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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2004 07-13 BudgetMeridian City Council Special Budget Workshop July 13, 2004 The Special Budget Workshop of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:15 A.M. on July 13, 2004, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Item 1. Roll -call Attendance: X * Charlie Rountree X Bill Nary X Shaun Wardle X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd * Arrived at 2:00 p.m. Nary: Okay, on our schedule starting as our first presentation is Parks, but I didn't know — Ms. Kilchenmann did you want any short, little overview before we get started or did you want to wait till your sections? I know it's not on here, but I didn't know if you wanted some intro? Kilchenmann: Yeah, we passed out a few changes that happened. There were — like including — Nary: Can you turn that on? Kilchenmann: Okay. I gave you — as I told you before I gave you the revenue presentation. I am not going to do that orally, but I just gave it to you to look at some of the graphs and some of the revenue directions and then there have been a few changes in the summary, so that's why Reta gave you new summaries and we had like the Historical Commission came in at the last minute, so there was some slight changes for them and we had change in the upgrade amount for utility billing that I will talk about when I do my section. So, everybody is just ready to come and do their presentation to you and I think everyone knows we are going to try and get through it today. So, Pubic Works said they will be here a little early too to start their presentation in the afternoon. So, that's all I have to start with. Parks and Recreation Nary: Thank you. The first department up then is the Parks Department. Mr. Strong. Strong: Good morning Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. I appreciate the opportunity to go first today. This is a good time of day, at least for me to be here because I am usually awake at this time of day, so I appreciate that. The way — I hope that you have had the opportunity to look through your budget book and have at least some initial understanding of what we are requesting in the Parks and Recreation Department. To facilitate that I would just like to make Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 2 of 156 some brief comments about our general fund request and our impact fee request just as points of clarification and then, of course, stand for questions and have administrative staff here to answer anything that I can't, so we can get through this quickly. First of all, general funded requests on — and I want to talk about these in the priority order that they are listed, so that we can represent at least the review by Commission and department staff, which we are in agreement that the priority for these requests are as listed. That first position under general fund request is the recreation supervisor position. This is a request for a full-time professional position in recreation in the department. The intent is to establish a full-time, professional focus on recreation activities offered to the citizens of the community. The position would absorb an existing position, the Adults Sport's Coordinator position and a four -month -time office position if funded and what this would provide is coverage in the office from roughly noon or 1:00 in the afternoon through the evening hours to cover evening sport activities and possibly keep our office open until, say, 6:00 during periods of time when people are registering for programs and need to get in after work to do so. It will provide a little bit different coverage. The important aspect of requesting a full-time professional position is that it brings professional focus to areas of recreation programming that currently have been met by part-time individuals who typically hold other jobs and are fitting their responsibilities into their day. This would be necessary to help grow the recreation services to the community and since we are reaching a population of about 50,000 residents, it seems timely to do so. We anticipate the recreation program revenue would increase as well by bringing new programs to the City and we are looking at least initially such activities as three on three volleyball, basketball tournaments and Park's Children Fun Days, after school programs and no -school day programs that would be offered and from there grow to other needed areas of recreation service. The next item in the general fund request are the Grounds Keeper reclassification. It is to just simply reclassify grounds keepers who have been through training and a classification increase based on training certifications. Then we came to the decision of looking at additional grounds keeping staff based on what we anticipate for additional park acreage being added in the next year, we decided that we would request two part time positions rather than look at another full time position. Primarily, because we feel that at least at this time that our full time positions that we carry through the winter months are adequate for the entire year, however our workload increases dramatically during the summer months. We anticipate an increase in acreage next summer that would require some additional coverage out in the parks. The anticipated additional acreage includes 23 acres at Settler's Park for Meridian Youth Baseball / Softball. We're anticipating grounds to keep at Champion Park a neighborhood park off Ustick Road near Eagle that we're in partnership with the developer to create. Kiwanis Park should have grass sometime early spring next summer — or early summer. That would — that's a nine -acre additional coverage. Then depending on the outcome of Final Plat on Autumn Faire Crossing and deed of that seven acre part to the city we could be in Phase 1 development of the Autumn Faire Park a seven acre park in the Autumn Faire Development. We're certainly anticipating additional acreage that we would Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 3 of 156 need coverage for. When we skip down in the priority list to the summer camp staff, I'm requesting that that line be deleted. Based on this years participation in our summer camp program it doesn't look like the numbers merit increasing that program offering at least in the next fiscal year. I would like to have that line deleted. That was anticipated growth in the program. We can take up to 75 children in the sections that we have currently. This would be adding another section of 75 additional children at another site. The numbers just don't merit that at this point. Skipping to the (inaudible) just wanted to explain because of the additional acreage that we're anticipating in park additions this next summer we're anticipating the need for another mower. This is a 72 -inch mower the type that you sit on top of that's highly maneuverable and has typically a good service life. Then the last item that I would like to talk about in general fund is the utility vehicle ball field groomer just for explanation. What we're looking for there is something like the mules that we currently use in the park or Cushman if you're familiar with that brand name that we would use as a utility vehicle to move around through the park and pick up garbage and do work throughout the park that we could also add a hydraulic ball field groomer to the back of the vehicle to groom ball fields. We don't have anything of this type right now and we think it would be a good addition. You see on your request form that we initially were looking at two we have deleted one. We think that with one we could move it from field to field as needed. This one would be primarily kept at Bear Creek Park. Currently since we've opened Bear Creek Park as a utility vehicle we're using an old electric golf cart to get around the park there, which is marginal as far as the use in the park. That's the general fund. The impact fee just to go through what we're looking for there just real briefly. Adventure Island Playground, this request was created at a time when we had applied for a Land and Water Conservation Fund Grant. This is for Phase 2 of the Adventure Island Playground the zero depth water feature in the playground. We sensor that our grant request was not funded and in looking at keeping this request in or not we've decided to keep the request for the $50,000 for Adventure Island Playground hoping that it will entice either donations for that Phase 2 feature of the park or be matched for any other grant opportunities that we can come up with during the course of the year. It would leave at least — this is 50 percent of what it would cost to do Phase 2. Typically grants require some type of matching portion if we go after a grant. The Settler's Park Meridian Youth Baseball request is for operating expenditures that we're anticipating as Meridian Youth Baseball completes that 23 acres on the west side of Settler's Park in preparation for the regional baseball tournament that they've been granted for July of next year. There are basic operating expenditures that go along with that. We need to add picnic tables, trashcan receptacles, and drinking fountains, complete landscaping with trees and so forth. It's an anticipation of actually completing that portion of the park in preparation for that tournament. The Kiwanis Park request is for installation — purchase and installation of a playground at the park. A portion of those funds would come from the recycle fund I understand. The Borup property is the 30 acres west of town that's still basically an undeveloped piece of property that was used for the first time last year by the Lion's Club Rodeo. In moving Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 4 of 156 forward in development of that property for future use it was also slated for the ice rink, which I think the status of that particular project, is questionable at this point. We need to look at it as what do we do with this undeveloped piece of property to keep it moving ahead for it lies in the county. This year again, we'll be pursuing a temporary use permit to hold the Lions Club Rodeo there in anticipation of looking for a Conditional Use Permit with the county there are some issues that we need to take care of at the property prior to looking for any additional funding for further development like parking lot, access and that. You'll see some requests for some basic maintenance item operation funds for payment of irrigation taxes and some basic weed control maintenance issues at the property. We need to improve access into the property at least some minimal way. We hope to secure a road easement through a neighboring property Mr. Anderson's property, which would come off of McDermott Road and clarify some boundary issues at the property. At this point, the corner stakes for the property actually fall within Mr. Anderson's barn, which isn't a very good thing to have happen. We need — in negotiation for the easement and clarifying the boundary issues to get that straightened out before we move further along with applying for a Conditional Use Permit. At Bear Creek Park we anticipate — look at adding a shelter to the park, which would be another source of revenue for shelter reservations. Other than the possibility of somewhere in the future adding a tennis court to Bear Creek Park, which has been discussed essentially, complete the amenities at that park. With the Champion Park development starting to build out our agreement with the developer was to look at developing that six -acre neighborhood park in 2005. That's the reason this request for Champion Park development is in this budget item. It's a six -acre park it will be participation with a developer for the completion of the park. New this year and we may have discussion is the request to create a land purchase account and have identified $200,000 to go into an account that would start a savings account essentially for future land purchases. The way that this was conceived when we looked at what was funded last year when we completed the final acreage purchase at the Borup property it came to just under $200,000 out of the impact fee dollars spent. It seemed like a good balance from year to year to look at dollars that we're either using to buy a park or that we set aside to buy a park out of the total impact fee dollars that we collect in revenue. This would also create an account that individuals that want to donate for land purchases could donate to an account of this type. I'm requesting a creation of an account for land purchase. A small request for master planning of the southeast corner of Meridian Settler's Park which is the last portion of the — well next to the last portion of Settler's Park that's not yet master planned or developed. There will be a small acreage between Meridian Youth Baseball and Adventure Island Playground that has not been developed yet either and we can include that portion of the park in this master planning process. This is where the old house and the red barn sit on that corner of the property. There have been suggestions I think from the past that this would make a good area for a farmers market or something of that type. At a minimum we would like to at least find a way to maintain kind of the agricultural heritage of that property in that area of town whether it's a farmers market or Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 5 of 156 something else. We would like to begin a master plan process on that portion of the park to complete that 56 -acre development. Autumn Faire Park has been — at least since I've been here has been much discussed as a city owned park. We still do not have a deed to that property and we're hoping that that will change in the next few weeks as the Final Plat goes through for Autumn Faire Crossing. At that point we should have deed to the property. We have money in this years budget to master plan it. In next years budget we would like to at least do the first phase of the development of that park. We do not have any participation in this particular project from a developer or a partnership with anybody to develop that seven -acre neighborhood park. At this point it looks like it would be completely developed by the city unless we can generate a partnership or some kind of an agreement with the developer. Lastly, some improvements to the Black Stone Pathway this is a requested project from the neighborhood association in that development to do some landscaping improvements along the pathway through the Black Stone development that connects up to the pathway that goes into Fuller Park. What we're looking at is doing some improvements to add irrigation so we can plant some minimal plant material on the pathway. It would also make it easier to maintain the borders of the pathway. We have not done very much of this at this point so this is kind of exploring whether this is a practical way to improve the area along pathways for future maintenance. That is kind of a very brief summary of what we're looking at. I would stand for questions and discussion. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I have a couple of questions on the pathway the Black Stone pathway. That's on the south side of the ditch there isn't it Doug or is that on the north? Huff: South — or I'm sorry north. Strong: North side of the ditch. Bird: It runs into the little path that they've already got there that runs with Fuller yes. Okay. Huff: Next to Western Ada's. Bird: Then I've got a question on the Bear Creek utility vehicles. $15,200 sounds awful high to me for a mule. I'd almost think that we could buy a couple of little used S-1 O's or something like that to get around out there and probably do everything at where you could have both of them for about a third of that cost. I don't know how many hours you would put on those in a years time but I don't think it's very many. Would you have any idea what kind of hours you would put on a machine like that? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 6 of 156 Strong: They're used daily. I don't know do we have hour meters on anything that we — Huff: Yes they have hour meters on them. We'll use them everyday. Bird: Yes but I mean you're not using them eight hours a day. Huff: No. Bird: One hour out of the day? Huff: Oh a couple hours or more depending on what we're doing. It varies a little bit. They would be used on ball fields especially during the summer so they get a couple of hours a day on that plus any other usage in the park. Strong: A difference to point out with this perhaps is that rather than like an S-10 pickup the smaller utility vehicles we need a turning radius to do ball field maintenance versus just to get around and pickup garbage. It would be a combination. Bird: I realize that. Strong: The hydraulic field groomer is about a $2,000 add on so that adds to the cost. Nary: Mr. Strong I heard you say that part of the playground equipment I think you said for Kiwanis Park was partly going to be funded with SSC's dollars? Strong: That's what I understand has been proposed. Nary: Well SSC's I didn't know if they wanted to also offer some input before we get into more details questions about all of your enhancements. Or maybe Ms. Kilchenmann would speak for them. Sanitary Service Kilchenmann: I should have introduced them first but they would like to follow Doug and do a little presentation on what they're asking for. Apparently there was some misunderstanding or so forth about the recycle money. There are actually three requests. Two of the requests because the fund has built up money and then Tom used it to purchase recycle equipment. There was some miscommunication misunderstanding about how he — if he communicated with the committee. We took two of those requests out of fund balance. On your general fund summary you will see where we just added revenue to offset those two requests. One of the requests is new based on how much money they will Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 7 of 156 earn. They have earned this year and will earn in the future. When Doug is finished they would like to talk to you a little bit about what their committee is doing, what their requests are and the direction they would like to go. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: It probably would be appropriate for them to do this before so they can get on their merry little way and we can — if that would be appropriate. Nary: Certainly. Strong: Let them jump in now? Nary: I assume you have better places to be. Kilchenmann: No they were really excited. They wanted to spend the whole day here. Bird: They wanted to stay here all day and listen to us. Sedlacek: Can we talk during the Police Department thing too? Bird: Sure if you're going to donate about a couple million. Sedlacek: Thank you for this time. We've never been to a budget hearing before so we're not really sure how this works. I guess I would start out by saying Nancy Slanaker is the chairman of the committee. This isn't SSC's money it's the city's money. We as a committee as a solid waste committee are just trying to figure out what our role is. In the past the money has been spent on the Bear Creek playground equipment and the Storey Park equipment and that's great. However you want to spend the money it is yours to spend. I guess Bill Nichols simply wants it spent on recycling projects throughout the city. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman Nary: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I'm sorry Steve to interrupt you but I think it would be helpful to kind of give a general overview in terms of the recycling program itself first. The recycling use has not decreased. It's contrary to some of the articles that have come out on how America is not recycling as much anymore that Meridian continues to recycle and it's because of these efforts. I'll make a presentation for you. If you could kind of give a general overview and then we can go into your requests. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page S of 156 Sedlacek: The way the recycling program works is obviously put out every week and we collect it. The revenue from that comes back to Sanitary Services. We pay — we reimburse our household hazardous waste contractor from that money and the net proceeds go to the city. Currently you're receiving about $2500 a month based on participation and fluctuating commodity prices that goes into some fund. I don't know where that is. Kilchenmann: A point of clarification. We have separated that now so that it's in it's own fund. We're getting you a copy of the revenue and expenditures from that fund that we'll hand out to you. Sedlacek: I think there has been — frankly our committee has miscommunicated with people in the past. We're not really sure — again we're struggling with our role in life as we — Nary: Aren't we all Sedlacek: But we've had some great discussions with Doug about maybe setting up some sort of a grant program to take this money or for some process for people to apply to get the money that we can — so we can act as a reviewer and then come to you with suggestions. Again, recycling is increasing in Meridian. We're looking at about 70 percent participation month in and month out. Basically, what fluctuates — the weights fluctuate through seasonally and also the commodity prices fluctuate. The numbers that you end up with net at the end of the month and we give you a check every month goes up and down a little bit. Do you want to talk about how much money might be in that fund or maybe Stacy's probably got those numbers? Kilchenmann: Yes she's getting it. Slanaker: Well while we're waiting I'll talk about — we have three requests that have come to our committee at this point. Up until now we've just been letting this money accumulate in the fund. Then in the past there have been two expenditures that have paid for like we said the playground equipment at Storey Park and Bear Creek. One of those we knew about and one of those we didn't so we were a little shocked last year when we thought we had about $30,000 in our account and found out that it was missing. We are now getting involved in this process so that we can kind of get things on the budget slate so that we know where the money is going to go in the next fiscal year. I'm glad that we're here because I think we're all getting a little tighter hold on this. When this committee was first put together we really didn't know how long it was going to last and how many years ago was that Steve? I don't know three or for. We thought it was just going to be for like a year to get the recycling programmer to look at solid waste issues and here we are four years later, we're still meeting and this thing is actually growing. We're excited to be part of this process. Right Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 9 of 156 now we have three budget requests on our slate. We've budgeted them out at around $45,000 to be spent next year in your budget cycle. $15,000 has been requested by the Kiwanis Group or for Kiwanis Park to purchase playground equipment. $10,000 has been requested by Western Ada Recreation to pay for recycled picnic tables and other recycled products for Fuller Park and Meridian Athletic Roundtable Association has requested $20,000 to build new bleachers which will be made out of either recycled aluminum or trucks material. One requirement that we have placed on all these requests is that we are asking for these particular groups to match the funds that we will be giving them. We're not just going to give 20 or $15,000 and off they go. We are asking these groups to actually put some money on the table themselves either in matching money or in labor or other types of investment. That's a total of $45,000 and we have budgeted that by the end of the fiscal year '05 there should be about $54,000 in the recycling account. There would be enough money to pay for these three projects. We're certainly open to take other requests. As community groups understand how this process works and understands that this money is available I'm sure we will get other requests. We've talked about doing teacher education. If somebody wants to put together a recycling program or curriculum for the elementary schools we think that would be great. We've also talked about maybe paying for some billboards or some promotional materials to promote our recycling program. The possibilities really here are endless. There are other areas where this money could be spent but it all has to be to promote recycling or to use recycled products. Post consumer -recycled products in whatever we're purchasing picnic tables, playground equipment park benches trashcans whatever. Sedlacek: The other two requirements to get the money that we suggest to you. It's your choice whether or not to accept that is not only the one to one match but also a sign on the project like we have at Storey Park that says this playground equipment is made of so many pop bottles. We have to make the connection with residents that when they recycle these things happen in the city. The more that you put out the more stuff you are going to get the better the city is going to be. We have to make that connection. Secondly, we do want to have a certain percentage of post consumer recyclables in every project. I think the number we set was about 25 percent. You can't just throw in one pop bottle and call her good kind of thing. Again those are guidelines we suggest to you. I think there's a discussion we need to have probably separate from a budget hearing about the solid waste committee and your expectations of us and how we interact with you guys. These three requests that we suggested we gave to Stacy. She has put them in the budget. They are — I have no idea what line item they are or where they sit. I'm sure Doug knows that stuff. De Weerd: We know. Sedlacek: Okay so that's what we — that's how we got where we're at. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 10 of 156 Nary: What I would suggest I guess for the future is that we have that similar discussion maybe at a Pre -Council Meeting and maybe the solid waste committee would have that type of proposal that the Council could then review and maybe consider adopting as policy so that you have some framework going forward as to how that's supposed to work. Some sort of community reinvestment is a wonderful idea I think to have and just having some standards as to how that applies makes perfect sense. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I do believe we need to have it at a Pre -Council. We do need to update their ordinance so they have more structure. I think it expired. It was a temporary committee and we do need it put back on the table as far as that. Also, thank you Will. I met with Steve and Bill last week and found it very interesting. I think when — there was an article in the paper about nationwide recycling has reduced in the participation. We had discussed that and also discussed why the separate you know plastics and cans and that sort of thing. It's all very interesting that I would love the committee to come back and talk about the program and why we do things the way we do it. I think as faces change up here we need to be reeducated and re -motivated. I would also suggest that part of the criteria for applying for these funds are that they are — their group is active in recycling. I know Kiwanis has a newspaper -recycling program so that they can show that they're also participating in that. The message I think to our citizens is you know this is at commodity prices. It's not — our recycling program is not to make a profit. Because of the ups and flows of the commodity prices that when it does we can see the benefits of being more environmental friendly and reducing the amount of what goes to the landfill but also that it can benefit our community in these kinds of amenities that you add. We appreciate your effort. Sedlacek: The City of Meridian's recycling program is unique in that the commodity money comes back to the city. All the other cities in this county they go back to the waste hauler. There is a disconnect there. The more they recycle the more money the waste hauler makes which in terms of completing that loop and getting the money back into the city into projects this city has done it right. I'll just throw that out. Bird: That's because we got the best waste hauler. Sedlacek: There you go. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 11 of 156 Wardle: Just to move this along and to thank everyone on the recycling committee for their efforts. Seeing the budget request the Fuller Park equipment even though Fuller Park is a community park it is not a city park. In my mind that $10,000 is well spent because it is essentially a matching fund for that. That was the one question that I had from the committee is since that isn't a city park how would that work but you've answered my question there. Sedlacek: I believe what we were hearing there is 12 recycled picnic tables they were hoping to purchase which is about $8,000 so that number might — the $10,000 number might be high. How they match — I'm not sure does this mean then that they have to put $8,000 worth of labor or stuff in or do they have to pay $4,000 to this $8,000 bill. I don't know how that works in the budgeting process. Anyway, I'll — Slanaker: And it's new to us so we may have to iron things out for next year too. Kilchenmann: Because they're not a city property that would be something you would have to work out with that park. We would just write a check for the amount and you would have to work out an agreement with them on how they were going to match. De Weerd: That's a committee thing. Sedlacek: There's the administrative issue of who checks that the stuff is recycled material and who checks that they've spent the money on the right stuff. Kilchenmann: Well accounting of course we know so much about recycling. De Weerd: Your committee. Bird: Well in organizations like Western Ada or tax entities anyway they go under the same audit that we do. MARA has a yearly audit too so it's all you have to do is ask — and when you give out money you should. I think Nancy said right there that we need to set a criteria of who gets it and how we distribute it. I think it's fantastic I'm just really pleased that we — that they feel fit to give $45,000 this year. Within the community it's really a big help. Sedlacek: Thank you. De Weerd: Thanks. Parks Department Nary: Other questions for Mr. Strong. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 12 of 156 Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: I have some and if we could just begin part of the discussion. Doug could you define a little clearer the goals of the recreation supervisor position? Strong: Actually we have a position description if that would help that we can provide to everyone. That might clarify this position further. De Weerd: Doug I guess while we wait for that you had mentioned that this would eliminate several part time positions? Strong: Yes what we intend to do is absorb — we currently have an adult sports coordinator position that the individual that's in that position also teaches school during the school year. Then works evenings at basketball, volleyball and things like that. That position would be absorbed and then — you might notice on our request that we requested that the four-month office assistant position be made a 12 -month office assistant position. Unless this position was funded full time then we would drop that one out. De Weerd: So what is the savings in your budget. You have — you know if you look at your position sheet what does that — what absorbs into this position. Because I didn't see in the summary sheet an offsetting cost or even on your enhancement sheet. It mentioned it but it didn't say how much is currently in the budget that would offset this expense. Nary: I think the basic question is is how much of the bottom line is this position going to cost. Does it cost $48,000 1 think that's what the number was or does it really cost less than that because we're going to absorb these other positions? Strong: It would cost less than that. De Weerd: How much? Nary: If I'm summarizing it correctly. De Weerd: You did. Kilchenmann: The savings is $4900 the bottom line savings. Strong: Is that the — Bird: That's what we're paying for the part time guy now? Kilchenmann: Yes. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 13 of 156 Strong: We have a four-month office assistant position that's in the summer months that fills in and then the adult sports coordinator position would be the two. De Weerd: Doug on this sheet who is that? It has names on here. (Inaudible discussion amongst Council) Strong: There's a position on here that has no name (inaudible). Cunningham: Doug actually that's just rolled up. That's all those positions because you guys were — you were talking about realigning money. I just took and rolled all those positions into one as far as a line item. The $10,000 is for all four positions. De Weerd: Okay so it's the $10,400 approximately? Cunningham: The savings? De Weerd: Yes. Cunningham: No I understood that the savings would just be $4,921. If you go to that enhancement Number 1 the E 101 form it actually shows that they would drop out $4400 for adult sports coordinator and then with taxes it would be a savings of $4,921. You see that second column where it has a negative amount? That would actually be the savings in the current budget. Strong: That doesn't include the four-month office assistant though. Cunningham: No I was only the impression that it was the adult sports coordinator that it would eliminate. Strong: Our proposal was to also — we have a four-month office assistant position that we're requesting move to a 12 -month position. If this position is funded then we wouldn't request that. We wouldn't have a four-month office assistant position either. Cunningham: Okay so we could take that one into consideration? Strong: So there would be an additional savings there. Cunningham: Okay I'll get with you afterwards Doug and we'll go through it and redo the savings. De Weerd: Thank you. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 14 of 156 Wardle: Mr. President Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: And just to continue on until we get those numbers. I think the overall scope of that is we're rolling some positions in but we're also enhancing the recreation program for the City of Meridian. With the offset of the summer camp, which I think is a good deletion until we can prove that the program will self - sustain, and support itself I'm comfortable with that. I have a couple of questions as far as the enhancements. One of them and I'm just going to throw this out for discussion on expenditures of the impact fees. Before I get to that the one thing I don't see on here is the Lochsa Falls Park and partnership that we have with PAL. We have, as I understand from Doug what's the dollar figure in this year's current budget that we still are holding until they're ready Doug? Strong: I believe that amount is somewhere around $160,000 for master planning and initial construction. Just to clarify we have a proposed agreement right now that will come before the commission on Wednesday night that if that agreement goes through as it's proposed we would be involved in paying for the master planning for the park and whatever is left over from that some initial construction. That's in this year's budget to do that. Wardle: And my question for the Council is given PAL's recent situation and I do not have an update but I do know that their current field is unavailable and our neighbor to the north has expressed some concern with a new place for them to play. While we have the money in the master plan to master plan it I'm not sure what it would take to get that park up and running by I'm not sure what the timeline would be but I'll just throw that out for discussion. De Weerd: Our neighbor to the north is what? Wardle: Has had some concerns over their proposed — Eagle didn't like where they were going to put their new site. De Weerd: Eagle doesn't like where they're putting it in Meridian? Wardle: No, no. Nary: They're not at the corner of Fairview and Eagle. Wardle: They're not at the corner of Fairview and Eagle anymore. They had a proposed park north of Eagle where they were going to put a temporary field. The neighbors had concerns and the city had concerns so they're still looking for a place — as I understand they're still looking for a place to play. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 15 of 156 De Weerd: I thought they were going south of Amity off of Eagle. Bird: Anyway. Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I have some things to address on that particular thing. Now you say you have $160,000 for master planning that? Strong: Master planning and underground utility work to create the initial phases into that 30 -acre parcel. Bird: Anyway. Strong: Maybe this is a point of clarification — Bird: And what is the — I mean you've got a thing -- how soon can PAL get on it? When are we going to see some of PAL's — these partnerships they aren't really partnerships. We don't see any money. It's like the Adventure Land. I think all the money that's been received has been through us. I can guarantee you that when that baseball field at Storey Park was built the city didn't put a penny in that. The partnership built the thing and still does. Where are these partnerships? I guarantee you Boise don't spend a lot of money on the optimist fields, other than the original purchase. They have got to come up to the table, too. Strong: Well, that's a lot of the reason that there is no money in this year's budget request for PAL because we have money that we still have unspent in this year's budget for master planning and we are moving toward an agreement with them and in the agreement they are proposing that they do the utility work. They said it was easier for them to get people to donate toward the actual construction elements of a park verses the master planning of the park. With other partnerships, like Meridian Youth Baseball, they found it was easy to get people to step up and do the master planning construction documents for their particular agreements, so trying to balance with each partner what it takes to get it moving to kind of get it rolling along, kind of like seed money, but I hear what you are saying. We have to decide when to draw the line as far as what we are going to put in as far as the city contribution to a project and when the partnership needs to come up with the funds. Bird: And follow up, please. Nary: Certainly, Mr. Bird. Bird: Doug, I agree with you 100 percent there. If they don't come forward — I mean we need to develop the park with grass and stuff and everything, so we do Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 16 of 156 it but they have no exclusive rights to it because they don't have partnership. You know, these people are — sure, I am for helping in all we can, but there are too many places out there that need to be helped that they are going to have to start helping us a little bit. I am just floored that the deal — why do we budget it — (Tape turned over). Bird: -- (inaudible). Strong: $150,000. Bird: $150,000? Strong: A $100,000 of that I think was initially identified for the soft fall material. The $50,000 that was budgeted in the last year's budget will buy concrete and block wall and the initial work that needs to be done in phase one. Bird: Do you have any idea how much they have got raised? Strong: They have over, I think, $30,000 in cash and then the rest is in kind construction, labor and it's a considerable amount of money when everything is put together. De Weerd: About $500,000, isn't it? Strong: I think they have over $300,000. 1 think for the first phase they wanted $500,000. They are not quite there yet. Some of their fundraising efforts in this year have fallen considerably shorter of where they wanted to be. That's why in that request I thought the $50,000 if it stayed there for Adventure Island could be used for seed money or incentive for other donators and I think that there is some utility in that because that project does get considerable focus. It's been on the table for what, four years now? If we don't get moving along pretty soon, the interest in it is going to die in the project and then we won't get it finished. There is some immediacy that is kind of important there. De Weerd: Doug, are they moving forward with the community build at the end of the summary? Strong: That is still on the table. There is worry now whether it will be ready for the community build, but — De Weerd: Is their donated laborers still not done? Strong: We up the ante on that a week ago and actually have some firm commitments now from different contractors that have said they would do the work and hadn't completed it because contractors are busy. But, we got them to Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 17 of 156 commit to specific dates that look like we can move it toward that August 28th community build date. We are still, at this point, planning for that community build date. The part of that that will be a little bit of a juggle is that the last thing to go in kind of like carpet in a house is the soft fall material. So, we need to make sure that if we push it along to get it ready for the community build that we have enough money to put the soft fall material down. So, we'd like to have phase one completed. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Thank you, Doug and just to follow up the article in the Statesman (inaudible) for you talked about PAL at Hubbard Lane in Eagle and so, not south of Eagle Road, but we are proposing a development on Hubbard Lane. I can certainly ask the Parks Department to bring a little more information on that. I have a couple of other questions and one of them was the Adventure Island Playground for $50,000 and the fact that we — that in the past that had been allocated for matching funds for grant, which we have not received and so why I think it's a project that's worth while, certainly it merits a little bit of discussion as to whether we want to allocate that dollar figure because that dollar figure was a matching fund in the past. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird Bird: I feel that we are into this and this is such an opportunity to put a special playground in our community that I have no problem with the $50,000 there, Councilman Wardle. I think it's something that we can hold and I am sure there is going to be other grants out there and we might have to and have this ready to be used for it, so this is one thing I would hate to see us cut back on because I feel that that is a project that is really very important to this community. Nary: Doug, I just got a few questions on the — just so I am clear — on the groundskeeper re -class. That's not a one-time enhancement, that's an enhancement to base for those two employees? Strong: That is correct. They would be moved from groundskeeper II to groundskeeper III. Nary: Okay. On the seasonal groundskeepers, the $30,000 — it seems it's part of the expense and cost to maintaining those parks, especially the ones that are a little bit smaller, like Champion's Park, I think it is — Strong: Six acres. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 18 of 156 Nary: Right. Then the Kiwanis Park, I think, was not a really large park, either. Have you looked at any other cost and try and evaluate whether contracting those particular parks for maintenance would be cheaper than hiring more people to drive the vehicles out there and do that? Strong: In the initial review that as far as just mowing the grass we can do it for less money than we contract it. For outsourcing the kinds of things that seem to make sense for outsourcing would be like downtown tree maintenance, possibly some chemical application and fertilization and things like that that companies are set up to do. There may be some economy in that as we get more space and particularly for smaller areas like Generation's Plaza and you know when you go into less than an acre area to maintain it, sometimes it takes as much time as when you go to a six -acre neighborhood park to maintain that. Even the maintenance around city hall as we have discussed whether there is some areas that we could contract to a grounds keeping company to do that as an outsourced type of care and save in — you know at what point do we add full-time verses part-time staff is what we are trying to balance right now. When we looked at the two part-time, we felt that to carry full-time staff through the winter months in the decrease in workload that where we are right now seems good and we wanted to go through another winter before we looked at even considering another full-time staff. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess to also have Doug underscore the need for the seasonal is we have had a rash of vandalism and I don't know if this Council is aware of the extreme of it. Doug if you would give them a brief overview of what your crews clean up on almost a daily basis, I think that would be very helpful. Strong: Most of the vandalism to date has occurred at Tulley Park. We have had some minor things at the other parks. One recent thing, not so minor at Bear Creek Park was a firecracker down the toilet that blew the backend out of the toilet that had to be replaced, which is about $200. The majority of the expense has been at Tulley and at the restrooms there and some related expense around the skate park with trashcan receptacles and different things like that. We are in the thousands of dollars there now with doorframes bent, both exterior doorframes and partition doorways and in the rest rooms. We have had roof vents on the top of the building ripped out leaving a gaping hole that would provide access into the maintenance area. Recently, this week our groundskeeper there spent three hours cleaning up just the wet toilet paper that was wadded up and thrown in every little place that you could imagine in the toilet. So, just the impact to maintenance staff to deal with the vandalism and then there was some kind of red paint here recently, too, that took a while to Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 19 of 156 figure out how to remove from the halls at Tulley. So, there has been an increase in that. The thirty some years that I have been working in Parks and Recreation vandalism to restrooms and parks, has never gone away and it has been much discussed at regional and national conferences and nobody has an absolute answer to it. So, I think it's something that we do need to address in order to maintain the parks so that they are presentable to the public. We need to deal with the vandalism right away. One of the things that we are proposing soon would be a surveillance camera system at Tulley Park that would be set for the skate park and the restaurant building so that we would have some way to date stamp when something happened and go back and look at a tape and find out who was at least present at that time and to do that within an initial estimate that would be about $7,000 mission to a budget we don't have right now. De Weerd: Council, I guess at this point if accounting sees that we have anything left over in the money we set aside last year, if would be money well spent. The vandalism out there has been above and beyond what typically they see on a summer bases and it's getting to that extreme and I think it's also where the community needs to be aware of what's going on and what we risk to lose. You know at the skate park, you know, since we have opened that the vandalism has increased tremendously. It's very unfortunate. I don't know if it's the kids that use the skate park in and of itself or if it's an element that hangs out around that particular type of amenity, but parents need to be more aware. We just had some damage to the well site, also located out there, over the weekend. They are talking about having to build a fence around that that really does break up that nice green area. So, it's kind of getting to that point to where it's out of control and something needs to happen. But, that is a budget consideration, hopefully for this one if we have money left over that we can do some preventative. Remember, this was still going on when that extra person is out there supervising. Strong: That's right. We did — I mentioned to a couple of people there this morning, we did catch a couple of vandals last night, so we — so there are steps being taken and the extra person that you mentioned being at the park was a part of that. Wardle: Mr. President Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just a quick discussion on the land purchase fund. In my opinion we need this fund to get ahead of purchasing some land. One of the things that I would ask and I don't know exactly how to do this, but from time to time, park impact fee and we see a large amount of building permits come and so from time to time the park impact fees may be over what we expected. It would be my opinion that if we had a fund such as this so that we could take some of that Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 20 of 156 overage that we have that was unexpected and unbudgeted for and then place that into an account such as this. Bird: Mr. President Nary: Mr. Bird Bird: Two things for you Councilman Wardle. I think this is — and I have talked to Doug about this last year getting something like this started like we do with the fire truck fees so that we have it then. The video equipment that we need out at Tulley Park is definitely needed and that is something that we don't need to discuss about 2005, we need to discuss about 2004. 1 encourage any of you guys to go out there a couple of times a day at different times, which I have done and sit there in your car for about 1 '/2 hours and watch the kids. I hate to say this, but it's the element that comes off of the skateboard park. They go hit the deal. Like in our restroom, we can start pouring our doorframes and everything full of concrete, they can still damage it, but they are going to be there a while doing it. Nary: I agree on the video equipment. I agree the Mayor is right. I think we need to look at whatever turn back money we have remaining from the budget this year so that way we can do that. Maybe that's something we need to do before September. It seems like September becomes a fire sale and we don't want to do that. We need to look both in parks as well as other budgets where we can get that done. The only other question I had, Doug, on the Autumn Faire Park. Is that $183,000 that you are asking for, is that essentially just green up? Strong: That would be the initial green up, no buildings. The buildings would be the next phase. Nary: Okay, because I think green up, I mean makes some sense, you know it's right next to neighborhoods — it's right on the road and I don't think they want to look at a dirt and weed patch any longer. Strong: It is also easier to maintain. Nary: Right. And it is cheaper to maintain than a building, but that it still provide an opportunity for somebody else if they would like to provide some sort of partnership there with something else that would be a good place to do that. I don't have any other questions. Council? Bird: I would like to follow up on that, Mr. President. Nary: Sure, go ahead. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 21 of 156 Bird: On that Autumn Faire Park the $183,000 includes the utilities don't it? Even though it doesn't include a building we would have the sewer and stuff ran in this deal before the agreement? Huff: All the underground would be complete. Bird: That's great. That makes more sense then. Nary: Council, are there other questions on parks or are we ready to move on? Wardle: Mr. President, just one more question as far as the Black Stone Pathway and we had to request from a neighborhood group to do the pathways. If this is something that we approved this year, I would assume that we would see other neighborhoods come in and do the same sort of thing and so just a policy decision to look at. Nary: Great. Council, we did run a little bit long, should we just get started on the Police Department's section? Bird: You bet. Kilchenmann: I just need a couple of minutes to see if their (inaudible ----------). Nary: Okay. I guess we need a couple of minutes and then we will get started. Kilchenmann: There is one thing I want to clarify the (inaudible -------------------- ). Wardle: No, no. I knew that they needed to be accounted for in their own fund, but if there is a — because you have a proposed budget of $740,300 and in 2005 we collect a million dollars I know it goes into a different fund, but the Council could allocate that overage into Parkland Purchase Fund with a policy decision — Nary: Kind of like a fund balance. Wardle: Yeah. Kilchenmann: We just keep them in the same fashion. Nary: Right. Wardle: No, I didn't mean move accounts, I meant move allocation, I guess. (Speaker unknown:) Some of them are allocated for specific parks, like Lochsa because there are an over abundance of permit (inaudible ----------------------------- ). Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 22 of 156 Bird: And that Bear Creek and Autumn Faire isn't, see? So, that goes into the general and you know that — (Discussion inaudible-----------------------------) De Weerd: If you decide to spend it, it's more just a budget amendment because of what is included (inaudible ---------------------- ). It's in the park impact fee fund, which can be used for anything that qualifies under that capital (inaudible). So, if you want to use it, you can. So, it's really are you there? Bird: It is there, but I think we need to — just like I told Doug last week we need to let it like we do the fire truck fund. Tammy, you know about that. We wouldn't have the fire — we wouldn't be able to put the fire trucks (inaudible---). De Weerd: Then we should put more in it. Because even right now it we should put one of the two (inaudible -------------------). Bird: Let's see what we have got. Wardle: The problem with that is — De Weerd: Well, we already have it and then you establish a fund that you can grow. If that's what your goal is. Bird: That's what our goal is. Right now we got too much (inaudible-------------) that needs to be brought up to speed. If we had everything that we owned, park green and everything I'd say put more in. I'd say put more in it, but these partnerships have got to come and step forward. Cunningham: (inaudible ----------------------------------------------------------- )• Normally we would have to go to the amendment. (Inaudible--------------------------------------) (Inaudible discussions). Police Department Nary: Well, we are back on the record with the Police Department's presentation and we have a handout as well, Chief? Musser: Yes, I did provide handouts, which are reflective of the PowerPoint presentation, Councilman Nary. Nary: Thank you, go ahead. Musser: As we open our presentation today we will start with a quick review of our city mission. We find this is a very important aspect for the Police Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 23 of 156 Department to be able to follow in line with, so that's why we included it in our presentation so that we have it right there in front of us as we move forward. As our presentation moves forward we are going to continue on our theme that we had from last year, which was building on our future together as we move forward into FY 2005 with our budget request and proposals. Again, in short review our department mission with the City of Meridian Police Department is to be able to provide highest quality of service and partnership with the community to preserve and to protect life and property through education prevention enforcement. Something that we are making a very strong movement towards in conjunction with a lot of leadership training and the team building that we have been doing in the City of Meridian and I appreciate the Council's and the Mayor's efforts in helping us move forward with that and continuing that progress that we have had today. As we start, capital replacement vehicle totals at this point for the City of Meridian in the Police Department are at $206,000. This encompasses four marked patrol vehicle units at $34,000 each and at the prompting of Councilman Bird we have been able to get that figure pretty tight at that $34,000 mark where we used to estimate vehicles around the $40,000 mark. However, we have been able to pretty much narrow those down using the Boise City shops and so we have a good idea on replacement of vehicles as long as we don't have to replace a whole lot of that equipment that is on it. We have two motorcycles included at $21,000 each. Initially, the $21,000 was when we were looking at BMW motorcycles. We may see a savings this year on that as we are pursuing a similar structured motorcycle, however, it will be a Honda and they are coming in at a substantially lesser amount than the BMW's were, so we may see some savings in that overall area at this point. We are still working on it waiting for the new Honda model to come out that has the same safety features on it. One animal control at $15,000. We will be replacing a Fleet car in terms of replacing the animal control truck. This will purchase us the Chasse and the cab area and we will be replacing the box off of the existing vehicle and on that older vehicle in order to get another year or two out of it, we are going to try and utilize it for that short period of time in ordinance enforcement by putting a regular bed back on it, so ordinance enforcement would have a functional pickup as well as our full-time officer does at this point. That would allow us up to potentially three vehicles in ordinance enforcement as we move forward here. Then our final one is a staff car. We are currently using an old vehicle that is well in excess of $100,000. The staff car will role in a lease return type vehicle and their staff car is used by our backgammon investigator and our local staff in the office, our records supervisor, our evidence technician and these are for short trips around the area for delivery of evidentiary goods or to pick up paperwork and deliver mail and that type of thing or in the case of our investigator, to travel outside of the immediate area to do background checks on officers that we have applications on. Capital replacement for computers has significantly risen for us, but I think it's an animal that we are going to continue to see over time. We are looking at 10 total desk units or PC's that have to be replaced along with two laptops as we expand out for a total of $19,260. Relatively cheap in comparison to cars, but still it is some money that we have to look at. Overall, for what we Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 24 of 156 had we started with a total of 15 enhancements. Part of these came a little bit later on in the enhancement process, in particular the intern program and the WAN connection, which are listed as 14 and 15 on this. We also introduced the estimated cost of the K-9 training building, which we discussed in conjunction and partnership with the Park's Department for our undeveloped section of land. That's roughly $128,000 is what we are estimating. As I have mentioned before we are still working on some community partnership programs, looking at some donations that can help us offset that cost. One of the reasons we wanted to introduce it in this fiscal year is where it is a capital improvement item and it does involve a building, if there is some potential we could set aside a small amount of money towards that and look at that as being a focus in FY 2006. This sets the stage for that. We realize that it probably won't be a go in this fiscal year, though. Overall, we were looking at just under a million dollars in initial enhancements. However, this is what we are down to now. What we have done on this with the crossed out sections on here, I'll go into a little bit further explanation, but we reprioritize and we drop down to a total of 10 priorities within our enhancements. Those also significantly dropped us down to a total of $342,893 from the near 1 million that we started with. We do have the K-9 building showing in there, but that total is not included in this enhancement total for our personnel and operation costs. Part of the adjustments that we have, first and foremost was the loss of revenue from the Meridian School District's SRO contract. It forced an evaluation and a need for constant coverage of the schools as a result the re -deployment of two SRO's back to patrol and a third to checks and fraud investigations. We had a request for three officers for patrol that was in there, as well as a new detective position. Those were both withdrawn. Those were a significant amount of monies. Part of the reason they were withdrawn is that we can re -deploy two officers to field duties that offsets the need for the three that we had requested. We are still short one, but we are able to utilize existing personnel and staff and because of the growth in our commercial businesses in town and the absolute need to be on top of our checks and frauds, we also re -deployed one of those SRO's into the investigative spot that we have requested so there is no significant change there. It doesn't impact our current operating or our personnel cost by doing these re -deployments and we do gain on that. The only thing that we do lose is having an absolute officer at every single one of the schools that we were contracted for, however, what we have done with the school district is we have committed one officer to each of the major high schools, Meridian and Mountain View and we have one officer who is committed to all three of the middle schools and he will be working those on a rotating basis through the week. He will spend one day at Meridian Middle School, another day at Sawtooth as it comes online and then another day out at Lewis & Clark and that leaves him two days to follow up with investigative items that he may have as well. This will be a tough one first to evaluate, but it is something that we are going to have to be forced to take a look at in this current year. We are still providing some partnership with the school, but we are choosing it on the basis of what's best for the community we feel at this time and Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 25 of 156 gives us the maximum amount of deployment for coverages in terms of patrol and with our checks and frauds. Bird: Mr. President may I ask a question before we go any further so I don't forget it? Nary: Sure. Bird: Chief, do you three feel that and I don't go by any averages or anything like that that we really need those three patrol officers that we have scratched out? Now you have showed us how you have rededicated the personnel stuff, but I don't want to do like we did seven or eight years ago. Get behind in that area along with the cars and stuff that we have to catch up in a year or two because that really costs us. Do you feel that you really need those three officers to make this the community that you want it to be? Musser: Madame Mayor, members of the Council and Councilman Bird absolutely we do need the three officers, however, realizing the necessity to be able to fully evaluate where we are at and not having a grant stream of available to us to help offset the cost to the city, we made the decision based upon that. I have been in discussion with the Mayor and also with you Councilman Bird as our liaison to set the stage to let you know that over the next five years we need a total of 18 officers to cover the over 32 square miles of city limits area that we have now. Now, I realize that we don't have all of that in the city limits, but that is the geographic spread that we have to cover even though when they compress it down we end up with just a little over 18 square miles. The thing is that we have to cover the map as it lays out and not what they compress it down to. To have another 18 officers come on just for patrol purposes will put us into a coverage realm of one officer for just about every four square miles. That's a reasonable response time area and also allows us to be able to set up and to move into proactive policing based upon a neighborhood concept geared around those four square miles and it also allows us a little bit of coverage to have people close by to respond and to assist each other when we need it. Yes, we are behind, we do need the 18 officers, but I have tried to plan out over the next five years to look at it, realizing where we are at in terms of our revenue stream that comes into the city. Bird: Follow up, please. Nary: Certainly, Mr. Bird. Bird: Chief, I think and that's something I think we need to look at real hard here in this budget. Maybe we can't get you three, but maybe we can get you one or two; because like you said, you need 18 officers and the way we are growing you might more than that. You know, we might get more area than that, but I don't Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 26 of 156 want to have to come up the last year this five years and have to hire 18 officers. We are not going to have the money. Musser: I realize that. Bird: I'd sooner get this going and get it going on this point right now. If there is anyway we can find it. We do have a request that encompasses two more officers that we will see shortly here coming up. However, we didn't adjust anymore into patrol. If it so pleases the Council at this point, I could submit in a request for what one more officer would cover so that we are showing a total of three that we are looking at for a patrol and I can do that if the Council so directs at this point. I will have that prepared and in by the end of the day to accounting. Bird: Here is one Councilman that is for it and I can't speak for the Mayor and the other two Councilmen, but I would like to see that other officer, yes. Musser: Okay. I will prepare that and do that and we will try to stretch the fleet out as best as we can. I will leave the car costs associated with three officers off on that one and just run with the cost of the officer with benefits and equipment. Bird: Okay. Thank you, Chief. Nary: Chief, now the most recent hires were for the last quarter or for the last half of the fiscal year. Didn't we just recently hire on three? Or, I guess their positions are vacant? They haven't been hired yet? Musser: Councilman Nary, we have filled all of our positions with one exception at this point. You are absolutely correct everything that we had to finish out those hirees were just hired here July 1, three of which we could not hire until that date. At this time, we have hired a total of seven new officers on and that has been an ongoing process for bringing those officers on since about mid June. That was in response to losing three officers to Boise City. Those have been replaced. Took care of the three officers that were yet (inaudible) came on after July 1 and we still had two replacement officers that went back to replacements and restructuring within the department since we had one lieutenant leave and the former Chief, Chief Worley, also left. That left us two openings there, so we have been able to replace all of that. We had another recent opening that occurred and I just interviewed yesterday and made a contingent offer on that position and we hope to see that one filled by mid month here and that will take us up to the full 56 allotted and accounted for in the current budget. Nary: Because I guess one of the other ways to get along the road as Mr. Bird is recommending is looking if there is any value to phasing those positions in over the course of the budget year, rather than to try and do it all October 1. 1 recognize from a training perspective it's not very easy to simply add one person Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 27 of 156 in October and another in March and another in July. Most of the time through attrition you are not really adding one person, sometimes you may be adding one or two at a time. I don't know if that's a possibility, whether or not that is something feasible. Musser: Councilman Nary it is absolutely feasible for us and it's part of what we were looking at when we came in with this last year's hiring. We were lucky enough that the July session gave us enough time to bring those officers on after July 1, so that they could do the pre -requirement training prior to going to the academy. We now have approximately 60 hours of training that they have to do online via CD's before they can even go to the academy, which is part of what we have to look at now when we bring them on. Having worked here for as long as I have, we have phased in officers at different times either in October with a portion of them, in January or in April at the mid fiscal year level; however, July has also worked out for us as well. So, we are entirely open to be able to do those phasings and if we bring you multiple officer requests that's something that we will continue to look at as a money saving option for the city with the initial hire on it. Nary: Thanks, Chief. Musser: As I already stated, the last paragraph here covers what I had already mentioned to the Council that we still have SRO's in the school, so we are still providing that partnership in that coverage with our school district as well. De Weerd: Chief, I am sorry, but the school district is aware of the continued commitment to this SRO program then? Musser: Due to the changes that we are advising, yes they are fully aware of it and this is what we told them we would be doing. At the time they advised us that the contracts would not be renewed as part of their budget cycle. De Weerd: Can you tell me what throughout the Meridian School District, I know this has an impact, to other agencies as well. How are the other agencies reacting? Musser: As far as the reactions that we have at this time, Madame Mayor, initially I had contact with under Sheriff Gary Rainey and the counties' initial response back was to not cover the schools that they lost in terms of contract and that was specifically with Meridian School District. However, since that time, they have pretty much followed the same format that we have and the have provided limited coverage back into some of the schools and then reemployed other detectives to detective or field duties at this point. With Boise City, Boise City wasn't under the same contractual obligation, so from what I understand they are continuing to cover the schools that they were already in and fulfilling what they had agreed to with the Meridian School District. In the Kuna School Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 28 of 156 District, the Kuna School District still contracts with the Ada County Sheriff's Department so they still have their SRO's in their schools in Kuna. De Weerd: I guess one final question on this topic is when they get to (inaudible) school where their behaviors are kind of set, you know and we are splitting the middle school one, where are the resources best placed? A middle school or a high school? Musser: Madame Mayor, members of the Council that was a hard fought discussion that we had amongst staff at the Police Department, frankly my concerns are more geared towards the middle schools at this point, however, the high school is rather adamant when we were talking to them about having that coverage within their high schools and it's something that we are going to take a look at in this year and see where our behavior problems lay, where we can best direct resources and if it comes down to it next year that we re -deploy in conjunction with those middle schools based upon the instances that we may have as opposed to those at the high schools then that is something I will be certainly stepping forward to you and to my liaison, Councilman Bird, to address the need for that change. At this point though we are trying to accommodate predominantly the wishes of the school district by covering the high schools. They have more concerns referenced behavior problems there than they do the middle school. De Weerd: But, you know I guess when they are concerned about behavior problems, shouldn't they hire someone — I mean, why do we become their babysitter? We are looking at your community policing philosophy and pro - activeness and that sort of thing and I guess their goal might be a little bit different than what your staff has discussed and I guess I would like that in consideration. If they have behavior problems, that's their fiscal responsibility. If we have people in there a particular reason on the law side in looking at how we can be preventative, those considerations have a lot of weight behind them as well. Musser: Madame Mayor, members of the Council you are absolutely correct. However, most cases what the officers do in terms of behavioral problems in the schools a lot of them are directly related to illegal activities. So, either the school district or the officer has the option under Idaho Law to be able to petition that child, you know, to be reviewed and looked at in terms of those illegal behaviors. One of the proactive things that we look at also is by having an officer there is a chance to have that interaction. I want to still be able to have that interaction especially with our youth and have no officers and have that trust still being able to be built by having contact with them and being able to interact with them. I think we still have a little bit of that even though we have compromised to look at high schools instead of the middle schools directly. In terms of the compromise, I think it's something we have to review and look at as we move into this next school year and then make the hard decision based upon what we are able to Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 29 of 156 put down on paper resulting from the performances as we move forward here. I hope that answers your question Madame Mayor in terms of why we made the decision that we made and that we feel that it still meets our community needs in terms of partnering. Nary: I guess I will follow up on that, Chief and I guess I can be more blunt than the Mayor. If the school district wants us to be security guards then they can pay for that. If they want us to have a role as community policing and they are not wanting to pay for any of that then I think it is your philosophy and our philosophy that really carries the day. If you feel and I guess that's really the $64,000 question for you. If you feel that community policing the model that you have, the philosophy you set for the department and that we have also agreed with you is best served in the middle schools then it should be in the middle schools and not because the school district would prefer it be in the high school because they want to have a police officer there because of their behavioral problems. They can hire security guards or they can pay to have an SRO program. This is not a free service, this is supposed to be a community service and if you think it is best served in the high school then I am fine with that; but, if you think trying to meet the needs of this community it's better served in the middle schools and the other part of that is I only heard the three middle schools and not Cross Roads. The three major middle schools, rather than Cross Roads and I didn't know if that was — I didn't think we normally or used to staff that as a regular position by itself, either, but I didn't know if that was part of that rotation too. I guess, I understand the school district has budgetary problems and that's part of the reason they can't afford this program any longer. But, we have budgetary issues as well and I think we need to spend our dollars and the priority areas that we think are the most important. I think it really is up to you, Chief, not because the school district wants it, but because you think that the high school is a better place for police to have that level of interaction then I am for that. I do agree with the Mayor it makes more sense to me, I guess as a lay person, that from a community policing standpoint the middle schools deserve that one on one attention verses the high schools having a little bit more intermittent attention would be a better bank for our buck. Musser: Madame Mayor, members of the Council, Councilman Nary like I mentioned it was something that we've had a lot of discussion on and even to the point of asking the SRO's that have been working there where best we could our mileage out of it. Understanding where we are at, I am not trying to provide everything to the school district that they no longer are paying for now up to and including of putting them on notice that if we have to do overtime for them at their games and events that it's our officers' rate of overtime, plus the benefits coming into the city. So, we will have to wait and see if they even ask us to show up at those games like they have in the past. That's entirely their decision on it, but realizing where we are at, I put that hammer down. Also in terms of where we are at is while the officers are assigned to those high schools, their technically only there for three days out of the week. We said that we would have them Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 30 of 156 there and they could be there for three days out of the week, but they are also going to be carrying cases and in doing other investigations that relate to the age group that they are dealing with and they are not totally committed everyday out of the week like we were in the past. They will work our schedules with our priorities of the department, not that of the schools. I wasn't clear on that when I first mentioned it and the same thing with the three schools. Yes, we realize that we have Cross Roads and we also have the Academy and basically what we are going to be looking at is handling those on an as needed basis. If they call, then we will respond and take a look at where we are at there. The learning environments in both of those schools have been structured to an extent to where they relatively handle themselves because of the smaller populations and because of the special structure within the schools for the teaching formats that they use. I don't foresee them being as much as a problem as our general population schools do at times with the variety of things that we can have occur there. Hopefully, that may ease your minds a wee bit in terms of where we are at, but I think I have exercised my prerogatives as Chief to be able to set the stage for where we are at and not make a total commitment other than to know that my investigators assigned to those schools are Meridian investigators number one and when we need them and if they have other assignments to do that comes first. The school is secondary in terms of where they are at. Nary: Thank you, Chief. Any other questions, or should Chief continue on? Musser: Moving into our priorities again. A new lieutenant for Service's Division, this is a promotion position. It adds back the third lieutenant that we have had prior under Chief Worley and that I chose not to put in at the time when we had an opening on it because I wanted to centralize and provide a management focus by having a single lieutenant and patrol (inaudible). However, as the Department has grown and we have been able to expand our services orientation within the Department, I find it necessary now to re-evaluate where we may be best served by having this management position re -introduced. The overall cost would be $22,335 in terms of the promotion. What this lieutenant will be doing is working with records, crime prevention, ordinance enforcement, crime analysis, community policing, our volunteers and serving as a public information conduit for both media and web resources. Something that I know in recent discussion with our Mayor that each department needs to have a central point for our new web format that's coming on so we can stay updated so that's one of the issues we are looking at within this lieutenant's preview. In this enhancement also helps us address a number of challenges and issues within a strategic plan. Number one is community growth; we are asked within those challenges to develop new processes and procedures to better allocate staff resources. This is one of those things that I am looking at where we can have management combine it and then help be able to spread it out department wide in terms of where we are headed. It adds information. It updates our department's pages on the city web as we move forward there and it will help us develop a positive image for the city and the department. Under Police Services it helps us Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 31 of 156 maintain our current high levels of service quality, our commitment to the community and it maintains our involvement directly within the community. It increases the number of community services provided as part of our departmental outreach, in particular with the way we are moving forward with out volunteers at this point. Under department issues specifically, one of the things that we are really keying on is reduction of property crimes through proactive crime analysis for directive patrol and the expansion of the crime prevention program. These are both very proactive and necessary items that we need in town here in order to have an impact on our property crimes. Property crimes still remain the number one area of concern within this city. Honestly, in order to (inaudible) impact that we have to work through the educational and a prevention arms of our city Police Department's mission. The law enforcement end of it even though the officers that I represent as their Chief have been very busy — (Tape turned over). Musser: -- Eight? Burglar's Lt. Stowe? Stowe: Yes. Musser: A total of ten burglars that we have been able to apprehend over about the last three weeks in a multitude of cases that we have been able to take a look at. So, we are making some progress. In continuation with that it helps us increase our departments' involvement in proactive community relations and utilization of volunteers. As you know, our former Councilwoman Cheri McCandless has agreed to become a volunteer coordinator for us and is very excited and working very hard at this point on helping us get more volunteers in and getting us more involved in the community with a number of other projects. This will also help us increase the department's ability to manage and initiate levels of professional career development in the areas of technology. Some of this is very technologically specific in terms of crime analysis, it's terms of where we are headed with some of the crime prevention aspects and working on the web and reaching out in ways that we haven't reached out before. The other thing that it will do is it will help increase the efficiency within the support services in general for the City of Meridian and in particular for the Police Department. It gives us other resources to be able to use. The other thing that we have added in on this, though, is if I promote a sergeant to a lieutenant's position this will also cover the replacement of that sergeant by adding for that promotion so that we don't lose anything in the patrol or investigations in terms of that. A little thing here on some fast traffic facts. I can thank my captain for this who did a little bit of research and made some contacts over at ITD. When Eagle Road was finished, it opened up the five lanes. ITD made an estimate on traffic counts and predicted the daily traffic counts on Eagle Road at Chinden Boulevard and note that that's Eagle and Chinden, which was one of the busiest intersections at that time would not hit 25,000 vehicles per day until the year 2017. Okay? This is right out of their direct board minutes, which he was able to obtain a copies on. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 32 of 156 In terms of Eagle Road and 1-84 we are now at 34,260 vehicles per day. Oh, excuse me I was just corrected on there. That's Chinden and Eagle is at that mark right now. So, we've missed the mark on where we were initially counting and where we were looking at and you can see the difference there is almost a 10,000 over shoot from what they initially estimated and we are only in 2004. What are the five busiest roads in Ada County? As if I have to tell this Council. It's Eagle Road and 1-84 and this is the average daily traffic count there. It's 52,750. Eagle Road at Franklin, just one mile further — or a little less than a mile, it's % of a mile and it's 45,751. Meridian Road and 1-84 is 42,666. 1 think you can see where the numbers are headed on this. If we take our (inaudible) in three core areas into the City of Meridian via the Interstate at Meridian and Eagle Road and you combine those, you are looking at 95,416 vehicles per day. During the week, primarily Monday through Friday you are looking at almost 100,000 vehicles moving through this community. Traffic is a concern and remains a concern for us. We have five of the busiest locations in Ada County and the only reason we didn't get more for whatever reason is at State Street and Pierce Park seemed to have grabbed that number four spot. Where all this is headed is it takes us to our second priority. This is a personnel enhancement in terms of officers and one that we feel very strongly about and this is our second year for bringing it to this Council. This traffic emphasis places two new officers, plus a corporal's promotion and one car into our current personnel and operations. It's an overall cost of $183,289 and it provides us with more staffing in terms of traffic enforcement itself that helps us direct the traffic issues by increasing our traffic unit and it meets our variances as we have listed in our objectives from FY 2003 and 2004. The final bid on this is by the final addition of these two traffic officers, it will complete what we had initially projected when we first did our strategic planning process back in the 2002 at what time we were looking at needing a unit that consisted of six officers; a sergeant, a corporal and four officers. By fulfilling this enhancement we will have met that goal of having that six -member traffic unit to be able to work here in the City of Meridian. I was able to bring a sergeant on within this current year by not replacing that lieutenant's position at that time, but expending it out so that that sergeant performed an administrative function of managing our fleets so we could get a better handle on replacements and keeping our vehicles up and running and supervising the traffic unit. We have done very well by having that sergeant in place and then these last two officers, plus getting the corporal forum will move us forward to meeting the goals in terms of traffic enforcement in Meridian and our proactive and educational programs that they are busy in as well. Nary: Chief, on this type of, essentially, assistance of the traffic unit is one car a better enhancement than two motors for that type of need? Musser: Councilman Nary the reason that we requested the one car at this point is we are also looking at some DUI enforcement and we need the cars as opposed to the motorcycles. We will be able to get two motorcycles, but to be honest we have one officer certified to be able to ride right now and it will be April Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 33 of 156 before we can evaluate who else will be certified or capable of riding motorcycles. In all honesty, I will probably be back before this Council next fiscal year asking for at least one if not two more motorcycles to help augment that traffic unit as we come together, but I want to make sure that I have officers that are certified and capable of riding those motorcycles first. Nary: Thank you. Musser: Priority number three: personnel enhancement that goes back to some of our collaborative and proactive community programs is a part-time anti-drug coalition coordinator and initially we had looked at this as potentially being funded under a grant, however, we were turned down on the grant application. In meeting with the Mayor, one of the items that we talked about because this would provide us some good avenues and access with community involvement is looking at bringing this before the Council as a part-time enhancement so we can still move forward with this program. This allows us to address the issue of policing service's challenges by increasing our level and participation collaborative inter -agency processes, strategic partnerships and with other governmental and local service organizations, in particular with Drug Free Idaho, Pay Ada in a number of other programs that we are looking at to be able to extend out and get into the workplaces and meet with the parents and the adults in this community and start redirecting our efforts as opposed to just looking at the youth. We need to start with the parents at home with them and those that are role models. We will also be looking at this to do what we can in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Clubs and the schools too with some of the paid programs that are currently in place. This will also help us increase the level of community policing as I stated with our collaborative activities programs and partnerships. It will increase the number of (inaudible) youths and others have to report drug trafficking and other drug issues within the community and increases our community services' providers' part of the departmental outreach. Priority number four is an equipment enhancement. A new computer server for the department. We are looking at $8,400. This initially had been much higher, however, this year prior to moving forward, I did have to spend $4,500 for a new tape backup system for our current computer as we maximized our memory and we had to do something about our capability to back up all of the data that we have over at the department at this point. Initially, there was another $4,500 on this request, but since we have already spent the money, this has dropped down now to just accommodate the server that we will need. Our current one is near capacity. This additional server will help us significantly with data storage and allow us to be able to free up for our intra net services as far as email and communication between members of the department within in the department. It will provide five times more memory than what we currently have on the current server. This one is better able to interface with new programs and will enhance our ability to tie the proposed city WAN, which is also part of our enhancements as we are going to move forward to. The WAN is our wide area network so that all city departments are being able to talk and exchange information. Priority Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 34 of 156 number five is a personnel enhancement and this is one of my stopgap items I have been looking at in terms of helping us out with officers where we can. This is for reserved police officers; an additional four, plus their equipment in the Police Department. We currently have four, five — we have five active reserves with us right now. We had six at one time and we are down to five at this point, however, these officers when they come in are volunteers and what I am trying to do here is offset a little bit of the cost that they initially experienced by getting uniformed up in having to get equipment so that they can go out in the field. I know way back when in 1981 when I started with this department as a reserve, I purchased all my own uniforms, my equipment, my handgun — everything at that time in order to be a reserve for the two years that I was a reserve before somebody told me I could maybe get a job and get paid for it. In the meantime, I looked at what it cost us now to outfit an officer and relatively by providing the uniform and the handgun and the equipment for these volunteers that help come out and supplement us, I think it's a good offset in lieu of the fact that to hire a full-time officer is going to cost us much more. The current officers that we have have been very beneficial and helpful to us in terms of some major crime scenes that we had to cover in the last year in assisting with parades, with other community events, being representatives for us when the officers are busy because of staffing and they can't get some of the community functions. These folks have gone above and beyond the call of duty in terms of being volunteers for this city. I would like to be able to expand that out and have equipment available forum and if I remember correctly there is also a small stipend amount in there so that if they have to sit and cover a crime scene for us through the middle of the night so staffing is available, we can compensate them a little bit of money. If I remember correctly it is about ten dollars an hour for the time that they are out there for their services for helping us out. Not much, but it's a little something for these people. Overall $21,211 is what we are looking at there. Priority number six is I already mentioned refers directly to equipment and it's the wide area network with the WAN. This is $5,000 has been attributed to the Police Department as part of our function for coming up and getting in on this project. It's part of a citywide effort to move forward towards our overall inter- connectivity between departments. It's an integral part meeting on our city-wide strategic challenge regarding information technology and service efficiency and additionally as I am in the middle of working on our emergency management planning for the City of Meridian in terms of homeland security, this will also go forward and enhance our ability to stay on top of things and have rapid communication between departments in the event that we have a crisis or other incident where we need to have that in hand. Priority number seven is an equipment enhancement for a (inaudible) Media VMS Library system. This is a rather complicated, very technologically based piece of equipment that will allow us to be able to digitize, such things as audio recordings, video cassette recordings, digital evidence both video and audio at this point and you can get bulk pictures from video cameras that will tape it constantly or single shot cameras. It will allow us to be able to store both the digital and the 35 together. As far as photo evidence, the big thing it also does is gives us multi-plex Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 35 of 156 capability. That ability allows to be able to take in tapes from our local merchants who have multi-plex security systems because we have no way of being able to play them, enhance them or record them now within the department and we have to rely upon the good graces of other places to be able to do that for us. This would even move us a step ahead of where Boise City is at in terms of equipment because they still have to go out at times to get some of their multi- plexing done as well. It allows a single point filing for investigative case files, so investigators can go to this, be able to have all audio and video stuff in there and any other type of digital data that they may have combined in it. Here is the big thing is it reduces the overall storage needs because most everything that we use now if you look at the little picture to the side, you have VHS cases, you have hard data tape cases on it, you have floppies, you have audio cassette tapes and those are all hard physical things now that we are busy putting away into our evidence room or we have to maintain in files as we move forward with what we are doing. Part of the explanation for this, I took the liberty to do a little bit of a process here to help explain it. We get all of our materials in and the first thing that happens with them is that they have to be logged in and tracked and so some poor person has to take all this stuff in as it's booked, they have to log it in, everything else to get it ready to go and archive it. Archiving it pretty much looks like this for the most part as you go back into evidence. It stacks up because it's hard, physical items. We won't totally lose all of that but we certainly can reduce it down the road. The next process comes in and when somebody needs one of these things after we have booked it in and it becomes evidence, we got to go back and we got to identify this tape that we are after in terms of where we logged it in and tracked it at. From there then we have to go search for the tape. After we search for the tape, hopefully we will find the tape and we will be able to get it and believe me sometimes it's easier said than done. But then the next thing is that we have to go back in and search that individual tape for the section of the incident or copy or clip that we need. We have to record that in order to produce a whole new tape in the same format to be able to send off to a prosecutor or to a defense attorney, or for heaven knows anybody else that may have requested it, depending on what the circumstance may be. This is pretty much the process that we have now. What we are hoping to do with this C Media VMS library is take what we still have here, move it forward, we are still going to have to log it in and track it because that is just the nature of the business that we have, okay? And as we log it in and track it we are still going to have some physical storage in terms of evidentiary tapes. But, the other thing that we are also going to have now is we can archive it digitally onto this computer format so that we can pull it out. By pulling it out it doesn't have to be that one specific person going back and getting it now. An officer can sit down at the computer, be able to go through the computer in terms of its being netted it, find out what they have in there and be able to review that specific item so they can retrieve it or get a copy on it in which it allows them ultimately to package and deliver the document in these two formats: a CD or a floppy. The CD being the most common format that will come out of this. So, it changes everything drastically and it speeds up the process overall. So, in terms of where we are Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 36 of 156 going in spending the money here, this is an expensive system initially for looking at it but in the long term it should save us in terms of the time spent and the process that we currently have and allows us to build and save more and it also accommodates everything that's moving forward in this digital age in terms of digital photos, digital recordings, digital video. That takes us to priority number eight since we are talking about all this digital stuff. We are looking at digital records and CCC TV equipment as well to tune of $46,900. Digital recorders are issued for all the sworn officers. This is something that we presented last year that we would like to continue to move forward and try and attempt to do it again this year. As you know, Boise City does issue recorders to all of their officers and they mandate that the officers use them when they are on contacts. That could be an excellent risk management tool in terms of where we are headed and it also protects the officers, not only the city in terms of how those contacts went down. By having digital recorders, the officers would be able to record their contacts, have the information there, they are easier to maintain and keep up with as opposed to the micro cassette recorders that we have used in the past and now because of something like this C Media VMS library system, we would have some place where we could store this type of material and keep it archived and be able to retrieve it. $16,800 is what we have estimated out would cost to provide each of our officers with that digital recorder so that they each had one. The CC TV system is a building security upgrade; something that is drastically needed over at the Police Department. We brought this forward last year, but withdrew it at the last minute as well. Since that time the price did go up on it as well because most everything is now digital. We were looking at first generation digital items last year and now we are into a much more sophisticated digital setup on this CC TV system. What this basically will do is provide us digital video recording at all points around the Police Department. We are looking at three points outside along the perimeter, so we can see the outside of the building and see who has access and who is coming and going and be able to review it. It will also tie in with the video systems that are in the front foyers as part of the 911 notification system in case somebody comes to the department after hours and has to push the emergency button that will enhance the video that we have in there. It also provides us coverage towards the front of the building so we can see if a vehicle pulls in where we don't have that now, we miss anything that would be in terms of a vehicle or person outside because it only records inside. The other thing this will do is allows us to upgrade our lower interview rooms or the first floor interview rooms adjacent to patrol. It allows us to set up an in-tox testing center so we can readily video in-tox tests that take place and within our holdings area where we have the in-tox meter set up for the BAC testing on intoxicated drivers. So, it allows us a multitude of things to be able to do with this $30,100 in terms of upgrading building security. Building security as I move forward here in this position and with the different meetings I have attended including the one that I just came back from Washington, D.C. that dealt with homeland security. Police security on any or I shouldn't say police security, it's public security. On any pubic building is something that we are going to have to look at in this post 9-11 era that we are in now so that we have Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 37 of 156 access to be able to see who has been around buildings, who is looking at them and who potentially has access so we can evaluate where we are headed with things, so it's becoming one of those things that is becoming a reality for us and that we have to face and look at down the road here. We do have some of the conduit and in the access to be able to run the wires through and all, but it was something that we didn't complete with the building when we initially built it, however, it was set up so we can move forward with this at a later date. Priority number nine was a stipend for department intern at $1,830, we are currently using a volunteer intern at this point over at the Police Department and that this will move us forward and hopefully we can have a little bit more interest from applicants over at the criminal justice program at Boise State by being able to provide a stipend in which it would help them out during their summer months when they are collecting their six credits for interim programs, you know which goes towards their graduation, so I appreciate the Council's consideration on that. I know that has been a project that the Mayor has been pushing for and we have included it in this as an enhancement so it becomes part of our base in the future if so approved. Priority number 10 is equipment. As you know, we all ready have two of the X26's taizers that were provided to us on donation from (inaudible) here in Meridian. They have been an excellent tool. In the meantime, we were also able to pick up an additional two taizers, so we have a total of four in stock. Our ultimate goal is to be able to have six available for deployment in the field and this request would accommodate us up to that total of six and it's at $34,400 because it would also include the additional training equipment. There are a number of wire and training cartridges that we have to have as we expand the department and have more training requirements with more people that will replace current field cartridges that we have because as they get deployed they will be used and it allows us for extra holsters too. One of the weak points we found in this system is that the holsters are made out of plastic and they do occasionally break, so we will have to accommodate for some extra holsters and so far what we found is nothing is really cheap in terms of adding up things like little holsters that they want to charge us $50 or more for. That is why we have the $3,400 here. It is a priority 10 where we do have the four now, but it does move us closer to having patrol better outfitted in the long run. Priority number 11, which isn't included in the overall total and as I mentioned before is something that we wanted to introduce to the Council and look at as a potential for FY 2006 is this K-9 training building estimated out at about $128,000 at this point. We are continuing to work for contributions from the community including some contractual and building supplies in conjunction with it. However, we do realize that we may end up having some costs and if it's something that we could direct towards permanent building fund or place into budget for in FY 2006 and not utilize it at this point, we'd be very appreciative of any consideration in terms of this priority within this budget year. Overall costs of enhancements from the Police Department for FY 2005, again, $342,893 and that's without the K-9 building and we would like to thank you for your consideration for your budget requests from the Police Department and we stand for any questions the Council or Mayor may have. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 38 of 156 Nary: Council, questions? Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Chief, I hate to do this seeing how (inaudible) last year. Out of your priorities, your 10. The security system and I know it's very important to have that; is there any chance that through homeland security that they got grants or anything that we can pick up some money to offset some of that $30,000 expense? Musser: Councilman Bird there is access. I have been looking at it; however, at this point for this current year that we are moving forward to, the emphasis is on training. Training in particular for officers on initial response; training for fire on containment and dealing with issues; training for all us managers sitting in here, including, Chief Bowers in terms of the new national incident management system that they have in place and how that should work across the country and within our own little areas in and through the county and all. We are engaged in doing a number of those things on training right now where we can because of where a lot of grants have come out in that regard. We are also still collecting some of the equipment that we had from the first grant sessions. There is every potential that we may have this and we can look at it as we move forward and it certainly is something that if I am not able to obtain this time, it will become a priority in terms of where I might be able to find the funding via grants. I don't have anything to be able to hand you at this time, I really wished I had been able to because last year I was able to pull out some last minute grants, but I haven't had the access at this point. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Certainly, Mr. Bird. Bird: I agree. I would like to leave it in. Let's don't try and cut it because I think it's something we need. The digital recorders, I mean, that's a necessity there is no question on that. I don't see any of your priorities that are out of place or anything other than if we could get some help on this camera deal would be nice. Other than that, I think everything else looks good to me. Musser: Well, in terms, Councilman Bird of what you had asked me earlier about phasing items in if it'd be possible for the Council to look at this as a phase in item for after April or even moving into July before we do anything on the building. It will leave that money sitting there. That would allow us time after October hits to look at potential grants that may be coming available or access on and I will certainly pursue that in terms of seeing what we can do. The one Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 39 of 156 thing that we may have to watch though in terms of that, would be we made sure we don't try to utilize the grant to supplant anything that we may have, but we can certainly move forward to see what we can do in assisting, you know, with our protection and security of the department via homeland security monies. Bird: Thank you, Chief. Nary: Council, Mayor any other questions? Looks good. Thanks, Chief. Musser: Thank you, Madame Mayor and members of the Council, we appreciate your time today. De Weerd: Chief, you will get the figures to us? Musser: Yes, I will I'll have that today and it will be in. Bird: And you and Captain Overton will where that dress all the time will you? Nary: Council do you need a couple of minutes before we take up the Fire Department? Kilchenmann: I am going to need a couple of minutes to set up. Nary: I guess we will need a couple of minutes. RECESS. Fire Department Nary: We are back on the record now and ready for our next presentation from the Fire Department. Chief Bowers whenever you are ready. We are kind of behind, so you can do it in 10 minutes? Bowers: Pardon? Nary: I said we are kind of behind so you can do it in 10 minutes, I figure. Bowers: 15 minutes? Thank you. Madame Mayor, City Council members thank you for allowing us to bring the budget in front of you. We were going to have the three amigos here to help out, but there are only two amigos today. Bill Johnson's father passed away and he went back to Oregon. So, we recruited our rule chairman to be the third amigo. I am sure you will have a lot of questions for him. Basically, our first enhancement we would like to bring on a part-time public educational person. This person would coordinate the use of the fire safe house, assist with scheduling and presenting of public education programs, assists with fire prevention inspections. I believe that once we open Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 40 of 156 up the fire safe house that that program is just going to embellish. I think there are so many kids, so many adults that are wanting that thing open that it's going to be busy. It's going to be a one person — one person is going to be in charge of that. The Mayor and I discussed about trying to do a part-time position for this enhancement and our request with a salary, with fuel for a vehicle that we already have, for personal protection equipment, the physical background check, the miscellaneous equipment would run right around $43,714. Enhancement No. 2. Firefighter paramedic or paramedic firefighter, however you want to call it for the new station, we would bring on — excuse me we would bring on 12 paramedics, staff the new station and that would improve our capability of handling medical emergencies, improve the response time of having a paramedic on location sooner and all stations would have advanced life support capabilities. This would enhance us if we bring on 12 paramedics to have one paramedic on each engine per shift. The next— De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Kenny, just to elaborate on that. We did have, I believe, initial figures to the Council and from the initial response this is what we brought back. It takes nine people to staff Station 4, that would be opening south of the interstate, but those nine people would be absorbed from the stations. The 12 positions you see there would then be distributed among the four stations to assure that there is a paramedic firefighter on each shift. So, that's why there is 12 positions here instead of your standard nine and all of these wouldn't be just at Station 4, again, they would be distributed among all shifts and the nine staff that would be there for Station 4 would be among the personnel that they work with. That wasn't well communicated, but I just wanted (inaudible -------- —). Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Rich can jump in here, but that also by going with 12 at this point, having paramedics not only like the Mayor said, we'd have each shift that would have a paramedic at each station and each engine would have one. That would give us an extra — if I remember right — Station 1 has four to a shift. One of the other stations would pick up four per shift, wouldn't they, by hiring 12 now wouldn't that give us an extra firefighter that can float around or something. Rich was explaining that at one point to me and I think that will give us an extra firefighter to go around if we are missing — or if somebody can't make it or something. Bowers: That wouldn't necessarily be a paramedic, but there would be an — Bird: No, a firefighter, yeah. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 41 of 156 Bowers: Right, but the purpose here is to have of the 12 to have a paramedic on each engine. Bird: I agree. Bowers: In each station around the clock. Nary: Chief, I guess, since we are on this point is the cost of that also include the increased overtime because if we are going to have a standard we are going to at least attempt — I don't' know if we — it doesn't sound like we are having a minimum staffing requirement, but simply a preference to try and have one paramedic per shift then if that paramedic is gone, we are going to have an increased in overtime cost. Bowers: That would be right, City Council. Possibly the thing to do would be maybe not staff that paramedic back up to a paramedic if he is gone, maybe just have to bring in a Captain or something if we have to. Nary: Isn't that more overtime? Bowers: No that would be less. We would bring on these paramedics in September. There would be one month that we would bring them in on this budget period and that would be $68,000 is what it would cost us to bring on the paramedics for one month. That gives us basically, three to four months of training before we put them into the new station when Station 4 is built. We would need a few more weeks of training to train these paramedics to firefighters and the reason being some of them has never had any firefighting experience before. It's always just paramedic training, so we would have to start from scratch with some of these people in fire training. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: But in the same token, Kenneth, when we hire firefighter — I know we have been very fortunate and we have hired out of our volunteer Fire Department, but a lot of them are — you have to train all of them to be EMT's or we require them to be EMT's now and you got to train them to be firefighter's too if they didn't come through our deal. Basically, the paramedics you don't have to train them to do the EMT or anything like that, so all you have to do is train them to be firefighters. Bowers: Exactly. Bird: And they don't all go to Station 4. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 42 of 156 Bowers: No, they would not, Councilman Bird. What we do is we would promote three captains to go to Station 4; we would promote three drivers and one of these new firemen, who are paramedics, would go to Station 1, one would go to Station 2, one would go to Station 3 and one would go to Station 4. So, we would have a paramedic for each. Bird: Three each would go. Nary: Chief, you said to bring them on in September. The station is not going to open until November, December? Isn't that right? Bowers: Correct. Nary: And the intent to bring them in October into the FY 2006 budget isn't very practical? Is that why? I mean $68,000 is a lot of money for one month. So, I just wondered why — maybe if we could push that to October. But, if that's not going to be very effective to do it that way, then I guess I don't want to do that either. Bowers: Oh, we would work within the timeframe any way we do could do that, Bill Nary. What we thought we could do if we brought them on that one month, we would have like three months of training to get them ready for the December opening of the station. Now, if we have to push that back a month, we can do that. I mean we can do that. Nary: One other question I had was that I would assume that some of you looked at the cost of — this is to hire 12 brand new paramedics and train them to be firefighters, correct? And the cost of training our current existing firefighters up from an EMT level to a paramedic would be more expensive than hiring existing paramedics, right? Well, what if we don't find 12 paramedics that want to be firefighters that fit our criteria that want to come here? Then what do we do? Bowers: Madame Mayor, City Council members, Councilman Nary. That is a very good question, it is. We would advertise nation-wide to bring these paramedics in. We would not be able to get them right out of our department now and the reason being is it takes about two years to get trained as a paramedic. So, we would not be able to get anybody out of our department now. We would be bringing 12 in from outside sources. Now, if any of our fireman want to become paramedics themselves, they are going to have to do the training themselves on their own to get the training of a paramedic. Nary: Is that additional cost for recruitment, I don't know if there is any additional cost. I know Boise uses public safety testing? I don't know. Does Meridian use that service? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 43 of 156 Bowers: We use a different company, yes, that we go through. Nary: And will there be increased costs to try and recruit those paramedics? Bowers: Madame Mayor, City Council members Stacy had talked about moving expenses. No, we do not pay any moving expenses for people who come in. It would not cost us anymore to advertise for a firefighter or for a paramedic. Nary: Okay, thank you. Councilman Wardle. Wardle: Mr. President. Just to comment on bringing in the paramedics and I think it's an excellent idea, I think, that we need to do it. I think it improves the level of service within the city. The $68,000 for one month, I think is important because we are hiring paramedics because it's less expensive to bring in a paramedic and then to make sure that they are a firefighter, but I think our community deserves to know that even that one month and that $68,000, 1 think that it's important for them to know that those paramedics are also trained to perform duties as a firefighter and to perform that function so I think it's money well spent and proactive in training. Bowers: Madame Mayor, City Council members and Councilman Wardle. You are exactly right. Bringing these paramedics in, we will have to start from scratch to teach them firefighting training. I mean, Councilman Bird was right, too, that when we brought these other people in we have put them through an academy, but basically all we hit was the high spot stuff of academy. Yeah, they can pull a hose; yeah they can put on an air pack; yeah they can pull the hose off the truck and squirt water. These new paramedics, we are going to have start from scratch and go through the whole basic firefighting training, just like bringing somebody off the sidewalk. You have to just start from technology because some of these paramedics don't come from fire department background departments. They are like Ada County EMS. They are strictly by their selves. So, that is correct. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess also for Council's information the training would be given regardless. The September start date is so that Station 4 could open one month earlier. So, they will still get the training and so the only question is do we open in December or January? So, that's for that one point. I guess, Kenny, I would also like to see have we explored other ideas? We are talking about 12 paramedic firefighters, so that we have a paramedic on each shift. But, do we need a paramedic at every station, or do we want to focus paramedics at just one station? Is the cost savings at having that fourth crewmember at yet another station — right now we four members per shift at Station 1, so that extra person — Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 44 of 156 those extra three persons would add a fourth person at another station. Are we adding overtime, are we saving overtime? You know, what is the cost savings by having 12 verses 9 other than getting a paramedic on every crew or every shift? And do we want to have a paramedic at every station? And I guess I ask that because right now Ada County is asking to put an ambulance and a paramedic in one of our fire stations and so we will have one already from the County that they are paying for and so do we need to have 12 verses 9 and I am just saying this because it just occurred to me, but I would like you to be able to crunch those numbers so we can make sure that the direction we go is actually the direction we think is going to provide the necessary service to our community. Bowers: Madame Mayor to answer your question and City Council members. I know Mr. Bird will hammer me on this, but when we open Station 4 there will not be any overtime incurred — Bird: Would you make sure that tape gets sent to me? Bowers: For callback is exactly what I am talking about. It's for call back. Yes, we will still have overtime when we have people out on vacation or sick, we will have that. But, when you open Station 4, then the only time you will have call back overtime is if we have a major fire, a major disaster something like that. De Weerd: Well, Kenny, with that that fourth person, that floater like you have floating at Station 1 supposedly, you will have then a fourth person on three shifts at another station I am assuming. No? Bowers: No. Bird: Why wouldn't you? De Weerd: Why then do you have 12? Bowers: Okay. Well, what you would do is the fourth person we have at Station 1, he rotates through Station 2 and 3 at this time to cover the firefighter position. That's all he's certified to do is a firefighter position. He is working on his driver's training right now, but we don't have any of those firefighters certified to do the driver's training yet. So, it has saved us quite a bit of money on overtime in the firefighter's position because that fourth person rotates right now. What we would do is we would still have four firefighters at Station 1. We would have three firefighters at Stations 2, 3 and 4. De Weerd: Okay, what's the additional — I mean you need nine people to open Station 4 and we have 12 positions up there. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 45 of 156 Bird: One of the other stations is going to have four on a shift, too, Kenneth. Whether they are drivers or what they are — because you only need nine firemen to start a station. Bowers: -- to open a station. Bird: We are not disagreeing with you doing this, but you are going to have another one and that should basically if we get him qualified as a driver it should basically cut out all of our overtime to a degree. I know there is some you can't, but it should. Also on the paramedics, I for one believe that the selling point of the paramedics is having them at every station regardless of whether we have EMS County at our station too because they are not driving around. The fire truck is going to be the first one on the scene. I don't care what anybody says, they are going to be the first one there. If I am the guy there they are working on as a victim, I want on that truck, somebody that can start drugs on me if they have to. So, I believe that we do need one on every shift at every station, but — Bowers: Madame Mayor and City Council, you guys are correct. I don't know what I was thinking. We will have two stations with four people. We don't know — we didn't even think about what station we would put that on. You are correct. I don't know what I — I was way off base. Yeah, we would have four people on that. (Tape turned over). Bowers: Now, do you remember your first question, Madame Mayor? De Weerd: Is it going save on overtime because that — then you will have one station with a floater and now a second station with a floater? We understand you won't have overtime except for extreme cases for callbacks. I am talking for vacation and sick coverage. Bowers: Okay, vacation. De Weerd: Because our overtime is out of control. Still. Bowers: Okay. Madame Mayor and City Council members. Yes, we would still have overtime. Those firefighters that would be rotating would only be able to fill in firefighters' positions until they are qualified to become drivers. Now, we have got several drivers now that are qualified, just got qualified to become captains. So, we will be able to move them up into captains' positions. When a captain is sick or gone for class we will be able to move these drivers up and what they are paid is the difference between the captains and the drivers salary for that extent that they have moved up. Wardle: Mr. President. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 46 of 156 Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just to give my opinion on an earlier comment by the Mayor whether we want the station opened in January or December. I say December and if we could have it opened earlier that would have been great too, but December in my mind and to budget this cycle for it is something that I feel strongly about. I do have a question for the Chief and that is now you are going to have two stations with four people; is that purely for the overtime coverage or is that for additional service coverage for the city? Bowers: Both. It can cut down, like I said on overtime because we will be moving them around from station to station to station, which we do now. We have hardly any overtime on our firefighters. It's the driver and the captain. But, yes, being able to move a paramedic out to each station, we will be able to respond quicker with events life support capabilities, giving drugs before an ambulance would be able to be there. Wardle: Follow up, Mr. President. Nary: Go ahead. Wardle: I understand the paramedic's side of things. I am just talking about the difference between having three people on a shift and having four people on a shift and is that something that you envision because currently at Station 1 we have four on a shift and then Station 2 and 3 are staffed with three and now you are going to take that up. Is that something that you see in the future for all the stations? Bowers: Councilman Wardle, no I do not. I do not see four person engine companies in the future. Nary: Chief, I only have a couple of questions. My assumption is and this is probably a stupid question, but at Station 1 and the same thing with this next station that would have a fourth firefighter. I am assuming you have three shifts? Bowers: Three shifts. Nary: Okay. I don't know if you call them a, b and c, but — Bowers: Yes, a, b and c. Nary: So, one of those extra four will be on a different shift? You won't have two four -firefighter stations on the same shift? Bird: Yeah, you will, Bill. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 47 of 156 Bowers: Yes, you would. Nary: Okay, so you'd have two extra firefighters and if you look at them as a, b and c if a shift has one extra person right now, theoretically, you are going to have an extra person on a and then if they need to fill in they are going to get overtime if they have to go to b shift or c shift? Bird: No, b would have an extra person. C would have an extra person. Yes. Nary: All right. Then currently, and I know this probably silly but currently, I assume, if that fourth firefighter for some reason that extra that floater that person is unavailable, they don't bring in another person so you have four? Bowers: No Nary: Only if they have less than three? Bowers: Yes, if our fourth firefighter now is sick, gone on vacation, gone to class we do not fill that position. Nary: Okay. Then with these paramedics and I guess I am just unclear in the request — the amount of money you are talking about that includes all the equipment necessary to operate as a paramedic? Bowers: Yes. Yes. Nary: Okay that includes the drugs, the equipment and all that? Bowers: No, I thought you meant for their (inaudible) for radio. Nary: That is just for the firefighters, not the equipment expense? Bowers: Yes, I have another slide in here -- Nary: Okay. Bowers: -- with the drugs and stuff like that. Nary: Okay, great. Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 46 of 156 De Weerd: Just to make sure the requirement is that we have three men per shift. Bowers: Exactly. De Weerd: And so that fourth person has been a floater as necessary to fill in for sick and vacation or he stays with his own shift as the fourth person. But, it's not mandatory the fourth. It is mandatory that you have a three-person shift, correct? Bowers: Exactly. Nary: Chief, before you go on, I guess that we have digressed a tiny bit. On this captain/fire prevention is there a necessity that it needs to be a part-time captain or could be a civilian? Bowers: No that would be fine. Nary: Does that change the amount? Bowers: What Reta did was just took what we had asked for the full-time position and just cut it in half is what Reta did. Nary: So, this is half if it's not a captain? Bowers: Pardon? That's is a half of a captain's position. That's what it was. Nary: Okay, so if this was a civilian position the number would be even less? Bowers: It could be less. Nary: Okay. Bowers: Yeah, it could be less if we bring in somebody, you know, a retired person or something — Nary: Right, a retired firefighter or something like that as a civilian? Bowers: Yes. Nary: Okay, thank you. Bowers: You bet. Any other questions then on the paramedics? De Weerd: No. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 49 of 156 Bowers: We have lost a slide somehow. I don't know where — it went into cyberspace, I don't know, but anyhow it was the slide on the fire station itself. You do have that down underneath the paramedics there. Capital outlay and what that is is for a two -based station with living quarters, we plugged in $822,000 for the building itself. That would be a rule expense. The turnout racks, furnishings, tools, propane -- $36,000; materials and testing, to come out and test the ground, to test the concrete as it's being built; the phone system, the base station, the architect, which the rural fire department will pay, Idaho power, that's the big transformer station that they bring out will be paid by rural, also Station 4 sign and plaque will be the rural fire; survey of the site; advertising, computer license software, the WAN, radio connection, water and sewer lines and meters and the City of Meridian plan review fees has been added in there for a total of $999,250. De Weerd: Kenny? Bowers: Madame Mayor De Weerd: I just wanted to emphasize that it's the same partnership that we did with three that also won the City Achievement Award the Association of Idaho Cities, but you know, again, this has been in discussion with the rural fire commissioners and continues to be a strong partnership that we appreciate and shows the commitment to really looking at response times in the rural areas as well, to make sure that they are out to the goals. Bowers: Yes. As Madame Mayor said this will be just like Station 3, the rural would pay for the building and where we got the price of the building was last Station 3 came in at $740,000. After talking with architects, they gave us how much increase it would be to build a station so we put it in $822,000. Material testing would be paid by the rural, the architect, Idaho Power and Station 4 (inaudible) plaque will be paid for by the rural. The location would be Eagle Road and the Ridenbough Canal. We went out and walked the property with ZGA the other day. He had a concern that the property is very big that we might not have enough money this time to develop the Fire Department parcel and the parcel where the well was supposed to go. So, we might have to phase this in a couple years possibly. ZGA would like to get with the Park's Department, the Park's representative, the Rural Fire Department and the City to discuss that second piece of property and see if we can do it now or later. De Weerd: Kenny, I guess I would like to add to that is the well site was exchanged for property that the Fire Department had out at the sewer treatment plant and so the well site is now part of the donated lot for the fire station. I think in talking with Kenny that this parcel could be developed as (inaudible) a small pocket part that would compliment the Fire Station. It's also kind of an anchor for the pathway that's going on the south side of EI Dorado that would then connect to the Thousand Springs little pocket park that Kiwanis is doing. So, I think it Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 50 of 156 would be impact fee eligible. It should be developed at the same as the station is so it's a complete amenity for the community and Council could consider that as a partnership to this facility and to the Rural Commission. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I concur with what the Mayor just said and I think that we probably wouldn't have to have it in '05 budget for the Park's Department, but we definitely need to get it developed all at one time. We don't need half of our lot out there in weeds and stuff so we need to — Kenneth needs to get the Park's Department with Rich and yourself and get it planned out and then '06 budget they can put in some money to green it up and that's all we ever talked about doing to make it look nice. On getting back to the architectural fees, we should save quite a bit of money on that as we discussed when we picked out the deals and we need to make sure that ZGA understands that we are expecting not to pay what we paid on number three because they are basically using the same prints if I remember right. Bowers: Exactly, we will be using the same print (inaudible) the station at all. Madame Mayor, City Council members, we have not exchanged that property yet with the Wastewater Treatment Plant. That is still in the works. So, we haven't switched that yet, but — Bird: It's all under the City of Meridian. Bowers: Yes, but it is under the city and I have met with Park's Department, Doug Strong and he is very in favor of that piece of property for people to use the Greenbelt they can stop there, he even talked about maybe putting a few amenities in there. Possibly in the future. He did not have that in the '05 budget. He didn't put any money in there. It would have to be in the '06, like Councilman Bird said. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just to follow up on that. Doug had a conversation with me about it and potentially putting in some improvements such as a shelter and certainly drinking fountains and things that would compliment. It seems like a natural halfway point for the pathway, which could be extended in the future which will be there and usable very soon. But, I believe the department is scheduled to have that in the fiscal year of '06. So, you probably will see that come across. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 51 of 156 De Weerd: I think it is important to note for the Rural Commission that commitment from the city that we take responsibility for that. Bowers: Thank you. Wardle: Mr. President the Chief is looking for some — as far as the station, I have said it before let's get it done and we appreciate the partnership with the Rural Fire District and this will definitely increase the service to our citizens, especially south of the freeway and help our emergency response time on that freeway. Bowers: Yes, that will help us out tremendously. Getting onto the freeway has been a challenge coming from Station 1 and so it will help us out tremendously. Okay? Any other questions? Nary: And just as an addition to that I think once we do open that station we really want to make a very big splash about that. I think it is a very great enhancement for the folks south of the freeway and quite a big step forward for the city and so thinking ahead when we get to that point of opening that station, we really want the people to know it's there and that was really a big deal for us and the rural and I am sure Mr. Green would agree that that's a great opportunity for us to show how our service is growing. But, let's do it for free because we don't have a lot of money left. Bowers: Yeah, we will be having several meetings with the neighborhood out there with associations. All right. We will go on to the next one. Next slide — this is basically nine paramedics and this would allow three engines to have advanced life support capability and what we would do we would have to do is sit down, figure out where the most of our calls are and put the paramedics in those engines with the three districts that we have the most calls in until we can bring on three other paramedics, but this is another situation that we could go by if we had to. Okay. Next one. A new engine for Station 4. We first had asked for a new engine to put out at Station 4 and the engine that will go out to Station 4 will have 96 to 99,000 miles, probably somewhere in that area by the time we put it out there. A 12 -year-old engine. After talking with the Mayor, Councilman Bird and Rural Commissioner Chairman Green we probably better put this off a year to help us out on the budgeting for the station and the paramedics that we are bringing on. So we have asked if we could put in a $100,000 into the truck fund, which we have $295,000 now with the $100,000 that would bring it up to $395,000. But, we just can't keep taking money out of there and not put any money in, we would be in trouble years down the road. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 52 of 156 Bird: Just for everybody's information what did 304 cost us, Kenneth, when it's all said and done? Bowers: It will run $380,000. Right in that area with the equipment and everything on it. Bird: Thank you. Bowers: Enhancement number four then. Opticom. The county and the state will be upgrading intersections in the future. As you could see there, on our enhancement that we have turned in to you, Eagle Road and Ustick. That is a big intersection that we go into quite often with Station 3, to either head to the freeway, to head south; even to head north we use Eagle Road. That does not have Opticom on it. It is going to cost us more to put Opticom because it's an existing intersection and we will have to either do it at night time or possibly on weekends to do this. So, it will cost us a little bit more to do Eagle and Ustick. We will have to bring in flaggers or we will have to bring in those trailers with the arrows that point the traffic to one lane. So, that intersection will cost us a little more to do. Pine and Locust Grove will be going in. Franklin and Ten Mile will be going in. Meridian and (inaudible) will be going in and also it seems like Ada County sneaks another intersection on us without us knowing it. So, what we have put in for a contingency would be $22,000 for Opticom. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Kenneth is that just for the Ustick and Eagle — the $22,000, is it? Bowers: No, that is $6,200. Bird: Okay, that's what I though. Bowers: $4,000 for the other intersections. Bird: Okay. Maybe we can — Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just a question, Chief. Pine and Locust Grove is scheduled to be completed in ACHD's budget? Or, is that Franklin and Ten Mile — are they both scheduled to be completed this fiscal year or excuse me, next budget year? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 53 of 156 Bowers: From what I understand, I have talked to them and they say that next year, June or July or somewhere around in there they want to do those intersections. Now, I don't know, you know they change quite often, so I am not positive, but that's the last word I had and three months ago, I think it was in the Statesman they had their plan made out for next year and those intersections were in there also for next year. De Weerd: Kenny, was not Franklin and Hickory also included in '05? 1 don't see that listed on here. Bowers: Madame Mayor and Council I didn't get any information on Hickory at all. Nary: You mean Fairview. De Weerd: Fairview and Hickory. Bowers: Fairview and Hickory? No, I didn't receive anything on that. De Weerd: Bruce Mills came back and told us that Fairview and Hickory was scheduled for '05. Bowers: Well, I got that one contingency under section already put in there, so that would take care of that, but then if anybody else comes in — like what they did they — this year they came and are going to do Chinden and Meridian, just out of the blue they decided to do Chinden and Meridian. So, I purchased Opticom for that and probably in the next month or so. We also got trapped under the one that Pine out by the new school. I am not sure what that road is there that comes out of the new school. They put that one in last year or this budget period, so we kind of got trapped by two of them. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Kenneth I think the main thing and that depends on the Mayor, the Council and yourself, your administration that we need to look when these things are coming through for approval and stuff and if we see where there is going to be a stoplight, let's get these developers to kick some in and they will be glad to do it I am sure, if we do it upfront and we just need to be more observant ourselves, the Mayor and the Council and your administration. We really need to pay attention to it. Bowers: Madame Mayor and City Councilman, Councilman Bird when Deputy Chief Silva goes through those transmittals. He puts right on there and that's our comment number thirty. Somewhere our comment number 30 is if an Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 54 of 156 intersection is put in by these developers they need to put Opticom on it. So, we have missed a couple, yes we have. We have missed a couple, but right now it's number 30 on our comment page, I believe. Bird: Good. Bowers: Yeah. Okay? Maybe I missed that night or something that Bruce was talking about Hickory and Fairview, but — Nary: That was my recollection, Chief that Mr. Mills from the Highway District indicated because there was so much increased traffic and increased interest in Fairview and Hickory that they were going to move that light up and they had funding to do that, but I guess I didn't see the article in the paper about their planned projects, but I don't — I really don't see Pine and Locust Grove being developed within a year — Bowers: Okay. Nary: -- to punch all the way through. Because I thought the intent was to get that so that by the time the overpass was done, which isn't until '07 then it would be all the way through. I guess I am skeptical that it will get done next year, so there may be money available for Fairview and Hickory with that one that's for Pine and Locust Grove. De Weerd: Well, they are trying to get ITD to bump it up to '06 and so they want all the landing road ready. So, I think it might be scheduled for '05, so I believe that Kenny is correct. Nary: I just said that I was skeptical. De Weerd: We just got the update — Bird: No, I think Locust Grove is going to go through from Franklin to Pine in '05 and we are not going to get Pine through, don't get me wrong there. Nary: I was just skeptical, that's all. Bowers: They have to move a power pole at Locust Grove and Pine, too so it might be awhile. It might be awhile. Or they might want the Rural to pay for that (inaudible) I don't know. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 55 of 156 Wardle: Just to clarify, Mr. President from the ACHD meeting yesterday that Locust Grove was not going to go all the way through on the north side of Franklin, it was going to and then jog over to the current road until they can get the railroad crossing done. So, it won't completely go through it will jog over on Nola. Bird: They have already got the (inaudible) road to Nola in there. Bowers: Okay. We will go whatever we need to do and we will get what we can; whatever we can we will get. Any others then on the Opticom? Enhancement number 5, we would like to purchase a hose repair piece of equipment. What this is is when we get a hole in our hoses to repair them — right now we take our hose that needs to be repaired to Boise or to Nampa, both ways to get it repaired. If we could do it in house it would cost us $3,000. What this is is the hose you take a steel ring and go inside and just slide the coupling over it and it clamps it down on the ring and if we would be able to do that in house that sure would save us some time of running back and forth from Nampa to Boise on that. Okay, next slide. This is some additional cost that we have found out that we were going to have to do. We have discussed it many times. We finally got some prices for it. For a medical control doctor for our paramedics it will run us about $25,000 a year and what he will do is he will go through every medical run that we have, make sure that we are going by his standards because we will be working under his license, excuse me his or her license on that that we will be going by Ada County standards and also the State standards and what he does is he pulls all of our runs and makes sure that we have done defibulation right, CPR right; basically backs us and we work under his license. Nary: So, Chief on that $25,000 that is a contract, right? That's not an employee. We will have to have that person under contract when we begin the program. Bowers: We can hire paramedics, but they cannot work as paramedics until we bring on a medical control doctor. Nary: So, since we are talking about starting them in September, but we are still doing training that actual expense wouldn't have to start until they actually went online? So, like December when the station opened? Bowers: We would need this person from my understandings before we go in and ask for a license and apply for a license. We have to have a medical control doctor. Nary: But, we could control that cost by putting that into the '06 budget rather than having to have it in the "05 or at least the one month amount? Bowers: Sure. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 56 of 156 Nary: We wouldn't be doing that right off the bat, anyway. Okay. Bowers: And possibly we could team up with the other medical control doctors. Boise has hired one now and Nampa has hired one, so maybe we could team up and co -exist with them somehow and use the same doctors. Nary: I don't see that the doctors giving us a discount because they have got a bunch of different departments do you? Bowers: Probably you are right on that. Nary: So, that was $25,000 for the equipment? That's an annual cost? Bowers: No, this would be a one-time cost for the drugs, for new defibs, all the equipment that goes on to become a paramedic. Now, we have discussed it with Nampa and what they say is it costs about $10 average per call to re-equip and engine. When they go out on a call it takes about $10 to re -equipment your truck. So, if you use a drug or use a band-aid or use something it usually costs about $10 a call. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: On these supplies that we are supplying like this now, Kenneth, if we are the first paramedic out, do we get reimbursed for some of that. I know as now that it would just be an EMT that — unless the firefighters happen to see something in the paramedic that we've used that they can get it back, but don't insurance or something kind of reimburse you for that stuff or am I thinking about something else? Bowers: To my knowledge, Councilman Bird we would not get reimbursed of that. Right now exactly what you said if we use a C-collar or something we go in the ambulance and take it off and then they charge the person for that. Now, drugs and different stuff, I don't know how that works with the paramedics. I am not sure how that would work out through Ada County EMS. Possibly, we would be able to get it back from Ada County paramedics and then they could bill for it. Well, that would have to be looked into very close. Bird: That's something that we could definitely work out. Bowers: Yes. Bird: Ten dollars is pretty cheap. They have a paramedic on first line. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 57 of 156 De Weerd: Currently, the material's that the paramedics on the ambulances and what they use is ours and they do not replenish them. Bowers: Madame Mayor, would you repeat that? De Weerd: If they use what we use on their calls, what are our firefighters are using, they as I understand it they bill for it, but they do not replenish our supplies. Bowers: Madame Mayor our firefighters on that medical call are supposed to go in that ambulance and pull that equipment off and to restock our stuff. Sometimes that don't happen because that ambulance is leaving so fast and gone so fast that they don't have that chance, but they try to on any call to restock our bag before the ambulance leaves. Now, drugs and stuff I don't know how that would work because once you open a vial, I mean, it's probably gone and so I am not sure how that works. Nary: Chief, this is probably a dumb question, but is there ever a time since our fire district is so large that firefighters respond outside of the district because of a need? Bowers: That is — Madame Mayor and City Councilman, Councilman Nary, yes we have done that. Sometimes now we have got called to Kuna because all of Kuna's trucks have been out on calls, so we have headed that way, but most of the time we get canceled before we get on the call or we have went to Star. Very seldom, if Station 10 and 11 are out for Boise on Cloverdale would we get a call in there because they have "4's" and other stations to take, but it could happen. Nary: I just wonder going forward as we get this service online, I understand we probably are not going to receive reimbursement from the people within the fire district, who are already paying taxes for this service, but we when respond outside the district, even under mutual aid, we should probably look at recouping that cost, I mean we are not recouping the cost of the firefighter or the vehicle to get there but at least for the cost of paramedic service we may want to look at how do we track that, account for it and bill back for it because those people aren't paying tax payer dollars to have that service. That might be something to look at in the future if it becomes very common. Bowers: Exactly. Thank you. Next slide, please. Madame Mayor, City Council members, Stacy just told me that by the medical calls that we went on last year to re -staff, restock our engines would cost about $14,000 from our medical costs. Bird: At $10 a call? Bowers: Yes. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 58 of 156 Nary: Chief, on this particular slide, I mean I think this goes back to the Mayor's earlier question about do we need 12 or 9? Is this — well, obviously you don't have it all worked out, yet, but was it intended that that be essentially an MOU or is there a cost expenditure to this because if there is is it better to have 9 paramedic firefighters for Meridian and using that cooperative arrangement is a little less expense to our tax payers in the city and the district by using Ada County since they already are paying tax dollars for that too? Bowers: Yes. Madame Mayor, City Council and Councilman Nary last week Ada County EMS, Troy Hagen, which is in charge of that now since Mike Roberts has retired come over and wanted to discuss about putting a one person paramedic ALS unit, now I don't know if that's going to be an ambulance or a suburban or a car, I don't know. That would have to be probably worked out. That if possible they could have a unit in one person over here in our district by the end of this month. For another station, one person and an ALS unit they would probably be able to staff another station when the new budget period comes in in October for them. They cannot guarantee, of course, that these ALS units would be strictly Meridian. I mean, they might have to go to Eagle, to Star. They might have to go to other areas so they cannot guarantee us that they will be in our stations. For the positive for this, having a paramedic in our quarters would sure help us on training, too; training our EMS people. I had talked this over with the Mayor the other day and they are — excuse me — Ada County EMS would say that they would just put a person over here with an ALS unit in our station without an agreement, without a contract. They would just bring them over here. That's the way they do it in Boise, that's the way they do it in Eagle and that's the way they do it Kuna. After talking with the Mayor on this we decided that we would like to have something in writing of what they would like to pay for. Hand towels, toilet tissues and basically what they are going to do for daily duties. I mean are they just going to come and sign in and say they are here and then take off to Boise to get equipment and not see them the rest of the day? This would need to be worked out. They are planning on coming to our rural meeting Wednesday night when we have our budget hearing and just sit in. Just sit in and listen. They are not — if there is questions we can ask them, but we don't have them on the agenda or anything like that. But, they said they would like to just come in and sit in and be present when I discuss this with the rural commissioners. I thought this would be a good place, good time to bring it up to the Council. It's working out very well in Kuna because that ALS unit and that person stays in Kuna until he gets a call. But, I don't know what they would do with our station because they are so close to Eagle, so close to Star, so close to Boise area, would they go that way? I don't know. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 59 of 156 Bird: I will ask you seeing how that you probably know. How is the joint EMS firefighters working out in Boise where they are staffed together at this fire station? Nary: There is only one station in Boise that has that. I think it's Station 3, which is over off of Geckler, Chief? Bowers: Yeah. Nary: From my experience and from what I have seen 90% of the time I'd say it's probably fine. There haven't been a lot of issues. Occasionally there are issues. Usually it's living arrangement issues, it's not really service issues. Now, Chief and Deputy Chief Silva may have other knowledge and experience. There are some issues because obviously, you have got male and female paramedics. So, you have got to covert your stations to make them more accessible and we have had some issues on occasion. Like I said, for living arrangements, but I don't know that service wise, I guess you folks would probably know better than I would. Service wise I don't have a lot of knowledge or background that that's been a problem, so — Bowers: Madame Mayor, City Council, Councilman Nary you hear both sides. I mean, some days the administrative think it's good and the next day it doesn't. You talk to people in the field and man it's working great and the next it doesn't. You are right they have one in one Station, I think, number 3. 1 think Station 5 they are all by their selves. Correct? Bird: Yeah. Nary: Yes, that's a training facility from what I understand. It's probably better, I think the Mayor is correct in having some sort of expectation of agreement because I think that's part of the issue sometimes is that there is no real concrete basis as to what is everybody agreeing to and how we man this, how we staff it, how it's operated. So, I think in the long run it's probably better to do that — it's certainly nothing wrong to start off as somewhat of a pilot to see that it can work and work out an agreement, but I think it is probably in the long run it needs to get done. Bowers: Yes, exactly. You know, they have been telling us for four years, five or six years they are going to be over here and now all of a sudden we are talking about paramedics and they are showing up at our door. You can take it as it is. Mayor and Council, Chairman Green would like to have a word. Green: Madame Mayor and City Council members I would just like to address the issue of 12 verses 9 in reference to this. I would be somewhat concerned if we went with the 9 and it's not that I don't understand the money. It's the level of service. If we have nine medics and we only staff certain stations and we end up Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 60 of 156 depending on this to cover the other area and they are out someplace else because they have been called to another area, then to me there are going to be certain patrons of ours, customers of ours that may not get the same level of service as the stations that have the paramedic and I wouldn't want to see us get into a thing where we have different levels of service, you know, for different people depending on where you live in the response area. Am I making myself clear or — the Mayor has that look of confusion on her face. Oh, okay. I wasn't sure. I can't see you up there. I am somewhat vertically challenged. Thank you. De Weerd: You are short Green: I know it. But anyway, I think that's something that should be taken into consideration that everybody gets the same level of service for the tax dollars they are paying for. Nary: I would agree with that comment. That I think if we are going to begin this program, I think we need to not necessarily rely on essentially a pilot program to really fill that gap. Now a year from now or two years from now if that service is continually we find it to be a very reliable agreement and it works very well, we may look at that as attrition occurs that we don't necessarily have to fill it behind that to keep that same level of firefighters because we will have this service there. I would agree with you at least at the outset it doesn't seem fair to say that if I lived in the western part of the district, I don't necessarily get the same services if I lived in the southern part of the district. I don't disagree with what you are saying. De Weerd: Chief, I just wanted to also clarify where this unit would go is they would be converting one of the conference rooms into living quarters at their expense. So, it's not like we are adding a bed to our firefighter's current situation. They will be using the conference room and converting it into their living quarters. So, there would be a separation whether the paramedic would be a female or a male. They do have their own living quarters. Bowers: That's correct and they would pay for bringing in their own phone line, also their own computer hookup, the whole works there. They would have to incur that cost. Any other questions on this? Do you want us to proceed, basically and talk to them some more? Start working on a contract? De Weerd: Bring them on Bowers: An agreement? Bird: Bring it on, buddy. De Weerd: An agreement Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 61 of 156 Bowers: Okay. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I got one question, Kenneth, on the paramedics (inaudible). I don't see where you have got some replacement computers, but I understand we got some real computer problems between stations. Now is the time to get it fixed. Is it going to be money? Do we need to get computer people in here and get it done, or what? Bowers: Madame Mayor, City Council members, Councilman Bird I believe that a lot of the problems can be handled with Ada County that's supplying this equipment and man I don't know what the process is called. I don't — Bill Johnson has been involved with that. This program that they are doing, VMP or VPM and I think most of our problem is if we could get Ada County over here to help us out on that and then Terry has discussed with Ada County several times too on different problems and it just seems like we are having a problem getting Ada County over to repair this. I don't think there is any money involved other than the WAN or whatever you want to call that program. (Turn tape over). Bird: (Inaudible) to make a phone call or two. Bowers: As soon as Bill Johnson gets back, we will work with the Mayor and Terry, maybe we can all kind of have a roundtable and decide what the problems are. De Weerd: You guys can all get together, identify the problem and I will make the phone call. Bowers: And we will bring them to you. I am not sure if we got a next slide on that or not. Nary: Council, do you have any more questions for the Chief or for Mr. Green? Bird: I don't. Bowers: Was that 10 minutes? Nary: It was just about 10 minutes. Thank you very much, Chief. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 62 of 156 Bowers: Thank you. I appreciate your listening. I know you have more questions probably through the day. I sure will be around and if I have to track down Rich I can do that, too. Thank you very much Mayor and Council. Nary: Council, I think we are kind of waiting on lunch and we were hoping to sort of work right through that. We can do Ms. Kilchenmann's, I guess. Bird: I don't know. Have we got a lot of time allotted for administration? They are the ones asking for all the money? Kilchenmann: Is Charlie coming? Nary: Yes, he should be here. So, maybe until lunch gets here, we can go ahead with — do you need a few minutes change something out? Kilchenmann: Yes. Finance Nary: Sounds like Finance is going first? Kilchenmann: We have been talking a lot about police, parks and fire and this afternoon we will talk about Public Works. So, we talked a lot about the programs that provide direct services, but on the administrative side is we have talked about the growth and adding new police officers and adding new firemen and new buildings and locations. We have more customers, we have population growth and that increases the burden on the administration's staff, which is Clerk, HR, Accounting, we have more payables, the Clerk's office has more to process, HR has more people to process, so we are kind of switching gears. We are going to look at the fall out of all the growth and adding new people and adding more equipment to track and so forth. I am just going to address two areas, one is utility billing and one is information technology. Just as a little background on what utility billing does. I wanted to kind of explain some of the functions they do besides just take money over the counter and process receipts. We are now preparing billing statements twice monthly and we are up to 16,000 customers and that means every two weeks, 8,000 bills have to go out and they get tons of phone calls from customers inquiring about leaks, about questions on account status, so any questions people have about utilities don't go to wastewater and water treatment they go to the utility billing people and they process direct payment requests, which turned out to be rather timely or take a lot of time to do rather than saving time. Another area that has just shot up is processing Title Company closing requests. That means when there is a closing and the title company needs to know the amount or an estimate of the amount due for utilities and that's about 30 to 60 a day and then after they ask for that estimate then they have to go back and handle that again when they are seeing what the actual amount was, so they may have to issue a refund and they do service orders, Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 63 of 156 which are final reads for properties and billings the properties have been sold or the renters have moved and then a biggie is conducting two delinquent water turn off per month and that is the kind of — that figure you see on the right they deal with that kind of customer for a couple of days. Then in trying to make customers happy, we make payment arrangements, they have to do delinquent account collection. They do the third party rental agreements for property owners. That's time consuming. They open at least 16,000 pieces of mail per month, write the check numbers on the billing statements, (inaudible) run calculators, enter and do deposits. Then we have a lot of things that are manually billed, which is time consuming: SSC dumpster, false alarm fees, water meter rentals, reinstall fees and NSF fees. As I mentioned before they do the refunds for title companies, they do closing adjustments, which customer credits, etc. Since we are doing two billing cycles that requires closing both billing cycles and then closing the month so there is a reconciliation process with the county, month end reports review, connect and disconnect accounts, set up new dumpster accounts, balance two cash drawers daily, scan all the checks and then they do mountains and mountains of filing. Kind of like Bill showed you earlier, we have that same kind of filing. Our customer base just keeps growing. I mean it just steadily grows every month. These are a couple different forecasts. The actual and then using three different forecast models, but whichever forecast model you use you can see that the growth isn't going to stop. So, in looking at how do we handle the growth and still provide customer service without just throwing additional staff at the problem, we split the billing cycle, task reorganization, implemented direct pay, which turned out to be probably more work than it saved, but it's also a service that some customers really felt adamant that they wanted — De Weerd: We made a lot of people happy? Kilchenmann: Yeah. We redesigned the office and the front counter. We redesigned the delinquent notice and we just have the new billing statement about ready to go out that contains more information. But, we are still having a problem and the reason is is that we have a large, large volume of small transactions in addition to some of the other services that we need to do, especially like the title company assessments. So, what we would like to do is we still have a sixth vacant position open. We would like to transfer the money from personnel to operating and utilize the lockbox service. What a lockbox service does is they just hire people that just sit there and open mail and enter it, open mail and enter it. Then we do a download every day. They deposit it to our bank and we do a download everyday and enter the information into our computer. Some things they won't enter like multiple payments for apartments, etc., missing account numbers. We will still have people coming in and using the night deposit and doing payments over the counter. The City of Boise licenses lockbox service and they are really happy with it. They use one that's in Seattle. The person who does our billing services wants to get into this and so we would Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 64 of 156 actually utilize them and they are just in Caldwell. So, by doing that transfer of money we would save $7,000. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Can I interject here? Stacy, you say we are saving $7,000. How are we — are we eliminating a position? Kilchenmann: Yes. Bird: That's what I thought I heard you say, but I wasn't sure. Nary: The total amount of the expenditures (inaudible) $25,000? Kilchenmann: Yes. Nary: Don't we have to bid that service then? Kilchenmann: We probably should bid it, yes. I mean, we should bid it yes. De Weerd: Before you do it. Kilchenmann: Yeah, we use the quote from that other company and then added some on top of it just in case. The second utility billing request is to upgrade to the sequel version of our Caselle software and to add an AR module. So, I will discuss them separately. The reason we want to upgrade is the current — I am nervous because Terry is behind me now and I can't just make up buzzwords as if I know what I am talking about. The database is Access and it doesn't have the capacity, the sequel version has, plus there is a problem that you know we talked about a year or so ago, where we can't track the transaction to the particular user. So, this is something that we could overcome and the biggest reason is that the database has a lot more capacity and because of the way that we are growing in the city, we need to do this because we are just not going to have the space on our database and we actually, originally started this we were going to upgrade our accounting software for the same problem, but Terry was able to find a fix and we got around accounting software and the accounting software upgrade would have been like $47,000 and we could have crashed and not been able to do payroll, the most important function that we have, so he got it fixed around that, but we can't do that with Caselle. Speed and efficiency will improve. More users can be on simultaneously now that billing is a part of accounting. We have several people in accounting that are on the software and also water uses the software and it's better manageability, it can integrate with other applications easily. The AR module section is — Reta is going to jump up and cheer for this. What we would like to do is enter all of the City's receivables Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 65 of 156 in a central location, have one database of city customers. We get checks going every which way and we get checks here that maybe utility billing thinks are for utility bills and they don't have any way — if somebody else has billed them they are in a separate database and they get applied to the wrong account and it just would be so much easier if you could just pull up and find all the customers in the same place. De Weerd: Stacy, so in essence this would not be a stand-alone program? It can interface with throughout? It has that interfacing capability to communicate across departments? Kilchenmann: No. I mean, they can. I am not sure if I understand — De Weerd: So, right now you can't — MUBS and Accounting are two separate --? Kilchenmann: They are two separate packages — De Weerd: -- and this would merge --? Kilchenmann: They would still be two separate packages, but what we do every month is we just take the summary of the data from Caselle and enter it into accounting. Although we can get on the Caselle system. Cunningham: Actually, what it would do is right now we were doing AR's here in accounting, so Cathy is actually billing out and then MUBS is doing billing out now, so we will actually centralize it. MUBS will handle all the AR's and then from what I understand is the module does interface with their billing program, right Terry? Do you know much about it Terry? No. But then — so right now we get money in and this has happened with some of our customers. We actually — MUBS gets money in and they don't know what it's for, they send it back to the customer and come to find out, it was one of Cathy's AR's just right here down the office. So, if we have — we eliminate all the separate AR's, we just have one AR, which would be in MUBS, which that's what they are already doing is AR. The same with Public Works doing their separate billing; we have police doing their separate billing. We are going to bring it all into the MUBS Department. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Is this — because I have been told since we got Caselle that we probably didn't buy — we got sold a bill of goods is what I understand. Is this worth spending another $24,000 to update it or is there something that we should be looking — if it's not going to interface with everything within the city like the Mayor just asked, I mean why throw another $24,000 on something that's just a partial fix? I haven't — to be truthful to you, I haven't heard much good on Caselle from Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 66 of 156 our employees of it being very friendly. I am just asking is there or is this something that will last another four or five years for us or are we going to have to upgrade every year or what are we going to have to do? Kilchenmann: I think — I actually looked and I forgot to tell you when I did the mail thing I also looked at like buying mail -sorting equipment and it's very expensive; you have to be really large to be able to make that cost effective. When I looked at some of the other utility billing systems, it's very common for an AR system to be a standalone system, just because it handles such a large amount of data and it would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade. I think with this sequel version it addresses the concerns that we had. We will also be able to have — if we do the Wide Area Network and so forth, we will be able to have, well like Water already does use it and we will be able to have more people using it for information. Not necessarily entering data, but being able to bring it up and look up streets and so forth? Bird: Okay. Thank you. IT Department Kilchenmann: Okay, the next area that I am going to talk about is information technology and we have our IT Administrator, Terry Paternoster and our IT intern from Meridian Charter School, Sean, who is great and we are going to have him drop out of high school and just work for us. Just wanted to talk briefly about some of the things that our IT Department of one and is trusty interns have accomplished since we started. They formed a citywide information technology committee, which has been a tremendous resource to involve all of the — the whole city by having a member from each department. They are very active. They meet monthly. They just completed a strategic plan. They work together to prioritize projects and decide how they are going to use limited resources and through that committee they came up with the recommendation to purchase the WAN that Chief Musser talked to you about earlier that — after they decided that that was really what the committee's priority was. We have centralized purchasing which has allowed us to make our purchases in bulk and resulted in substantial discounts. We have maximized resources by shifting computers and matching older computers maybe for people that just use email etcetera. We have standardized hardware and software purchases so we are not having somebody purchase the Cadillac and somebody else purchase the Aspire, or whatever that car is called. We also — I didn't have this on there, but Terry also went through and got our licensing up to date, so that we are not doing anything illegal now. We can track all that. The system was secured to protect — De Weerd: Don't print that. Kilchenmann: I am not saying that we were doing anything illegal, but now we know we are not doing anything illegal. We secured the system to protect Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 67 of 156 against internal and external theft and actually when we had our Jefferson Wells when they did the IT section, he was very impressed with the things that Terry had done with our system. Standardized email Fiberpipe; set up VPN between fire department locations, which I don't know what that is. But, I think — you had a question about it, Keith, that if you want Terry to address that later he can that with the Fire Department. We changed Internet providers to speed up our access at no additional cost. Worked with the Meridian Charter School. We have had two interns now. Terry, actually, has gotten involved with the school and served as a judge in a contest that they had with the school and think he has developed a good relationship with them and they have been extremely helpful to us. So that has turned out to be great. We have our summer Meridian Charter School intern behind me for afternoon helpdesk and work on the web. We have worked a lot with the different departments on web page information. Terry set up service for GIS, Parks and Laser Fiche upgrade and the web link install and implemented the remote administration help desk tool to save time in driving from department to department. If you look at the growth in city staff, this is what I referred to before. This is all city staff; you can see it just doesn't stop. We have 145 workstations, approximately; 12 servers; 7 different operating systems; 190 computer users in nine separate locations. This is just too much in growing. We talked about the things we are adding and the locations we are adding today or that we will add next year and it's just too much for one person to do all this. Some high value projects have been neglected. Terry is capable of doing software development, which he doesn't have time to do. Networking the departments together; user training is something we really haven't been able to work on; database programming, security and database management; long- range planning, which is just going to be essential and participating in the capital improvement plan development because as you can see that a lot of these things like the police — the things that they ask for are all becoming more technology intense. So, we are asking for an information technology network specialist and I put the total cost there, but this is split with Enterprise Fund, so that the impact to the general fund is actually half of it. With that particular position will be doing is provide routine maintenance of computer hardware; provide maintenance and trouble shooting for imaging server; manage security; review error logs and plan for software upgrades; test software and hardware before deploying into a life environment; be available for onsite service and support, so run around the city; assist with installation maintenance and manage a WAN and assist with user training. So, some of those costs are like one time for their desk, although I am not sure where they are going to sit. Maybe they will just sit in the car. The final piece that we are asking for is an intern request and this is to hire two high school interns just to work on and maintain the website and then other projects as needed. We originally when we asked you to do this for this year we had just asked to move the money down as an amendment, so this is asking you to make it to permanently develop a program and like I said, I think it's been very successful. So, are there any questions? Bird: Mr. President. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 68 of 156 Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Employee training development, that's — what's it called? Nary: Aspire On. Bird: Aspire On? Kilchenmann: That's HR. Bird: What's the $47,000 here? De Weerd: We are only talking finance right now. Bird: Oh, it's all on the same budget. Nary: It's all in the same section, but if you notice, Mr. Bird, there are the different ones on the side and tells you which department wants it. I think Ms. Kilchenmann was doing the finance stuff. Bird: I see. That's in HR. Kilchenmann: But, they are right here ready to be harassed. Bird: I got to be able to harass you, first. That's okay. I got enough coming from the Mayor. Nary: Stacy, just for the record, I guess, I noticed there isn't the cost of the IBM notebook for that IT Specialist, which is about $1,000 more than the other enhancements that have requested just simply laptops. What's the difference? Or maybe Terry can help? Kilchenmann: Mr. Paternoster will explain that. Paternoster: What was your question? I didn't quite catch that? Nary: Well, I noticed for the IT network specialist it said they need an IBM notebook that's about $2,400. In the other departments they have requested a laptop as either a replacement or an enhancement. It's about $1,400. So, I didn't know why — the $1,000 what's the difference? Paternoster: I think that if they followed the budget recommendations that I made — De Weerd: Those were tabletop computers. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 69 of 156 Nary: Oh, those are desktop computers? De Weerd: Yeah. Those were desktop. Bird: The police had some laptops for $1,440. Nary: Those the ones for the cars. Maybe those are for the cars. Paternoster: I think the ones for the cars cost about $4,000. Bird: I was going to say, those in the cars are more expensive. He had some laptops. Nary: In the police section towards the back, they are all listed at $1,400 Cunningham: Actually, the desktops are $1,400 and then the laptops — Nary: Oh, I see there is one there for $2,430. Oh, I got it. Okay. Thank you. Terry, one other question on the IT person. I agree that there is a necessity to have an IT person. I guess — is the network specialist a little too narrow of a field that you are looking for or is that really to allow you to do something differently, not focusing on — is that more of an internal function and you are looking at more long range functions and those types of things? Paternoster: Well, what I did Mr. President was I actually contacted other cities within the state that were of comparable sizes, mainly Coeur d'Alene and Twin Falls and I determined what type of positions they are currently using and what those positions are. The actual position I am looking at is basically that help desk support/network support person that both of those cities use as far as employees and job description and just basically took that to move forward. Nary: Great, thank you. Council, any other questions? Bird: I have none. Nary: I guess we are still waiting for food, so Mayor do you want to talk about yours or wait until we have eaten something? De Weerd: We can go ahead and go into mine or into the rest of them. Nary: Or, City Clerk. Kilchenmann: Mayor, do you want Terry to talk about the WAN while he is sitting here? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 70 of 156 Paternoster: Do you guys have any questions about the WAN? De Weerd: I don't know if anyone has any questions about the WAN. Nary: The what? Paternoster: The Wide Area Network. Nary: That might be helpful because everyone (inaudible) so that might be helpful to have a little bit update. Bird: Yeah, I kind of would like to know what it is. Paternoster: Well — De Weerd: Thanks for asking. Paternoster: Madame Mayor, members of the Council what the Wide Area Network is really going to provide for the city is to allow us to have communication throughout the city instead of being isolated by individual departments. Right now, since we have nine locations each one of those locations, you know, per se, is pretty much autonomous and independent and (inaudible) location within the city. The problem with that is that often times when information is needed, somebody has to either run to another location, pick it up, it has to be emailed or there has to be other methods to gather that information, which in turn turns out not to be as effective for serving the public and providing enhanced communication. What the WAN really is is it's basically kind of similar to a local network and the fact that we have individual computers at every location here at city hall, but those computers are all essentially tied together. What the WAN ultimately will do is it will tie together all the departments of the city so that we are on a single network structure. You know, one of the major benefits at least from an IT perspective is that right now there is a lot of time and effort spent to maintenance, you know, between each one of those locations because each one has it's individual network structure instead of being connected to a core network structure which in turn ends up meaning that we end up doing work often times over and over again at different locations because it's not centralized and structured. Other benefits that will be derived by this WAN and have this connectivity is that when we continue to add applications, you know like the utility billing stuff that Stacy mentioned, you know and like the GIS and email is that we can have that inner communication that can take place across — you know throughout the city verses purchasing an application, only being able to utilize it's functionality at one location. You know a good example of that right now is the Laser Fiche. Right now the city has purchased two Laser Fiche installations. We have one at city hall; we have one over at the Police Department. Each one of those installations cost tens of thousands of dollars to purchase, where as we could have avoided one complete purchase by having a Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 71 of 156 WAN in place because we could have been able to optimize the technology already currently owned in one location and utilized it in another location within the city. The main thing about this WAN request is that what we are doing is that we are requesting a wireless network. How other cities often handle their networks is what they do is they lease T-1 lines, you know, from like Qwest or from Time Warner to create that connectivity between locations. But, after doing an analysis I was able to determine that the cost of leasing T-1 lines would actually — after leasing T-1 lines for three years we would have actually paid for the cost that we are going to have for a wireless WAN. But, with the wireless WAN that we are requesting is our speeds will actually be about 45 times faster than that of leasing T-1 lines, plus we don't have the continued cost other than paying like $5,000 a year for maintenance. So, there is some considerable cost savings by going this route verses leasing T-1 lines. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Terry, hopefully within the next couple of years we will only have three outside building — one main building and two outside buildings for this? Will this stuff be able to be brought in-house like — I mean, I realize we will lose a lot of the lines that we have now, but it's something that we can incorporate into a new city hall and --? Paternoster: Absolutely. One of the greatest benefits of going with a wireless network is it's very extensible as far as moving it and mobility. You know, basically that the way that the structure has been designed when we hired a consulting company to come out and perform a site survey and determine the feasibility of putting in a wireless network for us was that each individual department basically has it's own single antenna that is going to be pointing to a central location, which at this particular point the location that we are planning on using is on the waterpower and so even though city hall might move locations, the location of the wireless network only has to move for city hall, which means that the cost is probably about $1,000 to have the move take place. You know, between moving city hall locations from this location to another location, another one of the core benefits is that although you know Public Works and Planning and Zoning and city hall and I don't know, maybe Park's Admin might go to a central location, we will still have remote locations like the Water Department, the Wastewater Department, the Fire Department will keep adding — the Police Department. So even if like Public Works and Planning and Zoning end up moving into city hall, when that new building comes online, we will still be able to use that antenna at let's say one of the new fire stations that comes online and we will be able to just move that technology to that new location, set up the installation without having to invest in additional hardware. So, it's very extensible. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 72 of 156 Nary: So, I guess on top of that then for the cost of Station 4, for the Fire Department then there would be an increase cost for the hardware for that facility, right? Paternoster: There would be about $5,000 that would need to be appropriated to pay for the equipment needed to include them inside the wireless network and I think (inaudible -------------). Nary: Any other questions, Council? Berg: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Berg. Berg: I would like to address you a question of lunch, since I had a miscommunication and didn't understand the situation. We do not have lunch ordered yet. I can order and you can continue on or we can just break and go somewhere real quick or --? Bird: Let's stay here and get something to order and let's get this thing done. We will work through. Shaun, Bill and Tammy are the only ones I have to worry about starving to death. I have got enough fat that I can go for a few days. Nary: Let's take five minutes, Mr. Berg and let's figure out what we want to do. FIVE-MINUTE RECESS. Human Resources Nary: We can go back on the record. It's 12:40 with the presentation by HR. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Well, it will be in cooperation or collaboration. As you all know, we do have an opening right now that we are working to fill and I first want to express my thanks to the HR Department. Nancy Nash has been with us just over one month and I believe all of you know Audi Clinton. They have been running this department as a team and they have done a phenomenal job. We have hired the new Police Officers, they have listed a couple of openings and I don't think there has been a noticeable gap and they have filled in very well. I just would like to express my thanks to you. You have been a great team and asking them to do the HR presentation probably is really above and beyond, so we won't put that on their shoulders. But, I would like Nancy to update you as far as — as you see there is an enhancement request for the performance evaluation Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 73 of 156 of $5,000. That is a result of what has been initiated already in this budget year and they are starting with a values team and I would like Nancy to maybe speak to where we are at in that process. Nash: I am not familiar with the process, so this is kind of like death by fire. De Weerd: Well, aren't you used to a fire? Bird: Learn under fire. Nash: Yeah, I usually do. This year as all of you know, I guess we have been participating in some training through Aspire On and there is money in the budget for continued training. There is a couple of different classes that are going to be offered from what I understand and again, pardon me I am not well prepared for this at all. I am winging it. So, I will take help where I can get it. So anybody who can chime in and give some help or some — correct me if I am wrong on things, I will appreciate that very much. There are some coaching and some strategic management classes that are planned for October and January delivery and those are part of the budget that you see there — the dollar amount. I did not have a lot of time to look at this to verify the amounts that are budgeted or actually delineate them and figure out exactly what is proposed here. So, there was so much that was done previous to my coming on board. So, can anybody help out with Aspire On? De Weerd: I will help out on that, Nancy. If you will just kind of give them an update on what we are doing in the steps to improve our employee evaluation performance. Nash: From my understanding there is some performance evaluation software, which is going to run about $5,000 and that should help to make the performance appraisal system more efficient, more streamlined, more consistent and certainly a lot easier for the managers, directors to work with that. Right now when I look at the performance evaluations, they are pretty cumbersome type of process there. So, the hope is that it will be more efficient, take less time, and be more encouraging for people to use that software to get the performance appraisals done. That is an issue. Getting them done in a timely manner and I think because what you have right now is a system that takes quite a bit of time and it's not real user friendly. De Weerd: What you have in front of you on the enhancement request is $15,000. It has been reduced to $5,000 because we did when Pauline initiated this process, we had three different options and in talking it through we did want to really tie it to the values that we set earlier this year of the customer service, accountability, respect and excellence in care and so right now we have a carotene or a value's team put together and they are going through some exercises in defining behaviors to the values. That exercise will be used to Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 74 of 156 create this performance evaluation form, which is the $5,000 resulting action. Nancy has been helping with the value's team and the exercise they are going through right now to get to the behaviors by department and classification so that those performances are tied to something that we are trying to accomplish with our mission and our values and accountability to those. With the Aspire On training, you see a breakdown as to what is being proposed. Now this is a continuation of what was started even in the last budget year is ongoing and this budget year where you had first your senior leadership that went through a process, now they are doing the training or the performance catalyst program following the additional steps and the attachment that you have to the requested enhancement on HR and I think that's for the full value. I have some of the budgeted for mine, which would cover the directors; the remaining amount is in HR that would cover the mid -management and the additional training for the rest of the staff members. So, there probably will be some savings here that we do need a director to work with the rest of this to put that all in perspective. This will cover needed continued training that we initiated last year. There is really not much else that has changed in the HR budget, but certainly if you have any questions we will work to answer them. Outside of these two enhancements we did have an HR software that you should be expecting next year in next year's request, but we wanted to make sure that it could interface and interact with what accounting does because personnel in accounting and HR do need to kind of co- exist so that the duplication of some of their efforts will be eliminated. We weren't quite there yet. Any questions for Nancy, Audi or myself? Bird: I have none. Nary: Thank you Nancy. De Weerd: And again, thanks to both Nancy and Audi they work well under pressure. Citv Clerk's Office Nary: Mr. Clerk, did you want to discuss your requests? When I look on here, I see the intern as the only enhancement. Berg: Yes, Mr. President that's the only enhancement. If you look at my budget it drops from the previous year, overall and I had earlier requested another position, but that's been dropped and so the only enhancement or addition to my budget is an intern to help out with some of the work during the summertime, especially when people are requesting for vacation and such that can help alleviate the workload. I don't think there is anything else different from my budget from the previous year. De Weerd: Mr. President Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 75 of 156 Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess the only question I have, Will, is on your contract labor. It was at the $20,000 and we have been dipping into that quite hardily over the last couple of years because of the positions or some vacancies, but now that you are fully staffed, does that need to be at $20,000 or is this Dean's --? Berg: Madame Mayor this is Dean's contract that fluctuates between the number of — the time that he spends, plus the number of pages that he prepares. That is split from last year with the Planning and Zoning, which that department takes the Planning and Zoning Commission meetings, which is all planning and zoning issues, which deals with the application fees, which is what's covered by that expense. De Weerd: So is $20,000 about what you anticipate — you were going to touch bases with Dean and get a better indication. Berg: When I talked to Dean he did not see that he wanted to increase his contract any, it just depends on if we anticipate any other meetings and it had showed that it was progressing along about the right pace. De Weerd: I do have one final question, but I won't guarantee it's final. Just in case you hold me to it. On elections, I know in the transition team report there was a recommendation to look at additional poling or at least additional signage and those have budget constraints. Do you have a recommendation on that? Berg: Well, it's the direction of what the Mayor and Council want to do, the transition team, the recommendation and if we increase poling places it can increase the number of employees as well as if there is a cost to renting that poling place as well as additional signs, which that would be a question as far as if we have to get permits for temporary signs also. So, it is just kind of an accumulated thing. No. I don't have a recommendation of such. We try to take the elections kind of out of a two-year budget ----------- (Tape turned over) Berg: -- preparation work that has to be — that can be consumed with one budget before the election and then after the election is or — excuse me, after October 1 st is more the cost of the employees than the signage that you would have or any other additional cost of that. We try to take all the printing cost and advertising cost up front in the prior year budget. De Weerd: So, I guess, Council what are your thoughts on the elections and you know, I think that the frustration is the low voter turnout and that people aren't totally aware or in tune with it. When the transition team discussed it, they discussed it in terms of bringing up the level of awareness through signage and Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 76 of 156 maybe even additional poling places because there is mass confusion. Every election year you have general elections and sometimes the primary elections are at different places. The general elections and then city elections are something total else and so that's what prompted the recommendation by the transition team is to take a look at that and if not to add additional poling places at least to have better signage to direct the general public that this is coming upwards, it's the day of. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: My reply to that and I seen it in the report is you know, I can't see putting up more poling places or spending a lot more money for 16% of our voters, which is about what we get. I don't know what you have got to do, you can't baby sit and as you said about the school district we can't be babysitters. I don't know how much more coverage you could have got out of the Statesman and everybody else through these elections. The poling places are advertised. I think it's just the lack of citizens not wanting to vote. They could care -a -less. You know, it's a shame when 16% of the people run the country. So, I think that we put $5,000 in and if we see next year that we need to raise it — we can raise some now, but $5,000 for a year that's no elections coming is I would say would be plenty for me. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just a comment on the voter turnout. I don't think that in giving this last legislative cycle, we saw a low voter turnout there, I think that it's important to try and increase our voter turnout, but at this time we need a more definite plan and I don't feel comfortable trying to fund additionally a program that we don't have any measurable results or goals for. I think it can be something that you should probably look at in the next budget year. It's something that's important, but at this time I feel comfortable funding the current election cycle. I am skeptical as to whether we could affect the voter turnout with additional budget dollars in the election fund. De Weerd: Okay. Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess as I was on vacation I visited the transition team report and each of the directors had their response. My response from the City Clerk was it all depends on what City Council wants. So, I just wanted to know what you wanted. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 77 of 156 Berg: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Berg. Berg: The transition team report addressed several issues and it was, I think, a lot of it geared to the direction of what the Council wanted to do in a few areas. This particular one is an issue of public awareness. But, with the confusion of where the precincts are and the districts are for county elections and I think you will agree that there is 92 precincts in the city limits of Boise that the city uses as does the county. The same ones. We — I am sorry — the cost of the election would just be quadrupled or even more so if we had each precinct in the City of Meridian stationed for the city elections. The other thing is people in Danbury Faire vote over at the Public Library, not close to other precincts because they cross over to go to that poling place, so some of them is because of our growth. I asked the county clerk about maybe re-evaluating some of those districts and locations and I suggested that because of the new legislative juristic would be nice to do some of those things, but they have not addressed that issue. I have tried to keep our precincts in locations and drawn maps accordingly to make pretty distinct boundaries without crossing over some of the county precincts because that's what they want too. They don't want to split one of their precincts up either. Nary: Yeah, I would agree Mr. Berg. I don't think it's all a precinct issue. The City of Boise does use the same precincts as the county. They had a very contested election last fall for both Mayor and Council and they still had a low voter turnout. So, you know, it isn't all about poling places. I think there is always room for improvement and evaluation over what we are doing and what we could do better. It was my suggestion a few years ago that maybe a cheaper way to address that turnout is to at least provide some better signage so folks knew that they did vote at a different location than they normally did. That's probably something that I heard the most and I am sure everybody else up here heard a lot from people is "why don't we vote in the same place"? That doesn't necessarily mean that it will be a better turnout, people do tend to vote out of convenience, but I agree with Mr. Berg. I don't know that we need to put more money into that line out of it at this juncture. I think we need to just put some more thought into what we could try to do to essentially increase some voter awareness and hopefully some voter turnout. You know, though, I don't know if we have an answer. I think people just still tend to vote out of convenience in a lot of ways too. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 78 of 156 Wardle: Just to comment on some of the things that Mr. Berg talked about. Somehow we need in the future to look at consolidating some of those poling places because I can hopefully envision, regardless of the percentage of turnout, what with our population growth that we are going to have those four poling places will become very, very busy and so we need to look down the line, maybe not this budget year, but certainly in the future set some sort of — set our sights on looking at and expanding that as our population expands. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: So, I guess what I am hearing you say is you would like to see a plan by the City Clerk to bring some recommendations to you and strategies to raise the awareness and maybe even look at additional poling places as we grow, but just more of a — and this budget year is actually when the next set of City Council elections are so that is why the conversation is needed now. I think Will was waiting for direction from Council on if changes were desired and if you would like him to start moving towards a strategy then we can start doing that. Nary: I guess for myself that I would concur with that. I think there is probably some work and thought to be put into some strategies and when those growths should happen. I know it's terrible when people are turned away from the poling because it takes too long to vote. I think that does happen on occasion because sometimes our poling places do get congested. Not all of them, though. So, there probably needs to be some thought into how do we know when to expand because I think we have had this discussion for the three years that I have been here. I think we need to have some idea of when do we know to expand? What do we want to try to do? It's probably not going to fix everything, but I think that's probably something we could work on. Anything else, Council? Madame Mayor, I guess it's your turn. Other Government De Weerd: Okay. Well, we have other government first. I believe that Will also gave you a copy of this estimate for the city goal? I think as we looked at other governments, we also need to keep in mind maybe what the first steps are. I know that Councilman Bird is kind of steer -heading this and he would like to firm up these numbers. I guess what I would like Council to really consider is having a line item under other government at least for the initial start of cost, whatever those might be. I would have to defer Councilman Bird on that. But, I don't want us to lose sight that we need something in this budget. Secondarily, the Senior Center continues to have building improvement needs as well as the commitment we have made to their transportation and their bus and their van. So, as you see, in other government on the enhancement we have the continued $15,000 partnership grant contribution. It's not included in the base budget. It would be Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 79 of 156 considered because it is a form of a grant for projects specific; it does fall under the enhancement line item. Also, I did not — I was not familiar with the Historical Preservation and their requests, so maybe Stacy can address that one. Historical Preservation Kilchenmann: That one just came in in the last — well, actually — well, Brad can talk about it. De Weerd: We will have Brad Hawkins -Clark who is a staff member, who also serves on the Historical Preservation Commission. Hawkins -Clark: Good afternoon. Walter Lindgren who is the chairperson of the Historical Preservation Commission is planning to be here at 2:30 to make a presentation if that's okay. De Weerd: That sounds fine. Hawkins -Clark: I have met with them and they are trying to get their goals and whatnot more established than they have in the past and so I believe this is the first time that they have actually formally submitted. De Weerd: Thank you, Brad. Well, then we will delay that one until Walter can join us. The only thing that I did notice on other government that we probably need to consider is such as what we did with the summer staff picnic. We do have a budgeted expense for the holiday celebration that is done here at City Hall for staff city wide, but there is no budget for a citywide employee van. So, you may want to consider that. I think that the amount that we budgeted for this year's summer picnic was $1,500. So, please consider that as you are going to the (inaudible-------) Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would like to bring up something and on the historical society we will wait until 2:00. But, the Senior Center — I know they — we got a grant and everything and we have helped, but I just — I think that we ought to give them at least $25,000 on that. I am going to question a couple of things the Mayor has got on her enhancement that maybe we can take from to give to them. I just feel they have got started on this remodeling stuff and they could use some — they are short in funds and they need — and if we could do it would definitely be a big help to the building down there and these are the people that have taken care of this city for the last forty or fifty years and I would like to be able to help them out. The Fuller Park recycle, that's a matching — we don't know if that is going to be $10,000 or $5,000 or whatever process we want to do with the recyclable stuff. I Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 80 of 156 would like to do that. On the city hall construction, I would like to see us at least throw in $10,000 in this budget and it's not going to get us real started, but once we decide how we are going to finance or how we are going to do it then that money takes over so it's not something that we really need in the budget. But, $10,000 wouldn't be — it would give us something to work with. Nary: I also noticed there was no request from MDC this year for any contribution? Bird: I don't believe we are going to need any. Nary: Did they pay back this year's --? Bird: Well, we will be paying you back, I think you can ask Stacy, but I think we said in August we will pay you back (inaudible) and our money is now starting to come in, Bill, so we are okay. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: The TIF money is coming in and they get their next payment in August and so that's when that should be — I would encourage our Council representatives to get that director hired so we can have our staff back. They were supposed to have that done this month and I don't even know if they posted their position yet. Bird: They have not because they don't have a job description yet. De Weerd: So, just my own little pet peeve. On the city hall suggested that Councilman Bird recommended that should not come out of the general fund that should come out of the capital building fund and so that should not change our bottom line, but you may want to put a little bit more in there because I don't even know what additional costs and advertising or initial setup and those kinds of things — Bird: We could do that De Weerd: -- and we don't need a figure right now, let's just give that some thought. Bird: We could always pay it back whenever we get our (inaudible---------) financing. De Weerd: I appreciate his comments. When we applied for the grant for the Senior Center for Sage we did demonstrate that they had more needs than just Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 81 of 156 the $100,000 that they received. So we do have paperwork backup for anything additional that might be granted to them. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Yes. Nary: While we are on other government I was looking at the dues and partnerships (inaudible) and this is probably the place to discuss those. Now, I noticed for Valley Ride the dues for Valley Transit Coordinator Office — that's the same Valley Ride dues — we always pay based on population, isn't it? Or is that a different thing? W. Nary: All right. The one thing I didn't notice in here — we have had a lot of discussion about Dr. Freilich's study and Meridian's participation in that and contribution and we don't — I know we don't know a number, but I think we are going to have to have some number set aside. De Weerd: I do have a number. Nary: Oh De Weerd: And we do have that in the special service's request enhancements. We set aside I believe $45,000 for that and from the initial figure that I have received that's more than enough, I believe it's around $30,000 that would be the Meridian portion, so that is already in the special service's fund. Nary: Oh, okay. Thank you. De Weerd: Okay, any other questions on other government? Berg: Mr. President, I would just like to make one more comment and I know that my position was pulled from the request, but I will be requesting that. We are getting busier and busier as the load comes in and if I am going to increase some other duties, it's tough to pass other duties onto people that are already really busy. So, somewhere down the road as other departments increase and we find other ways of technology to enhance maybe from hiring, but still you have to have somebody answering the phone, you still have to have people helping at the counter, you still have to do the requests as they are needed as well as the processing. So, as it does increase I guess I could do some statistical information of how many applications are processed and give you some information, but it's just wanting to be able to do the service that people come in and call on you to do. Thanks. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 82 of 156 Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: I just have a quick comment on dues and partnerships and I am assuming that the $5,000 for Meridian's half of an annual membership, which is booked to the Boise Chamber is actually payable to the Boise Metro Economic Development Council. The Mayor and I were at a strategic planning session on Friday and the discussion of whether the BMEDC is a separate entity from the Chamber was discussed. I would just suggest that we book that to the correct entity. Cunningham: Can you repeat that entity? Wardle: The Boise Metro Economic Development Council. De Weerd: That's the BMEDC. Wardle: Then to bring up for discussion the $600 annual membership for the Meridian Chamber of Commerce as opposed to buying individual memberships as individuals and department heads, I think it probably shows good relationship with our business community to join as a city and allow all of our employees to be active without having to incur a separate fee for themselves. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Just to touch on that, you know, Shaun and I had talked about this and it does show a city as a whole commitment to the business community and to the Chamber, but we have had more interest among our employees of being involved and there was always that membership fee that kind of stalled it. So, we thought we had enough members at this time to even justify it and thought now is the time. So, if you have any questions, I would certainly be willing to answer them. Nary: Council, any other questions on any of these? Bird: We are just on the other, right? We haven't hit the Mayor yet? Mayor's Office De Weerd: No. You can hit me now. We will start with my enhancements. There is a request for Gateway RF Project and identifications (inaudible). As we are working, I know this has been a discussion item at the Meridian Development Corporation and in our attempt and economic development as well as branding Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 83 of 156 our identity as a community, the Gateway project is to initiate that branding and that identification that as you come into Meridian you are actually in Meridian. This is going to be offset from the capital improvement plan so that it's actually not a general fund item and I think that that's noted on the enhancement, but I couldn't guarantee you on that. As it suggests on the enhancements there are a number preferences in our Comprehensive Plan and again, it has been an item of discussion at the Meridian Development Corporation. Doesn't necessarily have to be towards any particular area if you want it to first come out on Fairview or Meridian or Main that would be a conversation for Council. There has been a three-person committee that's been looking at a consistent design. I guess I would refer you to the City of Eagle. As you enter Eagle and almost each — from Boise going west into Eagle they have a big monument sign. They have the Gateway art going into their older area and I believe they are working on an identification coming from the west into the eastern parts, so — or the western parts going east. They have very nicely branded and identified their community and as all of these communities start growing into Meridian, this would be our attempt to start really identifying that you have arrived and that we are very proud of who we are and what we are and again, it's that branding and identity for the city. Our intern program, you will hear from one of the interns tonight at our City Council meetings. The two summer interns I have right now, one is working on Meridian becoming a community of promise and as well as any youth initiatives. One is the Mayor's Youth Council and the other one he has been working in concert with the anti-drug coalition as well. You will hear his update on the activities that he's been involved with as a summer intern. Our second summer intern program has been working on a business registry. He also finished up some things on the faith initiative and putting together some yellow pages of resources for the anti-drug coalition so these two summer interns have been working on projects specifics and the student intern that would be utilized through the school year would be to carry forward on the youth initiatives and giving support to the different coalitions and initiatives that have been established to maintain that (inaudible) for them. I do have an enhancement request for a laptop and a printer. We have a fax machine from the Police. Department that we would like to get rid of because you have to kick it every time we get a fax so it actually prints out and we don't have a whole lot of room to have a fax and a printer, so that would be to consolidate the printer and the fax machine. I think the fax machine would be retired to wherever machines that don't work very well go. The printer that our office has could be shared with another department. In regards to the laptop, I do work at home and the laptops that we use as Council members is extremely slow and it doesn't have a whole lot of memory in order to keep the PC anywhere and to access the database and that sort of thing from the office and so this is the recommendation in order to be able to actually work at home. So, oh on my budget, you know, I do have a negative balance at the bottom, but I did have a request — our summer intern that's working on the youth programs, did some research and I didn't have this in my request, I would like to add a $1,000 for a line item dedicated to the Youth Council/Programs that once that Youth Council is established that they would be responsible for setting a Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 84 of 156 budget for themselves and that they would actually have responsibility to that budget. (Inaudible) certainly through me, but I would like to have that. Under professional services, I would like to request a transfer of $5,000 from your professional services into this to be used specifically for economic development purposes. One is we will be working on a web site and we would need some support on that. A second one would be that we do have money dedicated this year in a brochure, but we do need a better brochure than that that has currently expired and needs some updating. So, I would like to get some professional service support from that. Finally, an employee incentive awards. We did — they gave us what we were doing the per person, but I also have responsibility per director and I would like to start an employee recognition program on a monthly basis. So, I would like to increase that by an additional $800. It was in my original request, it just somehow got lost in all my scribbles. So, I would entertain any questions on my request, Mr. Bird. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: The only one that I have got is the Gateway Art Project because we do have MDC work on it they got a committee. I would sooner see us take $10,000 off of that and give $10,000 more to the Senior Center and that leaves us with $16,000. I, too, agree that we need some nice entries into the city. But, -- Nary: $10,000 off of what, Mr. Bird, I am sorry? Bird: Off of Gateway Art Project. Nary: But that's out of a capital budget verses — De Weerd: No — Bird: No, I thought she said — Nary: The Gateway is out of a capital budget. Bird: Oh, okay then we can't do it. Nary: Well, we maybe can find it from something else. Bird: Yeah, we will find it from something else. I thought she said it was — okay, well that's all I have. You got away easy. De Weerd: I thought I was going to (inaudible) debate going. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 85 of 156 Nary: Madame Mayor, so it looks like we don't have a professional services line item for the Council, we have a consultant line? De Weerd: If I can take that from your consulting (inaudible) professional services. Nary: I guess we will see. De Weerd: All you can do is ask. Right? I will spend one moment also on your Council budget. I did decrease one of your line items by $1,000. Never in the history of Council have you spent that much and so I just thought — you haven't even spent close to that much. I just thought we would put it a little bit closer in line. AIC is up north again next year, so I didn't want to decrease it too much until I really knew the impact, but this would be just one step in trying to align your budget to what the actual expenditure is. Nary: I think it's in Idaho Falls. Bird: Yeah, Idaho Falls. De Weerd: Oh, it is. Nary: But, it looks like in 2003 we spent $4,000, which was in Coeur d'Alene, so that's probably a good estimate of that at least at this point. De Weerd: Okay. Nary: Council, any other questions? Bird: I have none. Nary: I think we have gotten through all of our morning ones, finally at 1:25 p.m. Council we actually finally have our lunches here, so we can take five minutes, get that and maybe we could start with the Planning and Zoning presentation in a few minutes. De Weerd: If you don't mind us eating when I talk. Nary: Ms. Canning, are you --? Canning: I would much rather you be full and happy than lean and mean. Nary: So, we will take a short break here at 1:25 and we will start up again in a few minutes with Planning and Zoning. RECESS. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 86 of 156 Planning and Zoning Department Nary: We are now at 1:50 in the afternoon and we are now onto the next presentation from Planning and Zoning. Mrs. Canning is here. De Weerd: I notice the Mrs. Canning. Canning: I am still getting used to it. You know for as often as I usually sit over there and talk to you guys, I am really nervous, so if I stutter, you will have to forgive me. De Weerd: We will only deduct $10,000 per every stutter Canning: So, Brad is going to go through the slides for me and I decided I would stand up here to remember what it's like every once in a while. Next slide. Just a quick summary on some of the applications we did last year and I know that the Public Work's Department always give you a good update on the number of subdivision plats that they file and the number of lots and building permits, but this was just kind of more on how many applications that Planning and Zoning has processed. Or, in the case of housing units how many housing units. We processed about 4,500 new building lots. Some of those were denied, so there were about 4,000 approved housing units last year that came through in a number of applications. Our data doesn't track the number of applications. We didn't set it up so it looked at that for this one. De Weerd: Do you have handouts? Canning: No. Do I have to have handouts in addition to that? De Weerd: No, but I need to go get my glasses. Canning: This is the smallest text that there will be and there are only two tables. You might be okay. Nary: As long as you can print that out and provide that to Mr. Berg for the record. Canning: I will. Moving on to the next one. This was the number of commercial applications. There are about 20 applications that comprised about 255 acres, so these are various sizes. Some of them, you know, are only six lots, some of them are 100 lots so it's various sizes on this, but just to give you an idea of how much work we have been doing, most of those are approved. Only six were denied or two applications of six acres were denied. Moving on. So given our demand on what we are doing, the question that I really wanted to answer when I came to the budget was how can the Planning and Zoning Department best Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 87 of 156 serve the City of Meridian? To answer that question, I looked at three different things. One was the transition team report and the deficiencies noted within that report that we are moving toward more staff level decisions and had been moving that way with particularly with the redo of the zoning ordinance; faster processing times; again, the more staff level decisions helps with the faster processing times and the better coordination with the Clerk's Office and this has been — it's still, to me I think and I don't mean this as critical of either Will's department or mine, there seems to be something broken there that the transition team felt there is a flaw there and I haven't been able to find out why it's there. I look at what the Clerk's doing; they seem to be doing the right things. I look at what we are doing; we seem to be doing the right things. So, I am not quite sure where that breakdown is and I will address that again a little bit later. Then looking at the Comprehensive Plan, which calls for quite a bit of pro -active planning at the immediate action items and the Comprehensive Plan, we are supposed to be done about six months ago, I think we have gotten part way through two of the 12 or so that were called out for planning staff to do. Then just a question of what else is missing? I think over the last year, we realized that the transportation is such a huge part of Meridian because we are between everyone and so the transportation issues are just huge for the City of Meridian and the one thing we are lacking is a squeaky wheel. Somebody that is out there saying, you know, this is what Meridian needs; hear what we are saying. De Weerd: Are you saying I don't squeak loud enough? Canning: No, you do, but we need a staff level person to support your squeaks, how's that? Then a little more on the Comprehensive Plan, which is on the next slide. This was a summary of those immediate action items that I talked about. Downtown master plan, revised development ordinances, which are in process; Old Town development standards, again and process; infield development areas, identifying those and getting the word out to developers; regional pathway and creek protection plan; identify industrial areas with services and kind of promote those to some of the industrial developers around town; neighborhood center design ordinance; land use inventory, particular of the residential verses non- residential properties; noxious weed ordinance and a dust ordinance was not identified in a Comprehensive Plan, but that's another one that has come up for discussion. These are the things that because we are chasing our tail on development applications, these are the things we don't have a chance to get done. This is the proactive planning. This is the planning in the Planning and Zoning Department as opposed to the zoning. These are the ones where we really struggle to keep up with these because they don't have immediate demands like the development applications do. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 88 of 156 De Weerd: I guess, one more thing to add to Anna's list is next year as we hit the 50,000 mark, we will be eligible for additional monies and I would imagine that that's going to be in large part a responsibility out of Anna's office. Canning: For writing grants and making sure — De Weerd: Well, and for the — we met with the Housing Authority, what is that? Entitlements. Yes, entitlements. We do become an entitlement community and with that comes additional monies and additional planning responsibilities. So, I thought you could add that to your list. Canning: Thank you. De Weerd: I am good at adding to your list. Canning: Yes, indeed. Regarding the planning, I mean this is really the opportune time for Meridian to plan. I mean, waiting until there is no vacant land supply it doesn't do anybody any good. This is when we are in high demand with the developers. This is the place to develop right now and if we can do some of this proactive planning, this is the time when we can really guide the growth and development of the city. So, that leads to the request of enhancements. I have asked for a long-range planner. This person would focus on transportation and also trails development as (inaudible) the non -motorized transportation. My original request did include for an assistant city planner that was withdrawn by the Mayor, but I am going to talk about it today. The space and equipment to house those two folks and finally the growth management consultant as was raised earlier and it is $45,000. That's in the enhancement request. So, the Mayor spoke correctly. The transportation planner — you won't be able to read this one, sorry Tammy. It's the length of the list that's impressive more than actually what's on there. You know, when we started considering this, I put an email out to staff and said what all would this person do if we had this person? The list that came back was just phenomenal. I mean, I knew that we were doing a lot of transportation related items, but we had broken them up between us fairly well to the fact that we were kind of weren't aware of the overall need for a transportation planner until now. Just to go down some of them as a city advocate on transportation issues to ACHD, COMPASS and ITD update to Mayor and Council on COMPASS Board agendas, proactive right-of-way planning and acquisition; proactive pathway planning and acquisition; work with the Park's Department on pathway location decisions; COMPASS, Regional Transportation Advisory Committee, as well as their demographics advisory committee; ACH Tech Review having a Meridian person there to represent our transportation needs and wants; Valley Ride, Regional Operations and Planning committee; Valley Ride Board of Directors, currently we serve as the alternate to Mr. Nary; Transportation Task Force, comment on ACHD TIP and ITD — that should be STIP, I suppose; ITD meetings related to Eagle, Meridian and 1-84 and of course the Interchanges, the Ten Mile Interchange; scenic byway meetings; Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 89 of 156 downtown traffic management study; downtown parking study; ACHD hearings regarding contested development issues and also ACHD neighborhood enhancement and school safety applications, which I spent quite a bit of time talking about yesterday and the need to coordinate some of those activities. So, I think that the need for one person that can look at all of these transportation issues and think about them for the City of Meridian is pretty clear. I do have both Dave Zaremba here to talk on those and Doug Strong to advocate for that position as well. They can do that after I finish my plea for the assistant city planner. The next one was the assistant city planner. One of the things that I see this person doing is coordinating with the Clerk's Office trying to figure out where this problem is and trying to figure out how we can solve this problem that we haven't been able to identify yet. I mean, diagnosing it is the first step, I suppose and having — shifting some of those responsibilities to the assistant city planners, there would be two of them or one in particular that could track these things and try and keep a better idea of what's going on so that we can figure out how to better coordinate with the Clerk's Office. Right now — we try and help out the Clerk's Office, we are doing the mailing labels, and we got that up and running again so that they don't have to retype all the labels. We also try and help out on some of the project descriptions where the planners or the assistant planners are writing those so that the Clerk's Office doesn't have to try and wade through the application and figure out what the — how to summarize it for their applications. The primary purpose of having an additional assistant city planner is to free up time of the associate city planner so that they can process more applications and get more of the approvals going and expedite those processing times. As I said before, the new zoning ordinance does have more staff level applications; typically we get the certificate of zoning compliances out in a week. It's going to be an odd transition because all of a sudden they are not going to have to do a conditional use permit, so it's not going to take them four months to six months to get through the process, but they are used to these certificates of zoning compliance taking a week and if we get flooded by all these new projects that are CZC approvals, but it may be longer than a week to get these out now because we will have quite a few more of them. We are hoping to free up more time (inaudible) associate planners so that we can continue to get those out, hopefully in a week and keep that processing time up. The findings and the final plat orders, we have been kicking this around with the current legal staff and Councilmember Nary was helping me with those discussions of trying to move the findings and the final plat orders over to the Planning and Zoning Department. Right now we do spend quite a bit of time reviewing the findings for consistency and if we can change the format so that they are less legal, I think we could do them ourselves, but it does take more time, it is going to be an additional demand on our staff. In this again, -- the final part of this is that the transition team, most of the other communities or in Ada County, I think adopt the findings at the time of the decision made by the Council or the Planning and Zoning Commission and this is something the transition team wants done if we can — they would like to see us move that forward, so this would be part of that. It would be moving that timeframe up on those findings as well. That's obviously Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 90 of 156 a discussion with the new city attorney once that person is hired as well, so it's a little undefined at this point, but I did want to raise that as kind of an outstanding issue, but will take more resources from the Planning and Zoning Department. Quickly, on the space needs we are out of room at our current location. We are hoping to move next door into the All State Insurance. They are moving out, so that would be a great place to move. It's just about the right size. It still keeps us upstairs close to Public Works, which we like. They are not ready to get rid of me out there. They seem to like having us around there. We asked for a little furniture for a small conference room and also one larger conference room. We are short on conference room space. We find that we are having larger and larger meetings. That conference room — the larger conference room would still be on the Public Works side, but I offered to put in the enhancement for the actual furniture for it because we just mooch off of them as far as conference room space goes right now. The next thing I wanted to do is look and say are these reasonable requests? I know that the city prides itself on being lean and mean and you know, just how lean? What's anorexic verses what's really healthy? I wanted to — I did a quick comparison. I did look at Ada County and Boise City and I just picked these two because they have a similar level of analysis and seem to be a similar perceived level of activity. I probably should have included Eagle, but you know Eagle would have made us even look better because I think they only have two less staff than I do and I don't think they do nearly the volume. Then I looked at the applications to date. So this is just for 2004 and the number of planning staff and applications per staff. We will go to the first one. The total number of applications, ours is close to 300. 1 did break them out by hearings and then staff level. Boise City is over 500, most of those are staff level. I don't want to go this way, but Boise City basically thinks that my staff just walks in my door and says is it okay that we do this and I say yes. Those are staff level application at Boise City. It's more bureaucratic there, more formalized in all their decision-making over there, so they do have quite a bit of staff level applications. Ada County also, their zoning ordinance was - (Tape turned over) Canning: -- a lot more close to 15 staff members. Ada County is not fully staffed right now. I think they are missing one principal planner or planner III. That would bring them up to 10 and as you see, we are down there. This is just the planners. This doesn't include the directors or the administrative support staff. So, if we go to the applications per planner we are doing close to 60. Ada County does, I think, 22 and Boise City does about 36. So, we are putting out a lot, you are looking at a lot more applications than any other staff around. Even if we add the two planners, we are still above the — do more applications per staff member than those two organizations. Move on to the next one. So, that's part of my summary highlights is that I still am asking for the two positions. As I said before, even with two more positions we are still processing more applications than those two organizations and there are some unallocated revenues. There are about 150,000 right now. I understand 75 of that goes to another budget. I Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 91 of 156 forget what the — capital improvement, so it still leaves some money for that assistant planner position. It was just short of $55,000 for that. I don't know if you want to ask questions now or --? Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I have got a question. First I will ask the Mayor why she felt that we didn't need another assistant planner. De Weerd: When Anna and I sat down and talked about it, it was more of a highlight on the findings and not a lot of the other statistics and the bells and whistles that you are now saying that I didn't. But, I also in conversations with you wanted to be sensitive to the findings and you know the time spent on that. So, I told Anna to speak to it and I think she has done a fine job. I have no problem keeping that end, but it was more sensitivity on conversations that we have had up to this point. Bird: Follow up, please. Nary: Certainly, go ahead. Bird: This is going to depend on like Anna said (inaudible) new city attorney and what kind of proceedings he wants to do with the findings. If we are going to expect them to write the findings, I think there is no way shape or form that they don't need this other planner. If the attorney wants to do it somewhere else, then he could look at that. I still think we need this assistant planner, whether they write the findings or whether they don't write the findings. We, as the Mayor has jumped me already, we need to make sure that MDC gets on their own feet in terms of staff back to the city, like they should be doing. I would like to see that left in if it's okay with the rest of the Council, the Mayor. I would like to see that $55,000, is that what you said, brought back in? De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess just to also respond you know staff remains very committed to bringing more at the staff level and that's been noted in the Blakeslee Report and the transition team report and I think the only way they are going to be able to do that is with adequate personnel. I think you have done a good job in stating your case. Canning: Thank you. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 92 of 156 Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: I can be sensitive to the Planning and Zoning staffs needs and their workload, but as I mentioned before and I am going to bring it up right now in the budget hearing that the position of city attorney and some of those changes as I understood were tied to this position and some savings within departments. So, I understand why the Mayor withdrew it because she had expressed that when creating this new position, so while I can be sensitive to the workload, the explanation that I was given was that this was one of the positions where we can see some savings and reorganize this department. Nary: Yeah, I guess the only other comment I would have is I don't think we know exactly what we are going to look like in three months and I think that's probably part of the discussion going forward. I think Anna has presented a case that without even that piece there probably is plenty to do. The issue is if there is funding for it. Because I noticed in here, I mean part of that funding for this position for the assistant planner is from the savings from the White Peterson contract, so if there is a savings is there adequate revenues to support that position without it? I guess I am not married to the idea that a planner has to do or a lawyer has to do findings. I think when we sit up here at the end of the day we want to be right. I don't care who prepares them as long as they are right. It may take different levels of review. I did — as Anna said a couple of times, I did sit in with her and Mr. Nichols on trying to get the process better so that it can be done quicker and more efficiently and it initially was essentially a first draft through the planning department and then there are other levels of legal review to make sure that some of those — that we are the ones honing those on Tuesday nights are the ones that probably take the more higher level of scrutiny. But, we don't have any particular plan today as to how to get that done. Like I said, I think you have identified that there is plenty of work to do anyway. I mean, it's not like — if the city attorney or the Legal Department takes over that function it doesn't mean that the assistant city planner has nothing to do, I think there is plenty. It's just he issue of revenue. I think that's what is Councilman Wardle's concern is that that revenue was, I guess, thought to maybe be used in a different fashion. So, what do you think? Canning: Well, in — when I did write the enhancement, I was looking at — it's not the contract amount, actually, with White Peterson, it was the additional money that we were paying for findings from Marlene. Because of just the sure volume of work, it was outside the contract amounts, so there was that, I think it was $16,000 or $17,000 that I saw as — well, if we take over this that's a possible savings there and perhaps I did emphasize that too much in that enhancement request, but it wasn't the actual contract amount, it was the over and above fees that we were paying and I am hoping — yes, I am getting nods of consent over there — so it was not the contract amount. So, this would not be a savings on the Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 93 of 156 — the full amount of the contract would still be available for the new city attorney position. Nary: This was the add-on that was taken outside of the contract (inaudible) budget, right? So, that is the difference, Mr. Bird, I think is that we have talked about is this is the addition that was added on by last year? Canning: Yeah. Again, we are — regardless of where they go, right now there is a severe duplication of efforts because for — to really have good findings, it really requires that my staff go through and make sure that everything got in there. Not to say that White Peterson is doing a bad job, it's just that one person doing all of those doesn't know the intricacies of the file to make sure that everything got caught, so there is just — we are having to review them regardless, so there is that duplication of efforts there and whether or not it's — if it's somebody who — we don't know what we are going to look like in three months, you are right. Nary: I guess to follow up with that, I mean, one of the discussions when Anna and I had met with Bill Nichols is that it's not uncommon rather than writing a staff report that is full of suggestions as to what the final findings should be, the staff report is full of the proposed findings and there may be some changes to that, but you are not creating a duplicated effort. You are not turning recommendations into findings and then verifying that they all made it back through the same transition, you are doing it once. You are verifying the change ones that you need to change or clarify and you are not redoing it — because otherwise you are doing it twice. Canning: I still think — I mentioned this before. I am really working at automating some of these things and making them so they transfer from one document to another quite more efficiently and easily. I am about 80 percent there as far as getting that done and I hope to move that into that other 20 percent shortly here because my staff is eager for me to do that. Then you will see a whole new staff report format and findings and presumably findings as well. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess to just further elaborate since Anna has done well to fill in some of the blanks on what this additional position could do. I think also the additional coordination between tracking applications and coordinating paperwork with the Clerk's Office and helping streamline some of those processes, you are going to see that Anna's department works with almost every department here in the city, but with the Public Works with the Public Safety, with the attorney's office, with the Clerk's Office and there is overlap and there is checks and balances in making sure that our systems work efficiently and effectively, but there is also in terms of if we do want to add more to staff level Meridlan City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 94 of 156 decisions so that things can go through and our commitment to making our process more streamline, I think really support the additional staff and I guess if we want to go with the timeframes that we are meeting today, you know, maybe it's probably still — there probably still warrant to it, but if we want to look at better efficiencies and providing more customer service and making sure that we are the best in the Valley on our processes then we need to give them the support they need in order to that. I think that Anna has shown justification on that end of it. Nary: Council any other questions or comments? Canning: Just to remind you I do have two other gentlemen that would like to speak briefly. Nary: And I would also note for the record that Councilman Rooftree is present. De Weerd: Welcome. Nary: Mr. Zaremba, Mr. Strong you came all this way. Strong: Thank you, Madame Mayor and members of the Council, just a quick note related to pathway development. As we look at the development of the Comprehensive Plan in the city and how pathways are looked upon to connect the community, there is a number of issues that come up when we look at preliminary plats that have come in that require some level of review and I know that over the year and one half or so that I have been here I have been out locking pathways with both Steve Siddoway and Brad Hawkins -Clark to determine just which side of an irrigation canal or ditch would be better for the pathway and (inaudible) it leaves room for the irrigation district to maintain the ditch with the pathway and other issues like that that you can't tell from a preliminary plat. Some are just those kind of in the field issues and then where is the best place for it to go and how to connect, so, I certainly would support the transportation position from the standpoint of the city. But, also from the standpoint of the development throughout the Valley for connecting trails, pathways and transportation corridors, at least initially discussed in both Ada and Canyon County and maybe stretching further for a complete and both off highway foothills trails type of dirt bike trails to pave pathways like we have in Meridian to bike paths and transportation corridors. It's a very large issue. There is a group foundation for Ada, Canyon County transportation or pathways system called FACS that meets on a regular basis looking at those issues. This will be a valuable planning position for all of that. It certainly would help our department as well. I am very much in support. Nary: Council, any questions or comments for Mr. Strong? Which of your enhancements should we cut to make sure we can fund this, Mr. Strong? Just kidding. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 95 of 156 Strong: How about the landscaping along the Blackstone pathway? Nary: Good answer. Mr. Zaremba? Zaremba: Madame Mayor, Mr. President and members of the City Council. I am David Zaremba. Thank you for allowing me to address you. Before I say what I came to say, let me add a little bit of side note. Many of you who have served on the Planning and Zoning Commission, which is currently my pleasure to serve on, I started going to Planning and Zoning Commission meetings almost six years ago now. The improvement in the staff and quality of support to the commission and thereafter the City Council, the current staff has my great admiration, both in their skills and their dedication and I think you ought to triple their budget and pay them all twice as much. That's just a personal comment. Nary: Take private donations. Zaremba: The subject I did wish to speak about is the transportation planner. I was privileged to be on the Mayor's transition team and on the regional partnerships group and we put together a suggestion that such a transportation planner is needed. As a business for more than thirty years, I have designed transportation systems and managed transportation systems, most of them temporarily all over the country and in major cities and I get the opportunity to see how the infrastructure in those cities works and what has happened good and bad in the way of transportation and even though it's a situation of the tail wagging the dog, transportation, while it's not the purpose of the city or even the convention groups that we work for, if transportation doesn't work everything else you plan for suffers because of it. If businesses can't get their supplies, if employees can't get the work, if customers can't get in to shop, everything that you plan to benefit Meridian suffers because of the transportation issues. The things that I see transportation covering are not just roadways of traffic, but also public transportation, pathways and how those relate to land use and smart growth. Over the years, part of the study that we did for the transition team, I just discovered that there are 35 agencies or organizations that have something to do with transportation in Meridian. They are either planning or making long range plans or they have something to fund it or they have a client base for whom they provide transportation. On all of these organizations have something to do with transportation in Meridian. Some of them have statewide responsibility as well, but they are making decisions that impact Meridian and have already been mentioned. Meridian's position in this Valley as the Valley grows and builds out, transportation issues are going to focus here and they need to be solved. This list of things that the transportation planner could do is an excellent list. There are even more things; liaison with the other 35 agencies that are doing something would be a fulltime job in and of itself. I can express that from experience. I have been privileged to be appointed to a few of the agencies, by this City Council and this Mayor and I as a private citizen and a volunteer have Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 96 of 156 attended meetings of many of the other agencies to which I am not an official representative and believe me for somebody to really fully cover all of the people that are doing something about transportation that impact Meridian that would be a full time job. So, I am here to fully support the idea of promoting a current person in the Planning and Zoning Department to the position of transportation planner and relieving that person of all other duties, which means that there would have to be a replacement for that person. I realize the budget is tight and that's a difficult decision to make for budget. But, think in reverse, what if we don't do this? Twenty years from now, fifty years from now if we just sit back and let the other agencies decide what transportation and by that I mean total mobility, people that have transportation choices and people that don't have transportation choices, seniors, youth, disables, if we just sit back and let the other agencies make the decisions without somebody out there advocating for us who can put together a Meridian mobility master plan and advocate it to these other agencies, if we don't have a person like that we are abrogating our responsibility and the cost to us in the future would be far greater than promoting a current person and replacing them with somebody else with new budget. I can only express my support for your diligence in hopefully finding a way to accomplish that. Thank you very much. Nary: Council any questions or comments for Mr. Zaremba? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: Thank you. Nary: Council any questions or comments for Anna before we move on? See how easy that was. Council, I know we have next on our agenda is Public Works, I don't know if they need a couple of minutes to transfer some material. In that interim, we do have a gentleman here from the Historic Preservation to make their presentation. Is it electronic? Lundgren: No Nary: See, even better. So, we could probably do that while we are waiting for their transfer of their computer materials, if you'd like? Hearing no objection, I guess that's okay. Historical Preservation Lundgren: Madame Mayor and members of the City Council, I appreciate the opportunity to come and speak with you today in regards to the funding request from the Historical Preservation Commission. As you may or may not be aware, we've, I believe in the packet that we have submitted we have also included our goals for our short term and long term stance in terms of what the Commission's agenda is going to be for not only this year, but for kind of the future as we see Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 97 of 156 the City of Meridian grown and hopefully develop responsibly. I think what I would like to do is just cut to the chase and talk a little bit about what it is we are asking for and really just talk in terms of the five items — itemized list that you have in front of you. I do believe that you have that in front of you, is that correct, as part of our submittal? Affirmative answers. Lundgren: Okay, I don't want to make a false assumption here. First and foremost, really, before I go into any kind of long and I will spare you that — kind of long dissertation on what it is our goals are. Essentially what we our long term goals in terms of working with the Mayor and the city is essentially to strengthen the goals and policy of the city to place more emphasis on historic preservation. Also, is to create public awareness and community participation in the preservation process and these are through educational programs walking towards workshops. Also, one of our more short-term goals and to be more specific is to get four properties to get them registered through the National Historic Registration. So, the list of requests that we have in front of you, we will basically address those. Number one, I would like to talk to you about is we have a $10,000 request for and this is a one-time effort, which is a city survey that is actually performed by an outside consultant. There are about 25 or so of these firms that are statewide that through a city RFP will go out and survey the existing structures of the City of Meridian as well as provide specific information on the properties and what, ultimately this document will provide the history of the structures, but at the same time provide recommendations for these particular properties and establish whether or not these are actually contributing structures meeting are — do they fall within the criteria of being a national historical registration opportunity? Really, just to give you a case example, the City of Caldwell spent about — just more recently they just completed a report for about 110 properties for $3,500. So, you kind of get the scale of where that money is going to and how it be spent. Ultimately, this document becomes incorporated into a database, which has been shared with Planning and Zoning through the help of Brad Hawkins -Clark, who has been recently put to our group as a liaison to the Planning and Zoning and that data becomes available to local teachers, property owners, city planners and future development and just understanding the heritage of Meridian. I can get into more detail on that later to the questioning and answering period, if you don't mind. But, I will just kind of move on here. The second item we are requesting is we are asking for a $1,000 for training to network with PEERS. Essentially, what this is addressing is there are oodles of these conferences across the country and in terms of networking and kind of these commissions that actually are going through the same growing pains as we are and so there are conferences in terms of the Historic Trust, the Meridian's Historical Preservation, excuse me the — there is the National Trust, which is actually, I believe, the group that is actually a combination of all the local cities' commissioners that basically share and pass on their ideas for how to, I guess, better the planning for historical communities. Number three item I would Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 98 of 156 like to address and this is probably our priority at this point is to request $4,000 from the City of Meridian. What this request is for is in terms of selecting four particular properties or structures within the City of Meridian to get them registered with the National Historic Registration. There are funds available from the Idaho State Historic Preservation that is available to us through a grant writing that we have to put together that is due by, I believe, September 2005. That money that would be funded would be required to be matched by city funds or in kind funds, so essentially what we are asking from the City of Meridian is $4,000 for that effort. Item number four is $200 to join preservation organizations, such as Preservation Idaho, Idaho State Historical Society, the National Alliance of Preservation Commission — actually that is the Commission that is the combination of all small cities, large cities, historical commissions that again pass on information back and forth, what worked for them and what didn't work for them. Finally, number five item is the $5,500 to pay for consultant services. Currently, there is information that is available, but it is essentially all hard copied and is not very user friendly in terms of cross referencing that information and this effort would essentially be provided for someone to go ahead and scan information, data entry and all those things. If this particular effort could be performed by the city planning staff, great. We just don't know if that resource is available, but it's something until we get the ball rolling in terms of getting this data into the cities' system in terms of property ownership, we are just fighting an uphill battle in terms of communicating. Essentially, I will open up to questions and answers, but I would just like to say, essentially the bottom line is it's — we are just looking to the city leaders here to figure out what is your expectation of our group. You know, we have right now the organization as you can see from the list of long-term and short-term goals. I think the fire to get this thing rolling and working with the new — with Tom Hudson's effort and get the downtown revitalization going, but it's a matter of some of these things do cost money and we can only do so much and volunteer so much effort and labor, but without some of that funding it's nearly impossible to see the things that we need to do through. I do appreciate your time and just open up to any questions you may have. Nary: Council, Mayor is there any questions? De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I think you're commission has come a long way in the last half year in defining the steps that you do want to take and we do understand that you have to have something to do it with and I do appreciate this information. Lundgren: We realize that this is short and long-term information that I think would be if not this year, plant the seed for future years in terms of how do we facilitate these goals. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 99 of 156 De Weerd: So, the highest priority in funding is what items? Lundgren: I would say, item number three is certainly a priority. We have already got verbal agreement from two property owners here in town that are interested in getting their building sign up date. They do fall into the criteria for a National Historic Registered site and certainly the state liaison are grant analyst; Ann Swanson is been very proactive in working with our group to get to see that happen. I mean, keep in mind, we have four structures here in town right now that are registered. Three were done in 1982, one was done in 1996 and again that is not the sole purpose of this group that is to just get something registered and just walk away from it. But, I think at the very least, what that does is that sets the stage for the direction we want the city to head and to respect the heritage that the City of Meridian does, in fact, posses. I think the indirect results of that will be very fruitful. Nary: Have you had either conversations or contemplated conversations with the Meridian Development Corporation? I mean, since you did cite — in some of this stuff, especially the Item A has a relationship to downtown that might be an avenue as well. Lundgren: In terms of their involvement in our efforts or vice versa? Nary: Yeah, their involvements in your efforts or at least some assistance with partial funding of some of that. I mean it's going to benefit the MDC to have that survey done for example to — Lundgren: In terms of funding, we have not. I think we probably do have some overlapping that does exist there, but just have not really discussed it at length yet. I suspect that is probably a good idea we do though. Nary: In this item, the last one, the $5,500, that is essentially to pay the contract with somebody and then — it's not to buy equipment or anything is it? Lundgren: There was an actual survey — an unofficial survey I should say that Lila Hill put together back in 1988 that, however, it was good but it — for one it was done 16 years ago and secondly it was — their survey consultants that do this stuff and meet the standards of the Secretary of the Interior and so there is specific standards that they meet that they can provide. Saying that, what this fifth item does is it takes a lot of that information that Lila has put together and gets that into a computer system that starts the ball rolling if and when that survey happens that compliments that effort, so right now everything is kind of — it's hard copied, it's in somebody house or it's in about a million different places and that effort would consolidate that and get it more in place. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 100 of 156 De Weerd: So Walter, what is the order of this? Probably, you said, Item three is most important and you would need to do one before five? Lundgren: No, there are actually — there really isn't a critical (inaudible) of these to answer that question. I would say that if we had our wish list, you know, certainly Item three is one that we are actively searching at this point. Again, I can appreciate the budget crunch that all cities are facing these days and I think if at the very least this plants the seed for future because right now, we realize $10,000 to do a survey — you know I can understand it that there are other things that you may perceive to be a priority, but really I would argue that the sooner that we do that the better for various reasons. To answer your question, Item three is definitely our priority at this point. Item five I would say would probably be a second and then a close third would be Item one. Items two and four are smaller dollar items. I think they are very critical. $200 and $1,000 respectively may be a small price to pay to network and connect with some of these other communities. So, that's what we are asking for. Rooftree: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Rooftree. Rooftree: Help me understand the significance of property registry. Why is that your number one priority? What does that do for us? Lundgren: The registry? Rooftree: Yeah. Lundgren: If anything, it's — as a preservation group, there is a real public push to get some of these more, I guess, visible successes out there. One thing that's — in terms, I wouldn't even put it in terms of financial terms. If you have historic places like heritage type places for people to come visit and if you have more than one or enough to hook people in because there is a population out today that we'd refer to as heritage tourist and they actually make up a certain population, in fact, in terms of what they bring to a community in terms of financial dollars, this is a fact that they spend the most money out of all tourist (inaudible) that grouping. I am not saying that there are a million of these guys, but in terms of financial reasons that alone has some merit. In terms of — I think it's because we have — it's a smaller step initially for us to take. I don't think it's something that we are biting off too much by doing that. We have typically been given — I know the preservation commission has been approximately about $2,000 a year — I think that's what our budget was for this year and that is our priority to get a home registered. In terms of — I don't know if that's addressed your question necessarily, but has that addressed your question? Rooftree: It hasn't struck a cord with me yet, right now. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 101 of 156 Lundgren: I am not sure. It's an intangible thing. I do admit that. But, it's a doable thing, let's put it that way. Rooftree: Can you put it in context of the historicity of Meridian and are there a thousand properties potential in Meridian or are there 50, are there 10 really good ones? Lundgren: I would say that in terms of what the criteria is, there is — I'd say there is probably closer to 30 or so, but are they viable? I mean are they ones that really do mean something? I mean if you take in terms of the ones that exist today there are four that are even registered. I mean there have certainly been more candidates. Are they better than the others? I think there is in terms of viable ones, there is probably maybe a half dozen to a dozen that are really important. I apologize I don't know if there is a better way to communicate it? Rooftree: No, I just need it in context. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess to add to what Walter has said is that by adding to your national register, the historical preservation piece of it it shows a commitment of the community to preserving it's heritage and history of those buildings. It is something that is mapped and shared in your walking tour type of things like the Historical Society has put together that brochure and the walking tour and it also has some small benefit to the property owners and help you to preserve the structure that they have in terms of qualifying for grants and that sort of thing, but it doesn't commit them for a lifetime to it either. Lundgren: It doesn't. De Weerd: So, you know, as ownership would transfer, at that new owner it means nothing to them. They don't have to continue it on. Lundgren: They could certainly tear down the building. There are no teeth in what that being registered does. There isn't. But, with that said, there are some federal tax credits that are available to those individual property owners. They would have to apply for those, but they are available as well. But, that's about the extent of it. De Weerd: If that helps. Rooftree: I understood all that. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 102 of 156 Nary: Council any other questions or comments? Hearing none, thank you very much. Lundgren: Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. De Weerd: Brad, did you have anything you wanted to add? No. He did it very well, huh? Thank you. Public Works Department Nary: Now, to top it off with our favorite part, the Public Works Department. Wherever you want to start with, Building or Public Works or --? Smith: Thank you. Good afternoon, Madame Mayor, Mr. President, Council members, Mr. Clerk. Good afternoon. It's our pleasure today to present to you the proposed FY 05 budget for the City of Meridian Public Works Department. First of all, I wanted to introduce Public Works Department staff that is here today. I will just turn so I make sure I get everybody. Brad Watson, our City Engineer; John Shawcroft, Wastewater Superintendent; Rick Clinton, our Water Superintendent; Len Grady, our Staff Engineer; Clint Dolsby, Staff Engineer; and Bruce Freckleton is our Senior Engineering Technician, Engineering Tech III, all around good guy. All of them are. And happy to have him back. We missed him terribly. He'll get caught up sometime in FY 06. The Public Works Department, as you know consists of four different divisions; namely the Building Department, the Water Department, Wastewater and Engineering. The budget presentations today for each of these four divisions will be made by Brad that will do an overview of our Public Works activities for this past year. I'll do building permit division presentation. Rick Clinton will do water. John Shawcroft will do wastewater and Brad will do engineering. Brad has some handouts for you as far as the presentation is concerned, so I will let him or his designated staff person do that right now. That would be Clint. We didn't rehearse handing out the presentation packets and I will turn the time over to Brad at this point to make a presentation of our overview of our activities this last year. Watson: Thank you, Mr. President, Madame Mayor and Council members. I know you have had a long day, unfortunately we have developed our usual presentation that takes a little while, but we don't get a chance to talk about our accomplishments too often, so please bear with us. Usually I wait till the end to go out of script, so this is a bad sign. De Weerd: We look forward to it. Watson: Do, you? Okay. Well, you might wonder why we bring so many people along to some of these things, but if you total up the whole budget there is a little bit of money involved and each one of these guys is responsible for at a minimum a half a million up to 10, 15 million dollars. So, they all have a very big Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 103 of 156 vested interest in this. Second thing is that we need to thank Len for putting this presentation together this year. It's one of those things I handed off and did a good job and also to carry who is not here but she is kind of the unsung hero back out our house. She, every year it never fails we put these together and an hour before we come over here, we have a change to make and she has to unbind everything and put it back together. She can just tell that when I come walking up that — you'd have to see her expression. It's pretty good. Anyway, go ahead. Quickly, this is our overall (inaudible) chart. Presently, we have about 62 employees with the enhancements that we are proposing today would bring it to 70. This is our mission statement, simply put. It hasn't changed a whole lot over the years and that's what we continue to do. A few quick statistics on what's been going on. You are well aware of the overall pace. The single family building permits, just to ensure numbers are up to 78 percent this fiscal year; commercial permits, 28 percent; total permits, 56 percent. In terms of dollars, we have almost doubled this year what we did last year. Just a few of the highlighted activities, I am not going to go through each one of these, they are there if you want to go back and look. Some of the highlights of what we have done is we have initiated the GIS system in our shop. The whole purpose of that is to get information where it needs to be faster, more efficiently, quicker and we are well on our way to getting that up and running. We completed, or are completing a fairly significant portion of our safety program and it doesn't get a lot of airplay, but it is pretty important to us and I think to our employees. On the waterside of things for I don't know how many years in a row, there is zero positive bacteria samples. One of the big things to note here is just the sheer number of meters being set. There were almost 1,700 meters set through June and Rick has noted here 266 in June and that equates to about 13 a day. We have all the normal well water line construction projects that — I remember when at the inaugural party out at the Golf Course I told Charlie and welcomed him back and I said do you remember when a million dollars used to be a big project? That's about a month's worth now. That's kind of the way it feels. All these projects are needed to just keep up with the growth. We have been trying to squeeze all the efficiencies that we can of our existing facilities by doing more (inaudible), rehabbing some of the wells, just the normal repairs that go on. On the wastewater side of things, some of the highlights are the electronic (inaudible) manual that John and his crew have put together with the help of Brown Caldwell. I think that's going really well. One of the big issues is that we submitted our new discharge permit to EPA here recently. Theoretically, we would have that by the end of the year, but we are not holding our breath. There are a lot of issues to work through as far as EPA is concerned on that. The Black Cat Trunk project is clicking along at a good pace. And this is just a slide that shows you just a small portion of the system expansion projects that we have been doing. These are all just hard construction projects that are there simply to serve new growth. One of the things that we look forward to — as busy as we have been over the last couple of years building things, it's going to get even more intense. This slide just shows a few of the things — well, these are the major things that we are looking forward to over the next couple of years. When Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 104 of 156 we did our water master plan, I think in '99 —2000, we were projecting the twenty- year population of right in the neighborhood of 80,000 and this is not an official population projection. This is simply just our look at what's going on, what we see based on building permit activity, but we are looking at nearly 80,000 in another five years. We will get to some of these improvements later in the enhancements. I just love to show this slide. We started counting the miles of pipe we put in — well, we plus the development community puts in every year. Last year I think we had seventy miles and I thought that would take us almost to Cascade, but I think we are almost to Donnelly with this one. That's just incredible how much pipe is underground every year. Watson: Just another statistical slide. It helps sometimes rather than to look at text just to look at a graph and see what it is compared to other years. What this graph shows is calendar years in 2004 if we keep up at the pace we had through the first six months. It is just so far and away above anything that's happened previous. Even the commercial is higher than it ever has been. You noticed it's kind of an odd pattern, the residential will peak and then it will go down and the commercial will peak. Right now we are just, everything is peaking at the same time. This shows just the number of plats, the number of lots that are coming through our office. I'm not sure everyone knows exactly what Final Plat submittal entails but all those little conditions that get in there. That's when they get enforced and it's not just a real quick 50 -minute review ordinarily. It takes a period of hours sometimes, even days to get through these plats. At one point last week I had 16 in my office in various stages of review. The one good thing is that we have begun cross training and there is five of my staff that's involved in it now. I don't know that they want to be involved in it but they are. De Weerd: Lucky you. Watson: They are doing a great job and it's really helped my sanity as well as the developer's timeline. Once in awhile the question of out sourcing comes up as compared to bringing on new employees. I asked our staff to just quickly go through and look at what we are out sourcing presently. It came back with quite a list really. When we look at all these different aspects of what goes on in our operations and design we have. I'll back up a little bit. There are some cities that do a lot of design in house and they do a lot of repairs in house. They do TV inspection and all the stuff that you see here is stuff that I know some cities do in house. We just looked at the numbers of the cost and the number of employees from the consultants that are working on our projects and it looks like we could have another 20 full time employees doing all this stuff very easily. So the only point of this is to show you when we get to the personal request. That we don't take that real lightly, I don't at least personally like to add staff unless we absolutely have to and I think we've done a good job of that of farming some of this stuff out. And these people can do it efficiently and cost effectively. These are just a few slides to show you I guess what is physically being done. We've upgraded the telemetry system that was approved last budget year for several of Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 105 of 156 the lift stations that are out in the field. This enables the guys to know what's going on a lot better, a lot quicker and get out there if there's a problem sooner. This was a project that was finished up I think this winter. It's called a Dissolved Air Flotation Thickener and I briefly described it I think at a Council meeting earlier and it takes slug and thickens it. It's a pretty cool process. It has little air bubbles that go up through the slug and then it comes up and floats to the top and it's pretty cool. One of the things to point out about this project is it's just how and the picture doesn't do it justice, it's so clean and it was done so well. Carollo Engineers designed this and the Ewing Company was a contractor on this. By all accounts it went extremely well for both us and the contractor. It's a good project. If you are ever out there, you don't have to go up in the tank and look at the floating slug but just go around it. It's very nice. This is the current project at the head works. Contractors Northwest, they are based out of Coeur d' Alene but they have a Boise shop they are doing this project, doing a great job. This will build out the head works for the next 20 years, pretty excited about getting this up and going. Just a picture of the Black Cat pressure sewer that is pretty well completed at this point. I know it caused a lot of consternation out on Ustick Road with road closures and that sort of thing, but we are out of the road now. Go ahead. Added another blower; you approved that a year ago. This is just a little slide to show you that work is being done on the Black Cat Lift Station; it doesn't look like much is going on out there. It's still a dirt lot. We should be bidding this I think in September; hopefully we'll have a winter construction to keep out of the groundwater. The gravity sewer that goes down Black Cat Road to Franklin Road is fully designed. It's just been on the shelf for three months. We can only probably build it during the winter because of groundwater concerns out there. The second issue is that ACHD wants to team up with us and rebuild the road to it's final profile while we're doing this and they had some budget issues to work through. So the timing is lining out fairly well for both of us. Water projects. We've got pipe going in all over the impact area it seems like. This particular one out on Eagle Road between Ustick and Fairview. We program this a year ago thinking we were really proactive in keeping way ahead of all the development and now we've got a Lowe's breathing down our neck. But we'll get it up and running and get their fire flows for them. Here are all the wells that are in various stages of construction. Twenty-four in Tumble Creek was completed I think late last year. Twenty-five is drilled and just waiting for the pump house to get built. Have we bid that? Yeah we've already bid that one. 26 the test well is done. 20 B which is up by the Ustick Reservoir in Settler's Park is under design right now; well on it's way. As I mentioned earlier, one of the things we've been trying to do with water is squeeze everything we can out of our existing infrastructure because of the water rights issues and we don't need to go into that until we get to that enhancement. But we've had some issues with water rights and adjoining water (inaudible). So rather than go through the lengthy process of securing these water rights we are trying to do some innovative things. This is something that because of all the growth along Eagle Road and that North Locust Grove area. It just made really good sense to push some of the water that's not being utilized in the western part of the City to be pushed Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 106 of 156 upward. This should be under construction real shortly and really it's going to benefit that major commercial growth over there on Eagle Road. De Weerd: Hey, Brad? Watson: Yes. De Weerd: I don't mean to digress, but in looking at our budgets in some of the other departments that we have irrigation taxes and we were to consider the buyouts so you don't have to pay those every year. Do you lose water rights? Are water rights associated with the irrigation taxes? Watson: Madame Mayor it's my understanding that we — if you opt out — well, you never do have a water right. You have a license to use Nampa Meridian or Settlers water rights. If you opt out, I am not sure — I don't know if I ever asked that question if you can get it back. De Weerd: I guess at some point if you could help with your opinion or expertise or knowledge on if we should opt out instead of paying, you know, these dollars every single year, it makes more sense to opt out, but I don't want to risk losing anything and I didn't think we have water rights, but we do lose any rights to access water that we are not currently accessing, so I just don't know what sense it makes. Watson: You know that's a good point. AT some point we should probably get a listing from finance on — I know Reta has asked me periodically, you know, I have got an irrigation tax due on this piece of ground, what is it? And that's as far as I have gone, but we probably do need to do a complete inventory on it and see where it goes. De Weerd: Well, I am sorry, but it seems like since we were kind of talking about water, I would ask that question. Watson: Sure. The purpose of this slide is to just show a completed well site. I am not sure if you have seen them lately, but this is the type of product that we are turning out now. This is the one in Tumble Creek, sort of kitty corner to Tulley Park. These are really designed to blend in really well into the neighborhood, with the landscaping. Usually we ask the developer what kind of exterior they want — stucco or siding and shingles and all that. This is kind of the trophy whenever we start negotiating with the developer on a well site and what we are going to build in his neighborhood. We tell them to go check this one out. De Weerd: Is that the one that was vandalized? (Inaudible discussion) Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 107 of 156 Watson: Hadn't heard about that one. Nary: Brad, this is probably a reminder, but you know we are selling that other property that has extra property because we didn't want to maintain it anymore. Are we going to run into that when we buy larger pieces or do you think that that's still a better way to go? Watson: Councilman Bird or Nary, sorry. This particular one was an odd situation because this little tiny piece of ground was donated to the City years and years ago at the very, very minimum square footage it had to be to contain a well. What we have wanted to do is increase those and every thing that we have asked for since probably 1998 has been bigger to accommodate either potential treatment that's required by the state or a replacement well. So, in this particular case if this well goes bad and we just can't remediate it or (inaudible) it, we can move their drilling rig north and plunk one down there. If we need to do some chlorine it's not really disinfection because there is no bacteria, but if it turns out that we have to maintain a chlorine residual in the water then we have the space to put in those facilities. No we won't surplus this one. Nary: Okay, thank you. Watson: This is my last overview slide before we actually get into the enhancements. I just want to keep this in here and keep this in people's mind that we continue to bid out a lot of projects every year and very successfully. We had one minor hiccough three years ago that sometimes gets brought up, but we have probably bid out 60 or 70 projects since then very successfully without any protests, without going to court or anything, so I think we are doing a real good job and I don't do this anymore. Lynn and Clint and our consultants are the ones that do it, so I think between them and consultants they are doing a great job. I guess that's a look back on the last year and with that we will turn it back to Gary for the Building Department enhancements. I will be back later. Buildina Department Smith: Thank you, Brad. First enhancement is converting a part-time department specialist right now to a full time position. We presently have two and one half full time positions and we want to make that three. Reason for that is because we have had our department supervisor down there during the days helping out in getting work processed, so that the particular inspections can be made and she needs to be spending her time upstairs, so that is the reason for this request is to change that part-time position to a full time position. The second enhancement has to do with some lease space. We have additional inspection staff coming on board and enhancement #3 will point out one of those positions. We are also still short one field inspector. Is that right, Brad? Affirmative answer Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 108 of 156 Smith: Yeah, one field inspector we are short right now. We haven't hired from the last budget. The additional space that would be required or requested here is 1,000 square feet and we would propose adding that downstairs adjacent to the existing Building Department. That was going to be done in conjunction with the Planning and Zoning's anticipated move to larger quarters. They were looking at moving downstairs before we became advised that the insurance company upstairs was moving out. So, alternatively, and this would go into (inaudible) #5 in the engineering enhancements that Brad will cover that we will want to or propose to take over their space, Planning and Zoning's space upstairs if they are allowed to move across the hall into the vacated insurance company space to facilitate their new staff. I think that was all I had on that. Did that make any sense or is it totally confusing? De Weerd: It's fine. Smith: The #3 enhancement is our — is a position that we want to provide to answer some of the concerns that the Transition Committee brought to the floor in their report. That is to better coordinate the plan review process for commercial plans that come through the Building Department and this position would have several functions. One would be to more closely monitor the time that's being taken review and approve those plans to shorten that time period. This person would also provide a backup to our present Building Official, our present contract Building Official in case he is absent for one reason or another and also would provide some quality control, quality assurance on the inspections that are being made by our contract inspectors in the Building Department. Kind of spot check from time to time. Those are the three enhancements that I have for the Building Department. Do you have any questions that I can answer? Mayor, I will be meeting with Kenny Bowers and Joe Silva this week to discuss the Fire Department review of the commercial plans. At this point just as kind of a side light information, their contract inspector/plan reviewer is spending about pretty close to 40 hours a week, just doing Meridian work. So, I think that with the emphasis that's been placed on the turn around time for plan review and having this Building Coordinator in place to monitor that and have to keep your thumb on it, it can only get better. I think right now it's better than it was. De Weerd: Thank you, Gary. Smith: Thank you. The next presenter will be Rick Clinton our Water Superintendent. Rick, would you like to come forward? Water Department Clinton: Mr. President, Madame Mayor, members of Council. I am pleased to be here. Enhancement No. 1 is a full-time operator, grade 3. We basically have two Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 109 of 156 work person positions right now that are doing operator related work. One of those two work -person individuals recently through a process reciprocity received their level three certification and I really would like to be able to promote him to level three operator's position rather than risking losing him to another purveyor. The other one is for a level one -operator position. What my hopes would be is if these two are funded I would quite likely promote from within and then fill the work -person positions from outside is my goal. Enhancement No. 3 is for radio read equipment. I have got a couple of notes here. We — earlier in the year (inaudible) this summer we were able to move forward with some radio read equipment. Just some statistics that I have, we have added approximately 5,000 new accounts since 2001. We are currently at about 17,000 accounts. We had previously had in our budget request an additional meter reader because we haven't added a meter reader since I took this position in 2001 and I think as a result of our moving forward with radio read, I am very comfortable that we were able to resend that request. This particular request would allow us an interrogator, which I found out just recently in order for our radio reading equipment to work that we have purchased, we need to have this interrogator. So, hopefully it's funded and we will on an interim basis, I hope, be able to rent a radio read capable interrogator to (inaudible) move forward on radio read until October 1st. The rest of the funds in this one are for MXU Units, which are basically the little radio -sending unit that we install on the meter bits that will allow us to start expanding our radio read capability. One other thing that I am hopeful is that in the near future we will be visiting the rates and receiving authority to start charging for those radio sending units with the sale of each new building permit, so from that point forward everything new going in the ground would be radio read. De Weerd: Probably the sooner the better. Clinton: That's my goal. De Weerd: At the rate we are going. Clinton: We are having a lot of accounts. I am kind of moving on through these, I assume you will ask me questions if you have questions. The cross connection control program enhancement — I was at the City Council meeting last week and met with a little opposition and I would like to take an opportunity to explain a little bit about what we are after. I would like to start with perhaps explaining the mechanics of a pressurized irrigation system and how it can potentially, could potentially contaminate the municipal water system. We have got a tremendous amount of the City in Meridian now that is pressurized irrigation. We don't have a real good handle on how many cross connections we have out there, but what could potentially happen is any one of the systems that a local operator, the retired individual from the homeowner's association who would really like to get rid of the complaints from the guy on the end that doesn't have enough water pressure goes out and he turns up the pump pressure just a little bit on his Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 110 of 156 pressurized irrigation to eliminate that pressure concern from that last customer he exceeds the pressure of our water system and we then have pressurized irrigation water pumped back into our municipal water system. It's a profound concern that I have and I think that through this process we can significantly reduce our risk of that happening. There was one other thing that came up the other night was a question about a right of entry. I think Bill raised that question to me. One thing that in our current ordinance that I have been able to find is in Title 9, 1-10 there is a provision for a right of entry for inspection and testing of water line apparatus and you may look at that and see if that answers your questions. Another thing that concerns me about the way we are currently doing it — enforcement is not a customer service friendly activity currently the way we are doing it right now. I think the Mayor could attest to that. We spent a lot of time and a lot of money trying to improve customer service and I just don't think going out and trying to enforce individuals to test their backflow devices is setting well with a lot of people. As I have indicated in my memo to you from a couple of weeks ago, there have been a lot of complaints. I think the final thing that — before we move on actually — one of the key points that seem to, I think, raise everybody's concern last time was this price tag of $200,000 and if we take a look at that from the perspective that it is essentially going to cost a dollar per month, per customer to implement this program and I guess I can't think of anything that will benefit the health of the community for a dollar per month per customer as much as protecting the water system. So, I feel very strongly about it and I just want to make that known. Does anybody have any questions on that before we move on? Okay. Enhancement No. 5 public education water conservation. I think that's fairly self-explanatory. Enhancement No. 6 is an emergency response plan. This is basically a mandate from Homeland Security and it's something we have got to do. The Safety Program, I think, Brad kind of touched base on that a little bit earlier. I think it's — we are making headway on it and I hope we can continue to proceed with what we need to on safety. Enhancement No. 8, Water Right's Adjudication — this is basically in defense of the Snake River Basin Adjudication and our water rights are very important to us. Water Master Plan and Future Needs Assessment — the key purpose in this is to demonstrate the need before a water right application is filed using the delay for an application to be processed. As we all know, new wells are vital to growth. Enhancement No. 10 is leadership training. Gary feels pretty strongly about supporting this enhancement and so I think I am looking forward to doing some leadership training in addition to what the City is doing at the upper management level just with Public Works. Enhancement No. 11 Space Analysis — Brad has got a handout for you. While he is handing that out, I will kind of cover some of the concerns — I will pause for a moment and allow you to review the memo if you'd like. De Weerd: Rick, have you heard from BSU on what their plans are and when they are going to be out? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 111 of 156 Clinton: The only thing that I heard was from the instructor down there who told me it would be at least two years before he was moving, whether the rest of them liked it or not — that it would take him one full school year to move all of his facilities and his students would have to do that. At least from his perspective it wasn't going to be something that was going to happen probably until 2006. Has everyone had a chance to review that? Okay. I think this slide up here kind of demonstrates that some of our personnel do not have adequate work space and in some cases it's starting to cause some conflicts, especially when we have got two operators that are using the break room as office space and sometimes the lunch activities conflict with their concerns about a cup of coffee sitting on their work space or somebody not cleaning up after they make a sandwich on top of their maps. This photograph here on the lower left and I am not sure all of you have been in the Water Department recently, we have basically had to remodel a closet to allow one of our two receptionists to occupy that closet area there so that we could go to two full-time individuals which (inaudible) merited last year. We moved from one and one half to two full-time positions in fiscal year 2004. Then the photograph on the right — my three operators that are occupying what was originally intended as a file cabinet storage area. Fortunately they are not in there all day long, but it's pretty cozy when they are in there. In addition to personnel concerns, desirable security controls cannot be achieved at the present site. I think that may have been addressed in the memo from the (inaudible). We also as you may recall had a mold investigation done just recently by somebody in environmental. I had a phone conversation with him this morning. He has estimated that's it's going to be between $5,000 and $8,000 to remove the mold. He says it may be more than that once it is opened up, if it's more extensive than first estimated — part of the cost is the containment during cleanup of the mold, I guess, in the air. Following the cleanup then we would need to go back in, which we have a current contract for to test to make sure that we have got all the mold and he estimated that at about a thousand, but that's the current contract that we are in with him that we have already executed. De Weerd: Where do you have mold? Clinton: In the ceiling area from the leaky roof over a period of years. The majority of the mold is in the southwest corner where BSU occupies it. There are numerous leaks that are in different areas of the building, but they weren't able to establish that there was mold there, but there is mold in the rafters and dry rot over in the BSU side. One of the things that we are hoping for today is we are seeking direction from the City Council on an existing site verses a new site and we have tabled the space analysis that we currently have until the outcome of the budget hearings so that we can get some direction from you on whether or not it's more cost effective to try and do this mold cleanup, re -roof the building and look at some sort of modifications to the existing site to meet our needs. Nary: Rick, on the enhancement request it says 1.2 million. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 112 of 156 Clinton: Correct. Nary: And is that for remodeling or is that for a new site? Clinton: The 1.2 million, I think, would probably cover either option. Is that correct, Brad? Yeah, that was our intent. So — Nary: So, it would cost — it could cost 1.2 million to just remodel that building? De Weerd: --and expand. Nary: -- and expand? Clinton: Yeah, what our goal was to try and achieve a 20 -year growth rate with this expansion so that for 20 years we could accommodate the fleet vehicles and the expected and anticipated staff additions. Do you have anything you would like to add to that Brad? Watson: Yes. Madame Mayor, Council President part of that — it's not just to expand the building, it was for an additional shop area and additional vehicle storage and some relocation of vehicle storage in the back. It's not just a per foot building expansion. It is a very loose number. It was simply something our architect gave us as a rough per square foot plus this and kind of gave it to us because we didn't get very far in this study. We came to this decision point and didn't know how to move forward. If we told our architect no we are not interested looking at the existing site, go find us something else we knew we needed some input from you before we did that. On the other hand, if we keep looking at this existing site, it's like throwing good money after bad and these things keep turning up and we come back here and you say why didn't you look at an alternative site, well, we would feel pretty silly too. So, we have an existing contract with BRS for about $20,000 — $22,000 to look at the existing site and make it work. They have back with to us with this memo and said we don't think that's the right thing to do. They said that they would — if we had them look at both alternatives, do a fairly detailed (inaudible ------) conceptual look at cost that we would probably need to increase their contract by about 50 percent, so somewhere in the $30,000 to $35,000 range to look at both alternatives. That's kind of the decision we are looking for right now. Do we just look at that existing site for $22,000 or do we go back for a contract amendment and look at both things? Or do we just scrap the site? I don't think that we would necessarily want to do that, not even look at the existing site. That's where we are. That's the main decision we are trying to get here in fairly short order and number two, obviously, is to get the enhancement approved so that either way the study comes out we can move forward this next fiscal year. Bird: Mr. President. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 113 of 156 Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I don't know how bad the mold is — I don't know if Will has known this and let the insurance company know that we got mold in our building. We should. I for one, I don't see moving the location but I think you could through a lot of dollars in that existing building and not have a building worthy of moving into. It's going to depend a lot on how far that mold has went. If that mold has went very far it's got to come down anyway. Myself, I would like to see us pursue the new building with the new shop, design the thing so that it's employee friendly, customer friendly, security friendly and we don't have mold. We do need to let Will know stuff like that there so he can get with our insurance people. Nary: Is it feasible at all for that site — I don't know how large that site with the building is or where the park is and I don't know if there is a necessity for it to be in that location. Is it for it to be there, or it is just there? Watson: Mr. President, I think it's just there. We inherited that back from BSU and it looked like a better opportunity than it was at Bower Street for the Water Department. Nary: I wonder if it's a feasible option to basically — when I used to use that park a lot when my kids were younger and we would go to that park it seemed underused. I know it gets used a little bit more during seasons for soccer and the like, but it's seems underused. Is it feasible to build the building in the back of that park and then you won't have to move the shop and when that lease with BSU expires you can tear that building down to make the park in front. Then you don't have to move everything, you don't have to move your shop you may have to expand it, but you can take the rear section of that park that, at least in my past experience wasn't used extensively and then we could green up the front when that — and tear that building down completely when (inaudible ----) is done. Watson: Right. Mr. President I guess I haven't thought through that particular alternative. There are a couple of site constraints. There is a main sewer — well, that's the old Wastewater Plant, so one of the main sewer trunks for the City runs right through the middle of that park, which would interfere with locating the building a little bit. There is probably some space to one side and I can't recall exactly where it's located. I guess the second would be the access off of — what is that Chateau that stubs right to the north end of that park? It's kind of a bad little spot for traffic, but — Nary: Just a thought. A trunk runs through there you can't build a building right on top of it. I understand that, but — Watson: Right. Meridian Clty Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 114 of 156 Nary: -- it's cheaper since we own it rather than going out and buying another piece of ground and build a building on it. But I agree with Mr. Bird. I think — I would certainly want to explore a new site or a new building at least obviously because we do need to build facilities for the employees as well as the public and the cost of mold and repair and remodeling is going to eat it up pretty quick. Watson: I just want to make sure I understand. I think from what I am hearing, my direction to BRS Architects would be to, well maybe I am not sure what I am hearing. There existing direction is to look at remodeling the building or we increase their contract to look at a new building, whether it's on that site or another site. Do you --- Nary: I guess that's what I am in favor of. Rooftree: Yeah, I think that's what I am hearing; a new building. Bird: That's what I am saying. I don't even want to mess with that. You are paying $22,000? They should be able to design a 200,000 square foot building for that. Watson: Well, the contract that we have, I think, with the existing sum if we don't go down the remodel option then our contract will be fine. We can just go down that road. It just changes the — Bird: I just don't think that we need to be throwing money at (inaudible --- De Weerd: If you have mold that changes everything. Watson: And it was a fairly recent report and we will get it to Will for sure. Any other questions for me, or --? You look like you have one. De Weerd: No, I don't. I am surprised. (Inaudible discussion) Bird: Boy, I tell you it isn't a laughing matter if the right attorney got a hold of it. Rooftree: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Rooftree. Rooftree: Brad I know you are seeking a different direction as well and I am not sure this is the right site myself and I don't know what the rest of the Council feels about maybe citing this building in a complex with the potential new city hall complex. Is that's something we want to contemplate? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 115 of 156 Bird: No reason you can't put it within the city hall is there? Rooftree: Well, that's something I am asking. Bird: Well, you do need a shop, Charlie. Rooftree: And I understand that. Bird: I don't know what that — the last time I was out there that shop wasn't too bad, but it don't look like it's big enough. Rooftree: So, I will just throw that out there for consideration. I mean if we are looking at a new building, it would depend somewhat -- the design would have been somewhat on the site if we are stuck with the site then we are okay, but if we are thinking about trying to stimulate activity in downtown Meridian then you increase the size of the campus for the new city hall and include ancillary buildings for these kinds of things. I don't know. I would think it would certainly benefit the customer that they don't — that if they needed to deal with the Water Department they wouldn't have to try and find this, which is not very easily found. De Weerd: I think that's probably preferred on shut off day. Rooftree: That's probably true as well as cancellation of all phone numbers. De Weerd: (Inaudible ---) Rooftree: Well, that's okay I just bring that up for some direction. You might want to think about that a little bit and come back to us in terms of is this really a good site for this. Watson: Okay, Councilman Nary, I think we can work with the architect to at least get the preliminary stages of the space analysis put together. Maybe the citing part we can look at those two issues: the existing site verses some — I haven't been following where Council is with that and the Hudson group and all of that very well and if there are potential sites, but we can have some concept level analysis of the existing site verses something else, I guess. Nary: I think maybe to sum up at least, it sounds to me like the Council's preferences would be to look at a new building for the facility and some alternative sites. Obviously, that site may be usable, it may not be. There may be other sites. I guess for me, I don't know about the rest of Council, certainly if it is already city owned property it's much more beneficial. If it's not then we may look at some alternatives. As Councilman Rooftree pointed out if downtown city hall site is what we are working on then maybe adding this to that site may be much more beneficial to the public as well. The only other ones that I could think Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 116 of 156 of offhand is the Wastewater Treatment Plant. What did I (inaudible--) Mr. Shawcroft? (Speaker unknown): No not yet. Watson: Yeah, those are all ideas that we can certainly look at a little bit. Clinton: One other thing, I guess before I move on that I do want to maybe point out is that maybe this remediation report that was just issued a couple of weeks ago, I have been playing phone tag with the consultant up until today trying to pin him down on a cost, so I haven't really been in a position where I could provide the Clerk's Office with an estimated cost of damage until today and I just got it by verbal when I pressured him and told him I needed something to come to the meeting with, so — if something in written form is of benefit, I think I could certainly get that. I do have about a 30 -page report. We contemplated whether or not to hand it out here today, but it seemed fairly burdensome, so we decided that we wouldn't hand it out unless Council members requested it. Does Council have any other questions before we move on? Bird: I have none. Clinton: Thank you. Enhancement No. 12 is capital outlay for wells. This is basically just to repair breakdowns within wells that Finance Department should be capitalized rather than the normal (inaudible). Number 13 is new wells and water mains. I am almost thinking that Brad may be able to address this a little better than I can. Do you want to take it Brad, or do you want me to --? Okay — again all the new construction is pretty much done through Public Works, so I think Brad has a little bit better handle on some of the waterline extension activity than I do. Watson: Just real briefly, these are just more growth related projects, well, except for the rehab — that's to go back in and redo one of our wells that doesn't have real great water quality and — De Weerd: Which one is that? Is that the one over there by Cherry Lane Golf Course that we keep getting complaints on? Watson: No, this is Bear Creek. The well in Bear Creek Park. It has some staining issues from what I understand. There is nothing unusual here. We have got the waterline extensions. They include four or five different projects — (Tape turned over) Watson: (inaudible--) don't have a geographic location tied to it at this point, but just the way things have gone over the last four to five years we always need that Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 117 of 156 extra well in there to jump on something if we need to. Well #28 is — Lynn might have to correct me if I am wrong. This is Franklin, Ten Mile Road — is that our--? (Inaudible discussion) Watson: Okay. It was simpler when we only had ten wells. Well #27, which has already been budgeted for is going to be Ten Mile and Franklin kind of in that Black Cat Trunk area and #28 and #29 haven't been geographically pinpointed yet. We probably could do the next one here real quick. We've been putting in a $100,000 each year for the urban renewal waterline projects. This is simply to upgrade, repair, replace antiquated waterlines that need to be done downtown as sort of the vision of the MDC, I guess. We are still kind of waiting for that vision to come to us so that we know what to design too. De Weerd: The whole area. Watson: Well, we can throw a million at it every year and make it all 16 inch, but once we get that real clear vision from MDC then we can hit this pretty hard. This will show up in the sewer or the wastewater enhancements as well. There is a little bit of work being done out of this account. When ACHD tore up Bower and 2nd and 3rd or whatever they did downtown there this summer, we did upgrade some waterline and so there was some money spent out of this account this last year. I think that's it for the enhancements. Do you want to wrap it up? I will let Rick wrap it up. Well, thank you for your time. Clinton: Before I leave the podium I do want to take a moment to express my gratitude to our outgoing director, Gary Smith, for his years of service and just acknowledge this is his last budget presentation and let him know how much I have appreciated working for him. Thank you. We have got a lot of stuff here. Do you need a break? Affirmative answers. Nary: Five minutes. Watson: Okay, that would be great. Five -Minute Recess. Wastewater Department Shawcroft: First Wastewater Enhancement is Phase 1 of the wastewater upgrade. I don't think I have to really spell out for you the dynamics of what the City's growth has been, but one of the things that I did tell Mayor De Weerd was once upon a time and it's still true that for every dollar you spend pumping water Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 118 of 156 out of the ground you are going to spend $2.50 to $3.00 cleaning it up and returning it to the environment. So, that's the fiscal dynamic that we deal with. De Weerd: To a better condition than we got it out. Shawcroft: Absolutely. (Inaudible---) Shawcroft: So, anyway this wastewater upgrade is a substantial amount of money and it will increase our capacity upward of seven to nine million gallons with a peak of twelve. If projections go right, if we can get this built and the ground online by the end of 2006 we should have plenty of capacity in the foreseeable future with a few upgrades on the way. This is the major one. Next is the safety program. I am one of those few people who has the privilege of running an industrial complex and started out a couple of years ago trying to get the safety program in place. We have made a lot of progress and this is to keep that going. Last year I did have — when I checked with HR it was three time -loss accidents and my estimation that is three too many. Consulting: In my consulting budget, I have requested some dollars to defend our NPDS. When it comes up the application is in. Typically, it takes about 2'/z to 3 years to get a permit, so we'll operate on our old one in the interim. It will also — bio -solids go along with that and so does the pre-treatment program. So, that's where those dollars go. Part-time mechanic: A couple of years ago I had three full-time mechanics. One of them quit and we tried getting along with a supervisor and two full-time mechanics and with the way the plant's going, age, new equipment we are going to try and add a half-time person and stay even. Eventually that will, obviously, have to go to a full-time position, but we would like to try the half-time position first. Collections operator I: This one, the UUC, which is the Underground Utility Commission — is that right? Coordinating Committee Council — I used to go to it and I don't even remember the name. But, what most of the cities do is when they do line locates of where the utilities are, especially sewer, they locate the task in these other cities. So, you will go along in the cities and they'll — but the main sewer and then they will put the taps where the taps come off. We don't do that. In our ordinance, we have always just marked the mainline. So, if we start marking the taps as to the other cities in the Valley, we will require a full-time person to do that. We get in the neighborhood of eight to twelve line locates a day on average. Minor capital: these are just miscellaneous things that will be capitalized. The lab would be some testing equipment for phosphorus, new microscope, and traffic control. With ACHD we have a memorandum of understanding that says we will do traffic control when we are in the right of way. That money is to make sure that we can fulfill our obligation under that agreement. The rest is fairly self-explanatory except the mower attachment, I think, and our lawn is quite thick in the front and even though Parks mows it, it doesn't mulch it. So, what we end up with is a lot of grass laying on the surface and it tends to kill what's underneath. So, we have to go and re -mow it or we Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 119 of 156 have to pick it up and move it. So, that's to get a lawn sweeper to pick that heavy grass up. Lift Station SCADA: we right now have, I believe, five lift stations that have SCADA on it. This is to complete putting the rest of those lift stations on. What it will do instead of daily visits or sometimes twice-daily visits will go to, like, once a week or as necessary because the SCADA will allow us to watch how that lift station performs. So, this will save us some onsite visit time and thereby some man hours. Truck Bay Wash Rack: last year we asked you folks, the Council, for some money to enclose two truck bays so that we can keep some of our bigger trucks warm in the winter and when we actually went out to try and do this project we found that "A" it needs to be designed correctly and "2" we had under guessed what it was going to cost us. So, in discussions with Public Works and my own staff, we thought that we needed a wash rack for a long time because what we do is when we need to clean a piece of equipment so that we can repair it or service it, we take it and set it out on the influent and wash it off with our pressure washer and that is against our City ordinance. We don't allow others in the City to do it and we probably shouldn't be allowing ourselves to do it. So, we thought to combine the two into one project and see if we could get those two bays, get them heated and designed in such a way that it can also do a dual duty as a washrag. Nary: Excuse me, John? Shawcroft: Sir. Nary: On that particular one is there some recaptured savings from a prior budget then if we'd already funded —? Shawcroft: Yes, there is $15,000 sitting in this budget this year that we did not spend because once we actually got to looking at it, we knew we were in over our heads. Nary: Great, thank you. Shawcroft: Pretty painfully obvious. Nary: That's an odd term from the Wastewater Treatment Plant Shawcroft: It's an uncomfortable place to be. The next is sewer line construction and as you know these come mostly through Public Works and so, although I have not a lot to say for them that's what that enhancement is for to do certain extensions; and the same with urban renewal, parts of the Old Town. We have a lot of old sewer pipe that needs to be taken out and new put in so that we can get on with that project. And leadership training, which is. Aspire On. The Wastewater Department has already used Aspire On extensively, they have in my opinion been very helpful and I think they are reaping the rewards out there of that and this is for the continuation. There is the summary. I am going to try and Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 120 of 156 get you guys out of here by five, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them? De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess, John, over the last year or so we have had some issues with sewer lines in Old Town. Shawcroft: Correct. De Weerd: And I know you have the money set aside for urban renewal, but can there be some kind of a program looked at in terms of where you set money aside, people that would like to kind of as an insurance type of thing that if something happens they have that money to help with the ---? Shawcroft: Are you talking service lines? De Weerd: Yes. Shawcroft: Their own individual, private service lines? De Weerd: Like when there is more than one house on — Shawcroft: Oh, yes. Bird: Know the situation. Shawcroft: I do De Weerd: And I think that there are some other cities or communities and there used to be grants available and I understand those grants have dried up. Shawcroft: They have. De Weerd: You know, we do need to look at this because I would anticipate that this is not just the only incident that will happen. What can we be doing in terms of anticipating? Shawcroft: As to my knowledge and you would have to check with the City Attorney on this, but to my knowledge, I do not know of any law that prohibits a Council from taking some discretionary action to do such a thing. I know there are laws that, as you are well aware that say what you can and cannot do with it, but I think mostly were constrained by ordinance. So, to achieve that would be mainly a function of the Council. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 121 of 156 De Weerd: I guess I would look for recommendations on what others have done and what this department wants to do. Shawcroft: I will do some research and get back to you. Does that work, or --? I certainly don't have anything at this time in that direction. De Weerd: Well, I didn't know if it had been anticipated. I think I (inaudible ---) of a woman who has continuous problems, not that woman, but another one and you know I think we are paying for it in our insurance claims and we just need to start taking a look at this and see what we can — Shawcroft: Yeah, I know as the ordinance sits now anything that is on their line is their responsibility and that they pay for it and whether or not the City decides that they want to hedge that bet, I say, will be strictly a function of this Council. We can look into it and we can find out what other cities have done, what we can do and what we can't do. De Weerd: Yeah, more of these unusual circumstances where there is more than one user on the line or in terms of where they are backing up on our lines as I understand it and we just keep doing the cleanup, but — Shawcroft: Right. De Weerd: -- that would just be disgusting. Shawcroft: It is. De Weerd: I know it is. I have had it. Shawcroft: Yeah. Unfortunately, you know as it sits at present there is very little that we can do for these people. We can feel empathy for them, we can try and guide them in the best direction, we can try and find them a contractor or at least give them a list to choose from, but at present it is not — if we follow the ordinances we cannot help them a whole lot unless it hits our main, which is unfortunate. But that is the way it is written and until such a time as Council decides to take action to change that then that's the constraints that we live under. De Weerd: I guess if we can have options or examples and certainly recommendations — Shawcroft: Sure. I know that City of Boise goes to maintain it's lines to property line and we don't do that — owner responsibility goes clear out into the right of way to the mainline including the tap and that's — Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 122 of 156 De Weerd: Even if it's down the street and across a couple of properties — Shawcroft: Exactly. Yes. Good point, though. We can certainly investigate that for you. Would be happy to. Nary: Anything else Council? Thank you, John. Shawcroft: Thank you. Watson: I am back again. Just to follow up on that real briefly. There are some other things that I know other communities have done and I hate to even open this can of worms, but like United Water has their leak guard program where you pay another buck or whatever per month on your account and I think it's more or less an insurance fund that pays for your sewer — or your water service. Maybe we can look at some of those programs. The other thing that we are actively doing is (inaudible) all of the Old Town sewer this summer so that we can prioritize and identify where the major problems are and I think that is really going to get us a long ways towards some of these problems — solving some of these problems. Public Works Department Watson: I will try to get through these engineering enhancements fairly quickly. The first three are personnel related. The first one is for kind of a combined position at this point. It's a GIS Analyst/Engineering Tech. They would basically be pulling double duty as we get our GIS system up and going, they would be the main person manipulating the data. You will have to forgive me; I am a little ignorant on exactly what they do. I know what it's supposed to be when they get done, but they would also help the engineering staff with just typical engineering tasks like water, sewer, and modeling, some of those things. The second enhancement is for just an engineering tech to - the intent of this particular enhancement is to find somebody to help Bruce Freckieton in his job. Right now he is doing all of the staff reports for every application that comes through this City. He is obviously a little overloaded. We have three existing engineering technicians that are doing plan review, legal descriptions, pre -cons, record drawings; we found out over the last month that for one of those persons to start assuming Bruce's duties backs everything else up and I intimated to the Mayor last week we are not meeting what I would think would be our timelines for sure — what should be our timelines. But, Bruce is back so hopefully we can get back to where we want to be. Third enhancement is what we are calling a project site representative. This is more than a field inspector. This is somebody that can monitor our heavy construction projects at the Wastewater Plant and the Black Cat Lift Station. The intent of this is to have somebody with some heavy construction experience, maybe some concrete inspection certifications, those sorts of things — people that have run big projects before. The problem we are having right now is that we have so many projects going on and really with Lynn Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 123 of 156 and Clint being the only two engineers on staff to administer those problems — or those projects. They are spending a lot of time doing things that this person could be doing, whether it's verifying quantities in a pay request or just answering contractor's questions. They come up constantly, just hour after hour almost. I am not sure that's the best use of their time. The one thing that I did note on the enhancement is this could conceivably could be — not a temporary, but not a permanent position once we get through the next major upgrade at the plant in this Black Cat Lift Station, say 3 '/2 years from now we will take another look at this position and if there is no heavy construction then maybe it's not needed at that time. There is one item that didn't make it into the enhancement or into the presentation. Gary mentioned during the Building Department enhancements that we wanted to increase the half time Department Specialist to full-time. Well, the great scheme was to move that half time person up into the Engineering Department. It does show up on your summaries in the budget books and it is included in the total amounts, it's just not listed out as a separate enhancement. It looks like it's about $11,000 wage for this part-time person. I think it's in there. If you approve it, it's all good. I just wanted to make sure you knew what we were doing. I debated on this whether to go out of script again at this point or not. One of the things that we are doing is Gary and I have been working with Phil and Josh from Aspire On for several months on some reorganization of our whole department, but it doesn't really touch the Wastewater and Water Departments right now. We don't have it quite ready. I was hoping maybe we could have it for you today, but the whole intent of this is to make it more efficient, obviously, and get people where they need to be and reporting to who they need to be and just make things a lot smoother. So, that is forthcoming. Back to the script. Enhancement No. 4 is GIS Consulting. This is significantly less than it was last year and we will anticipate that this will continually go down as GIS staff comes on board. This would include some training from our consultant, maybe some data conversion. It will never completely go away. There will always be points and time where our GIS staff runs into a road block, whether it's lack of expertise on some certain thing or simply a lack of time. But we think we are on the right track with that one. Enhancement No. 5: you probably had an idea this was coming, based on what Anna talked about and what Gary talked about in the Building Department presentation. Our grand scheme is that Anna would move across the hall in our building and engineering would take over her space, if these three personnel that I have proposed are approved and hired, we are lacking one office for them. We do have a little bit of room where some cubicles could be set up, but often times engineering work is not done very well in cubicles, but I think in the next three to four years we will utilize most of that space. The other thing that I will want to do is bring all our field inspectors upstairs as well. That will allow the building people to all remain downstairs and actually have a place to sit when they are in there reviewing plans. Approximately one-third of Anna's space would be utilized immediately this coming year, if this is approved. The one thing that evidently Gary and Reta spoke during break that my figure is short? Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 124 of 156 Cunningham: Yeah, by $4,800. Watson: I had it $25,200 figure in there; evidently, P&Z is actually paying $30,000 per year on that space. De Weerd: So, add what, $5,000 to it? Cunningham: $4,800. Watson: Enhancement No. 6 is the same — it's really the same thing that you have seen in the Water and the Wastewater, it's just our prorate share of the safety program. This involves a retained safety director by contract. He is involved in training onsite inspections, investigations hopefully not very often, but he would be the one doing the follow up accident investigation to identify how to prevent it in the future. As you'll know we just made that the department -wise strategic initiative No. 1 just across the board. I think we have got a huge buy -in from all divisions in this department to make that really one of our main priorities. Enhancement No. 7 is another thing that you have seen in both water and wastewater. Those are funds for continued leadership training above and beyond what the City as a whole does. I think it doesn't necessarily have to be Aspire On, but that's who we have been working with up to this point. I think we have seen the benefits of working with those too. Finally, No. 8: capital outlay. This is kind of the boring stuff. We need some field inspection equipment. This amounts to some magnetic field locators for our field inspectors and some safety equipment as John alluded earlier (inaudible). Our field inspectors are part of the MOU with ACHD as far as any activities in the right of way whether we are doing maintenance inspection or whatever we might be doing. So, we put $10,000 in there for some of those pieces of equipment and we also, just because we have more people, we are coming up short on vehicles lately. So, we have put in for another Jeep -type vehicle. We bought one used from GSA four years ago or something and I think it was Forest Service surplus. It's worked really well. It's a rough ride, but it works well. So, that's kind of what we are planning on trying to find again. The other one interesting thing and Councilman Rooftree suggested this to Gary and I several months ago, maybe several weeks, I can't remember. We are going to replace the 1986 Crown Victoria, the one that has the paint peeling and it's Gary's baby, I know, but it's time has come and gone. Nary: Sounds like a retirement gift to me. Get that surplus resolution on the agenda and here we go. Watson: One of the things that Councilman Rooftree suggested is that we look into a Hybrid vehicle to replace that Sudan. I don't know think that's a good idea. Being engineers we think that's pretty cool. We'd like to get one of those in our shop and lift the hood and see what's under there. I think that's it, just a summary slide. I think we are pretty well done. I guess John and Rick have both thanked Gary and they think he is going to be done, but he is not going to be Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 125 of 156 done. He'll be back and he will be getting phone calls all the time. We will see if we can suck him back out here again next year this time because I know he enjoys it, I know he does. De Weerd: He'll be bored. Watson: Yeah, he'll be around. Anyway, I am done and I thank you very much. Do you have any questions on any of those? Nary: Council any questions for Brad? Bird: I have none. Smith: Mr. President, Mayor and Council I would just like to make a couple of comments with your permission to close out. Nary: Certainly. Smith: The budgeting process is really an integral and vital part to providing services to our customers and citizens and through the Finance Department under Stacy's leadership and Reta's outstanding help, they have simplified it, detailed it and they have strengthened it and I applaud them for that. I extend a special thank you to Brad and John and Rick and Lynn for all the work that they did to put the elements of our budget together to present to you today. Just a couple of other comments; what we do here is not about any one of us, but what we do here is about all of us as a team and what we do is to provide the best service that we can for our customers and the City of Meridian. What we do we also do for each other because each of us can make each of us better? What you have here in this group is a great leadership team that I am very proud of and I think they are a great attribute to the City of Meridian. We thank you for your support of this department in the past and I am sure it will continue in the future and it's been my honor to serve you and the City of Meridian, our customers and I thank you for that opportunity. Nary: Thank you Gary. Council is there anything else? De Weerd: I think I should clap or something. Bird: What time do we go tomorrow morning? Nary: Do you want to go tomorrow, Mr. Bird? You don't want to finish today? Bird: I prefer to go home and eat. I eat (inaudible). Nary: We can get dinner and not meet tomorrow. I think Councilman Wardle had a conflict tomorrow unless that's changed. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 126 of 156 Wardle: If we could finish this evening that would be fantastic. How long do we think it would take? Nary: Well, I think we have on the agenda review revenue. I don't know how long that will take. Cunningham: She is going to skip that one. She just handed you the handout this morning. Nary: Okay. So, Council I guess it would be helpful to not meet again tomorrow as well, but I mean I can be here if I need to. Bird: Well, if you want to go, President, you are the one calling the shot. Nary: If you think we need a little break or we want to have some time to discuss it we could order dinner. We don't have a meeting until seven, so we have got time. De Weerd: We would probably need to know where we are at. So, I think — we haven't deleted anything, we have added things, so — Nary: Would it be helpful to you, Reta, if we took a few minutes and then we could come back and then kind of see where we are at and maybe we could discuss while off the record about ordering some dinner and maybe we could get this all done today. Recess. Nary: All right it's almost five o'clock and we are ready to continue on with our budget workshop. We seem to be a little in the red. I think Ms. Kilchenmann was just getting a cup of coffee for — (Speakers not using microphone) Cunningham: Are you guys ready? Nary: I think we are ready. Cunningham: Now the Mayor isn't here. Nary: That's okay. Cunningham: Okay, the first thing I did is I moved the $5,000 out of the Council (inaudible) and put in down in the Mayor's budget and I also added $1,000 for their youth council money and then (inaudible) $800 (inaudible-----). Then I also Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 127 of 156 increased the (inaudible) contribution to ($ inaudible). Now in the Police Department I increased the first enhancement to (inaudible-----) ($ inaudible). Fire: I got to looking at fire this morning when they were going through their enhancements and we have not included the FSLA, the 12 hours for each officer. So what I increased are 12 paramedics per one month by $4,000. Bird: Yeah. Parks and Recreation Department Cunningham: On the Parks — on the recreation supervisor, you know she said we were going to reduce that $2,700, but (inaudible---). So, I took that out and now (inaudible -----------) enhancement and so for the general fund summary, here is where we end up: We are going to have a negative $132,(inaudible). Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: On the Parks and if we have plenty of money — would you go back to the Parks there on the recreation supervisor? Council, I thought that's what we had Kathleen doing was the recreation supervisor. Do we need two recreation supervisors in our department at this point? De Weerd: Reta, what was the savings of the Adult Sports Coordinator and the other half-time position? Nary: $2,700. Cunningham: Yeah, it just ended up being $7,700 and then she says that if she doesn't get this position, she also needs that part-time office assistant for another $5,000. So, if we take this one out then we are going to have to add that $12,000. Bird: That's still a $30,000 difference. Cunningham: It's still cheaper. Bird: I don't know. I am asking the rest of Council, what do you think? I am open. De Weerd: (Inaudible). Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 126 of 156 Wardle: Just to answer Mr. Bird's — just real quickly just to answer — is this Kathleen's position? It is not. Kathleen is the Recreation Superintendent. I will give the Parks perspective on this. They would like to take the Recreation Program further such as the Adult Sports and the Adult Sport's Coordinator is the individual who puts together all of the softball leagues and basketball and volleyball leagues. What they wanted to do because they need a second or because they are requesting a second office assistant to help with calls, especially after hours from maybe five to seven o'clock. They are looking for someone to answer the phones and help out in the office. They decided to try and consolidate some of those positions and elevate a position to a supervisory level and the recreation supervisor. That is the kind of the explanation that Doug has given to me. Certainly it's up for discussion and they knew it was going to be an issue of discussion, so it's good that we have this discussion. I just wanted to make sure that we had the Park's perspective on it. Bird: Follow up. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Then what is Kathleen's job description if she is not running these things too? I mean, as a Recreation Superintendent, I don't understand what the job description is doing that. If it isn't part of it (inaudible) running the programs. Nary: There we go. Were your ears burning? The question, Doug, is what's been raised so far is that Recreation Supervisor position and whether or not there is some overlap with the current Superintendent's position and I think Mr. Wardle has stated they really aren't the same positions, but I think the same question now before the Council is if they are not the same position then what's Ms. Keebler going to do? What is she going to be doing differently than this Adult Sport's Coordinator Supervisor position? Strong: That's a reasonable question that's come up on a number of occasions. It's a separation of responsibilities. The Superintendent position, typically, (inaudible ----------- ) for records and services throughout (inaudible), working on agreements within the school districts (inaudible ----------------) and information goes through that (inaudible -------------------------------- ). She is in charge of (inaudible) and information distribution (inaudible ---------- ). This person — the difference is that they are more in the trenches out working with maintenance, planning programs and (inaudible---) out for special activities and special (inaudible ----------------------- ). Calling enhancement will also suggest that this person is (inaudible----------------------------) volunteer program with the department to (inaudible) and maintain and train volunteers (inaudible ---------- ). Throughout (inaudible -------------------------------- ). The duties of each position would be separate with Kathleen's position. (Inaudible-------------------------------) and this person, being a full-time professional focus and other services offered throughout Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 129 of 156 the community. There are a lot of things that we are not currently doing in Meridian and (inaudible----------------------------------------------) programs or activities (inaudible--------------) and certainly (inaudible----) summer -camp type of (inaudible) not just the type of summer camp we are seeing (inaudible) soccer camps and sport camps. This person would work with all those different associations (inaudible) PAL and Meridian Baseball; coordinate their activities with (inaudible--------------------------------), as well as locating poles that aren't being (inaudible) organizations that are (inaudible-----------) that we did (inaudible- --------------- ). A real important aspect of this would be a full-time, professional (inaudible-----------) services (inaudible --------------------------------------------- If that's enough of an explanation? Nary: Sure. It sounds to me a little bit like the discussion that we have a lot that it's sort of the chicken and the egg. I mean, if we don't — we always want to see an improvement in our programs and not a decrease in our programs, but we don't always have quite the level of personnel or the amount of personnel to make sure they can focus on just that and not spread themselves too thin. Is that fair? Strong: I think that is very fair and the thing that I haven't mentioned is that most of what this person would be dealing with would be the programs that would generate revenue. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they would generate revenue that would pay for the position (inaudible). I know that recreation programs typically do that and the recreation (inaudible --------------------------------- ). But there would be revenue generated from registration programs and the service would grow (inaudible----------------) with one person (inaudible ------------- )• Nary: Thank you, Doug. Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Mr. President, just to talk about something that Keith has brought up and we are $132,000 short on our budget. One of the things that we can consider from this position is that, from my opinion, the we are increasing the level of service and that's a goal of the Department, but at the same time to keep up with the level of staffing that they need, we can add a part-time assistant and not necessarily increase the recreation program at this time, but we certainly don't want the Department to fall behind on it's service to our actual customers and so I think they provided us an option in Enhancement No. 6 realizing that it is and would be an enhancement to service if the Council feels that, but if not with Item No. 1 then Item No. 6 is necessary. Doug would that be a fair assessment? Strong: Yes. Now that would be certainly a second choice and would prefer to have a full time person. We have a number of issues going on in the Department right now just with following up calls and activity at the front desk (inaudible-------- ). (Inaudible-----------------) and if we (inaudible) programs after we should continue (inaudible----------------) not just seasonal and it's taking a lot of time. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 130 of 156 (Inaudible----) administrative assistant that does invoices and (inaudible------------- ----) and other local agencies beyond helping out with recreational (inaudible) and it's become a big chunk of our time (inaudible -------------------------- ). Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just one more — I am not quite sure of the entire process of this, but if we consider this when we are essentially saving $30,000. One of the other items on here, Item No. 10 that Doug and I talked just a little bit during our break, the Black Stone Pathway. We have some issues with Nampa Meridian Irrigation and some — the project itself is not flushed out very well at this time, I don't believe. And so, while there is $10,000 in impact fee money, there is also $1,350 in the general fund for operating and expenses that I am not sure merits the enhancement in this budget year. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: And I am not saying that we need to. I just brought this up because I fully agree that we need somebody to do it. This Recreation Supervisor isn't going to help our winter sports at all this year. Could he not come along board until October and if you don't already have your league signup by then the teams are signed up at Nampa, Caldwell or Boise. Thank God Nampa and Boise is running us out and won't let us in, hopefully we can get some of their overflow. But, we have got to have more adult leagues to pay for this. I realize that they shouldn't have to pay for the supervisor, but they should pay for themselves and stuff like that and you don't do it with a six or seven man basketball league or a five or six team. So, I am all for it if we can get an aggressive guy that goes out and gets this stuff. For 30 years I have fought for an adult recreation program in here and then I get too old to enjoy it, but I do have a son that still gets to enjoy it and stuff like that. I am not against having it as long as both of them — as long as we get the programs in place and get them going. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Sometimes the risk you run with having historical knowledge can be a detriment, but you know several years ago we had a much stronger program and we had fewer employees and so I would like to see a strong strategic or business plan for the recreation program that shows what, with milestones and benchmarks on the direction they are going. I know that this program was Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 131 of 156 derailed and it needs to — it's — there is a lot of work that's been done to put it back on track. I would see that right now at this point our — (Tape turned over). De Weerd: -- in some areas has taken giant steps forward. In other areas it was stronger a couple of coordinators ago and so I would like to see the program strengthen with the option six and show that the plan on where we are going and how we are going to get there and have the extra effort in those that we all know that the adult programs do pay for the children programs and once we can strengthen those that this full-time position would be a lot easier to justify and show that it can continue the momentum that's been set. But, right now we are where we were a couple of years ago with even more staff in supporting it and so if we add this additional Item No. 6, 1 think that can again continue the momentum, but help in justifying the request for next year. Nary: I would concur with what the Mayor said. I think we do need to improve the program. I guess what I am not seeing in the material is what's those measures of success? How are we going to know — are we going to have the same discussion next year and saying boy we sure need to get a better program, but we are not really sure how we are going to get there? So, I guess I agree with the Mayor that having those measures would help us be able to evaluate what is the point that the current setup and the way it's being done isn't going to work and that we do need to add the staff to be able to get to the next level that we want to be at. I just don't know what that is. But, I am just afraid that without that we are going to sit here a year from now and say well we still don't like it, but we don't know how to get to where we want to be and so I think, I guess to me, would be a better alternative right now is to have that sort of roadmap of here is what we are going to get to and here is as far as we can go and here is when we'll know that we need to go further than that. Nary: Mr. Rooftree. Rooftree: Mr. President. I will give Doug an A+ for giving us an option on this one and that's a good stroke. I agree with everything that has been said in terms of the recreation program and the need, but I think what the bottom line is that we have got deeds that out -strip our (inaudible) revenues. We can do one of two things. We can increase our revenue projections by that amount or we can cut and I think we had better cut. I think this is an opportunity to find $30,000 and let's move on to the next issue and find out where we can find the rest of the money. De Weerd: Can I make a question on Item No. 11, the Police Station half -acre park and why that can't come out of impact fees? I guess it's more of a technical question than — it is park development, you are bringing additional land on (inaudible) and why it's coming out of the general fund? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 132 of 156 Strong: It's my understanding that (inaudible --------------- —----- -------). De Weerd: Is that right? Nary: I don't know. Bird: Don't they pay back fees out there? On that ground? Nary: Those people at Woodbridge pay impact fees? Bird: I thought they did. Wardle: Yes, they do. De Weerd: I just thought that was something that — Nary: And it is an improvement on the existing park, but the impact fees aren't only for acquisition. Rooftree: (Inaudible) it's new. Nary: Well, that's true. Strong: (Inaudible). Bird: I thought they did. Let me — before we move on — and then I would agree with Charlie, let's get on with this. Our adult recreation from basketball, adult basketball I can tell you one thing I talked to six teams last year that played. If we don't change we won't get them back. So, we need to have somebody strong and I know poor Kathleen got stuck in a corner last year thanks to her predecessor, but if we don't we will lose them all and then we will start over. Strong: Well, I don't know what's going on is (inaudible -----------------------------). Bird: You put a bunch of 20, 30 -year-old big men in a gym that's fit for grade school you get fights, you get that kind of stuff going and you don't want that. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just to, I guess kind of move us along. As I see it if we — I believe the figure that we are looking at is $30,000 in savings, but — oh, we have got it up there? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 133 of 156 Rooftree: Yeah. Cunningham: (Inaudible) number one and number six, I added their enhancement plus the savings from number one. Did you want to take (inaudible)? Wardle: Well, I would also then delete number 10 and then if we can move that $10,000 in impact money up to the Item No. 11 and delete the $10,000 from the general fund — double check and make sure that qualifies, but certainly if it does, that would be a better use of the $10,000 in impact fees than the Black Stone Pathway at this time. That, in just my calculations, is a little over $41,000 swing to where we are trying to get. (Inaudible discussion------------------) De Weerd: I would think it qualifies and so I'd just put it there. Because you will have the Centers project, Multi -Family a block from it, you have Woodbridge a block from it, I mean it's — we'll have residential on at least two sides. Rooftree: Do you know which one it is? My busy --- Wardle: Is that the figure where we are at? (Inaudible discussion) Wardle: So, that was a $44,399 swing? Rooftree: Yeah. So, that's $50,000. Cunningham: Anything else for Parks — or? De Weerd: No. Bird: We got him bad enough. Let's go to finance. We can get finance real good. De Weerd: Doug is looking awfully good today; I think we may move on. Rooftree: Thank you, Doug. De Weerd: And he is ducking over there. Bird: Yeah, don't throw stones at us now, Doug. De Weerd: Weren't there some suggestions in Police? We did add the — Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 134 of 156 Rooftree: We added — De Weerd: We added and we talked about the surveillance — Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Did the new budget figures also figure in the new Police Officers that we had asked for? Nary: Yes. Wardle: They did. Okay. Historical Preservation Cunningham: (Inaudible discussion ---------------). The Senior Center contribution and does it include the Historical Preservation request still? De Weerd: Oh, we can take some out of that. Wardle: Let's go to that. De Weerd: $15,000. Rooftree: $15,000, yeah. Bird: (inaudible ---------- ). De Weerd: Take that 10 and that 5. Bird: Eight, ten, seven and five. Cunningham: (Inaudible-------) want the ten, seven out? Bird: Isn't that what you wanted out? De Weerd: The 10 and the five. Nary: The five would cover the — Bird: (inaudible) — number three, which they wanted. Nary: Right. The other would cover what training or memberships or something like that. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 135 of 156 Berg: $15,050. De Weerd: Yeah, keep two, three and four and take out one and five, which is $15,000. Berg: $15,050. De Weerd: $15,050. Rooftree: Mr. President I would suggest on that Historical Preservation thing — I mean I understand what they are trying to do to register properties, but I have a hard time accepting that the community needs to pay half the fee for registering properties where a private individual reaps the benefit of tax reduction and that sort of thing. Bird: Right. Kilchenmann: They also have $2,000 in the bank (inaudible --------------------- ). De Weerd: That's the Historical Society. Bird: In the first place you need the permission — Rooftree: Yeah, this is different. Bird: --of the owners. Berg: No. De Weerd: It's not? Berg: No. We are required — Madame, Mr. President we are required to have a line item for Historical Preservation — Rooftree: Right. Bird: Yes. Berg: -- and so that's that $2,000. Now, I don't know of anything that says that we keep that in a continuous account. Kilchenmann: Well, we just (inaudible ------------- ). Berg: Correct. So, if we don't use it it goes to capital outlay? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 . Page 136 of 156 Kilchenmann: No, we appropriate (inaudible------) Rooftree: So, they already have a base. This is an additional enhancement so they have a base for their dues, which that's probably where it ought to come out because it seems to me like that's a base budget kind of an item, an annual dues. I just throw that out for consideration. If we do put money in there for site registration, I feel there ought to be some participation from the private individuals that reap the benefit. If it's a commercial or publicly owned facility then I don't have a problem doing that. Nary: Maybe what to do is — I guess it wasn't clear from the presentation if those properties are public properties or — Rooftree: Well, he indicated that he'd talked to two individuals that were willing to register their properties. Nary: So, maybe what we can consider doing is instead of putting $4,000 towards that, putting $2,000 towards that and a directive that we would only match up to half of the half that is supposed to be on the private side, so that would be $500 and then the property owner would have to put in $500 and the Historical Society put in $1,000. Rooftree: I think that's excellent. Nary: The other one, I guess to me — that consultant services or something to preserve the existing stuff. Well, if we don't do it now when are we going to do that? I mean, who is going to pay for that or how is that going to get done? That's material that is going to go away -- Rooftree: Right. Nary: -- if someone doesn't do something with it. That would be the only concern. Maybe $5,500 is too much money, but it seems like there is — it makes some sense, but if there is already an existing $2,000 we could certainly put a small amount towards just that part of it and they would have enough to at least get started with both the registration or if they wanted to look at — Rooftree: So, put $5,000 total for site registry and documentation of existing records, with the stipulation that they would have to have a 50/50 match on site registry if it dealt with private parcels. Nary: Yeah, I would feel more comfortable with that and then we would at least be basically trying to assist, but (inaudible) the whole bill for it. Rooftree: I would also suggest that they are asking for $10,000 for site inventory. At some point and time we are going to have that for grants and some of those Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 137 of 156 kinds of application of what we are going to need in the future, but we might want our Planning staff to investigate the opportunity of getting an art's grant or cultural resource grant of some kind to assist in doing that in the future. I think that's a valuable element and in my opinion I would have put that as number one priority, but — De Weerd: I would ask that this particular portion of the minutes be transcribed for the Historical Preservation Commission so that they have a better understanding of the direction of Council here. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just to — one of the items that they are talking about was for the $5,500 for the consultant services that essentially scan the data that Lila Hill had put together. I think — might be something that as a City we could find somewhere in an internship program or something that they could be utilized in one of those departments. I heard a recommendation that we essentially add $3,000 to the current base budget of $2,000 for a total of $5,000 is that correct? Rooftree: And an additional $2,000 for site registry. Bird: Yes. Rooftree: So, that would give them $7,000 total. Wardle: $7,000 total. (Inaudible speaker): Let's do it. Nary: But, I think if we do as Madame Mayor suggested and we include that as part of that allotment that they'd be looking really towards an intern type of program instead of simply just a consultant agreement. That might make it a little bit better and make their dollar stretch a little longer towards — I think Councilman Rooftree is right I think that survey is a better long-term goal. Now Council there is food that is here. Cunningham: (inaudible). Rooftree: Now are we leaving the Senior Center contribution at 25? Bird: Yeah, but you got to put $2,000 more on the Historical. Rooftree: No, the two is already there. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 138 of 156 Nary: I guess on the Senior Center, I agree with Mr. Berg. I guess my only issue with it and just for the purpose of discussion is if have historically in the last five years given them $15,000 what's our basis to increase it to $25,000. Bird: Because they have got a remodel coming on, Mr. President. Nary: Well, that's what they have a grant for. Bird: Yeah, that grant isn't covering all of the remodel by a long shot. They need to get their garage wired, enlarged and everything else so they can get that big bus in there. De Weerd: They have to expand the garage. Bird: Yeah. De Weerd: They have wiring on other components to the building if that was it. Bird: But they would accept anything, Mr. President, and be very happy to. Nary: And I am not trying pick at anything, just for the purpose of discussion. I mean if we have given them $15,000 and they haven't asked for an increase and they — De Weerd: Well, yes they have. Nary: Well, yeah, okay. They haven't come here and asked for an increase, I J ust didn't know the basis to justify the increase. I am not opposed to it; I just wanted to make sure our record is clear. Bird: Yeah, and if you want take five out of it, I have no problem with that. I think we got a gentleman here maybe that can answer on Fuller Park. That $10,000 and like I said, we don't have a set way of the way we are going to do it, Charlie, but we don't know whether that SWACK is going to be matching or what the deal is. If what you are buying is $20,000 and we are matching with $10,000 and you are matching up with $10,000 or — do you know what the policy --? Because they didn't know and we certainly don't know. Rooftree: Who are you talking about "they"? Bird: The SWACK. Rooftree: SWACK. You know we talked about that recycle program being a matching program, but I don't know that it's within the power of a temporary committee to establish that kind of policy. It seems to me that that's something that the City needs to do by ordinance or resolution. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 139 of 156 Nary: I discussed with them this morning about putting some proposal together and then bringing that back to Council, that's kind of the criteria that it would be. De Weerd: And updating the committee to (inaudible) for something other than temporary. Rooftree: Being on both sides of that particular item, I guess all three sides all surrounding that item, but Fuller Park — the use of that funding is for expansion of playground equipment. If it requires a match I am sure we can come up with the $10,000 match. Nary: Council, I don't want to lose momentum, but there is food here, but I think it will keep if you would like to just,going. I just wanted to let you know. Bird: Let's see if we can't get down here a little bit. Rooftree: What are we down to about 67? Bird: What was that one — did you take out, Reta, for the Police did you take out that security system around the building? Cunningham: No, I did not. Bird: I think we need to take that out, don't you, Council? De Weerd: That's $30,000 — Bird: Yeah, like $31,000 or something like that. Nary: Isn't that off of capital anyway? (Inaudible answer) Nary: It's off of capital. Bird: Oh, that's right. Cunningham: Do you want to take both of them out? De Weerd: No. Bird: No, no. Cunningham: Just the $30,100? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 140 of 156 Bird: Right. Cunningham: Down to 37. De Weerd: Well, I think, too there was a position for a Fire Prevention position that was over priced. Do you have any idea what — I think they have time — Drug Prevention person was around $17,000; if we reduced to at least 8 that certainly puts in a little better — Nary: What if we reduced it in half? Rooftree: Do it in half. Bird: I was going to say do it in half. Nary: Still put it in there that it's civilian fire prevention. Bird: Well, not only that's civilian, but we have got to make sure that they only work so many hours a week. Nary: Right. If you changed that heading to civilian fire prevention and moved it down to that 26,150 or — that seems more in the ballpark of what we are looking at. Bird: If we go part-time, Mr. President, I think that Tammy is right you are looking at maybe $17 to $18,000 is all it would cost. Cunningham: I just divided it by two, so now we are down to $17,000 there, right? Or are we down to $24,000? Nary: Yeah, but if we want to make that smaller we certainly can make that down to 20, just so we know what we are getting. Bird: Well, I think to start out we don't need anymore than that. Nary: Okay, so move that one, again Reta, from $26,150 to $20,000. De Weerd: Let's see what else there — Bird: Let's leave it there for a minute. Nary: All right. De Weerd: You need someone with qualifications. Kilchenmann: Maybe we could start (inaudible-------------). Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 141 of 156 De Weerd: Well, you would probably want to start that Police Officer the same time you do the Patrol Officers. Wouldn't there be some training in that sense? Nary: Right. Kilchenmann: (Inaudible ---------). Nary: It's more problematic, I think though, to stagger one than it is to stagger a group, just from training and the like. De Weerd: Yeah and make sure in that Patrol Officer's you put one as — you change the three to a one. Rooftree: How many infield positions do we get to go into the fiscal year with? De Weerd: Just one that he has a contingent off or out on. You could start in maybe the beginning of the year. Rooftree: No, (inaudible-----) De Weerd: -- (inaudible---------) that wouldn't be that much. Nary: I think the only enhancement that we really have realistically left in that on the table is that Anti -Drug Coalition Coordinator. Bird: Ooh, I don't want to drop him. Because we are losing our SRO's. De Weerd: And our highest crime is property crime and most often than not it's drug related. This is a — Nary: Just mentioning it for discussion. De Weerd: Thank you. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: Going back to the fire. Maybe this year we know we can't buy a fire truck maybe we can knock down that money we are putting in the fire, even though it is capital, that wouldn't take out of it anyway. I was going to say we could take 25 out of it or so. Kilchenmann: We (inaudible ----------------------------------- ). Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 142 of 156 Bird: Oh, okay. Nary: I am just saying this for discussion, not because I am promoting it, but we could certainly move that station 4 back to October 1 and not buy that extra month. We are in the black and it's only a month and it means only opening the station in January rather than December. But it puts us in the black. Bird: I am not too sure, Mr. President, that we still couldn't open it in December. Nary: (Inaudible ----------------- ). Bird: We could be ready to go on board October 15`, get in their training. I am not too sure we couldn't because not all of them are going to station 4. Rooftree: Right. Bird: Only three are going to 4, so you are going to send out — you are going to send the other six that are going to be experienced firemen. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Just my opinion on that is that we're running the pilot program. I understand that we need to cut to meet our budget to balance it, I am not sure — I think the month of extra training even though it's going to cost because I see some additional dollars — I think the cost to make sure that that pilot program is up and running and that those paramedics can complete their duties to protect the public safety of our citizens, I think it's worth it and that's my opinion and I want to ensure also that that fire station opens just as soon as it can. Nary: Well, and I guess I look at it as, you know to me at least at this juncture without knowing any more there is not — there is at least a possibility because we always have this happen sometime that there is delay in opening the station anyway just because of construction. I don't know — I guess I didn't get the sense, maybe I just understood that this was really additional training. My understanding is that we were wanting these online in September so we could open in December. They are going to get three months of training regardless. We train even brand new firefighters. We don't always hire people with experience. We hire people that just come from many other walks of lives and we don't know that we are not going to hire paramedics who have firefighter experience. The month is nice, but in the reality for $72,000 dollars if we move it back to October 15` that it's really going to kill us. I want to open that station south of the freeway as much as anybody because I think it is really important, but I am not sure what else we can do without really actually cutting something. This is really just the length (inaudible). Meridian Clty Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 143 of 156 Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: On the line that you are on and I agree with, I am like Councilman Wardle I'd like to see them get on board as soon as I can, but one fire chief that is doing the paramedics it's shorter time to train and to fight fires than it is to be a paramedic or an EMT. Basically, if we have paramedics we have no medical training that they would need. All we would need to do is to teach them to fight fires and they are all going to just be firefighter's 1 as far as the fireman's classification. I could live with the October 1st, too, as long as we have got it ready to go on board October 18t Cunningham: Okay, do you want me to take it out? Rooftree: Well, if that was the intent, I don't see any reason why it should be in the budget in the first place. Bird: Well, they wanted to go — Nary: They wanted to get them online September 1st to begin the training. They can't actually begin training until they are on. Bird: Kenny wasn't real heart broken over it. Nary: No. The Chief certainly said he would be fine if they had to start October 1st it wouldn't matter. Bird: Yeah, take it out and see what we — we know what we are there. Cunningham: Okay, now you have a positive. Rooftree: Well, I would suggest on that item, you are not going to be able to fill all those positions at once anyway. Nary: Sure. Rooftree: You are talking what, how many positions? Bird: Twelve. Rooftree: Cut it in half. I would be surprised if you could get six online that quick. They are going to be hard to come by. De Weerd: Well, they are going to need to train all at the same time. Meridian City Council Special Budget workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 144 of 156 Bird: We have got to get nine on at least. If not we know we can get by with six because we got three extras, but we don't want to cut it (inaudible--). Wardle: If 72 buys us four weeks of training and if we need 24 to balance the budget and it we can cut that to 38 it will still put us in the black, but we get an extra two weeks of training. I think I could probably live with that understanding that, I think Councilman Rooftree is right and I am not sure that you are going to fill them all at once. We would like to and hope to. Bird: I think you will. Kilchenmann: (Inaudible ---------------------------- ). Wardle: Don't say never. Kilchenmann: (inaudible ------------ ). Rooftree: At that wage? De Weerd: I think that's — Wardle: We have a little bit of money left. Rooftree: That cuts it pretty fine. Cunningham: Okay, now we go to Special Services Fund. What I did there is I (inaudible) push back the assistant planner and that also included a $31,000 dollar reduction in legal fees and then I decreased the growth management consultant. (inaudible ---------------------- ). De Weerd: Yeah. Cunningham: The Mayor (inaudible-------------------) less. De Weerd: Well, the Finance Committee met and I was told that that was the amount Meridian would be asked for. Cunningham: (Inaudible -------------- ---------- ). And then on the Department Specialist we decreased by the $11,000 (inaudible-----) there is a part-time position that will be dropped (inaudible---) when the billing move to Public Works and also dropped the office leased space of $21,000 because the Building Department won't need any additional office space and P&Z goes across the hall and Public Works (inaudible ----------------- ). Wardle: Hang on one second. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 145 of 156 Nary: Wasn't the issue of that $31,000 reduction in legal fees that were not very clear as to how much of that is really going to be taken over by that planner. Isn't some of that the actual lawyer that sits in the Planning and Zoning meeting? De Weerd: Yeah, that's --- Bird: I don't like seeing that stick in there. De Weerd: And that's what I told Anna to begin with is, you know, it has to be based on the merit of the workload and not just an offsetting by — and you know that's why she focused on their workload with or without it to justify the need for it. Cunningham: So, you are saying — add back the $31,000? De Weerd: Well, I just — it's not — they charge us not just Marlene's time — Nary: Right. De Weerd: -- so that's misleading. Cunningham: (Inaudible). Nary: And we may see some savings if, but someone is going to type it whether it's Marlene typing it or somebody else typing it, there is an expense. Yeah, I don't think taking it out probably at this juncture would make much sense. De Weerd: You could take out that withdrawn by Mayor, though. Cunningham: Okay, and they would still have $50,000 that they would need to put into the kettle. Also, I talked with Gary and he is going to get back to me on the (inaudible) because right now the Building Department is paying the rent for Public Works and so he said he wants (inaudible) square footage on how much Public Works actually have and how much the Building has. So, we are going to move some of the rent in their base. De Weerd: Now what I didn't understand is when they talked about the increased lease amount, he talked about that they would be filling it within the next three or four years. Well, I'd hope they are not there in three to four years. If Keith does his job right. Bird: What are you talking about? De Weerd: Well, I understood from that lease that they were — that they are leasing more space than they need because they will grow into it in the next Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 146 of 156 three to four years. Well, I hope that we are in a city hall by that time. We are leasing more space than we need. Bird: Next year at this time we will be second — two stories up and will be going, if we can find the steel. Nary: Well, we have been here all day. De Weerd: Well, that would be awfully hot. Nary: So, that puts us $50,000 in the black for the Special Service's Fund? Cunningham: Yes. Bird: The problem is their revenue — this is strictly based off of revenue and if their revenue isn't conservative — De Weerd: Their revenue is conservative — I mean we have blown our revenue budgets for Special Services this year. Bird: Yes, we have. De Weerd: Incredibly. Kilchenmann: The thing you have to remember is that P&Z is (inaudible) by the Building Department. Bird: Yes. Kilchenmann: So, whenever it gets to the point that the Building Department — if things aren't growing like they are, P&Z will not — we will have to make some changes. We have to move into the general fund or reduce the staff or something. De Weerd: Certainly understandable. (Inaudible discussion ----------). Nary: We didn't talk a great deal — just for discussion purposes, Council, we didn't talk a great deal about that code enforcement officer. Bird: I think we have dropped it somewhere along the line. Rooftree: Well, that's because we didn't have fees in place to support it. De Weerd: Well, I think we all believed in the code enforcement officer and we need it. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 147 of 156 Nary: Well, we currently have one full-time and two part-time. So, this is an additional full-time and continue with the two part-time. Again, I am not married to any of it. It's just for the purpose of discussion. Is everybody comfortable with that? De Weerd: Do either full or part -times want to — is it better to increase one from part-time to full-time? Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: And I don't know the answer to that question whether it would be better to delete one part-time position and create one full-time, but I do believe we had a presentation not too long ago from Mr. Venneman and in my opinion it seemed to me that that department was severely overworked and really just trying to meet the needs of current violations and not getting ahead of any new ones. De Weerd: And based on the number of emails and letters I get in my office, I think that's kind of an understatement. Wardle: I believe it. Bird: Well, I think they are so — I think he is so busy that he doesn't have time to take care of the — the only thing he just puts fires out. Kilchenmann: Well, Anna — (inaudible ----------------------------------------- ). Maybe it would be better to have two full-time and not have the two part-time. She felt that the full-time person was (inaudible -------------- ). Bird: Stacy, turn that microphone on. I couldn't hardly hear Doug and I can't hardly hear you. I know my ears are bad, but — Kilchenmann: Okay, I will start over again. Nary: Here is the request is in the police section. Kilchenmann: Yeah, we should have had the — the police didn't address this one, but Anna was just saying that she felt like maybe having two full-time people and another person like Joe Venneman might be more effective than the two part-time people currently are right now. Bird: I agree with her. Definitely agree with her. Rooftree: But you'd have those savings. Bird: That's right, Charlie. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 148 of 156 De Weerd: We should probably touch bases with the chief tonight if he — just to verify that. Kilchenmann: Yeah, we could. We don't have to have this completely — Nary: Here in the write up it says that one of the part-time positions wants to move to a full-time position. Bird: Is that in the police? Nary: Yes, it's in the police section and in the write up it indicates that the — it should be noted that one of the part-time code enforcement officers has expressed the desire to move to a full-time position. The Department would request that the funding for the two part-time positions remain intact. So, this would be basically moving one up to a full-time, still having a part-time so they would hire another part-time officer. De Weerd: I think we should move the part-time (inaudible). Well, you can go ahead and do something and we can run it by the Chief and see if he wants to provide any further information that we can (inaudible) out to. We want to publish this by the end of the month, is that it? Bird: Yes. We have got to. De Weerd: So, you can make your recommendation and if he needs to come back and comment to that recommendation, we can have him do it at the next Council meeting. Nary: Yeah, because we can always cut it back to just having two full and two part-time to go to two full-time and one part-time, but we can't do it the other way. Bird: That's right. Cunningham: At August 13th I need to have the notices to Will's office. August 1 oth you guys are actually going to adopt the numbers. Bird: We needed a couple of days ahead of time so we can see how smart we are. Rooftree: See if they still add up. Bird: See if you guys have pulled something over on us. Kilchenmann: Yeah, sometimes, but after this many hours they don't add — we go back the next day and like "who did this"? Where were our heads? Bird: Well, I know you sit in there and plot against us all the time. Kilchenmann: I do. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 149 of 156 Nary: They put back what we took out — it just comes out of finance. Kilchenmann: We do, that's how we — Bird: Finance, that's the one we got to look over twice. Nary: Well, I thought we took that out, I guess we didn't. Cunningham: Okay, you guys want to go to Enterprise? Bird: Please. Cunningham: Okay, in Enterprise we didn't make any changes. So, let me know if there is something you want to do with this. Nary: Based on their revenue projections, where does that leave us on the bottom line with what they have requested as enhancements because I didn't see anything that ended up feeling like --? Cunningham: We actually broke up their money — operating money and assessment money and so — Nary: Pull the microphone over there, Reta? Cunningham: Oh, yeah. This year we broke up their monies and we have operating money and assessment money and then we also broke up the budget the same way. So, in both operating and assessments they are going to go into their fund balance or into their retained earnings for them. I listed down here what their retained earnings are. They currently, at the end of last year they had 38 million and they have 14 million that they were carrying forward, so it left them an unrestricted of 24 million and they want to spend 12 million for next year. Wardle: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Wardle. Wardle: The one item that I saw in here that we did have a little conversation on wasn't in this meeting, but it was in a pre -Council meeting or in the Council meeting was the cross connection for — in the Water Department. De Weerd: The backflow of $210,000. Bird: That's $210,000 and I have a hard time in finance when I had to pay for my deal. But, this is something that we have known for the last four or five years that it was going to happen — it had come to a point where we, and don't get me wrong, they are probably not going to spend fifty percent of this year; we just got to budget for it because we have got to stay up with the Wastewater Treatment Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 150 of 156 Plant. We have got to start redoing downtown sewer and water, it's falling apart and we have known this is coming. So, I think it's something that — Kilchenmann: The only caution that I would have not necessarily for this year, but in the future is that we not go negative on the operating side — Bird: Never. Kilchenmann: They are negative this year and — Bird: They are negative and we knew that, but one time in ten years is not going to hurt us, but we don't want to do it two years in a row. Kilchenmann: Correct Bird: And if we get the fees in line like we'd been asking our revenue is going to Kilchenmann: Should pay for the expense, yeah. Bird: You probably are not going to have to use that much fund balance by a long shot. I mean, you take 237 building permits and even if the fee was $500, look what that brings in. Kilchenmann: You are right. They won't spend that this year. Bird: Well, it's impossible. Kilchenmann: Yeah, they spent like a tenth of the amount we are carrying forward. Bird: But, we have got to stay on top of this plan. Because if we ever get behind, we are in trouble. It's very important and the first time we don't get a good reading off on our water out there, we are in real trouble. Mayor De Weerd will really find out what ringing phones can do. De Weerd: We don't want that. Bird: I don't — I thought everything they presented us with was necessary this year. I thought they thought it through real well and they are trying to stay on top of everything. Wardle: My comment on the cross connection fee: the $210,000 was an estimate. We don't know what that's going to get us or how far it is going to get us, but I — my thought is that I can only imagine that if we can undertake this and don't somehow offset it with the water user fee because that's what it's directly affecting then this will just build and build and build within the operating budget. Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 151 of 156 De Weerd: Certainly need the liaison to make sure that the appropriate ordinances are — Rooftree: They are working on the fee structure. De Weerd: And we just need to get that fee quickly adopted at the same time that this budget goes into effect, so that we can assure that no one subsidizing anyone. Well, not subsidizing, but — Bird: Are you going to pay me back, then? De Weerd: No. Rooftree: No, it's not retroactive. De Weerd: I guess we award the procrastinators. You are an elected official you should stand above the rest. Bird: But, at the same token my only complaint on that whole thing is you talk about babysitting people; we are being the biggest babysitting service in the world for these people that are too lazy. They know — don't ever kid yourself, they know that they should get that checked and we will take the responsibility and then when something fouls up, whose liability comes back on? Don't come back on mine, it comes back on the City of Meridian's. I just — I really have a problem with it. Kilchenmann: Is there a fee to go with this? Because we only have — is there some kind of fee? Bird: They have not got a fee out yet. De Weerd: They are working on it. Rooftree: Yeah, it's something around a dollar a month. Cunningham: It was in the proposed fees they gave you? Rooftree: I don't think so. Wardle: Just to note that while it's in the proposed fees, all the users will pay for that, however, I don't have a cross connection control — De Weerd: I don't either. Wardle: -- and I don't know how many other people do, but we will be subsidizing it to protect our water supply, but at the same time it is a subsidy. Bird: Why don't you have a cross backflow? Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 152 of 156 Wardle: My irrigation system1s not hooked to the City water. De Weerd: He has got pressurized irrigation. Bird: Mine is hooked to the City and that's the only thing. If I don't have pressurized, why should I have to have one? I am the least one to ever get one back in there. I think — De Weerd: Well, it doesn't matter. I guess — Wardle: Sorry, that was just my point. De Weerd: -- the whole premise to this and I think we all agree is this is a necessity to protect the integrity of our drinking water and right now having half a program doesn't do that. Rooftree: Well, and I think that's right. We either have a program or we don't. We recognize its potential threat to our water system, we know what we have in place is not working and probably will never work, so this is I think a reasonable approach to get those inspections done and take care of those issues that are out there that need to be remedied where we have cross connections that don't have any devices to meter and to make sure that the owners get those installed and keep that part of the ordinance in place to make sure that we remedy the situation and once those devices are installed and the City has taken on the responsibility of checking to make sure they are functioning on a manual basis. I mean there is a gob of sprinkler systems out there on the City system that don't have any record of (inaudible) at all. A lot. And in Shaun's case and the Mayor's case and my case we are not hooked to City water, but there is a potential that at some point and time somebody that's on pressurized irrigation could cross connect and those are the ones that are really the potential disasters. De Weerd: I guess, on Item #11 with the expansion as — I am not suggesting that's deleted, but I certainly appreciate — (Turn tape over) De Weerd: I don't want any decisions made immediate without that. Rooftree: In terms of that amount and that particular item, I would be very surprised if we were moving towards contract for a new building next fiscal year. There is a million too that could be downsized for maybe an amount to take care of site development and architectural. Bird: The only things is we can move the administration, Mayor, into the city hall stuff, but I don't believe that with a city hall downtown that we want to shop when all the trucks are running out of that location and that's what we — so, we have got to have a shop with some kind of deal and I am like Mr. Rooftree, whether we stay there or we go out to Wastewater Treatment we don't need that much Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 153 of 156 ground and Wastewater Treatment does have 47 acres out there and where the guys could run out of, but I always felt all along and I thought that was your plan that we were bringing the administration and all that in. De Weerd: It was on the administration, but as I understood even the consideration that that shop might even be in the vicinity of the city hall, you know — Bird: (Inaudible). De Weerd: Yeah. I guess just to keep the options open. Bird: I agree with it and I am like Charlie, I don't think — if they spend 250 towards that 1.2 million dollars I would be shocked this fiscal year. Rooftree: Yeah, I would be too. We can have that as a number to play with if we need to. De Weerd: Well, there weren't any red flags and Charlie and I have talked about the inter (inaudible) fund, budget and I know he felt comfortable about what was in it, so if no one else has any other items, I think we are done. Nary: Are we done? Cunningham: I think we are done. Nary: Well, 10 hours later it appears that we are done. Bird: Mr. President. De Weerd: I am sorry, Keith, just one more comment. This year as we presented the budget as I told you I had wanted to present it with us in the black instead of slightly in the red, but you guys got us even further in the red to begin with. But, you know we did sit down and have the directors go through and not look at it, as "I am an island". They worked with the budget and the picture and even next year's budget request in mind and so this was a product of a real team effort and I was very proud to present it to you as our recommendation for your consideration and would like to thank finance, as usual. They have done a stellar job and to our department directors in coming in and telling you of their accomplishments over the last year and kind of their vision to move forward with their departments. I think they did an excellent job and it was a good, positive experience. It just gets better every year. So, I appreciate your efforts and hard work. Rooftree: Madame Mayor if I might offer an observation. Having been here four years ago, the improvements that you have made are beyond words. It's a fantastic product that you have produced and my appreciation goes out to the Finance Department and the department directors for bringing this together. This Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 154 of 156 is really a first class budget presentation and document compared to four years ago, where it was very laborious and difficult to understand what was even going on. Excellent job. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would concur that I have seen this thing really got out. I think that one thing that we are forgetting is the reason we can have a nice, conservative budget is because of the directors and the employees that we have got within the City. I think that this year has been better because of our management of the Mayor's office. I hate to say that, I hate to give her credit but she has done a great job along with all you directors. Stacy and Reta, you guys have done a tremendous job. This is my seventh budget and by far the easiest and the best one and I certainly appreciate it. If you have to sit here for 24 hours and don't kid yourself we have set for 24 hours or more and never come up with a budget like this, but because of the leadership that we have got here now, I just appreciate it very much. Nary: Speech, Mr. Wardle. Bird: Don't give her any more credit; her head is going to get this big. Wardle: Other than I like the fact that we have got a new fire station, we put some more officers on the street, got some parks, have some department enhancements and didn't need to raise the levy assessment. Rooftree: And we are right on revenue projections. Bird: We are right on revenue. Kilchenmann: And we are done. Nary: We got it all done in one day and the other thing I will add is that without any concern or any batting of an eye of having merit increase money available, having enhancements for employees available that is not common. If you go to the East that isn't very common and that is good and that's good because I think to add onto what Mr. Bird said, nothing works without the employees that work here and so we couldn't do any of those things without the employee's. So, I think that is another testament to the directors, the Mayor, the budget folks and brining us something that was realistic. I mean we have made some cuts, but not very many, I mean, just some things that we can do a little later; but a very realistic — this is the only third one I have done, but by far really the easiest other than a long day. De Weerd: I would also mention that several things Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 155 of 156 Bird: I thought we were done. De Weerd: -- since when has that stopped? There were no limitations on timing. I would like to say that, you know, finance has been working on some policies looking at how we can get better economies (inaudible) scale with. Purchasing or looking at it in terms of the quantity of purchase and we have tackled the clothing policy, which you hope to see here soon. We have employee incentives and as you saw at the picnic, I think those longevity awards were very well received and appreciated. There has been a lot of progress. Department directors have also taken a look at line items and where in the past we have seen some pretty solid padding going on. It's really been taken out and people have been trying to look at each line item with a realistic eye; and we are going to be looking at some fix line items as well on controlling costs in those areas that you can really control. So, anyway, I appreciate your time, Council. Nary: If there are no more speeches, Mr. Bird, did you have a motion? Bird: Yeah, I do have one thing to say and I hope the Mayor will do this. All the employees need to realize that they are getting a three percent over the board raise and I am very proud of that and I am proud of the employees and the directors for being able to do that. I hope that the Mayor will get it out there to everybody. With that, I move that we adjourn our special Council meeting. Rooftree: It's been moved and seconded to adjourn the Special Council Workshop for the budget. All those in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED. ALL AYES. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:10 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) i®¢ MAYORLA7Y DE WEERD DATE APPROVED ATTEST: L `o`G`•( OF MERia�''',, WILLIAM G. BERG, J , CITY CLERIE SEAL e CbC1 VTY Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop Meeting July 13, 2004 Page 156 of 156 Indy department Reference Department Pa e s Parks & Recreation 1, 11, 127 Sanitary Services 6 Police Department 22 Fire Department 39 Finance 62 IT 66 Human Resources 72 City Clerks & Other Government 74,78 Historical Preservation 79, 96, 134 Mayor's Office 82 Planning & Zoning 86 Public Works 102,122 Building 107 Water Department 108 Wastewater Treatment Plant 117