body of the task order it did state that this project
was expected to be -- I think it was 2.5. Yeah. 2.513 for the design. So, if it -- in that
case we have already come to Council and said here is how much it's going to cost, we
are going to do it in two fiscal years. First fiscal year was 444 and, then, we are going to
ask for the rest in an amendment. The difference between that and a change order is that
we didn't even know we were going to do this and, then, we come to you and said, oh, by
the way, now we want to do this as well. That's a change order. That's how I differentiate
a change order and an amendment. An amendment was something that was already
anticipated and presented to Council from the original task order.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: So, the original task order for the 444 and, then, amendment one was for the 228.
Dolsby: It's right there.
Watts: Correct.
Borton: Both of those were part of the original 2.5?
Watts: Correct. It -- that was anticipated in the original. That was just the funding of the
rest.
Borton: And then -- so, that's for a preliminary design and final design?
Watts: Correct.
Borton: But now the 2.5 has grown to 3.3.
Watts: Correct.
Borton: Round numbers.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Borton, the original
estimate we received from the engineer in the middle of last summer was more on the
order 2.9 and now it's at 3.187 when we finally negotiated the final contract.
Borton: Okay. Thanks.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Seeing we have no more questions, I would move that we accept the budget
amendment to reallocate 900,000 for the wastewater resource recovery facilities capacity
expansion project.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second by Councilman Milam. Any discussion?
Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
F. Public Works: Approval of Amendment No. 2 of Task Order
10601.A to Brown and Caldwell for the “Wastewater Resource
Recovery Facility CAPACITY EXPANSION – DESIGN” project for
a Not-To-Exceed amount of $2,513,918.00
De Weerd: Thank you. I guess you're 4-F as well.
Dolsby: That's correct. Next item is the task order that's associated with the amendment
that you just approved. We had to have this task order follow the amendment for the
funding to be available for the task order. Typically a task order like this would land on
Consent Agenda. I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: So, you first approve the budget and, then, you approve the task order. The
order of business. Is there any further explanation needed on this?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve task order 10601A to Brown and Caldwell for the wastewater
resource recovery facility capacity expansion design project, not to exceed 2,513,918
dollars.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9 -F. Any discussion from
Council? Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
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Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
G. Public Works: Approval of a Sole Source Purchase for Grit
Removal Equipment for the Wastewater Resource Recovery
Facility Capacity Expansion Project
De Weerd: And in order to get Clint to sit down I will -- Item 9-G is under our Public
Works. Clint.
Dolsby: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this last item I'm going to have tonight is
in conjunction with purchasing. It's more of an informational item. We wanted to inform
you that we plan on going out for a sole source for grit removal equipment at the
wastewater resource recovery facility. Grit removal -- one of the first processes that we
go through after the wastewater reaches the plant is to remove a lot of the -- well, grit,
sandy-like material and so that it doesn't wreak havoc with the rest of the processes at the
plant and all the pumps and things that -- other mechanical equipment that we have at the
plant. This particular process is a proprietary process that removes up to 90 percent of the
grit, which is significantly better than other processes that we have looked at, other pieces
of equipment. So, we would like to go out for a sole source for this equipment, which
means we go out and advertise for a few weeks and, then, at the conclusion of that,
assuming, you know, we -- the sole source is approved, we would go and negotiate a
contract to purchase the equipment. The cost estimate for this equipment is on the order
of about -- we would buy two units for about 560,000 is the original estimate. Other grit
removal equipment that doesn't do nearly as much of a percentage of grit removal, maybe
on the order of 50 to 60 percent, around there, instead of the 90 percent, is over 400,000.
So, we feel like it's worth the extra expense to get the better removal for the wastewater
resource recovery facility.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we approve the sole source purchase for grit removal equipment for the
wastewater resource recovery facility capacity expansion project.
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9-G for the WWTP. Okay. Any
-- anything from Council? Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
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Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Dolsby: Thank you.
Item 9: Department Reports
B. Continued from December 22, 2015: Strategic Plan Update
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 9-B is continued from December 22nd. We have
received the comments of -- regarding the objectives, so we weren't getting into the
tactics, because for the most part these come back to you as they need funding,
resources, or your approval to move forward. So, turn this over to Robert.
Simison: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. Yeah, what the Mayor just
indicated, what -- we are getting a new sheet that's being handed out to you. We had
some comments that we thought were included, but had come in and now altered the
document that was in your packet. So, you will have a few more things to look at. But as
the Mayor stated, from the comments that we have received we are really just focusing on
the objectives themselves, not looking at the tactics. If there is any tactics that you had
comments or concerns about, most of those will come forward in the form of Council
activity in one form or another where people have an opportunity to weigh in on those.
So, what we are really here to look at -- taking what I have received directly from Council
over the last couple weeks, a couple of items. I tried to take where -- the last discussion
we had and very -- if I had discerned a specific comment I put it in there. If it wasn't
specific and it was just general comment, I didn't put them in there, because there really
wasn't much I could do. So, with that if Mark and I and what stands between you and
listening to the State of the Union address, which starts in a few minutes, we can take
these one by one and get a general sense of whether -- where people would like to -- if
they would like to make the chan ge which has been recommended by a member of the
Council, I would like -- either we can go one by one and I can -- we can do a raise of
hands or a general head nod, but in order to take the action I would like more than half the
Council to say yes to that activity in order for it to do or shake your heads no to that
activity or take that action. If you want, I could save us a little bit of time and go through
about seven of them or eight of them and knock them off the list right way and give you
my opinion on them and, then, we can really get down to the heart of the matter, the ones
that say eliminate. And I think that's where most of the conversation or actions we took
here, so without -- do you have a preference or would you just like to start at the to p and
work your way down? Would you like me to make recommendations on which ones make
sense --
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Bird: Just start down, Robert. You're short -- you're a lot shorter than --
Simison: Okay.
Bird: -- northeast corner of Overland and Eagle.
Simison: All right. We have a recommendation to eliminate 1-A-2. Do I have a
consensus from Council or a majority? Does it support the elimination or comments?
De Weerd: Well, Council, I would say that we are at the tail end of that, so that's coming
in front of you next month to eliminate at this point before it actually even -- you have
already expended money to consider this, so if you remove it it's still coming back in front
of you, so it's kind of --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would agree with you on that point. It's -- it's way down the railroad tracks now and
we can certainly have our say here in a month or so when it comes forward and at that
time we can determine what this urban renewal district is going to do, if anything, out there
and if we want to -- if we want to do it. So, I think it's too late to eliminate it off here
myself. That's my personal opinion.
De Weerd: Any further discussion on this one? Okay. Go ahead and move on.
Simison: Okay. 1-B-2. There is a suggestion to make it its own objective. I will say I
believe it's -- personally I don't think that that's necessary. I think that as a tactic it will be
accomplished. If you want to make a new objective we can take that step, but it is a tactic
within that overall objective.
Bird: I agree with you, Robert.
Simison: Would you like to make it its own objective? Yes or no?
De Weerd: No.
Simison: Okay. We will leave that.
De Weerd: Only those that would like it I would ask them to speak up, otherwise, we will
just move to the next one.
Bird: Yeah. Let's do that.
Simison: Okay. 1-B-3. Make a priority objective.
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Cavener: I agree with this.
De Weerd: Okay. I guess we will leave as is. Again, this comes back in fron t of Council
at some point, so --
Simison: 1-B-1 was a suggestion from Council Member Zaremba. I think -- I think it's
already in there, but if we want to change the name to match the mobility plan that is an
easy fix, but the overall plan is already co ntemplated per e-mails, in our opinion.
De Weerd: It's semantics.
Milam: It's in here to stay. Max severability plan. Less syllables.
Borton: Madam Mayor? For what it's worth, just to kind of short circuit it for me, the entire
plan -- the goals and objectives I'm comfortable with. I was back in May. The reranking of
priorities that are listed here I don't have any problem with either, for what it's worth. I
would not eliminate any of them. I think a lot of work went into it with staff in developing
this. A lot of the items speak to evaluating a particular proposal. I don't think evaluating
an issues causes me any concern, it's not -- it's not a plan that we are going to adopt or
implement a particular item. So, with that I wouldn't elim inate any of them in my eyes and
I'm comfortable with reorganizing some priorities, as counsel suggested in your summary
sheet, so there is my overall approach. As to very specific tactics, I have concerns with
many of them, but I don't think that's getting into the weeds of how we are to accomplish
what needs to be done by each individual council member.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would agree with what Councilman Borton said. The objectives are out here. We
are -- the tactic, we can always look at and they will come back before us and stuff. It's
not something that's, you know, the go ahead to go do right -- you know. I --
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Maybe a clarification. Two weeks ago when we discussed this, the discussion
was a vote in favor of the strategic plan was a vote in favor of these objectives. So, this
sole Council person has some issues with some of these objectives that have been
presented and so if we don't want to continue this system or if I'm the lone Council
member that has some issues with the objectives, then, we can go ahead and vote and I
will vote no against this and we can move on. If we want to discuss the -- these each
individually, I'm in favor of that, but, there again, I -- as I said since we began this plan six
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months ago, I'm one of six and I do have some issues with some of these specific
objectives. But I'm fine also being the sole person that has those issues.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, then, we will continue to go through them one at a time and if you
have an issue we can discuss it. Or we can just suggest and -- why don't we talk about or
have someone initiate the discussion on, well, I would like to talk about 3 -B-2 or 3-B-4 or
what -- what you would like to have the conversation on.
Cavener: Madam Mayor. I think for the purpose of a beneficial conversation, it sounds as
if the bulk of the Council is in favor of most of these and perhaps the discussion should
just revolve around those objectives that have been suggested to be eliminated, unless
I'm hearing any objection on those.
De Weerd: Okay. Okay. So, we will just discuss the ones that are -- are on here listed as
eliminate.
Simison: And, Madam Mayor, that was going to be my recommendation, just to accept all
the priority objective changes which have been recommended in terms of priority level.
It's really going to change when the work is done on most of them regardless and -- but
how you want to -- if you want to have the change listed that's fine, but --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I disagree with 5-C-2.
Simison: And, Councilman Milam, my only comment would be the start date for that is
right now, so whether it's a medium or low priority objective won't determine when the
work gets done, but just so you're aware of that component.
Milam: Well, I want that on the record I disagree with -- it's a low priority.
De Weerd: So, that's one change that if -- whoever made that suggestion wants to speak
up, otherwise, that is one we will not adopt. It won't change. Okay.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Palmer: All right if I might go backwards then, back to the urban renewal district. I don't
know enough details about the proposed expansion or creation of a new one for the Ten
Mile area and so without a whole bunch of information and even if I had it I would probably
still be in favor of eliminating it. So, if that's included as a -- in it as a -- when we get to the
point of voting on the whole thing I would probably be no.
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De Weerd: Yeah. This, again, was an initiative that started and it's at the tail end of the
process, so at this point I think -- because we have already expended resources and we
are just weeks away from the final report in the joint meeting with the Meridian
Development Corporation, it doesn't make sense, because it is so far down the road.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. And I understand it may be a train that's hard to stop, but now
that I'm on the track I'm going to try, until I -- unless I can be given this otherwise when I
know more details of it, I want to have an opportunity to find out who knows some more
details that I can ask my questions to. So, I guess right now I'm saying from a training
mode, it's going to move and I understand that. I just got here.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. And I -- I think that we can have Mr. Chatterton follow up
with you and give you an update in between now and when we have our joint meeting.
Palmer: Sounds great.
De Weerd: Okay.
Simison: Madam Mayor, 2-B-2. Is there a desire to eliminate that item?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Robert, can you give us a -- we have got lots of papers in front of us and not a
real strong explanation of the 2-B-2. I can pull it up and review it quickly, but with this new
sheet put in front of us I'm trying to do -- sorry, Dean. I'm trying to do six different things at
once and so it might be beneficial for all the Council to briefly explain what 2 -B-2 is.
Simison: Just the title or do you want me to get the tactic worksheet and go through the
objective and performance measurements?
Cavener: That would be my preference, but, again, just -- I don't want to speak for
everyone.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Members of Council -- Members of Council, so if this is in order
for Meridian to be attractive to provide a business diversity and diversity is part of the
communities competitive advantage as to a place to doing business, the performance
measurements are to implement the diversity specific best training here at the city,
participate in a celebration of diversity even in Meridian and try and get 30 percent of
Meridian Chamber of Commerce business to develop diversity statements by 2018.
De Weerd: Who is the drive on that? The chamber? Well, the Mayor's Office.
Okay. I vote to eliminate that.
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Simison: The Mayor's Office is lead on this, because we don't actually have -- anybody
else that can work with the community partners in this aspect, unless we did Community
Development.
Milam: Madam Mayor? Robert, does it say specifically what type of diversity it's referring
to?
Simison: Well, it says actively support BVEP's diverse initiative by joining and helping to
create a consortium to develop and implement the initiative. A lot of it is like saying best
training courses. Diversity celebration and it's really just challenging Meridian to award
diversity scholarships to Idaho universities and develop diversity statements. So, it's
really BVEP diversity initiative training for city employees and working with the chamber to
do things with the businesses.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I asked for this one to be eliminated as well. I saw it as if we had
a problem, then, it should be something to be looked at. I don't feel it's a problem and so I
think that we are on the better course of colorblindness, that it shouldn't -- it shouldn't
matter, we should always be going for whoever is the best suited to fill a position, for
example, not -- make sure that we fill -- have all kinds of different percentages of diversity,
it should always be who is the best for the position or whatever the situation may be and I
feel that because it's not a problem, we don't have, you know, people knocking the doors
down, because we are not being diverse enough, that I think colorblindness is the better
route to go and if there is not a problem we shouldn't be trying to fix it.
De Weerd: I guess I was just saying the tactics -- it's internal and that is through our HR
department, so -- and, then, I believe that the chamber has had an initial conversation at
government affairs on -- on the other and have not really taken up the conversation. So,
at this point if it's internal it does need to be under HR. It's not appropriate to be under the
Mayor's Office. We don't do best training and so --
Simison: Madam Mayor, I would say that it's probably right now 60 percent external, 40
percent internal. You know, if you're -- and it's probably Community Development, as
much as it is anybody else working through BVEP. The chamber is really more where the
Mayor's Office comes into alignment in that conversation. I'm not aware of any
conversations with the chamber regarding diversity. I would prefer to refer to the chamber
executive director slash new Council members exactly what conversations that -- there
have been conversations on other -- on other issues, but not what I would call diversity
necessarily.
De Weerd: Well -- and I know I haven't heard anything about BVEP and their initiative
since the project whatever --
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Simison: Correct.
De Weerd: -- made a decision and that was -- that's been a year or two. So, I haven't
heard anything further.
Little Roberts: Madam Chairman -- Madam Mayor. Sorry. There were some discussions
-- very low key, but I think probably within the next six months to a year we will see some
conversations through the business with just giving them some opportunities and some
examples on how to word things within their own organization, just to make sure that they
are more in compliance.
De Weerd: If this is kept it's -- yeah, I think it needs to be under a different lead.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Robert or Madam Mayor, you can -- probably a clarification, then. How do you
want us to proceed on this one? Robert, are you looking -- you said you are looking for a
vote?
Simison: I would like to have people either say take it out or -- you know, the
recommendation was to eliminate it. If you support that, up and down is fine. If you
opposed it -- and if we are split and I can't tell, then we might ask for a vote, if that's
appropriate.
Cavener: We should just vote.
De Weerd: Madam Clerk, it will give you something to do.
Holman: Take roll call?
De Weerd: Yes. Eliminate. The vote is to eliminate this object as listed on here to
eliminate, so if you say yes you're eliminating it, if you say no you're keeping it in and
reassigning it to HR and City Council.
Cavener: Yes is for elimination. Is that what I'm hearing?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: Okay.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, nay; Milam, nay; Cavener, nay; Palmer, yea; Little-Roberts,
nay.
Bird: It stays in.
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De Weerd: It stays in and is reassigned to HR and City Council.
Borton: And, Madam Mayor, just as we go through this again, we are not making
reference or endorsements of particular performance measures or tactics, which could be
a great discussion, but that will take us six mon ths and maybe it should.
Simison: Correct.
Borton: So, for me it's -- we are speaking to objectives and strategic --
De Weerd: We are speaking to objectives, but also on lead.
Borton: On this particular one.
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Borton: Well, not to the tactics and performance measures.
De Weerd: You are correct.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? I think it's important also to note that we are agreeing to the
proposed cost associated with a lot of these goals as well.
De Weerd: No. The cost is not until it's brought back.
Cavener: Okay. Great. I appreciate that.
Borton: Madam Mayor. Luke -- or Councilman Cavener. I agree. That's a good thing to
reemphasize is we look at the cost as a general awareness of what may be implicated.
They are rough numbers at best and not obligations or commitments to be clear to staff
and to all of us. That's really all they are.
Simison: And, Madam Mayor, Councilman, I would just reiterate, if you don't approve
something, then, doesn't get done and that's your way of also making changes if you don't
like the direction something is going. So, you know, we can only do what we have the
resources to do or where the resources are prioritized.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: 3-D-4 is the next eliminate.
Simison: Yeah. 3-D-4. Evaluate the need for centralized professional administrative and
operational oversight for city functions.
Bird: Call a vote.
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De Weerd: Do you want to explain this one? I don't know who has or if there was a
question or --
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I recommended the elimination of this. I voiced my concerns about this position
in May. It's not something at the time that I think is of merit or value to the current city
operation, creation of a new position that I don't think is warranted.
De Weerd: And, again, I think this is part of an overall thing that we would come back
during a budget discussion. This doesn't make it so, it just comes back for a budget
discussion as part of this strategy, if it ever comes in front of us.
Simison: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Council, this is to evaluate whether or not a need even
exists, not to recommend -- not to recommend the creation of a position. It's the -- the
report is -- the performance measure, the report is completed with a recommendation on
future administrative operations. So, you really -- that's what you're going to see from this
is a review from that standpoint.
Bird: Let's have a vote. Don't sit here all night.
De Weerd: Well, if there is -- if there is someone other than Luke -- or Mr. Cavener --
Cavener: That's fine.
De Weerd: -- that -- that feels the same and do we need a vote. This is just to evaluate.
It has no bearing on creating a position.
Bird: Madam Mayor, if I -- if I read this, this this -- this to me is -- is city manager type is
what we looking at; am I not right? And that's changing the difference -- that would have
to be voted in by the public to the style of management in this city and to a city manager.
De Weerd: I don't -- I don't think that is at all what is intended. You can read something
under the tactics, but this might just be putting an umbrella under a couple of
departments, almost like we did with community development in consolidating operations
under one person. So, this is very vague and it evaluates a structure for our city at some
point.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? I would argue, then, specifically that if it's intentionally vague
should be a reason that we should eliminate it. If we don’t have something that's specific,
worth exploring, then we shouldn't be including it in the strategic plan.
De Weerd: I don't care --
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Simison: Yeah. Madam Mayor --
De Weerd: I don't care. I think you're going to have things come in front of you, whether
it's an objective or not. This is just being more transparent on looking at organizational
structure and -- and when there might be a need for it. So, I'm not married to this. Sorry.
Simison: Yeah. Madam Mayor, City Council, that's what I would -- would look at. It's
truly looking at the functions of the city, you know, and not looking at changing the
structure of government, but, you know, as the city grows there is certain professional
requirements that may outlive the abilities of any elected official. And no disrespect to
whoever you put on the ballot, but as the city grows and develops that Mayor may need
additional support to do the job regardless of who is in the position and I think it's asking
that question, well, if and when what might be the trigger to cause that? Is it size and
breadth of the amount of work and direct reports? Is it new federal requirements the city
has to meet for -- like -- you know, kind of like wastewater, EPA requirements that you
have to hire someone to do specific things. So, it is looking at the larger picture, not
changing government, not changing functions, but that is what it says in the tactics.
De Weerd: And it's a discussion that would be had regardless of -- if it's an objective or
not, so it -- to me it doesn't matter if it's there or not. It will always be something that we
evaluate as an organization and an organizational structure and a division of duties and
effectiveness of accountability and oversight. I don't care.
Bird: Let's go with a vote. Get it over with.
De Weerd: Madam Clerk.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, clarification. Vote on this and to vote no is a vote to remove or
a vote no is a vote to keep?
Bird: No is to keep and yes is elimination.
Cavener: Okay.
De Weerd: You're supporting whatever is on the chart.
Bird: We are going to make this Council meeting last until --
Borton: Madam Mayor, just -- before we vote, I think Councilman Cavener may be at the
right conclusion of where this ends up and I very well may agree with him that it speaks to
a city administrator or not. I mean it just does. It says it's a tactic, so that's one of the
many components of it. I clearly don’t think one is necessary and I think that's where
Councilman Cavener is going. So, why even explore it. It's just to evaluate it and if the
department directors thought it was necessary enough to evaluate it, we could. I just am
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not holding a hope that -- or a belief that a conclusion would be that one is warranted. For
what it's worth. So --
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council, if I could, this could -- and specifically, in the objective
summary it talks -- it says municipal services director and I'm only going to refer to that,
because Idaho Falls has a position and that positi on is really one that has -- much like a
county used to have, where you have five or six directors reporting to a specific -- you
know, a director level position that doesn't report directly to the elected officials or the
Mayor and those are the type of things I think that you're looking at as much as -- as
anything. So, city administrator -- I would argue no. I haven't heard any conversations
about a city administrator, who is always going to report to the mayor. That's the form of
our government, unless you want to have a different conversation. This is looking at your
reporting function potentially and really skill level. I don't want to speak formally about
people who get elected, but you never know who you are going to get and if you're going
to have the skill sets to manage the city when that occurs.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
Simison: You can make that call yourself, but -- yeah.
Borton: It says city administrator in one of the tactics. It's part of the evaluation.
De Weerd: But that's not -- that's not a city manager.
Bird: Well --
Borton: I don't know. I guess that's for me to see the evaluation process. You can
evaluate it and I presume you are not going to -- if you're going to do a complete
evaluation you're not going to preclude certain solutions before you start. That's why I'm
assuming that -- if you're truly going to have this in there and you're truly going to evaluate
it, of course you would include a city administrator-- city manager. I'm just telling you I
don't think that's ever going to fly, but we can evaluate it.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilmen, Councilman Borton, I would never look at changing
the form of government through this tactic. So, that to me is not contemplated in this
objective of changing the form of government the city operates under.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Unless that's part of the discussion from Council. Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Another thought on that, too, if it's just about an evaluation is having a survey of
January of next year, maybe we push that out a little bit further if we don't think it's maybe
going to be needed, but not necessarily in a year, maybe just change the priority or kick it
down the road a little bit on the schedule of things.
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De Weerd: Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, nay; Milam, nay; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little-Roberts,
nay.
Milam: It's a tie.
De Weerd: No.
MOTION FAILED: THREE AYES. THREE NAYS. MAYOR NAY.
Bird: Okay. It stays in. Let's go. Eliminate the benefits of --
Milam: Or maybe more the priority or kick it down -- start it in 2019.
Bird: 3-E-5. Eliminate the benefits of districting council evaluate -- geez. It's getting late.
Evaluate.
Simison: We have two recommendations here. One was remove the objective
altogether. The other was to remove the word benefits.
Bird: And I -- I --
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Excuse me. I'm sorry. Madam Mayor? I -- I'm for eliminating seats completely,
because the city --
Palmer: I just got elected. Why would you do that to me.
Cavener: I think he means district.
Bird: No, I mean district. I'm sorry. You know, I haven't eaten since noon and it's getting
-- big cavity to fill. But anyway -- I -- I have been associated with the city pretty close for
50 years and I can tell you that we have always had Council people that's going to step
forward and you could throw a blanket over -- at one time you could have thrown a blanket
over three of them and another -- and we have had -- we just lost two Councilmen that
you could have thrown a blanket over where they live. I just think you eliminate some
good people. It allows everybody to walk in and -- you know, if their district is -- isn't open,
they can -- you know, if they don't have districts they can come -- they can run every two
years if they want, so -- until they are elected. I'm for eliminating it. I just don't think it
works out.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
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Milam: Keith, when you first started doing this one district was the whole size of --
Meridian was the size of what a whole district probably would be now. So, I disagree with
you. I think that -- I do think that eliminating the word benefit -- I don't like the word benefit
in there, but I think I think evaluating whether or not that would be a viable option for the
city I think is a good idea.
De Weerd: And I think that, you know, just to give some context as well, it's -- it's come up
in community forums, it came up four years ago when a group of citizens were pulled
together to evaluate city services and their concern -- and it's been reiterated since then is
that -- and I think that the election -- you look at all of our council seats right now, you're
pretty well distributed. We don't have the blanket effect any longer, but wha t -- some
people drive everyday in south Meridian -- unless you're driving it you have no point of
reference of what kind of traffic they are sitting in and living in every single day and for
quite some time most of our Council members were north of the in terstate and so those
comments were more in -- you don't walk in our shoes and maybe at some point it needs
to be evaluated to the benefits of districting like the state does in legislative districts. So,
that's all this is to evaluate the benefits -- the pros and cons and bring it back at some
point. Again, it's another conversation with some background to bring to the discussion so
that Council can -- can have a solid discussion about it.
Milam: Yeah. And I'm not saying we should -- sorry, Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Thanks, Madam Mayor. I -- I feel like -- especially in this case that we just had
with the last election, you're going to get in that nobody was opposed -- that was on my
district council. You're going to get a better councilman, someone who is much more
engaged when they choose to run and when we are in a situation where say Luke and I
live next to each other and now one of us can't run, what if nobody -- or not -- I guess that
wouldn't work out, because one of us i s going to. But if you end up in a district where
there is -- there is nobody interested in running, you got to go find somebody to run and so
you guys talk him into, you know, taking a lot of their time that they don't really want to do,
and so you may have somebody just not engaged, not interested and not willing to put in
the work to fulfill the job adequately. But where you have the whole city and anyone can
run in any position, the odds are you're going to have somebody run for ever y seat every
time. Now, if we have 30 people running for each seat and two and a half million people,
then, yeah, now is the time -- then would be the time to talk about it.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: But right now we are just talking about whether or not we should leave it in the
strategic plan that we should evaluate it and I'm not voting that we should have districting,
that's not what this discussion is about. The discussion is about whether or not we should
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evaluate districting and so should we research it and, you know, however that comes
about.
De Weerd: At some point I think the legislature is going to do it for us, because they keep
talking about it, so, you know, just -- it's just another -- how do we govern, how do we
representative the -- the citizens and this has come up, which is why it's landed in this --
this plan.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: You can help being president of AIC one year. How many cities have districts? I'm
trying to think. I don't know of any that --
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council I know the answer to that. The answer to
that is none. Part of it -- and this is one that we are the lead on, so if you want to eliminate
it that's awesome, but -- but the reality is is -- I think as Council Member Milam has stated,
this is to evaluate when would be appropriate. Remember this is a long range ten year
visioning plan. I would agree that the reason many cities don't do it is because the way
the statute is currently written it's almost impossible -- or unreasonable to do it. So, that
may be one of the results of the evaluation is that until the statute is better formed it won't
make any sense. It may be also that -- as Council Member Palmer stated, I mean you
might not have enough people to run in certain areas. I mean that's a reason districting
wouldn't make sense or our city is not large enough. You know, Boise, 200,000 people.
They have had people asking them to have districts. They find a lot of their council
members living in one section of town as well. So -- and those are the things that I think
go into the evaluative process for this Council or a future council to decide when we hit
this benchmark -- when we are 150,000 people, when -- when our population is dispersed
differently, when the statutes are -- all those -- see, that's all we are really talking about.
So, we are not talking about implementation of anything, we are simply talking about when
would that make sense and the answer might be it will never make sense. I don't know.
But I mean that's really all we are trying to get some clarity on and I think -- I think
everybody has kind of got the idea -- understands what the challenges would be to doing
it, but I think all we are talking about is really kind of on the front end and before we even
get to some of the things, you know, and you folks would all see that. It might not be a
great priority and may not be worth a lot of resources, so --
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
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Palmer: Madam Mayor, I just think now isn't the time to put any staff time into thinking
about it.
De Weerd: Okay. I will ask for a vote.
Milam: But what is it?
De Weerd: Well, I will call it. So, yes means eliminate and no means don't.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, nay; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts,
nay.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, the yeses have it.
MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. TWO NAYS.
Holman: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Holman: There are a couple of Council members that are hungry. If we are going to be
here for awhile do you want me to order food?
De Weerd: No.
Bird: No. We will be out --
Holman: Are you sure?
De Weerd: Do you want food?
Bird: No.
Milam: Depends on how much longer we are going to be.
Cavener: Yes, you want to eliminate food, no, you --
Milam: I wanted food like two hours ago.
De Weerd: Well, I would say at least -- staff doesn't have to be here.
Simison: I think we will be done in 15 minutes.
De Weerd: Except Mark.
Bird: We are holding you to it.
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Simison: 4-E-2.
Milam: No.
Simison: Develop sustainability initiatives in the areas of water conservation, recycling,
energy efficiency. Is there a desire to remove this one?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think that we are pretty well into that with our recycling and our water conservation
and energy efficiency, so I don't see why we eliminate it at this point.
Simison: So, I have got two leave ins. Do I have one more? Two more?
De Weerd: One.
Simison: Two people said that they would like to leave it in so far, so I'm --
De Weerd: I would say leave it in. This is huge. Just about everything we do is our -- our
future and sustainability. We are already doing a lot of conservation. It's sustainability
and it has everything to do with our viability as a city to be able to deliver services and to
keep costs in control conserving water, conserving recycling, so you minimize wha t goes
to the landfill. This is what our SWAC does. This is what our Public Works does. I -- we
will still do it, but it's an important tactic in moving forward and the viability of our livability
as a community. So, who wants to eliminate it? Speak up.
Cavener: It was me.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, maybe you can share a different side of this.
Cavener: When I looked at this the cost associated to -- to include it as part of our
strategic plan was not something I agreed with. But I'm not against doi ng the work, I'm
against including this as part of our strategic plan and the cost and the time associated
with it. Again, I'm one of six. And that's not the hill that I'm here to die on. I appreciate
your further dialogue on that. That's what the whol e opportunity is to have this dialogue
as well.
De Weerd: Uh-huh. I agree. Is there a second person that agrees with this? We can
have a roll call if so. Okay. Let's move on.
Simison: 4-E-3. Promote environmental base eco sustainable programs, projects and
services.
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Palmer: Madam Mayor? Robert, maybe we can get a description of what exactly that
means.
Simison: It means in order for -- to promote the environmental sustainable programs,
projects and services that benefit our citizens it's necessary to increase the community's
knowledge, skills and attitude about sustainability resulting in increase and there are
people who incorporate aspects of environmental sustainability into their lifestyle. It's
really designed to increase participation in our community based on environmental
programs by 25 percent through this process. Working with our stake holders within the
community to get active participants in the promotion of our programs, projects and
services. Coordinate with the University of Idaho to gather information on public opinions
as to the behavior about these items. Utilize those survey results . Identify topics and
target audiences for community based environmental programs, projects and services.
De Weerd: And a lot of this is about leveraging other people's resources, so that in some
regards we have done joint publications with Idaho Power -- what is the gas company?
International -- Intermountain Gas and United Water -- looking for those partnerships to
leverage our efforts and their efforts into -- to get combined -- or efficiency in cost and
effort, basically.
Simison: And this would also be community gardens, looking at groups to do cleanup of
the streets, storm drains, creeks, so it's a lot of community outreach com ponents.
De Weerd: So, do we have two Council members who would like to eliminate this? Okay.
Move on. Develop a plan for financing recreation and entertain facilities. Anyone want to
have a discussion on this?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: One possible -- and I'm trying to turn to the page for it is -- oh. Instead of develop
a plan for financing, to -- back to the evaluation. Evaluate available tools that could be
utilized for financing recreation -- I think really that's -- that's how I read the -- the true
intent --
Milam: I agree.
Borton: -- is to see what means are available to do so. The way it's worded implies that
there is a decision to advance it and finance it and let's develop a plan to make it happen.
But I'm not sure that's really what was meant. So, I would change it to evaluate --
De Weerd: So, the last --
Borton: -- evaluate available tools.
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Milam: Second.
Cavener: Third.
De Weerd: Fourth. Oh, I can't -- dang it. Do I have a fourth?
Bird: Yeah, I would go along with that.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor, I move that we adopt the strategic plan.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mrs. Little Roberts. A brave first motion. Do I have a second?
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just for the sake of being redundant, recognizing that we are adopting the plan,
but there are a variety of matrix and tactics that are still yet to be discussed and I guess I
go back to what I said two weeks ago, that a vote in support of the entire strategic plan
doesn't mean that I'm in support of all the specific tactics, budget parameters facilitated
with this plan. Okay. That's what I said two weeks ago and that's the result of it, so --
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Exactly what Luke said and -- I mean Councilman Cavener.
Cavener: You can call me Luke. You can call me -- everybody calls me --
Palmer: Yeah. Mayor started it. And what Councilman Borton pointed out, you know,
adjusting the one to say evaluate, going back to the original district, it starts evaluate, so
I'm good as well. Reiterating again what Councilman Cavener said that while -- when we
get to the actual point that may change, but I'm good with evaluating it.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: We will kind of stumble over that for the first day.
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MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: For what it's worth, to that point, page nine of the May adopted high level portion
of the strategic plan does reference that we all acknowledge majo r changes in leadership,
Council composition, and modification to Council policies, strategies, plans to and
including the budget, may impact the content, implementation and attainment of the plan.
So, we have memorialized the understanding that we did -- this truly is living.
Simison: Correct. It is a living document. Madam Mayor. City Council. And, you know,
today in the directors' strategic meeting we did talk about, you know, next January you will
have someone else, not me, hopefully, back here before you talking about where we are
in the implementation and, of course, throughout the budget process you will also
continue that dialogue, but that's -- that's when you can expect to see the plan in its
entirety this next January during this workshop , but you won't have everything else that
you heard tonight as part of that. So, thank you for your assistance.
Milam: If not you who?
Simison: I'm sorry?
Milam: Who? Not you?
Simison: Well, I would make a motion for a budget enhancement right now for a new
position to oversee the implementation of the plan, but we will wait until the budget
process for that.
Milam: Good idea.
C. Fire Department: Briefing on Meridian Fire's 1943 GMC Parade
Fire Truck
1. Amended onto the Agenda: Resolution No. 16-1112:
Declaring Surplus 1943 GMC Fire Parade Truck and
Authorizing the Donation of the Truck to The Meridian
Local 4627 Benevolent Fund
De Weerd: Okay. Item 9-C is under our Fire Department.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor -- is that close enough? Members of Council, I should only
take about 45 minutes in the presentation. In 1986 or thereabouts the city evidently sold a
1943 fire engine to the Firefighters Association for them to use a s a parade truck, et
cetera. Since then they have been paying the insurance, they have been paying the
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registration on the -- or the tabs, they have put thousands into the engine and paint for the
parade truck, et cetera. However, the title was never transferred. So, it was sold for a
dollar. I don't have a cancelled check for you. I do have one dollar. I'm willing to pay the
one dollar so I can move this forward.
Milam: We want it back.
Niemeyer: What's that?
Milam: We want it back.
Niemeyer: Yeah. Now that it's nice.
De Weerd: I didn't call on Mrs. Milam if you notice.
Niemeyer: So we can close the books on 1986 and officially transfer the title of this 1943
fire engine so it's no longer on my books. That's the request.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: And we -- I think we are doing it right this time, because the last time we give it to
the fire association --
Niemeyer: Yes.
Bird: -- which is now a local union, so now the resolution number -- or proposed
resolution says Local 4627. So, it's great and back in those days a dollar was at least a
dollar and a half.
Niemeyer: I have got 50 cents, too. I have got a couple.
De Weerd: I would say two. Okay.
Niemeyer: Over my budget.
De Weerd: Any questions from Council?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
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Borton: I would move that we approve Item 9 -C-1, Resolution 16-1112, declaring surplus
the 1943 GMC fire parade truck.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9-C-1. 9-C-1. Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
De Weerd: Thank you. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
H. City Council Liaison/Committee Updates
De Weerd: Okay. Under 9-H. Council, any updates from your department?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: The IT Department is going to be needing some new computers. That's all I
have.
De Weerd: Thank you. That was very informative. You will have to bring that back as
part of the budget presentation.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I just need to let everybody know that next -- on February 18th to mark your
calendar is the -- the award ceremony for the police department and the Mayor and all
Council are invited. It's at 6:30 at the school district building on February 18th. It's a ways
out there to mark you calendar. Next Tuesday, however, there will be a swearing in
ceremony for the new officers here at our meeting.
Cavener: What time again? Sorry.
Milam: 6:30.
Cavener: Thank you.
Milam: February 18th. That's all I have got.
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De Weerd: Okay.
Borton: Madam Mayor, when was the swearing in ceremony?
De Weerd: The swearing in is next week.
Borton: It will be here. It will be here.
De Weerd: At City Council. So, you should be here. I hope.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: A couple of brief updates. One I think it's interesting news to come out of
Community Development and that is the shortage of commercial business real estate in
Meridian that is coming at a premium. All of the retail -- not the retail, but the business
spots in The Village are completely sold out right now, while a challenge for the folks that
operate The Village I think it's good news to the economic activity that's happening in
Meridian. One thing to come out of HR is HR routinely sends out ICRMP training to all
city employees and a hundred percent of our directors participate in that and because of
the amount of participation we have with employees and directors, we get a break or
discount on our ICRMP policy and I guess my challenge is that if we are having our
directors do that --
De Weerd: And Mayor.
Cavener: And Mayor. And we are a sking our staff to do that and we have a financial
impact due to their participation, that I would encourage all of you to participate in that
training as well. So, I have asked Crystal, who is acting as the interim HR director to send
that link to me, I will be forwarding that all to you this week. I would hope that in the next
week to ten days that you would take time out of your schedule and do that -- those
trainings as well. Great.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: I will get right on -- the parks going along great. Steve and his staff are working
hard getting everything ready for spring and doing a great job. The bark park is looking
nice. We have got it screened off so that our grass don't get wore out and stuff, which
can't compliment them guys enough for the job they do and thanks for Steve's leadership.
And, then, the Finance, we are -- the budget is getting worked on. Actually got auditors in
house for the last week or so and hopefully by the first of February they will start putting it
together and we will get it sometime in February. With that, that's it.
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De Weerd: Okay. Council, you should have a book from fire on alternative emergency
response vehicles and we will set this when I meet with Councilman Bird on the agenda
for next month. So, please, read it and come prepared with your questions. I appreciate
all the time that was put into developing that. We do have a request, if -- if you can all
look at your calendars in March, if there is a day that you can set aside -- our leadership
team would like to have training a book called Speed of Trust. We really would like to
solidify the leadership team and -- it's a day long exercise and training on this book, it's
Speed of Trust. So, if you can commit to the day, we would greatly appreciate it. We
think this gives us an opportunity to come together, the electeds and the directors to -- to
participate together in this training. So, if you could tell us what days would not work, so,
then, we can propose some days for you to set that up.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? Clarification. Who in the city would you like us to work with?
Robert? Peggy? Jaycee?
De Weerd: If you will work with Mark.
Cavener: Mark? Okay.
De Weerd: Niemeyer. Chief Niemeyer. Give your dates to them.
Milam: Might be easier to get those days that will work than days that --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mark, just find -- the people that have real jobs, find out when they can and I will
make it do. Just let me know and --
Niemeyer: Okay. At the directors' meeting today we did talk about the week of March
15th. I know Chief Lavey is going to be out of state the first week. We were looking at
that week of March 15th. But if that doesn't work at a ll let me know and we will keep
looking.
Cavener: You have spring break in there, too, don't you?
De Weerd: I think spring break -- can we not have these conversations? You're going to
drive Dean crazy.
Cavener: Sorry, Dean.
De Weerd: You can start throwing things. We will put a resolution on next week to -- for
COMPASS and VRT. I have asked Mr. Bird to look at the parks commission -- Steve
probably doesn't need two liaisons and so whoever is the liaison for parks probably should
be the liaison to the parks commission, unless there is a conflict. But that would probably
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create a change for COMPASS and VRT. So, we will talk about it on Friday and see what
we need to do. Tomorrow Councilman Cavener and I have a meeting, along with Mr.
Siddoway, to get an update on the south Meridian Y project, kind of where we are and
where we are going. Looking at maybe scaling design and that sort of thing. So, we will
be able to come back at a future date, perhaps next week, to give an update on that
project. I know a number of you have been asking. Saturday is the legislative breakfast
for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council.
Bird: When is it?
De Weerd: We would like to have you. If that is an option they love to see our Council
members there just as much as they would like to see the legislators. They are practicing.
The time -- what is the time, Robert?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Oh.
Cavener: If you could just send us an e-mail or have staff send an e-mail with the date,
time, and location that would be great. I would love to attend.
De Weerd: Will do. That would be -- I can -- I can do that. It's here at City Hall and --
Bird: It's got to be early.
De Weerd: It is. It's ridiculous. It's a Saturday. Come on. Yeah. We will get you the
information. I show 8:30, but I'm not positive. That might be when I need to show up.
Bird: You didn't get to set the time this year, did you.
De Weerd: No. I didn't get to set the time. And -- why did I write down calendars? I don't
know. Anything further?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: I know everyone is hungry, but last week you gave me the opportunity to say a
few words that I would like to have in the minutes for my first meeting. I didn't know if you
wanted to give Council Member Little Roberts the same opportunity.
De Weerd: Yes. Council Member Little Roberts, would you like to say anything about
your addition -- your adding to this group and anyone you would like to thank on t he
record?
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Little Roberts: Just thanks to everyone for the warm welcome and I'm just very, very
honored to be here. Looking forward to our future and our future in Meridian.
De Weerd: Well -- and, please, accept my apologies. I should have asked you if you had
something to add while your family was here, both your chamber family and your
husband. So, we do appreciate that you joined this team. Congratulations and definitely
look forward to working with you and to the -- the background you will add to the
conversation.
Little Roberts: Thank you.
De Weerd: It's always nice to have another female on perspective; right, M rs. Milam?
Milam: Yes. Yes, ma'am.
Item 10: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. 16-1668: Changing Parks & Recreation
Commission Regular Meeting Time to 5:30 p.m. and Updating
Review Process for Parks Alcohol Permits
De Weerd: Okay. So, with that if there is nothing further, we will move to 10-A. Madam
Clerk, will you, please, read Ordinance 16 -1668 by title.
Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 16-1668, an
ordinance amending Meridian City Code, Section 2-4-5, regarding parks and recreation
commission meetings. Amending Meridian City Code, Section 13-2-6C-1-E, regarding
review of parks alcohol permits and providing an effective date.
De Weerd: Thank you. You have heard this ordinance read by title only and I don't see
anyone who would probably like to hear it read in its entirety, so I would entertain a
motion.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I move that we approve Ordinance No. 16-1668 with suspension of rules.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 10-A. Madam Clerk, will you
call roll.
Roll Call: Bird; yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little -Roberts,
yea.
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De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Madam Clerk, if you could get some of the little calendars for Council, that
would be awesome. I just remembered what I was going to say.
Bird: Big O Tires.
Item 11: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Yes. So, is there anything under future meeting topics from Council? Hearing
none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Milam: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:53 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
_______________________________ ______/______/______
MAYOR TAMMY de WEERD DATE APPROVED
ATTEST:
_____________________________________
JAYCEE HOLMAN, CITY CLERK
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De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Madam Clerk, if you could get some of the little calendars for Council, that
would be awesome. I just remembered what I was going to say.
Bird: Big O Tires.
Item 11: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Yes. So, is there anything under future meeting topics from Council? Hearing
none, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Milam: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:53 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORD -LNG -ON -F4 F THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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MAYOR e DATE APPROVED
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JAYCEE HOLMAN, CITY CLE
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