HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-03-28Meridian City Council March 28, 2017
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday,
March 28, 2017, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Joe Borton, Genesis
Milam, Luke Cavener, Ty Palmer and Anne Little Roberts.
Others Present: Bill Nary, C.Jay Coles, Jaycee Holman, Bill Parsons, Jeff, Parry
Palmer, Warren Stewart, Robert Simison, Todd Lavoie, Crystal Ritchie and Dean
Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X_ Anne Little Roberts X _ _Joe Borton
X__ Ty Palmer X_ Keith Bird
__X__ Genesis Milam __X__ Lucas Cavener
__X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: I will go ahead and start tonight's meeting. For the record it is
Tuesday, March 28th. It's 6:00 o'clock. We will start with roll call attendance, Mr.
Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us
in the pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Community Invocation by Larry Woodard, with Ten Mile
Christian Church
Item 4: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 4 is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: On the Consent Agenda 5-K is resolution number 17-2000. Under 7-B
resolution is 17-2001. 8-A and 8-B the applicant is asking for those to be
continued to the 18th and C also. We don't have an ordinance number for 10 -A,
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but we will get one before it's read. With that I move we approve the amended
agenda.
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as read. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of March 14, 2017 City Council
Workshop Meeting
B. Memorandum of Understanding Between the Meridian
Speedway and the City of Meridian Regarding Joint
Presentation of July 4, 2017 Event
C. Acceptance Agreement for Display of Artwork in Initial
Point Gallery, Meridian City Hall between Erin Pietsch,
November 2017
D. Fire Department Data Management Services
E. Development Agreement for Blakeslee Commons
Subdivision (H-2016- 0066) with John Blakeslee(owner)
and Global Senior Housing, LLC (Developer) located on
the south side of E. Ustick Road between N. Locust
Grove Road and N. Eagle Road in the NE 1/4 of Section
5, Township 3N., Range 1E
F. Agreement with Capital Christian Center, Inc. For Use Of
Kleiner Park For Capital Community Egg Hunt on April
15, 2017
G. Lease Agreement for Crop Farming Operations Between
Blue Diamond Turf LLC and the City of Meridian for the
Borup Property
H. Memorandum of Understanding Between TVG Boise,
LLC and the City of Meridian Regarding the 2017
Meridian Youth Farmer’s Market
I. Agreement for Professional Services Between the Boise
Softball Umpires Association and the City of Meridian
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Regarding Softball Umpire Services - Project Number
10476.c
J. Memorandum of Agreement between the Idaho State
Historical Society and City of Meridian for Meridian
Walking Tour Updates
K. Resolution No. 17-_______: A Resolution Amending the
Community Development Block Grant Program Year
2015 Action Plan; Authorizing the Mayor and City Clerk
to Execute and Attest the Same on Behalf of the City of
Meridian; and Providing an Effective Date
L. Final Plat for TM Creek Subdivision No. 2 by SCS
Brighton, LLC Located Southeast Corner of W. Franklin
Road and S. Ten Mile Road
1. Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Nine (9)
Building Lots and Two (2) Common Lots on 9.63
Acres of Land in the C-G Zoning District
M. Final Plat for Silverwater South (H-2017-0025) by Trilogy
Development Located South of E. Victory Road Midway
Between S. Meridian and S. Locust Grove Road
1. Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty-Eight
(48) Building Lots and Four (4) Common Lots on
12.08 Acres of Land in the R-8 Zoning District
N. February 2017 Financial Reports
O. Approval of Finance Department Vendor Payments in
the Not to Exceed Amount of $1,005,593.78
De Weerd: Item 5 is the Consent Agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: 5-K the resolution number is 17-2000 and with that I -- and also we, under
the Consent, are approving the February 27th Financial Reports and the Finance
Department vendor payments reports. With that I move we approve the Consent
Agenda and for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest.
Borton: Second.
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Mr.
Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little
Roberts, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 6: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 7: Community Items/Presentations
A. SWAC: Proposed Community Recycling Fund Project –
Recycle a Bicycle
De Weerd: So we will move to Item 7-A, which is -- we have the chair of our
SWAC committee here -- or Commission. Steve, welcome.
Cory: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you so much for giving me
this time to be in front of you. I am Steve Cory and I am the chairman of the
Solid Waste Advisory Commission and I apologize I have been before you way
too much in this is very short year. But I have a very energetic and active
commission and I bear greetings from them and they would like to go ahead and
present you with some -- a project that they think would be beneficial to the city
and to our mission to go ahead and divert waste from the landfill . You have in
your package a copy of an article that was in the Statesman and it does a very
good job of documenting where -- how we got here. I will highlight a few things.
Over a year ago Republic Services in general and specific Rachele Klein noticed
that there was a great number of bicycles coming into the transfer station and
they were being sent up to the landfill. But most of them were in very good,
maybe needing a little bit of cleaning, maybe less so in need of having the tires
repaired or inflated. Maybe the seats had a little bit of a tear in them or they
needed some new brake pads, but needed very little work to make them
functional again and so Republic created in area and started encouraging people
to put their bikes over in that area and the observation was ver y appropriate.
The number of bikes that were put over there grew very quickly. Republic, of
course, is not in the business of rejuvenating bikes and someone -- I want to
acknowledge Rachele Klein, the person who I'm talking about and thank her for
this opportunity that I am presenting to you and they were blessed with the
situation that one of our citizens stepped forward and started to take some of
these bicycles and rejuvenate them and it was such a good fit and it was doing
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so much work that to our commission and Republic were happy to go ahead and
promote Ken Pearson to be given a Star at this year's award ceremony and he
was selected to be one of the citizens given a Star Award.
De Weerd: And, then, he went on a mission, uh?
Cory: Well, yes. So, that puts us back to square zero with an amazing
accumulation of bikes and in need of some help to go ahead and rejuvenate
them, which led to the article that was in the Statesman. The good news out of
that is that we have actually had a couple of individuals who are technicians that
have stepped forward and said that they would like to basically teach someone
by making them do the work on these bikes, to go ahead and get a little bit of
experience on maintaining their bicycle, and so we went to work very quickly and
particularly Andrea Pogue and Rachele Klein working with Parks and Rec.
Renee White is here also from Parks and Rec and they identified rather quickly
an event coming up later this month -- or in about a month, the Unplugged and
Be Outside activity that's occurring on the 22nd of April and it really opened up
this opportunity of having the technicians there and some people that would learn
how to go ahead and use a bike and maybe would use the bike here in the
community for transportation or recreation or whatever and so details started
coming together as far as having a sign -up procedure and having the people
present. We had hoped over the course of the four hours to maybe divided it up
into half hour segments and have about 16 people be able to be served . The
technicians tell us they think that it may be no more than ten that we can
probably pursue, but somewhere in that range to kind of initiate a plan to go
ahead and rejuvenate some of these bicycles and get them out to people for
transportation or recreation. This is kind of an interim deal. We are told that
there are some things that may be coming up later in the year that may step up
into this slot if we got -- well, anyway. And so, you know, we have been -- we as
a commission have been watching this whole activity and wishing we could be
involved, not having much in terms of resources, but we have started having
some cash inflow to the community recycling fund and we felt that assisting in
terms of the fact of parts. Basically goo for the tires or brake pads or some of the
other little things -- pieces and parts that would be necessary would be what we
could possibly do and so I stand before you on behalf of the commission, we
have drafted a resolution here that asks for two things . One of them is your
permission to participate in the activity that I have described and to give us the
authority to use up to 500 dollars from the community recycling fund to buy parts
necessary to go ahead and rejuvenate these bikes and with that I would stand for
questions and certainly feel free to ask the compatriots that are here to support
me.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Council, any questions?
B. Resolution No. 17-______: A Resolution of the Mayor
and the City Council of the City of Meridian Approving a
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Community Recycling Fund Application for the Project
‘Recycle a Bicycle Event’ Sponsored by the Solid Waste
Advisory Commission and Funding Authority of $500;
and Providing an Effective Date
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Milam.
Milam: I didn't see any questions, but I -- Steve, I just think this is a perfect fit all
the way around with Unplugged Week, with the parks and a great way to use
community recycling fund dollars. I think it's a perfect fit for the community all the
way around, so kudos to your team. And if anybody doesn't have any questions,
with that I move that we approve Resolution No. 17-2001.
Bird: Second.
Little Roberts: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a number of seconds to approve 7-B. Any
discussion? I guess other than kudos to SWAC for another program or project
that is -- is really intended to reduce the flow into our landfill and make it usable
again. I told my neighbors about this and so they will be there with their broken
bikes and learning how to care for them . So, that's -- that's great to -- to see the
collaboration. So, thank you to SWAC. Thank you to Renee and -- and Colin,
thank you for being here and it's continuing to expand that event to serve -- better
serve our citizens. So, thank you. Mr. Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little
Roberts, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. Thank you.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 8: Action Items
A. Final Plat for Volterra Heights No. 3 (H-2017-0023) by
Cottonwood Development Located South Side of W.
McMillan Road and West of N. Ten Mile Road
1. Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Twenty-
Seven (27) Single Family Residential Lots and Three
(3) Common Lots on Approximately 7.68 Acres in the
R-8 Zoning District
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B. Final Plat for Vicenza Subdivision No. 5 (H-2017-0022) by
Cottonwood Development Located North Side of W.
McMillan Road and East of N. Black Cat Road
1. Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Twenty-
Two (22) Single Family Residential Lots and Four (4)
Common Lots on Approximately 7.49 Acres in the R-4
Zoning District
C. Final Plat for Vicenza Subdivision No. 6 (H-2017-0021) by
Cottonwood Development Located North Side of W.
McMillan Road and East of N. Black Cat Road
1. Request: Final Plat Approval Consisting of Forty (40)
Single Family Residential Lots and Four (4) Common
Lots on Approximately 14.88 Acres in the R-4 Zoning
District
Cory: On behalf of Republic Services and Parks and Recreation and SWAC we
thank you for your support.
De Weerd: And thank you, Rachele, for being here. Item 8-A was requested to
continue to April 18th. And, Bill, what was this request based on?
Parsons: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I will try to give you the high-
level version of it, but, essentially, what has happened is the Council acted on
some previous final plats a year or so ago and so when these three final plats
came into our office we realized that the boundaries of this plat didn't comport to
the -- the previous boundaries that you approved with the subsequent plats and
so the applicant is going to have to come back through on the 18th was some
final plat modifications in order for you to act on these final plats that are being
continued to that hearing. So, we are stepping backwards a little -- a little ways
to go forwards on the 18th and that's really the gist of why we are asking for that
continuance.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Council, any questions? If not, I would entertain a
motion.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: With your permission I would like to make a motion on all three at the same
time if we could. They are all the same -- well, they are just different numbers.
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De Weerd: I have no opposition. Anyone from Council? No? Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we continue the final plats on H-2017-0023, H-2017-0022 and H-
2017-0021 until April 18th, 2017.
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to continue these three items to April
18th. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 9: Department Reports
A. Water and Sewer Service to an Un-Annexed Property at
5035 W. Franklin Road
De Weerd: Item 9-A is under our Public Works Department. I will turn this over
to Warren.
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, you may recall a couple weeks
ago I was here in front of you and -- did you catch the first part or do I need to
say it again? I was here in front of you -- there was a gentleman that was out on
the end of Franklin Road near the boundary of where the City of Meridian is on
the Franklin Road project that's being built right now, excuse me, that had
needed to have his water system connected to the City of Meridian. At that time I
also mentioned the fact that ACHD, in the process of the construction of Franklin
Road, had wiped out the septic system for his neighbor across the street and that
he would be coming in as well and so this particular request is for that property .
He would like to connect to both water and the sewer services for the city. ACHD
will be paying those fees associated with the connection of both of those and he
would -- you know, our recommendation is to enter into an agreement to annex
to the City of Meridian when he is eligible to do so and with that I would stand for
any questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Warren. Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. If there are no questions, there is a request in front of you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the hookup of water and sewer service at 5035 West
Franklin Road and the papers drawn up for both applicant and city to sign.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the request under 9-A. Mr.
Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little
Roberts, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
B. Priority Based Budgeting
De Weerd: Item 9-B is under our Finance Department. We have a
representative here from the Center for Priority Based Budgeting that is going to
share with you today some information about what this type of budgeting process
is about. So I will introduce -- I will have Todd introduce our speaker.
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, appreciate the opportunity to
present to you today's topic, which is Priority Based Budging. Again, as the
Mayor stated, while we have a representative from the Center of Priority Based
Budgeting out of Denver, Colorado, he is one of the founders of this organization.
He is going to present to you tonight the concept and the theory behind priority
based budgeting for you to consider. The city is looking at this tool -- this is a
functional budgeting format to consider for future budget years. So, with that I'm
going to hand it over to Mr. Fabian. So, Chris Fabian is his name and I will hand
it over to him and, then, we will stand for any questions at the end of this and,
please, let us know.
De Weerd: Thank you. Welcome, Chris.
Fabian: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you, Council, for having me in today. I just
flew in from Denver, Colorado, and the turbulence was minor, but anything that
you would expect flying over the Rocky Mountains. I have been in town recently,
because we just started our process with Boise , which I will get into in just a
moment. But this is my line of work. I founded the Center for Priority Based
Budgeting in 2008 and a supporting technology company, which we will get into a
little bit here shortly -- resources to develop the tools to help communities
implement priority based budgeting. The practice itself has become a national
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recognized best practice from the International City and County Management
Association, which represents city and county managers across the United
States. The Government Finance Officers Association, GFOA, which represents
finance directors and budget directors. And the National League of Cities, which
many council members tend to be a part of as well. So, I'm very grateful to have
a chance to talk to you about priority based budgeting today and how it's been
implemented in other communities. We are just at about 150 now since
beginning our work across the United States and into Canada. Large
organizations like Toledo, Ohio; South Bend, Indiana, just talking with their mayor
is they are making their state of the city address and talking about their priorities
as well and very small communities like Victor, Colorado. If any of you are
familiar with the Victor, Colorado, I'd be highly impressed. They are a community
of about 300 people. It's a mining community in Colorado. Very small. And
everywhere in between. Boulder, Colorado. Longmont. South Jordan, Utah,
which we will get into their stories. What's intriguing -- we developed priority
based budgeting as practitioners within local government and it was a solution to
our own communication needs, both as staff members communicating to council,
as well as to our own citizens and realized that there was a gap between what
we typically have as our primary tool, our line item budget, the budget that we are
used to seeing year after year, which is a fundamental tool for resource
allocation. But as council members are told that the budget is your number one
primary policy document for impacting your community and achieving your
results, what was hard for us as staff to communicate was exactly how the
dollars that you spend are or are not connected to the results that you're trying to
accomplish. So, we endeavored to create a process to make that easier , to
understand how each and every resource, every dollar, every person is aligned
with making your community safer, impacting the local economy, and that's what
the process fundamentally is all about. I thought as we get started you can see
some of the communities in your region who have gone through the work, both in
Washington, state of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, as well. Utah. Bainbridge
Island. Kenmore, Clark County, Washington. Maple Valley. Springfield.
Tualatin. Boise. Post Falls and Idaho Falls. Actually, quite interestingly, Post
Falls city manager at the time his name is Eric Keck, moved to Englewood,
Colorado, and he is the first two times city manager to implement the process in
two different cities. We actually have our offices within city hall in Englewood.
One of the main things that comes out of a priority based budgeting is an
understanding of all of your areas where you can leverage public-private
partnerships. So, we like to practice what we preach and we are a private
organization renting space from the city of Englewood in partnership and so
that's kind of our lab, if you will. I thought to begin the presentation today I'd like
to just share with you a few stories of what this looks like in some of the
communities who go through implementation. Sometimes it's easier to begin
with the end in mind and actually see what communities are able to accomplish .
If you're familiar at all with the state of Wisconsin right now, many of their local
governments are under an immense amount of financial pressure. Not every
organization who goes through priority based budgeting is under tremendous
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financial pressure, but in a sense we all are, right, because we are stewards of
the public resources and so even when we feel like there is an abundance of
resources it is still our responsibility to maintain a degree of transparency and
accountability. In Wisconsin they are truly -- they are under immense financial
pressure as local governments are pushed to consolidate. So, a lot of cities and
counties are consolidating townships. The level of local government -- a number
of local governments across the state is tremendous and so they are trying to
find ways to partner and in Washington county they used priority based
budgeting to save money. So, they have established in their very first year just
about 590,000 dollars worth of savings and the way that they have done that is
by understanding all of the potential partnerships in their community where the
government can partner with other public sector organizations or private sector
organizations, as well as non-profits. That's one of the things that takes place in
the process. It's an outcome and as you can see here on the slide -- a lot of
words over there -- but this is to list out all of the various examples of ways that
they have leveraged these partnerships and to small examples, 25,000 dollars
for a homeless coalition, 7,200 dollars for Big Brothers-Big Sisters, 17,000 for
friends of abused families and 5,000 for the Boys and Girls Club. So, that's --
that's literally what happens at the end of your work is you understand where you
can save even down to 5,500 dollars. Their biggest partnership opportunity
came through a consolidation with a local health department for the county and
several others in the region merged health department's overall. In Strathcona
county, Alberta -- this is the Edmonton, Alberta, area. Totally different side of the
spectrum. They actually have many new resources to allocate. They have
benefited greatly from a growing community, as well as the oil industry. In
Strathcona county you can consider them like a combined city and county.
That's more what it's like, compared to in the United States. Not a county like
you would anticipate. And it's full services. In Strathcona county they use priority
based budgeting to actually lower taxes to their citizens, while increasing service
levels. So, how do you do that? The only possible way you can do that is if you
prioritize -- you find out services that you're going to do less of , actually, and you
migrate the resources to the higher priority programs, thereby increasing service
levels and minimizing the tax burden overall. It's a phenomenal story. We hardly
hear stories like that, but that's their objective. That how to use priority based
budgeting. Kalamazoo, Michigan. They did it entirely differently. What's
interesting about Kalamazoo -- the city received a philanthropic donation of about
70 million dollars to establish a foundation for excellence , whose sole mandate
was two fold. Number one, stabilize the city's budget. Number two, end
generational poverty. They laughed and say they don't know which one's harder,
but at the same time they use priority based budgeting as the lens through which
they evaluate every new project that comes to them. So, in priority based
budgeting you establish criteria and you score every program and every project
against this criteria to approve funding. So, they are using this lines of priority
based budgeting to scrutinize the 70 million dollar donation . In addition in
Kalamazoo they use PBB for all city services. But my point here is that you can
choose to use this f or specific initiatives, for capital projects and for overall city-
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wide services across the organization. Two m ore examples. Douglas county,
Nevada. Their realization as a growing community was that their infrastructure
was underfunded. They used priority based budgeting to reallocate resources to
pay the way, so to speak, to -- to address their growing community and build out
roads. Final example, Boulder, Colorado, is now 70 years into the process. So,
you continue to do this year after year and what you're seeing on the screen --
those quartiles, I will explain here momentarily in the process, but every program
that you offer, every program and service, gets scored against the results that
you're trying to accomplish. Quartile one programs are your most relevant
programs overall. They are your highest priority. Quartile two programs are also
very relevant, just not as relevant as quartile one. Quartile three and quartile four
overall have less to do with achieving your results. So, it's definitely a relative
prioritization of every service that you provide and what you're looking at in that
picture is a time lapse. In the light blue that was Boulder's starting place. After
they finished their project in the first year they could see where they were
spending their money at the quartile level and the green indicate s over seven
years where they have increased funding. So, you can see they have
substantially increased resource allocation to their highest priority programs that
have the highest degree of impact on their results, at the expenses, as you see
there in quartile four, they have moved about 1.7 million dollars out of quartile
four programs that have less to do with achieving results. So, it's extraordinary in
Boulder. Imagine taking 1.7 million from your own resources, getting it out of
services that have less to do with what you want it to do, and moving those
people and those dollars towards the programs that really have a tremendous
impact. So, that's the mark of progress overall and I just wanted to start there, so
you have a general sense, case study wise, of what you're getting yourself into
as you consider how priority based budgeting actually works. Quickly I want to
spend a little bit of time talking about the mechanics of the process, how it works,
the process overall, because it's pretty straightforward. First and foremost we
want to have an understanding of what we call results. Results are your
fundamental reason for being a service provider. Why do you collect a single tax
dollar in this community. Oftentimes when we would start a project and we would
address council, we would say if you closed city hall tomorrow would anybody
notices that you're gone and usually at some point, yes, we have smiles and
someone says yeah, of course, somebody would notice that we are gone. We
say great, that's an awesome starting place. Why? What are the y missing from
you? Why are you relevant whatsoever as a service provider in this community.
That's what we mean by results. We are getting away from just typical strategic
planning, those areas that need attention or improvement, and talking about
fundamentally why you're here, because that becomes the criteria against which
you evaluate every dollar that you spend. We are going to talk about the
programs and services that you offer, so we turn the direction inward towards the
organization to find out what is it that you do and what do you offer , and we are
not just talking about your organizational chart. It's beyond the department level.
I will show you some examples to get down to every program and service that
you provide in this organization. That becomes pretty fascinating. Step three is
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really simple. Again you take the programs that you provide and you score them
or you evaluate them relative to the results you are trying to achieve and, then,
we bring in the resource allocation connection , which is your budget. So, in
priority based budgeting we are trying to answer three fundamental questions --
reading backwards from right to left -- why are we in business. What do we do.
And how much does it cost for -- in PBB terms what are the programs and
services that we offer, how do our costs connect to those programs and how do
those programs connect to results. I will just walk you through a few examples.
As we talk about the program inventory, which is just the list of services that you
provide and the cost of providing those services , this alone tends to be kind of a
tremendous breakthrough in your process overall. So, short of doing all of the
program scoring that we will get into, imagine knowing every service that you
provide and how much those services cost. So, the Government Finance
Officers Association has declared this particular step a best practice in and of
itself. It's all program budgeting. And the reason that it's a best practice is
because with this dataset you are able to start to answer some of those
questions that you see on the right-hand side of the slide. How many times have
you wondered are we competitive, are we cost-effective compared to another
service provider, be it the private sector or the public sector. We can't answer
that question unless we know what we do and how much it costs. Again, it's
tough to glean that information from a line item budget . When we talked about a
trade-off decision -- so, partnership opportunities or we are talking about rates or
fee increases, how can we measure the cost of providing every service relative to
the fees that are coming in for those services when you charge a fee. This gives
you, essentially, a rate study at a high level for every program and service that
you offer across the organization. So, this particular step is so vital, it's one of
the very first things that we do, but you have an interim deliverable as you're
starting to make progress overall in your project. But what is a program? This
slide is just to give you a sense for what I'm talking about , to get a little bit more
descriptive. If you imagine a finance department and a finance department that
might have two divisions that we are taking a look at, an accounting division and
an administration division, these are examples of things that we would consider a
program. So, this is how detailed we are actually getting. You offer perhaps an
accounts payable program. You do accounts receivable and collections. You
might have payroll processing. Hopefully you have a payroll processing
program. You have a budgeting program. You do debt management, capital
funding, information desk. You might have a pension administration. This is how
detailed we are getting down to at a program level. When we first began our
work back in 2008, this was a process that was -- that used to be fairly
painstaking. It was abstract. It was conceptual. We knew we wanted to get to a
level that was beyond the departmental understanding of the organization, but it
took a lot of work to interview staff to say what is it that you provide to try to get a
good inventory of programs. A hundred and fifty communities later we have
actually seen many police departments, we have seen IT departments, we have
seen fleet departments, we have seen water utilities, we have seen wastewater
utilities and so we built a robust database of programs that cities provide and that
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counties provide overall and why I'm mentioning this is because it provides a leg
up to your organization. Being -- coming from the staff side of things and having
developed this process, I'm sure one of the concerns that you might have is how
much work is this for the organization to take on. Back in 2008 it was a
tremendous amount of work. It was a costly process. We are happy to say we
have over 50,000 programs in the database. Now, this is not to say that you're
done with your work on day one. If you have heard of something more along the
lines of the 80-20 rule, we help your departments by saying, sure, all the
programs we have seen that come from a community development department,
do you have programs that look something like this and 80 percent of the
programs will probably align, but 20 percent won't and so that will be the work.
We always find unique programs in every community that we work in. That's part
of what makes your community unique. In Pacifica, California, we were just there
and they identified beached whale removal as one of the most unique programs
that we have come across. Nobody else had that. We didn't have it in the
database. In Beaumont, Alberta, just outside of the Edmonton area, they have
Taco Tuesdays and the Summer Sizzler. Nobody else offers those programs as
well. But it becomes really fascinating and you can imagine the implications not
only for matching up your programs, but think about this, for every program that
you're thinking of starting that you go to an NLC conference or you talk to your
colleagues and you're thinking about beginning a program, you can tap the
database to see who else is providing this program , how much does it cost, what
short of results is it achieving? So, the power of all of the communities who have
gone through this before you is also at your disposal. For the program inventory
we do run through a costing step to line up your line item budget, there is a cost
allocation process to develop the cost and associate those with programs as
well. We will run the costing step around your ongoing programs and services ,
but you can also do priority based budgeting for your capital projects. The most
important point here is that we keep your ongoing costs distinct from more one -
time costs. So, a capital project might be a choice that you have to fund
something on a one-time basis, so we are trying to align and identify your
ongoing costs and associate those with the ongoing programs and identify your
one-time costs and also run those through the model. It's a choice that you have
overall in the implementation. Let's talk about results for a moment. So, we have
program inventory and program cost. We take a step all the way back and we
say, again, why are we here, why are we in business whatsoever and what I'm
demonstrating here -- these are typical of the types of results that we have come
across when we ask the question -- communities often site we are in business to
have a role in someone -- perhaps an economic vitality or to produce a safe
community or to achieve sustainable and maintain development as you grow .
Effect of transportation. The health and wellbeing of your citizens. Culture and
recreation. Quality neighborhoods. Livable and inclusive communities. And
more and more we are seeing smart cities emergence as a result that
government site is why they offer programs and services . We call these types of
results community-oriented, because they help address the question why you
provide services directly to your community. As distinct from what you see on
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the right-hand side, concepts like financial stewardship, producing a high-quality
workforce or maintaining regulatory compliance, these are more internal results
and we call them the results of governance. What's the important point I'm trying
to make here is that in your process we are going to take community-oriented
programs and they get evaluated against community oriented results, the
reasons why you offer them, and internal governance programs -- it sounds like
they are off the hook, but they get evaluated specifically to the reasons that make
them relevant. So, you don't take payroll processing and evaluated it against a
community-oriented result, like a safe community, because the case is indirect.
You say, well, if the police officers get paid on time perhaps they are doing a
better job and it makes the community safer, therefore, payroll processing makes
it safer, that's a tough case to make. So, we keep them distinct and, then, they
come together at the end. As we get into -- this is a busy slide. As we get into
result definitions, the point I'm trying to make here is across the top those being
examples of results, we are trying to get specific as to how would you measure
that these results are actually being achieved . How do you know? What makes
your community safe? So, if you just took, for example, producing a safe and
secure community, we are talking about responding to emergency situations,
enforcing the law, reducing crime, protecting property, ensuring that your air is
clean and your drinking water is clean, protecting the environment and making
for safe travel. What I'm getting at here -- we are going to work with you to
identify all the indicators of success for your community, so these won't be yours,
to help you understand how your results are actually accomplished. So, it's
taking some of the subjectivity out of the result statements , because if you just
ask anybody what is a safe community about, their answers could -- could range
-- depending on their perspective. So, t rying to get really specific and the whole
point is that we are going to develop a cause and effect diagram, a theory around
how you believe a safe community is achieved, how you believe economic vitality
is accomplished in Meridian and this becomes the core criteria against which you
score your programs. So, if I'm going to say that my program achieves a safe
community, the only way I make that case is by using these specific definitions
and proving that my program actually is a cause to the effect of producing a safe
community overall. Again, the power of the databases is to bring to you how
other communities have defined these results as well. So, part of our struggle is
we work with the councils -- our own council in the past. If you take a result like
economic vitality and you say how do we achieve that , what are all the factors
that lead to it, how are other communities measuring if they are creating a
healthy, successful local economy, is it just job creation, is it tourism? How is
everybody measuring this particular result. So, we keep getting better at bringing
to bear all the various matrix that communities use and we are happy to provide
those to you in the project overall. So, after results are created and ultimately
defined, there is a scoring process. The departments score their own programs
first. It is a self-assessment. So, every department with their own program
inventory goes through to the scoring process and it becomes really interesting,
because departments have great cases to make about the programs that they
offer that if they just left it up to the Center for Priority Based Budgeting we might
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miss, but the departments, being subject matter experts, it's totally valid for them
to go through and -- and score their programs and make their case. But the
departmental self-assessment is followed up by a peer review step where we
treat teens around each of your result areas and there might be a safe city team,
a healthy economy team, their cross-departmental, sometimes council members
have participated, sometimes citizens have participated. These, again, are
options in your process, citizen engagement being a major one . But in peer
review that's the opportunity to ask questions of the department and really come
to better understand the case that they are trying to make that their programs
impact results. Ultimately coming out of the peer-review process, we run the
scores from a departmental perspective we run the scores from a peer-review
prospective and we generate a final understanding. We are essentially trying to
come to the truth as all of the bubbles blow up on the map here, we come to final
scores. I want to show you an example of a scorecard and it helps me make one
more point. This is an example of a community-oriented department in
Bainbridge Island, Washington, and as you see on the scorecard over on the
right-hand side there is something called community results, it's what we talked
about, things like safe city, vibrant economy, reliable infrastructure, those are the
primary criteria against which programs are scored, but they are not the only
criteria. As you look more towards the left of the scorecard you see
characteristics of programs that we called basic program attributes, the degree to
which a program is mandated, the degree to which your citizens are reliant upon
you as a service provider. Cost recovery for a program. Portion of the
community served. Every program is scored against all of the basic program
attributes, in addition to the scores. The reason why we did that -- imagine a
program that has nothing to do with achieving results , but you're mandated to do
it. We want to take that into consideration. Or what about programs, again, that
have nothing to do with achieving results, but your users are willing to pay a fee
to use the particular program. So, cost recovery. You end up with all of this
information about every single program. The degree to which it's mandated, the
degree to which it covers its own costs. The degree to which you are the sole
service provider versus programs where there are plenty of other potential
partners and so on and so forth and it's the cumulative impact of a program on all
of your attributes, as well as the results that make it either highly relevant or less
relevant overall, just as you see here on the screen, every program ends up with
a final score of one hundred -- would be a perfect score, so we normalize all the
scores overall. We have never seen a program that scores a hundred. If you
have a program like that it's a good indicator that your peer review process
probably failed, but we will be able to help you out with that. But as you can see
here there is a host of programs that score really highly and it's just like grading a
set of test scores on a curve, it would become your quartile one programs that
you are most relevant programs specific to your own criteria, as differentiated
from quartile two programs, which are highly relevant, just not as relevant as
quartile one, as differentiated from quartile three and ultimately quartile four
programs where as you can see just in this community's example, it's not as if
quartile four programs scored zero, that they are totally irrelevant, they are just
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less relevant to everything else that you do and it's at this moment whereby
attaching the program cost you can begin to see , just like we did with Boulder in
that earlier graphic, how much are you spending on quartile one versus quartile
two, versus three and four. And your initial year at this is more of a report card.
It's how well are you aligned with the results that you're trying to achieve and
every subsequent year talk about bringing meeting into your budget process is to
make progress from your starting place , to say how are we going to mine our
quartile four, our quartile three to look for opportunities to enhance services that
are of a higher priority. So, I wanted to actually take a step out of the slides and
show you a live example here. Let's see. I'm going to -- if I remember what
C.Jay taught me and we will go the -- these are the PBB communities that we
can take a look at and I'm going to look at -- let's see here. If I can -- go to South
Jordan, Utah. Not too far. And they are working on 2018 right now. So, go back
to their 2017 model and we will get to the quartiles here in just a moment. But
the first thing that I want to show you from South Jordan -- remember we talked
about the difference between community-oriented and governance programs and
so one of the first things we are able to see is your percentage of spending on
programs that are offered directly to citizens, those are your community-oriented
programs overall versus those programs that are internal for governance. And
this becomes a really interesting matrix, especially compared to other priority
based budgeting communities. As you can see here in South Jordan, 13 percent
of their programs are -- and their funding overall goes to their internal support.
Eighty-seven percent go to community-oriented programs overall. In our early
days we wondered, well, how can we drive the cost of governance to as low as
we can possibly go and we went to Humboldt, Saskatchewan, where they were
at nine percent for governance and we said you are the most lean organization
we have ever seen. How do you get by with nine percent governance? And they
said we will tell you how we get by. Our fleet is not being replaced regularly. Our
IT department is falling apart. Our facilities are a mess. So, there is a point of
limiting returns where governance becomes too small. But this becomes really
fascinating to see what is the difference between lean and underfunded overall.
But you have a tremendous opportunity to gain that prospective. We talked
about the overall degree of spending towards your results and , again, apart from
the quartiles overall, this becomes really interesting for a council. Remember my
story in the beginning, part of the reason that we developed this line of work was
because we were having a difficult time explaining to our elected officials how
your resources are aligning with the actual results you're trying to impact and so
here in South Jordan we have an opportunity to see what are the programs that
are achieving a safe community and how much are we spending on those . In
South Jordan, which is very interesting -- they are in the Salt Lake City area.
Sorry. They are in Utah if you're not familiar. And I picked them, because I
thought they might be somewhat familiar to what you're going through. A quickly
growing community, but nothing like what you're going through, actually. But
they talked about the degree to which economic development is really important
and when they got to this point they saw that it was their lowest ranking result
area in terms of the degree of spending that goes into that result. So, as elected
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officials what a great starting place to be able to see this information. Say if we
are really behind economic development and that's what we are trying to do, how
does this match up with what we know? It could very well be the case in South
Jordan that it doesn't cost a lot to achieve the result overall, whereas achieving a
safe community is a much more costly endeavor, but it begs the question is this
appropriate from a policymakers perspective and this is what -- yeah, you can
begin to dive into. We can see for any particular result, if we did want to dive into
economic development, what are the departments who are contributing to that
result and as we come all the way down we can actually get a sense for the
particular programs overall is this recruitment, business expansion, business
retention, the degree to which we are funding those programs and a program
level is there every specific program in the FTE associated with those programs,
but the final thing that I want to demonstrate for you -- and, then, we can get into
some discussion -- is that quartile spending array. This is South Jordan and we
can drill into this at the accounting fun d level, we can say -- if we were
specifically interested in how we are doing in the General Fund and we want to
balance the General Fund, we can just look at that particular fund or any of our
other accounting funds overall. Ultimately this becomes a primary utility for the
departments themselves. So, in our experience we wanted to change the
discussion between departments and elected officials , so if I'm a department
head and I want new staff , it's not simply a request for -- I want two new FTEs,
but, instead, the question becomes I want two FTEs for a particular program or
several programs that I'm offering. The programs are quartile one or quartile two
programs that are really highly aligned with your results, that's why I want the
staff there and the discussion flows from there. The opportunity becomes, well,
from your department spending array do you have opportunities, perhaps, to take
current staff who are currently serving lower priority programs, but are talented,
and move them to fit the need that you are trying to achieve. Is this a program
that is new, shall we run it through the scoring process. Is this a current program
that you're looking to enhance the services overall. Ultimately you're able to, as
well, take a look at the degree to which programs are funded by general
government tax, but taking those out of the equation we are able to see the
degree to which programs are funded by program specific revenue and this
becomes really interesting as well. So, notice in South Jordan the -- when I
clicked on program funded, these are fees for services, charges for services,
grant dollars that are coming into the community and they are most highly
aligned, as you see here -- not all the way, but most highly aligned with quartile
three and quartile four programs and that -- that tends to be a good thing. What's
happening here is that these are programs that are less aligned with the results.
It doesn't mean that the government has to cut them tomorrow, it doesn't mean
every quartile three or quartile four program that you have to stop providing the
service, but it points you in the direction to say if we are going to continue to offer
this service is there an opportunity that citizens might pay for it. One of our first
examples of this was in Boulder, Colorado, and one of the lowest ranking
programs was a city run yoga program. If you are familiar -- has anybody been
to Boulder, Colorado, before? All right. A couple. Boulder, Colorado, is a very
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interesting place in the world and back in the '70s at some point it started a city-
run yoga program. It's not uncommon today. Back then it was. Yoga fell to
quartile four and among the council members it was a top outcome. One of the
council members said I don't understand how this could possibly be. People love
our yoga program. And we said, well, let's dive into the scores, which we can do
for any of these. You can drill deeply down to the program level and to the
scores and they said is yoga mandated. No. Is it improving the safety of our
community? Has less to do with that. Is it improving our transportation system.
No. Is it improving our utilities and so on. They could see why it scored in
quartile four. But the next question became -- but, wait a second, people love
this program. Why do you think they loved it? It was free. And so the tool points
you have to those opportunities to say it's not that it's bad to provide yoga,
people did love it, but it was a totally subsidized program in quartile four and the
organization could ask the users are you willing to pay a fee commensurate with
what is charged in the private sector. First due diligence they did was to check to
see if this is serving perhaps underprivileged residents in their community. It
wasn't. So, the next level of questions was would you be willing to pay a fee on
par with what the private sector charges. This led to a public-private partnership
in the city of Boulder. The users said, no, we wouldn't be willing to pay a fee,
that's why we come to the city's yoga programs, because nothing costs us what it
costs elsewhere. There was that conversation. That's the point I'm trying to get
to. Last thing I want to show you -- just some really interesting programs here.
We talked about Washington County earlier, the public-private partnerships, and
the way we get there is by filtering on your data -- and it -- if I could just do an
example or two -- I will keep it short. But you take a category like the degree of
mandate and in our experience every time a program is deemed mandated --
highly mandated, it was an ending to a conversation. What I didn't explain to you
is that for all of these categories there is a scoring scale. It's pretty simple. And
the degree of mandate category of four means that you're required to do
something by the federal government or by the state government. It's the highest
level of mandate possible. A three is something that might be in your city charter
or incorporation documents, that's -- that's a strong reason why you're providing
is it's in your charter, but that's different from a federal mandate overall. At two in
mandate might be policy, an ordinance, something that you have adopted or a
prior council has adopted. That's like a mandate o verall, trying to follow your own
policy. A one is an industry standard. You pave roads in a certain way, because
the American Society of Civil Engineers said it's a great way to do asset
management. A zero is no mandate whatsoever. So, I chose a mandate equals
four and if you look here in South Jordan, what's very intriguing is how in the
world do we get quartile three programs that we are mandated to do. In our
curiosity we said what about programs that have everything to do with achieving
results and they are mandated, those are quartile one and quartile two programs,
but programs that are highly mandated, but don't achieve results to a high
degree, that's how you end up in quartile three or quartile four. This begs the
question what does the mandate stipulate. Yes, we are mandated to do this
program, but we sure wish that we weren't. Is it possible that we have a choice
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over the level of service that we are providing in order to meet the minimum
requirements of the mandate. Again, just for these quartile three or quartile four
programs overall. And what I'm doing for you is showing you an example of what
we call policy questions and these become filters and the tool for the
departments to use and the example that I was just demonstrating, policy
question number one, what is it about these programs that are highly mandated,
but low on the relevance scale, is it possible that we are overproviding for these
particular programs. For mandate equals two, low on the relevance scale, I
filtered down -- these are not federally mandated or mandated by the state
government, these are your own policies of the past that are requiring you to
provide this particular program. So, what the tool is asking departments here is
-- is it possible that our own policies are hamstringing us, forcing us to provide a
program that we otherwise wouldn't, if we can just revise our policy. That's what
we are pointing to here. Policy question number three -- and these are my last
examples. Very interesting. This is on the upper end of the spectrum. Public --
public-partnership opportunities where there is a shared service opportunity for
the city -- these are on the higher end of the relevance scale. So, we are not
only looking at quartile three and quartile four, we are also looking at these
programs you definitely want to be providing in the business of providing them,
but turns out there is somebody else in the public sector who also offers
something similar, is there a chance to form a shared service. So, this is
Washington county's consolidated health department overall. Policy question
number four is about public-private partnerships. This goes back to the lower
end of the spectrum and says there is another private sector entity who provides
something similar. It's low priority to us what might that partnership look and,
then, ultimately policy question number five, we are saying mandate is low, it's
zero to one mandate. Nobody's requiring us to provide this program. Reliance is
low. There appear to be other service providers and relevance is low, is there a
chance that we could take the people who provide these programs and think
about doing something even more valuable with their time , with their resources,
and that's what the tools allow you to begin to do. So, it's been a long
presentation. Todd, I'm going to stop here. Is it appropriate to take some
questions and some impressions and, Mayor, to turn it back to you.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Chris. Council, questions?
Bird: I have none.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Mr. Fabian, thank you for a very informative -- and I appreciate the
interactive portion, so we have an opportunity to see how the tool functions. Talk
to me a little bit about the peer review. Who -- who makes up that group and
who selects those people and how are they qualified to be peer members?
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Fabian: This is cool. So, peer review -- bring it back to the step here. In our
experience -- and you do have some flexibility here . The best peer review teams
that we have seen -- again, they are made up around each result area. So, if all
of us in the room were on the safe city team, we would come from different
departments, so it's -- it's across the organization, it's not that one department
turns over their scores to another department and, hopefully, they are friends or
they have mercy on each other. The idea is that we all come to the table -- we
are all participating in this process equally and we have the chance to ask
questions about those programs that we reviewing. We tend to encourage the
organization to bring people to this discussion who are not the su bject matter
experts. So, if we are on the safe city team you might come from IT, I might
come from risk management, we are the least likelihood of reviewing our own
programs, because that would defeat the approach for quality control and in the
early days we wondered is this going to work, because if people don't know much
about the programs that they reviewing, how are they going to participate
effectively and what we have actually found is that the more naive they are the
better questions that they ask, because they have no idea why the program is
scored the way that the department did. One of our first examples -- I won't
make this a long story. I promise. But you have seen cameras -- photo radar on
the top of traffic signals that take pictures of cars as they speed through them
and a police department scored their program a four, before the highest degree
possible for safe community for photo radar and the peer view team said it
makes sense, I mean it seems like it should work, but do we have any data on
the subject and that pushes the conversation just to say, well, I don't know, is it
decreasing traffic fatalities or accidents and if you are interested in this topic
there is a huge national debate about the degree to which photo radar is actually
proving successful in various communities. That's what happens in peer review.
Now, the best part is -- two fold. Sorry. One, if your organization is interested in
performance measures and actually tracking data, this is a great area to start.
So, in our experience most organizations it's -- it can be a hodgepodge. Some
departments have done a lot of work in performance measures, others are just
starting. Totally okay. This encourages what types of measures that you're
going to start to collect in the future, so it gets you started on the right path. The
second thing, as I say, was simply remember that we run this -- I'm not sure if I
explained this very well. We run the scores from a peer review perspective and a
department only perspective and we compare the two, it's not that peer review is
right or the department's right, we, then, chase down where there are
discrepancies to say what -- what can we learn and what is the truth about photo
radar or any particular program through the reconciliation.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
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Cavener: Is there an opportunity in this process for public input and at what level
does the mayor or the city council get involved?
Fabian: Very good. I did not cover that in great detail. I will start the answer to
this question by saying some communities began on their own. They began as a
city and don't begin their work by inviting the public in and others start with public
engagement. So, you have an option either way. The best areas that we have
citizen engagement take place tend to be around these results and result
definitions. I will show you any of the tools for that area, but there are -- it's a
pretty straightforward surveying mechanisms and live opportunity to bring
citizens into the very creation results, as well as result definitions. In the
definition phase citizens can actually weigh in on results to say in Meridian
maybe infrastructure and safety -- I've only been here for the day today and
everybody talks about how wonderful and safe of a community this is. Economic
vitality. I heard about The Village. Traffic is -- continues to be an interesting
issue. I have got a sense for results and my small rise -- these are great areas
for every citizen to participate in, is always my test. Citizens have a hard time
answering questions sometimes about program inventories, which programs are
the most important, because they don't experience everything that you offer . So,
they have an arrow thin slice about their experience overall. But asking citizens
about results that are important and the ways they define results, almost every
citizen can participate very effectively, so they can have their fingerprints on this.
The last thing I will say is that you do have an option to weight the results overall,
that comes in consideration of scoring, so our safety is -- is really a hot button
issue citizens. Declared to be the most relevant result that they are trying to
achieve and we can get relative differentiation on weighting factors, taking into
consideration the scoring.
Cavener: I don't want to take up all the time. I don't know if anyone else has -- I
have additional questions, but I don't want to step on anybody's toes, if there is
anyone else that --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I just have a follow up to something you just said. So, I will just have you
expand on that. You mentioned that you had a -- I lost my word -- survey tool.
Fabian: Uh-huh.
Milam: Can you elaborate a little bit on that and is that -- that's part of the
program and is that easy to use and -- we are getting ready to do a community
survey and so it had to be redundant or not ask the right questions as well.
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Fabian: Thank you for the question. The survey tool that we use comes with
your total package and typically we roll out simple things like Survey Monkey that
we can incorporate into a website. So, our whole objective is helping every
community implement priority based budgeting. So, our fundamental role is to
keep costs low as well. But if you are already underway with a citizen surve y --
we have already done one. We partnered pretty well and pretty frequently with
other community survey firms, just to see -- is there any data that we can glean
from what you have already done. So, we try to leverage any data that you have
already. If you're about to roll out, there is a chance that we have an opportunity
to intersect or talk to your other consultants or if it's an internal team just to say
here is the kind of data we are looking for, if we can help you add a couple of
questions to your survey we are happy to partner.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
Palmer: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Mr. Fabian, I think you did an exceptional job of kind of highlighting
some municipalities around north America that implemented this. Can you
maybe just walk us through what some not typical results are? I mean I
recognize that the snapshots are great examples of when this process has been
used exceptionally, but what's a random use of somewhere in the country, what
is their results that they see at the end of this?
Fabian: Great question. Yeah. I like to focus on those stories that are inspiring,
because that encourages everybody to go in that direction. Every organization
at the end of your first year, one hundred percent of the first e piphany is -- you
know, waiting for that moment to see their quartile spending and see where they
are in terms of alignment; right? The moment of truth. And some communities
are more aligned than others. We have not seen a community where it's like all
quartile four where you look at the spending array, you go, oh, no, we have been
spending upside down all these years or -- that's a good sign. I mean it begins to
prove that it's -- that you have been prioritizing as best you can, but we have also
never come across a community where everything is in quartile one and quartile
two. So, what's very typical is be prepared for the very first experience to see,
wow, here is how well we are aligned. It begs the question as well: Have we
identified all the results and have we defined them properly, because the quartile
system is a direct outcome of did you get the results right and so what always
happens as well is you will see a quartile four program that -- that jumps out at
you and jumps out at you because in your heart you say I know this program is
important, how did it score so low and the only possible answer to that is we
missed the scoring criteria or there is another reason why we offer it or if it is
correct and you realize like Boulder's yoga program that, oh, wow, it doesn't
achieve results -- the reason that people liked it for so long is because we
subsidize it -- ah-ha -- there are ah-ha moments like that all the time. So, those
are really typical initial experiences in the process overall and, then, where it
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goes next from there, as I was going to mention, some communities don't have a
need to reduce the budget and I was just in Edmonton and we had a practitioners
forum, so several communities from all across Canada were -- were talking about
their stories and especially for those that don't have a budget to cut, they talked
about it is really pushing us to say are we okay with the status quo. It really
makes you look at our own spending array and go we have all these
opportunities, are we prepared to help -- to help change, to help move it. I love
that as well, because that's the whole reason that you do priority based
budgeting. You don't do priority based budgeting to maintain the status quo, you
do priority based budgeting because you want to see where you are and see
where your opportunities are to change. Those are just -- short of Boulder
migrating 1.7 million over seven years, which is a great story, these are just the
qualitative first experiences that -- that are typical.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Cavener: Talk to me a little bit about staffing. Do municipalities that implement
priority based budging, do they, then, in turn, create a position to manage the
program? Is it managed as, again, our best practices -- is it a person? Is it held
within the department?
Fabian: I have lost my PowerPoint, which is no problem. I can keep talking. I
was going to move to a slide where I have this great graphic, but -- we -- we work
with organizations that are -- thank you very much. Some are really large and
some are not and what I was going to try to get to here -- sorry. No problem.
Actually, I heard about this. I'm prepared. All right. I'm going to roll with this.
Staffing -- when we started this process we were in a county government and
there were two staff internally that ran the whole thing for an organization of
3,000 employees. We worked with organizations like Monroe, Wisconsin, where
the town administrator is the implementer -- he was the person responsible for
janitorial duties as well. But they are also doing priority based budgeting. All the
way to a larger organization like Toledo where they have four people -- it's not
their full-time job whatsoever, but they are dedicated to watching how this
unfolds. Our job is we find a super user -- so that we might work with Todd and
the team just to see who can we teach everything to, because what we want to
do as well is make sure that you are fully equipped, you're not relying on us to
handle the process and manage it and move it along and our success rate is that
-- it always comes down to there is going to be one person who is designated to
understand how the tools work. It's not a full-time position. Let me say that as
well. We want to make -- our goal is to continue to make sure that this is easy for
implementation, but think about it for a second, the first year is going to be your
hardest work. You're going through inventory, you're working with the
departments to get costs, you're going through that scoring process and
beginning to analyze. Some organizations push out some of that responsibility in
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future years to other departments, so the departments -- this becomes your
budgeting process, so the departments are talking about do I have any new
programs this year that I'm asking for, how are my sta ff members reallocating
their time, so they become pretty adept at using the tools overall. Ultimately, if
you need help from us we are -- we are here. That's what we do as well. So, we
can continue to help the organization. Our goal is to equip you to be able to do it.
Cavener: One more? Someone else? Madam Mayor? What's the cost? I'm
always curious -- I think it's a robust tool. It seems very user friendly. When you
talk about budget, what's the cost?
Fabian: We are also trying to reallocate our own resources. In the early days it's
a pretty expensive process, so first communities we went through it was closer to
50 or 60 thousand dollars. We are down to a first year implementation for a
community like Meridian's size of about 40,000 and, then, ongoing costs to
maintain the software and our support would be on the order of 20,000. That's
what our initial proposal will look like. What I can say as well is the more users
who get into the tool, the more we are able to continue to decrease those costs.
That's been our track record so far.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further? Any other questions?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: One quick question for you. You mentioned success rate. Have you
had communities start the process and fail and, if so, what was their hang up to
getting to the goal of seeing success I guess.
Fabian: Happy to say no failures. Nobody has not completed their work. We did
have one community where a county administrator passed away. That was
disruptive in the organization overall. Some communities have taken longer than
others. That might be more along the lines, so Joplin, Missouri, i ntentionally
decided to make it a two year implementation. They were -- they had a whole
host of other issues going on organizationally. We are here to support you for an
implementation process that you can get done in as soon as four months.
Cincinnati got it done in three. That was an immense organization in a short
amount of time. We move as fast as you want to move. But in Joplin's case they
said we don't want to move fast, we want to take this really slow, nice and easy,
and it's taken two years. I wouldn't consider that a failure necessarily. I'm just
trying to describe that it's a longer implementation process and that's okay. But
nobody's given up in the middle of the process. We can definitely talk about
challenging points in the process. Every once in a while we will have a
department that is -- just needs more attention than other departments here and
there. That's okay. That's what we do. We do webinars and we are on the
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phone to help them with program inventory, program cost, program scoring and
basically helping the department see what's in it for them. You know, in order to
get buy in and excitement, enthusiasm about participating in priority based
budgeting, the departments need to see this is going to be a communication tool
for them and sometimes that takes -- that takes more time to continue to just be a
resource to them.
De Weerd: Mr. Borton, did you have a question?
Borton: I have one, Madam Mayor. How does the -- the peer review
composition -- how does it reconcile the -- the weight given to elected officials
input, as opposed to the department participants. It seems like that -- there could
be some great discrepancy and that would have a big impact on the results.
Fabian: So, there is a -- there a departmental self-assessment and, then, there
is a peer review process to take a look at those scores. Some communities have
also invited council into a scoring process. Shawnee, Kansas, did a peer review
specifically with council members, just so that you can also get a sense for how
do you feel about these programs and their impact upon results. So, it absolutely
can be done. Most elected officials in our experience so far have waited to see
that from your perspective you're saying we have established the results, we
have defined the results, so now we are going to allow the organization to go
through and score of the programs and you get all the data back as well, so that
you're able to weigh in and look at some of these programs and it's absolutely a
component of the process that if you wanted to flag a program to say -- if you
were in Boulder and you said, yeah, yoga doesn't improve the safety, but it
improves the health and well-being of our citizens, I want to score this program
higher, I think it could score higher, was that taken into consideration in peer
review and how so. Great opportunities to participate and ask questions.
Borton: Madam Mayor? One follow up. So, for example, if -- if we go through
this system and I'm of the mindset that public safety is paramount, second to
none, and Councilman Palmer says you're flat wrong, it's parks and open space,
above and beyond anything else, that might conflict with what the staff might rate
in their own scoring system. So, we get those results back and if -- if the results
for parks and open space are relatively low, quartile three or four, and
Councilman Palmer -- and I'm picking on you because you're right there -- says,
well, I think it's the most important thing we do and that's what I want to fund. Do
you find other challenges where communities have confronted that conflict
between political desire and -- and how its scored by the departments internally?
How does it reconcile?
Fabian: Absolutely. So, what I would say you're describing are the weightings of
results themselves. So, when you say that safe community is second to none --
you said public safety compared to parks and recreation, I know you're talking
about departments, but what we would want to make sure is actually happening
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is that what you're really saying is it's not that the departments are saying it's --
you're saying the achievement of a safe community is second to none, whereas
another council member might believe that parks and recreation opportunities are
second to none. So, I would want to be clear how are you talking about the
results that you're trying to achieve against which public safety departments, like
police and fire, emergency management systems, are likely to score really highly
towards a public safety result, in addition to others. That's like first differentiation
I just wanted to interpret from my own experience. But here is where it gets
interesting. Let's say that you looked at the results, safety, cultural, recreation
opportunities, economy, transportation and to you safety is the absolute most
important thing and to several other council members and the public it's second
or third, but it's not number one, and the economy is higher and infrastructure is
higher or parks and recreation. Let's run the scores using different weighting
factors and do a sensitivity and actually see if it changes anything. There will be
programs that are like right on the border between quartile one and quartile two
that -- that might actually change. So, we do this many times. Basically, just to
ferret out -- you know, is it making a big impact if we wildly change the weighting
factors of those results. What we don't experiences is that a program that is in
quartile one, based on one weighting scenario, now goes to quartile four. So --
so that would be a big problem, right, is that if we do it one way it's really
important to us. If we run the weighting factors a different way we are talking
about getting out of this business. We don't see that. So, that's what's been
really cool is let's do -- I really like your experiment, we will bring back weighting
factors to you and say let's -- let's run it both ways and see if it actually makes a
difference and what programs are actually sensitive. Is that helpful?
Borton: It is.
Fabian: Okay. It would be easier to show you --
Borton: Sure.
Fabian: I'm trying to explain it. Okay.
Borton: Thank you.
De Weerd: That's interesting.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: And question and answer may have been part of all that , but it was kind
of a little over my head, so that I understand, my question I guess -- in your
experience would you recommend that, then, council kind of stays out of the
review and scoring process and, then, has a peer look at the data that's received
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after, instead of being part of influencing our political bias into what would, then,
be the results for us to make decisions on?
Fabian: If we broke down -- let me go back to that process slide. If we said that
overall this is the process -- your primary role is to establish the criteria against
which all programs will be scored. So, results are the purview of elected officials.
This is your role to say why are we here. Why do we exist as a community and
so on. And to get into result definitions and quite possibly the weighting of
results as we talked about here. So, you are setting the criteria. In our
experience it works out really well when the departments are scoring back to
your criteria. All scoring is is communication. I'm telling you I think my program
really influences the achievement of economic vitality and here is how I'm going
to try to prove it. It increases jobs. It brings tourists to our community and so on.
So, it's -- it's good to allow the staff to bring that information back to you, because
it's upon staff, that's their role, to communicate are their programs actually
influencing results. Now, where does council get back involved. Two parts. We
talked about does council have an opportunity to look at peer review scores, to
score programs yourself? Absolutely. You can. In our experience most
councils, as they start to go through this exercise just f rom what we have been
through, get down to about program 15, 16, 17 and go -- I want to see how the --
the departments come back to us and I want to see what their scores are. But at
least you have a taste of it. You have a taste of what that scoring process is.
But, absolutely, towards the end now you look at the results and you can clearly
say this doesn't make any sense, this program is sticking out. Here is a quartile
one program that -- that just shocks me. I wouldn't have ever thought that it
would be quartile one and that's where the conversations begin. So, none of it is
formulaic, it's just to say how do you want to talk about these particular programs
from that point forward. The biggest role for council overall becomes after you
get to this -- to the end and departments are -- sorry, if you bear with me for just
a minute as a mention here -- as departments are reporting back their budget
recommendations here, this is where your role shines once again, because
you're saying why would we start a program that's quartile fo ur. That doesn't
appear to have anything to do with our results or great idea, is this a new
program overall or you want additional staffing, this program is fantastic. It's
quartile one, quartile two. It really has everything to do with achieving resul ts. I
want to see what happens with this program. You're the shepherd of alignment
towards results.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further?
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
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Little Roberts: Chris, you mentioned you had anything from four months to two
years. Is there kind of average in there or is it kind of an average for our size
community or our size budget? What kind of leads that?
Fabian: We always say as we get started, like a four to six month window feels
comfortable. That -- that tends to be average. I mentioned Cincinnati in three
months. We were happy, because they had to get it done and they were able to
work their way through it. The obvious issue on the table is departments are
participating and the question becomes -- they have their regular work to do, how
much can they contribute to costing programs, scoring the programs, and so on.
Even in three months they still have to be able to do their other job. So, this is
not day-in, day-out priority based budgeting. If the organization is doing day-in,
day-out priority based budgeting, I don't know how fast we could finish the
project. It would be really quick. But we always say give yourself four to six
months and that is a typical implementation timeline.
De Weerd: Any further questions? Thank you, Chris, so much for joining us and
-- and the informative presentation. I'm sure that Todd will wrap -- or follow up
with you. Todd, any -- any closing remarks from you?
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, again, I appreciate your time for
allowing us to present to you this topic of priority based budgeting. We planted
the seed last week of the term programs and now you see what the program is
kind of looking at. Again, we are excited about working with you, Council, to get
your feedback, to get you input, so we can work with Chris and we can select --
select a decision and a direction of where we want to go with the city with priority
based budgeting. So, again, Chris, we appreciate your time tonight.
Fabian: Thank you.
Lavoie: And, Council and Mayor, appreciate you guys allowing us to present this
topic to you tonight.
De Weerd: Thank you. Jaycee, do you have anything? Okay. Well, we know
you've already seen this presentation or -- okay. Well, thank you so much.
Fabian: Thank you, everybody. Very much appreciate your time.
C. Finance: FY2018 Budget Roadshow Wrap-up
De Weerd: Save travels. Item 9-C is also under our Finance Department and
so --
Lavoie: Members of the Council -- I will greet the Mayor later. Again, appreciate
you allowing us to present to you the wrap -up of the fiscal year 2018 budget
roadshow. Tonight we are going to discuss what we presented to you this
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month. We have had three previous roadshows. We are going to review those
items one by one. We are going to present to you for discussion the
compensation proposal. We are going to discuss and ask for direction and
discuss it on the benefits proposal and, then, last we will present and request
discussion and direction on the three percent allowable tax proposal. And the
decisions here and the guidance that we are looking for from you, Council,
tonight will help the Mayor and the departments build a budget proposal that will
be submitted to you at the beginning of June, end of May. So, the guidance is
what we are looking for from you to help the Mayor develop the budget for the
upcoming two months. These three items that we presented to you over the
months -- the last month begin our larger ticket items, so that's why we presented
to you these items in particular, as opposed to the rest of the budget during the
regular budget process. So, again, we have communicated a lot of information to
you over the last month. Also just to let you know the departments are here to
answer any questions from here all the way to the end of July 19th , which is the
-- kind of the end of the budget process. We will always be here to help answer
any questions, because these items, as we discussed, have large impacts to the
budget, that's why we bring those -- these items to you individually. And we
wanted to provide you an opportunity to digest this information over the months
and that's why we are here today to, hopefully, get guidance and discussion
about the information we have provided you over the last 30 days. Again, with
that March 7th we stood up here, presented to you our healthcare discussion.
March 14th was city compensation. Last week we did the three percent
allowable and today, the 28th, again, we are wrapping it all up, so that we can
get guidance and direction, so that the Mayor can work with her departments to
develop a fiscal year 2018 budget proposal. So, with that we are going to get
straight into the first item up for discussion -- up for consideration and looking for
direction from you, Council. As was discussed back on March 7th it's the merit --
the merit proposal. Today we would like to propose to you a consideration of
allowing the Mayor and Finance to put in three percent into the budget proposal
for fiscal year 2018 for the merit only calculations. So, again, we are looking for
guidance, direction, discussion. All decisions that we make are going to be -- we
can adjust them up to July 19th through the budget workshop process. So, what
we are looking for is guidance and direction so the Mayor and the Finance
Department and the directors can develop a budget based on directions from
you, but, please, note we can change the direction during the regular budget
process. So, this is the slide that we presented to you on March 7th regarding
the merit. Three percent is what we are kind of looking at at this proposal of
about 500,000 dollars. At the very bottom it's 46 and some change. Again, this
is the proposal that we are making to Council tonight to see if you accept the
proposal for us to include into the fiscal year 2018 budget draft proposal . So, at
this time we have the subject matter experts here to answer any questions that
have not been answered since March 7th. But, again, we are looking for
guidance and acceptance from Council, so that the Mayor, HR, and Finance can
move forward with development of the fiscal budget. So, again, I stand for any
questions, Madam Mayor.
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De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Council, questions? Comments?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: This is more of a comment than a question and I know that we wanted to
set these separately. However, they go together and I'm just going to say this.
The merit discussion and the three percent discussion, it should be one
discussion, because we need to make sure that we are getting -- that we are
getting enough money to cover the merit, so if we approve a thr ee percent merit,
then, we are going to need to approve at least a big portion of that three percent
in order to cover it and just like we discussed in the past weeks is the cost of
doing business going up and so it's hard to discuss one without the other, but --
yeah. They are sisters really.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Todd, will you --
De Weerd: Did you turn on your mike?
Cavener: Yeah, it was -- it says unmuted.
De Weerd: You need to at least get close to it.
Cavener: All right. Madam Mayor, Todd, either you or Crystal, can you give us a
quick refresher on what national and statewide data that you claim to have later
this year? I think that's important as a reminder as we evaluate this particular
question.
Ritchie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, absolutely. Great question. So,
when we look at the national data we look at the Consumer Price Index. For the
local information we look at our neighboring cities and neighboring municipalities
here in the Treasure Valley and, then, we also look at Idaho statewide. We have
expanded this year into looking at regional data that includes Washington, Utah,
Idaho, in addition to the standard information we consistently look at year over
year.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
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March 28, 2017
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De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Crystal, in doing the exit interviews, do you ever find that salaries
are an issue or primary issue?
Ritchie: On occasion, yes, we have had feedback that it is salary-based. Excuse
me. Sorry. I don't know if I hit a button and the presentation moved or if it did
that on its own. But it has not been something that has been a consistent pattern
of feedback that we have received at the city.
Little Roberts: Thank you.
Ritchie: Uh-huh.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: If we are being cautious in providing feedback or direction, I'd be
happy to provide one person -- one council member's feedback and direction.
Until we have national and local data that is somewhat more in concrete , I
struggle with saying three percent as the recommendation, only to want to run
that back potentially as we get closer to the budget session. So, for placeholding
purposes -- and I think that we would have a much more robust discussion
during our budget hearings, I would recommend a two percent placeholder.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: While we are having this discussion, can we see that slide back? The
numbers there. Thanks.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Crystal, do you have any idea what our average wage is?
Ritchie: I don't have that information with me this evening, Councilman Bird.
Charge,
Bird: But it's between 55 and 60 thousand I --
Ritchie: But I would be happy to get that information back to you.
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
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Bird: And do you know what the median income is for Meridian?
Ritchie: No. We would have to get it to you. We didn't bring that with us this
evening, but we can certainly get that and provide it to each of you.
Bird: I would appreciate that. Thank you.
Ritchie: Absolutely. You're very welcome.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And something else that we discussed in years past and I don't
remember the outcome, if it was just that we weren't interested or you were going
to look into it, was also implementing a bonus program for those special areas
that, you know, somebody may have performed or done something on -- a little
bit above and beyond even what may be their merit is, but maybe they did -- they
did something that deserves a little extra something.
Ritchie: So, currently that's not the structure that we are under today, as you
have acknowledged, Council Member Milam. Sorry for that. But that is
something that we are currently gathering information on from local agencies and
statewide agencies to see how they administer a merit pay for performance
program that's different than how we do it today and we are in the process of
collecting that information and will have that for you in the next several months .
Milam: Madam Mayor? And I'm not even saying this necessarily changes -- a
restructure of our entire program, I'm just saying have some funding set aside
that people could be -- in addition where it could be for recognizing those special
circumstances.
Ritchie: We will take a look at that and get back to you.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: It doesn't sound like on that -- do you anticipate having that information
to us, then, before our budget hearings?
Ritchie: We were not anticipating having a recommendation for you on changing
our current philosophy or our current program for FY-18. That's something that
we will be presenting to you in the next several months for consideration during
FY-18 for '19, unless directed otherwise.
Meridian City Council
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Cavener: Thank you.
Ritchie: Uh-huh.
De Weerd: Crystal, can you also -- I asked you after seeing some of the
compensation information, to look at some of our city employees and one of the
things that our -- our comprehensive salary plan considers is how long should it
take an employee to get from their starting salary to the -- the top and I think it
was 15 years with the three percent across the board each year that it took to get
to the top of the range.
Ritchie: Mayor de Weerd, that's correct. If you use a three percent merit
increase that was flat, with no changes, for an employee who comes in at the
hiring range to consistently progress through to the end of the salary range was
15 years.
De Weerd: And in our Police Department it's seven and a half? Can you tell us
what the STEP -- STEP plan contemplated?
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the largest STEP would be
eight years from recruit to the senior police officer level three is -- that just got
implemented this fiscal year, the new ranking of level three. So, it takes a total
of, I believe, eight years if they brought an employee at the entry level position.
De Weerd: Is that apples to apples?
Ritchie: The STEP plan is based on tenure, as they move through the steps.
Our current compensation policy and salary administration guidelines is based on
performance, so you can progress quicker through the salary ranges based on
your performance. The lower you are in the range the greater your increase is to
move you into the market, which is where we consider everyone to be market
competitive and, then, it slows down on the end of the raises. So, STEP is based
on tenure. Our general employee plan is based on performance. As one of the
differentiating factors.
De Weerd: Well -- and the difference between that is around 25 years?
Ritchie: Yes.
De Weerd: Okay.
Ritchie: So, if you have a flat rate of three percent, it's about 15 years. If you
look at the pay for performance program that we have in place today and how we
move through that program today, on a three percent no change, on a merit pool,
based on performance, it would take you 25 years to get from start to finish.
Meridian City Council
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Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Crystal, it's a three percent merit only?
Ritchie: Uh-huh.
Bird: Every employee gets three percent?
Ritchie: No. That three percent is in a pool that gets --
Bird: I know.
Ritchie: Okay. Based on performance.
Bird: In other words, some can get six and seven and some can get zero.
Ritchie: Not six or seven. I believe the highest would be four to five.
Bird: How much?
Ritchie: Four or five, depending on the -- the spread. I think four is most
common in the merit matrix, as well as zero, depending on performance.
De Weerd: I think what that does is you might have a superior performance, but
if you're in the -- a certain place in the salary range you could get just one
percent.
Ritchie: Yes. That is correct, Madam Mayor.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I'm still kind of new around here. In the experience of
those in the room when was the last time, if anybody remembers, this ever
happened that a placeholder was set and when the budget was set that number
was reduced?
Ritchie: Yes. Last year.
Palmer: Well, that makes me look dumb.
Ritchie: Not at all. That's why we are here, so you can question us and we can
get an answer for you this evening.
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Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Crystal, do you see more people than in the longevity that may
deserve that four percent that are only getting one percent? Are you seeing
more of them departing to other cities -- areas because we can't hit that -- what
they deserve or capped?
Ritchie: No. The separating employees that we have had, if you look over the
last year, are not employees that are in the superior range or towards the end of
their salary range.
Little Roberts: Okay.
Ritchie: So, that has not been a factor that's being communicated in an exit
interview.
Little Roberts: Thank you.
Ritchie: You're welcome.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: That, Councilman Roberts, we got a 95 percent retainage, I don't think our
wages are too bad.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Can somebody remind me what we did do last year?
Ritchie: Council Member Palmer, we did a two percent merit, one percent
market last year.
Palmer: And what did we do for the placeholder?
Ritchie: Three percent is what we came before you with last year.
Palmer: Okay.
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Ritchie: We said between two and four percent. Had some discussion around
three. And we ended up with two and one.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: I'd like us to go ahead and leave the placeholder at three percent.
Obviously, we can adjust it as we continue on with our discussion.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I tend to agree that the three percent placeholder for the purposes of this
stage and allowing you some direction to build the bloody budget and get this
thing going is helpful, because you have been -- you have been candid each year
knowing that that is a flexible placeholder -- quite frankly could go up, it could go
down, but you got to start with something. The data that Councilman Cavener
was commenting on will be extremely valuable to assist in making that
determination. But for the purpose of a placeholder, I think that's really common,
year over year, at least as a placeholder. Madam Mayor and Councilman Bird
would know best. I think three percent is commonly used, even if it's proved at
less on occasion.
De Weerd: Not always, but --
Bird: Not always.
De Weerd: So, I have heard two, three percent. It is a placeholder. It's not -- it's
certainly just going to be a placeholder just so you can see where we are at in
the budget process once we get into the workshops.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: It may go without saying, but I would prefer two over three.
De Weerd: Okay.
Palmer: Big surprise.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
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Milam: I'm good with the three percent and this way they are -- we are waiting for
the data to fill in the blanks. So, it gives us a starting point.
De Weerd: Okay. So, placeholder three percent.
Ritchie: Three percent. Thank you.
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, appreciate the guidance on the
three on the merit. We will move forward with that direction. Now we will discuss
the benefits. Again, we presented this topic to you two weeks ago. Again, like
we just did with the merit, we look for guidance, discussion, so that the Mayor
and HR and Finance can develop a proposed budget to that can be changed up
until July 19th. Our proposal tonight is the proposal that we presented to you two
weeks ago of 3.02 percent, again, as a placeholder. Not until we get to the -- we
get the national data that we will use, as Mr. Cavener stated, not to look at the
fine-tuned data, we will be able to propose to you the final number . But at this
moment in time we would like for you to consider the number of 3.02, total
anticipated budget of a little over 6.3 for the City of Meridian's fiscal '18 budget
proposal. Stand for any questions.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: So I don't have to do the backward math on that, can you tell me what
that number is? The increase?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: This one doesn't seem to be too discretionary, unless we are going to
delve into a discussion on what portion of benefits are covered by the employer
and the employee, which is a bigger, broader discussion, because that would
have to come into play if we were to say -- that might come into play if we were to
say we'd actually like to reduce it 200,000 over last year. Well, to do that we
would have to make some of the fundamental changes , which we are not -- that's
not on the table right now.
Ritchie: Right.
Borton: Broader discussion maybe for a later date. Is that right?
Ritchie: Council Member Borton, that's -- of course. You guys have the direction
to guide us and if you choose to redu ce the benefit pool we do have a benefits
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committee that meets and we would take that in consideration and pull several
levers that we have and one of those is that lever. So, we won't be able to bring
back a formal recommendation of what the benefit plan -- or the package will
actually look like or the total cost until we receive the renewal rates from Blue
Cross in June.
Borton: Okay.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: So, I'm just thrilled with our rating and the small increase that it is this
year compared to the last several years. So, I say put that placeholder in there
and let's move on.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other comments or questions?
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, again, appreciate the guidance
on the benefits. We will move forward with the value proposed. We will develop
the fiscal '18 budget as said. That gets us to our third item of the roadshow, the
three percent -- or the allowable property tax consideration . I stand here in front
of you proposing a three percent calculation to be considered for fiscal year
2018. You have heard from me on previous presentations, why I believe three
percent is a proper stewardship for the city. That's my opinion. But, again, we
are here for you to discuss and provide us guidance on how the Mayor and the
Finance Department will develop the revenue stream for the fiscal year 2018
budget. So, I stand for any questions and discussion.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I feel like last year we did right by the citizens by
preparing a plan that -- that did not include a tax increase, so that we were able
to have the facts before us as to what not increasing taxes would look like and
what would be cut out and, then, we were able to decide, knowing all the facts
from there, what needed to be added and, then, fell on a two percent increase
being the appropriate way to accomplish that and so I'd love to see us do that
again, so that we can take it to the citizens and say this -- this is what we came
up with without increasing taxes and, then, make the decision from there as to
what needs to be included, to decide how much to increase.
De Weerd: So, your proposal is what I did last year in bringing up a no -- no
increase budget to you with the tier one, tier two, and tier three options.
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Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: This is a hard one. I have a lot of mixed feelings and emotions and I
know I shouldn't be basing something on feelings and emotions, but a lot of them
will come up during this conversation. One, what I just said earlier, is it -- it goes
strongly along with the cost of doing business and the merit and the cost of the
increase rising and so it's -- I think it's unfair to put the three percent in on that
side and not have a way to -- to compensate for that and the increase in the
insurance. On the other hand, it is nice to start from zero. I think everybody,
then, just has to work a little bit harder. We also get -- regardless of what
number we put in there, the directors are bringing forward what they need and
we try -- we have already all said the most invaluable asset that the city has is
our employees and we have to trust that something that they are bringing to us is
something that is critical to the budget. They are not just bringing us a list of
things that they wish they could have, they are working really hard already within
their departments to cut everything that they don't think is critical already. So, I
think it's just kind of ridiculous to have an increase on one side and not on the
other. So, in my opinion if we are going to have a three percent for merit, then,
we should have a three percent for taxes, because we have to be able to cover it.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Even taking the three percent or whatever we have taken over the years,
our -- our mill levy's went down and, you know, the only increase in -- as far as
the City of Meridian property taxes -- the increase is the value of your property.
Our actual mill levy from '16 to '17 went from a 44 to a 38. That's six points.
Now, if your taxes went up, the value of your property went up, which is money in
your pocket. The problem with not taking this -- you get down -- you don't take
this for three or four years, instead of being ten or 12 percent behind, you're more
like 14 and 15 percent behind on it and once you get the -- the nice thing about
the City of Meridian, we have always been able -- aren't we the lowest tax base
for cities of equal service and size, but we have also been able to always have a
rainy day account, so when things like the snow this winter we didn't have to
worry about where the money was coming from , we had it, and that's -- I hope
you guys will always make sure that we have that rainy day account.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I just want to make clear that I didn't make any argument
against taking the tax, my argument is to prepare a budget without the three
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percent, so that we can take a look at what is left out when we don't and decide
how much of that needs to be built back in , so that we can more accurately
decide what percentage we need to do, as opposed to just doing the three and,
then, see what gets included, because that's all we can do.
Bird: I don't disagree with your there.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor, I agree, I think that exercise was the right one to go
through and whether you start with a zero and do the tier one, two and three,
which I think highlighted the discussion for those items , some of which got
included back, point them out and speak to whether or not they have an impact
on a particular level of service that we are trying to maintain or enhance or not. I
think that exercise is worthwhile and, quite frankly, whether we build a budget
excluding the three percent and show three tiers of where the 842 would be
allocated if we had it or if you did just the opposite and you built the budget
including the three percent and you still show three tiers of what would be cut if
the three percent or some portion wasn't taken. It's the same exercise either
way. I think it makes sense to do it the way it was done last year. I agree with
Councilman Palmer and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's not being utilized, it
just seems to be the proper way to build a budget.
De Weerd: The difficulty I think in the exercise last year was Meridian historically
has been a pay-as-you-go community and Todd last week showed you some
really good indicators in -- in terms of what -- what are those predictable cost
increases and there are some variables and when you start to not take the full --
fully allowed three, the cumulative impact it has on our ability to continue to -- to
be one of those pay as you go or save before you spend type of -- of
communities and -- and in that exercise it doesn't contemplate that and so we
can be thinking that we have that -- that way of projecting what that impact is
really going to be and -- and all you have and that's what that tool of the
comprehensive financial planning tool allows us, it's a -- it's a tool that kind of
brought you for your information, but it's something that we definitely have to plan
by. We need to see what the -- the impacts of the decisions we make. I can
bring you that, but what I -- what we have not yet been able to figure out is to
show what is that impact going to be on the CIP, on the ability to continue to
maintain our benefits, our salary plans, or commitments to a union contract and --
and those kind of things, I don't know if that fairly represents that and that's the
challenge that I really have been grappling with in trying to say we still haven't
found the right way to reach that and able to communicate it, but I -- we will work
with whatever we need to do. But that's my cautionary is I can bring that to you,
but it's not going to show you what the future implications are going to have and
-- that's what I can't communicate, so --
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Borton: Sure. Madam Mayor, I don't -- I don't disagree with that concern, but
certainly -- at least from my perspective nothing is decided today.
De Weerd: No.
Borton: It's a general direction. Right? And what was really illustrative last time
was that discussion and it really -- it highlighted and it made it easy for us to
articulate to a taxpayer who might question why a decision was made to take two
percent last year, for example, maybe three, is to highlight the discussion and it's
done in a public forum as to what those additional resources are used for and
why and the impact on those resources to the service level we provide an d
answer the question that -- that you're raising, which is valid, what is the -- the
maintenance of our service to the community that's provided by that. Rather than
skip that step, it just seems to be appropriate to go through the exercise and if we
can't articulate it through that public process, then, we will know that maybe it's
not appropriate in that given year to utilize it. But we don't know today. It very
well may be appropriate to take all three percent, but -- I don't disagree.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: I can certainly see how that was valuable to go through the
process and everything. I think it was very helpful on those steps and to analyze
the different tiers, but from talking to the businesses that are looking at moving
here or the businesses that are looking at increasing their numbers here, we
have got a business right now that's moving three-quarters of his team from
Austin, Texas, and I know that they are looking at the long term and expecting
our services and what we provide our citizens to not decline and so I think , like
you mentioned, it's just really important that we keep not just this budget , but how
does it impact the budget down the road in mind as we go through this process.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. And I think to your point I think they would look closer at
the decision that we make when we are actually setting the budget than the
decision tonight on -- on what budget to prepare. So, I think -- I mean I really
reiterate I think we have the best opportunity to set the budget appropriately
based on knowing where we are at if nothing changes, as opposed to just
assuming we are going to need it. We probably are, but that's a decision, while
it's the same topic, they are two completely separate discussions. One takes
place when we actually get into the details of what's going in it , this one is on
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whether to prepare a budget with or without it and , then, we are poking and
prodding once we have an actual proposal before us.
De Weerd: Well, I appreciate the discussion and certainly when we go out and
do business visits I -- what I hear from our business community is be predictable.
Maintain the levels of service, but be predictable, because it's -- if they know --
and, again, why I like the CFP is it gives a tool that -- that they can better plan on.
They -- they develop a business plan -- a five year business plan and they -- they
build in these kind of assumptions. It's when you throw in new stuff the -- the
new impacts that they can't plan for that they really have difficulty. So, good
discussion. We will -- we will bring you back a budget similar to last year with
one, two and three and -- it will be fun. It will be big. It will be incredible.
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, again, we appreciate the
guidance on that. We will go ahead and take the three items that we discussed
today, build it into our fiscal year 2018 budget and you will see the budget
proposal to you I believe at the end of May, early June, for your consideration.
So, again, appreciate your time.
D. Council: Discussion about Potential Open Meeting
Forum on 5th Tuesdays
De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Okay. That was the wrap up of the roadshow.
Item No. 9-D was a discussion on potentially adding a fifth Tuesday for an open
meeting. I believe that you all received a memo from Mr. Nary and kind of saw
some of the potential challenges. I have talked to a number of you in terms of
what -- what is the intended goal to this and you see that Mr. Nary shows what
the potential conflicts to that goal are. We are setting our town hall for April with
the Unplugged open mike type of a forum. It's going to be at Cole Valley School
and, again, show how -- when our office gets phone calls we do offer to our
citizens that you can do the coffee with the Mayor, you can do these town halls.
There are different opportunities to get in front of the Council, but what Council is
-- and what the discussion is is really focused on policy and land use and budget,
like we just did. That operational has a different of flow to answering concerns as
it deals with city business. We -- we do have other opportunities to have those --
those informal, not on the public record, not on an agenda opportunities to have
those conversations and -- and I think that Mr. Nary had also put in there -- there
are other things that we are not doing that can be considered in terms of office
hours or weekends. I have tried Coffee with the Mayor on weekends and I -- I
sat there by myself. So, that's all right, I don't mind sitting in a coffee house
drinking coffee and I'm good company. So, anyway, that's kind of -- I appreciate
Mr. Nary giving you some feedback and would open this to any questions or
comments.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I guess a question first for Mr. Nary. As the memo that was sent to us
was confidential, what are we allowed to talk about in a particular meeting?
Nary: Well, Madam Mayor, I guess I can put on the record at least what was
looked at and what you have noticed to consider. So, the Idaho open meetings
statute is very specific on what business meetings of the Council are supposed to
be. So, I was trying to advise you and again -- and I guess the public in this
instance now, it's much more restrictive than the type of forum you're talking
about of allowing people the sort of free flow of information and -- and probably
the hardest part about it -- and that's what's difficult in trying to answer this
question, both for the public's perspective, as well as the elected officials'
perspective, is the agenda part of it actually is critical. It may seem like it's not
that important to people, but the purpose of the statute is that the public knows
what you're talking about, because the public purpose of the meeting is a
business meeting and the public has a right to know what you're going to talk
about before you talk about it and that's why the agenda is critical . We
sometimes, as an entity, get a little wrapped up in getting all the documents
together to have them available for the public. It's an excellent practice. It's not
required to do, but it is required to tell the public what you intend to talk about
before the meeting. So, this openness it makes it very difficult to know and
anticipate what that is and so what you're left with is having a conversation with
the person that says they want to talk about traffic and you say, okay, general
traffic, specific traffic, thank you, we will put it on the agenda, because, then, we
can notice it and people that would have an interest in that subject matter could ,
then, attend or watch to see what you're talking about . To try to resolve it with
that is lacking the proper agenda notice and , therefore, could arguably be a
violation of the code. That's what we are trying to avoid, because the only way to
cure a violation of the code is do it over when you admitted you did it wrong . No
one likes to do that. That's not a situation any city wants to be or county. It
applies to everybody. So, that's what we have sort of looked at and helping give
you information on what the code requires. You know, one of the suggestions I
had, which -- which you can consider is the -- there is a section of your meeting
that is geared towards future topics, so if that's an area that would allow -- you
would consider letting the public come and , again, very general, no deep dive
discussion on what the issue is, but just a generalized discussion of what it is
and, then, a future agenda that it could be noticed on and, again, some
information needs to be gathered and something else about it and those type of
things. That's probably about as close as you can get to doing what -- what I
think you would like to do without it crossing that line on the agenda, because,
again, what we probably recommend is you have a sign-up sheet and if you sign
up John Smith, I want to talk about schools or traffic or whatever that may be.
Occasionally you may get an operational question like the Mayor was saying.
That's an easy opportunity for the Mayor to say, oh, that's an operational
question, my office or a department will get back with you, we will get more
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information, and we will follow up. It's not really an agenda item to talk about.
But that's the -- that's the concern I have is that the way that the structure is you
can gather -- all of you can gather information in lots of different ways and I made
some suggestions, like the Mayor pointed out, the office hours, you certainly talk
to people at various community activities, Coffee with the Mayor, the town hall
meeting, you all have e-mail, you know, all of those types of things give people
the opportunity to give you information for future meetings. Whenever
information comes to the city, normally it comes through the clerk's office or the
Mayor's office. That will get discussed and determined, okay, is this an
operational item for the Mayor or the department to handle or is this the Council,
one, because it's talking about budget policies and those kinds of things. So,
there is ways to do it, it's just -- it's -- it's the way that the statute has been
created by the legislature and the purpose of public business and their desire for
agenda and notice for people to participate and I know it's clunky, because,
again, the legislature printing up a need statue that governs, the legislature
themselves, all of the meetings. They have added to the governor's committee s
now have to be run by open meeting standards. All of the things that are
required by statute, all things that are created by ordinance, so -- I mean they
had to create one statute to cover a huge spectrum of meetings, so that's why it's
so restrictive. It's wanting to be clear that you can't create your own little world in
the public meeting context. Again you can gather information in lots of different
ways, but that would be my concern is that agenda piece is really critical and
without giving any notice to people you couldn't do very much. So, maybe that
future meeting topics at least is the -- the signal to people that this is not going to
be discussed today, but it will be discussed at a future meeting and that might be
a way to do what you're wanting to do without crossing that line. Is that --
De Weerd: Well -- and in that fashion you have four or at least three meetings a
month you can do that. We have Coffee with the Mayor and it could be coffee
with the electives. I don't care. We do that six -- six times a year and four town
hall meetings. There are a lot of opportunities for our citizens to come and the --
the nice thing about the town hall or the coffees is that we have some of the
directors on hands, so what you can't answer you can connect them with the
director of that department that can give them relevant information , so -- and
that's why we set them up is to have an informal venue that instead of waiting for
them to come to us that we go out in the community and are open to any of the --
the conversations and I can tell you probably the -- the chief had some of the
more interesting ones at our last coffee with citizens that came with concerns and
he was able to -- to listen and address it where he can and follow up where he
couldn't, so --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
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Milam: As much as I like the idea, after reading the memo and all of the pitfalls
and warnings that came with it and the -- there are a great number of forums for
this type of outreach. I am okay not doing the fifth meetings and maybe there is
another way that -- if somebody can request a future meeting topic or something
for one of our meetings, if it's something that we can actually get on the agenda,
if it's something that we can, you know, therefore, talk about in a council meeting.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Question for Mr. Nary. Mr. Nary, municipalities across the state allow
for public comment -- city of Eagle had a special meeting since we last discussed
this to engage the public to come address the council and the mayor. ACHD
takes public comment at the end of every one of their meetings . Have any of
these municipalities or governing organizations been challenged?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Member of the Council, Council Membe r Cavener, cities
have been challenged and counties have been challenged open meeting
violations. So, it does happen. Does it happen very often? No, it doesn't
happen very often and could you have a meeting where no issues got raised,
absolutely. Probably many. My concern and my caution is you won't know it
until it happens. You're going to have, you know, a situation that I can see very --
very commonly, because you see it in testimony, a person has a concern about
traffic and they are talking about it very generally and about two minutes into it
they are really talking about the project next door that's going to make their lives
miserable and it's on your agenda two weeks from now and all of a sudden in the
middle of them talking someone has to say stop, you're actually talking about
something else, not what you started with and now we have to stop in the middle
of it and now it's a confrontation and you won't know it until it's already happened
and that's the kind of thing that is why I'm concerned a nd, again, there is other
ways to do it, but has it happened very much in other cities? Not very often.
Does it happen? Occasionally. And usually it's over something super contentious
and a hot-button issue for lots of people. But that public record piece when
you're talking about land use is the one that's the biggest concern, because that's
got other interests and liabilities attached to it that the public meeting process
has to be pretty clean and right now as you have all heard in other training and
things like that -- I mean you really understand that ability of to self-censure that
when you go to the grocery store or activity or club and someone wants to talk to
you about it, you're all very aware of what those requirements are and you are
able to do that yourself and say, oh, just come to the public meeting, I can't really
discuss that today. It's a little harder when you invite them all to come here and I
have no idea if it's going to be two people or 200 and they are going to have a lot
of issues and not really want to take no for an answer and it's very difficult to
wade through that and that's why I would suggest using other methods. You can
use one that might work and we could try that, if that would make you more
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comfortable and see if it kind of gets -- evolves that way. But, yeah, there hasn't
been a lot of it, but I don't really want one. I think that's my job to tell you don't
get one, so --
Cavener: Madam Mayor, just a comment if I may.
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I appreciate the memo and I think that it is important that if this Council
or Council members want to engage in this process that we go into it eyes wide
open. I struggle, though, personally with the difference between saying you can
come and request something for a future meeting topic and provide your
feedback or comments in a meeting, but not have a meeting where we can say
come engage the City Council. I don't see the correlation between the two and
perhaps, Madam Mayor or Mr. Nary, you can help provide some clarification on
that. To me this is even more timely today when I -- I had a citizen call out -- call
me today on -- just wanted to get a better understanding of how do we engage in
the community. She's new to -- to Meridian, had moved from Eagle, and a
question that she asked me is how do I better engage the City Council and I said,
well, you can, you know, you can come to a meeting, you can e-mail us, we are
having a phone conversation, you can find us on social media, you're welcome to
come to Coffee with the Mayor and town halls and her comments were I have
been to Coffee with the Mayor and I heard about the town halls, but those seem
to be kind of citywide and I really would like to develop a relationship and better
engage my City Council, how -- she asked me how I would suggest that and I
said, well, I would hope -- I said we were going to be discussing this topic tonight
and maybe she could come and provide some perspective, but that -- I would
hope that this or something like this could be that mechanism. I think Coffee with
the Mayor is fantastic. I try to get to all of them. I know that many of us try to. I
think our town hall meetings are great and I love that we centralize them in
certain parts of our community and the Mayor has done an exemplary job of
getting outside the walls of City Hall to engage our citizens, which is to be
commended. Likewise, though, there are citizens who want to come in and
engage the Council and the Mayor here and I think having an opportunity for our
citizens be able to do that is a good idea . I recognize that there are issues.
However, as I mentioned earlier, there are municipalities across the state that do
this in one form or another. It is part of their regular meeting or as part of a
special meeting. Quite frankly, the road that I went down in having a special
meeting was in response to concerns from the Mayor's Office and city attorney
that this could be an issue if we had this in our particular City Council meetings
and so having a special meeting on this particular topic was -- was done as a
mechanism to remedy some of those concerns. So, I appreciate the memo.
This is something that I still think is wanted, something that I would encourage
Council Members to participate with. If it's not valid for your time I completely
understand that or if you were concerned about some potential pitfalls and you
wouldn't want to participate. I would understand that as well. But I do think that
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this is a -- a valid effort, at least for us to try like other municipalities have to see if
this is something that our community would respond to.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Just to respond, you haven't had a concern from the Mayor's Office,
the concern has been the fifth Tuesday, adding another meeting date. All public
meetings have to have a stenographer and take minutes and staff will need to be
here. You are a body not individuals and so you need a quorum and so it -- there
is a cost to it. If Mr. Nary says it can be put on our three land use meetings then
-- and that they come and present their idea and -- and you can decide if you
want to set it for an agenda that works, too, but -- and we can try it. All's we are
saying is another meeting costs money and there are plenty of opportunities for
citizens to engage not just with me, but as you mentioned Council Members do
go to the coffees and the town halls and there -- and that totals ten different
opportunities that those citizens have without the need for additional resources.
So, they -- they already exist. And -- and that's all my point is.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, I appreciate hearing that. I think that my goal is trying
to better engage our community at the Council meetings as always been
forefront and my initial plan was to have them be able to come to a meeting
much like tonight and provide their feedback . I was told by multiple people in
multiple departments that we can't do that, because we are unable to notice for
that appropriately. I'm hearing different things now, which is great, and if this is
the route that the Council wants to head down I would be fully supportive of that.
My -- my recommendation of a fifth Tuesday meeting was only to remedy the
concerns that had been shared with me about our inability to properly notice what
we were going to be addressing at a specific Council meeting.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Luke, I -- my thought is if we are going to do this, let's do it at one of the
regular meetings and have an agenda item to say public comment. Bill has
already said that can be done. My biggest fear -- and I will probably be the first
one to put my foot in my mouth -- is somebody is going to get up here and we are
going to get to talking and the thing you know we are deciding on some
application coming forward in three weeks. You set -- the application comes
forward and five, six Council people recuse themselves. I -- I really -- and, like I
said, I will probably be the first one to stick my foot in the mouth doing it, but --
and I -- to be flat truthful, I don't want it to be nothing but a complaint session. I
think we will see a lot of that. I have -- I have no problem having -- letting the
public come up here and say a few things, but we -- I think you have to limit the
time and definitely the subject. It cannot be an active or going to be an active
project.
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Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I agree with Councilman Bird. Doing it at these meetings -- and with
whether we allow them in a different way to have something -- kind of know what
they are going to be discussing and put on the agenda ahead of time or we just
have open comment, I don't think it's going to be clear we aren't discussing land
use issues period. I mean unless there is -- and, then, if -- I would have no
problem hearing people complain -- if they want to come and complain about the
roads and the schools all the things that we are going to work on fixing tomorrow,
but -- you know. So, I have no issues with that and so we just need to be very
clear what they cannot talk about and as soon as they start going down that road
we have to stop. But I think -- I don't think people will. I think if we are clear I
don't think that's going to be a problem for the most part.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Just to add one thing, while we do this the public is welcome to tear into
any of the seven of us, but not our employees. Absolutely. That has got to be up
front. We don't touch the employees.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, so I did look at Eagle's minutes
and watch some of their meetings and -- and I don't know if -- if this is intentional.
I'm assuming it is on their part, but they do have this public comment section at
the beginning of the meeting and I'm assuming it's so that the public can come
and go if they wish and not have to wait until the end. You know, if the desire of
the Council is to try this, I mean we can work on some language to include in the
agenda to make it clear, like what Mr. Bird said, again, this is topics in general
interest, these are not specific details, these are not regarding pending projects,
these are not for complaints, these complaints could be handled -- you know, all
those issues can be done in a different forum. It's just a public meeting forum.
And that all of them will be -- you know, if -- will either be scheduled at a future
meeting at some other time for further discussion , so that it's clear to folks up
front if it's necessary -- yeah. If it's clear to folks up front all you're telling us is
what your concern is and with enough detail for us to know whether we want to
schedule it for future discussion and it's something we haven’t already talked
about or made a decision on or whatever that may be. We could certainly craft
some language to make that clear and, then, you know, see how that goes. To
follow up on Councilman Cavener's point before, I have also seen and know and
worked in cities that did this and stopped doing it, because you open the tide
gate and you couldn't push it back without just stopping it, because it became so
problematic of the concerns Mr. Bird raised, complaints against employees,
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complaints against process, complaints where the person complaining really
didn't have a -- but once you put it out there and now with the internet it's all out
there. You know, in the past it only got heard in the meeting by eight or 15
people. Now it gets heard by four or five more that are on the internet watching
it, but those are the things that are concerning is that the way it's broadcast now
it's a lot different and when you have misinformation out there it's hard to put that
back in the bottle.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, Mr. Nary, so if we were to go with that format and
someone were to present something, would Council be allowed to not discuss,
but to ask questions for context and clarity of -- you know, to fully understand
what it they are saying, but, then, you know, avoid any discussion until it would
be put onto a future meeting topic?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, I
think you're going to need some clarity to know whether you would want to
schedule that or whether it's something -- but, again, it's going to be very
cautionary, at least the first few times, to make sure -- again, you folks have
heard it many times, I don't have to tell you, it's probably more for the public, that
somebody comes in and says I have a general concern about overcrowding in
schools and it's mostly because this 800 home subdivision is going to be built
across the street from me and all of a sudden we went from a very general
concern to a really specific concern and that happens all the time, because that's
what -- that's what -- that's what affects people and makes them passionate. So,
that's what I'm trying to be cautious of . But, yes, you would definitely want to
make sure we can clarify what is it you're really asking and, again, we can always
point back to we told you up front we can't talk about things that are going to be
pending and things like that.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, further follow up?
De Weerd: Un-huh.
Palmer: I want to be more appropriate instead of us, then, discussing to a point
to decide whether to discuss later, to just leave it up to Council President and
Mayor to decide they want to throw it onto a future agenda and now we have all
got the information, you know, they can decide what -- what would be appropriate
for a future discussion and, then, we can all chime in, you know, afterwards, I
guess. I'd like to hear this in case you're looking for opinions on --
Nary: That's certainly fine.
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Palmer: And that way there is no discussion, no opportunity to really tick off
somebody who is already maybe emotionally charged and saying we are not
interested in hearing it further. All right. The Mayor and Council President will
discuss --
De Weerd: Thank you.
Palmer: They will be the ones to discuss. Or I can make that decision if you
don't want to --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think Mr. Nary is going to find out what's the best route to go and
everything. I think we need to give it a try. I'm for giving it a try and see what we
get. Hopefully it will work out to be very good.
E. City Survey Discussion
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Clerk. Okay. City survey.
Simison: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I brought paper
copies of what's in your packet. If people like a paper copy. Just for ease of
parody. So, what I'd like to focus on -- I did receive some comments from
Council over -- since this last came up and I just want to walk through those
comments and I don't know how you want to h ave it. We will start with the
conversation. If we need to go to informal head nod or raise hand or -- but we
can go down that road on what should or should not be included . But I'm going
to start walking. And, really, the --
Cavener: Madam Mayor, before Robert begins, just a clarifying question. I know
that when you presented this to us last week or two weeks ago there was
concern about space. As printed do we have any spatial concerns?
Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, I made it all fit and I will transmit
this document to them -- to them, but the caveat I would want to throw out there
to everybody is I have not worked with the survey company on these questions .
The actual wording of the questions may change slightly. The rating -- or the --
just whether it's a yes-no, no opinion, might be a strongly favor, you know, it
might be five level, you know, decision. If you want it to be a decision point. So,
I don't want to tell you that this is going to be exactly what it's going to look like or
all this will be on there. I think that's -- those are conversations we need to
continue to have is -- as I talk about one of the questions, you know, on the local
option question and I'm going to work with them, if they have done other local
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option questions, if there is a better way to phrase it or format and if that changes
a link -- but I can make it fit. We will see. So, as of right now I'm going with yes.
Cavener: Thank you.
Simison: So, the order is different than what you saw last time and, again, that
was -- that was from the standpoint of making it fit. Sometimes when you took
something out you just try to make the space fit. So, if I can just get you to turn
your attention to page four and really question 16 is the first one in my
conversations with Council Member Borton he mentioned that the previous fire --
fire department question wasn't one that really was going to get a good response.
So, I talked to the fire chief and worked with him and he came up with a revision
to where he felt -- felt that this would give him more information and this is a
similar question to what was asked when they were doing their joint master
planning with the other departments in the area . So, it is a question that has
already been asked in a previous survey, but not a City of Meridian specific
survey that we have done on a city level. So, with that I will open up for any
comments on this question specifically. And I don't know if Perry is prepared to
speak to it. If he's aware of it or not. But I know the fire chief was in Oregon, so
he's not here to speak to it.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Robert, is it normal in our city surveys that we have had in the past that we
have asked questions regarding ordinances, which is the city laws that we pass,
in the survey?
Simison: Are you talking about question 17 and 18 or under -- right now I'm just
trying to stay focused on 16.
Bird: Yeah.
Simison: Question 16 regarding fire department.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Robert, I guess my question about 16 is it leads me to believe that
merging all fire departments, including Boise, is an option. And Nampa and -- all
the local surrounding fire departments. Is that currently an option?
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Simison: Well, Madam Mayor, Council Woman Milam, I believe the fire chief is
asking if the citizens believe it should be an option and that's the way I would
read the question.
Milam: Okay. So, it would include all surrounding areas, not just certain ones
that have been presented to us through --
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council Woman Milam, I believe the way I have asked
that question is it's -- it's clearly been stated by some that there is some
departments in the valley that are interested in having these types of
conversations. So, on one hand the answer I said would be no, because there is
some cities that have not expressed an interest in being a part of joint planning
purposes, but could this -- would this mean that if our citizens said, yes, we
should be looking at this that we would engage them, even though they said no, I
think to ask would be on the table on this question.
De Weerd: I guess the concern in having that piece to it it -- this Council has
talked about it as part of the master planning process and that's not anything that
we have an interest and I think other departments have also had similar
statements. So, I would take D out and leave it as A, B and C. But that's my
opinion. The question is if you keep it in there and people don't know what it
means and they say yes, what's Council going to do with it?
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: To me it seems a little bit misleading, because I know we can
have the dialogue with Boise, but if I read that not knowing the background I
would think, hey, possibility of merging when Boise at this point has made it clear
that they are not interested. So, I think that you can answer it with assumptions
that will lead us to the wrong information. I would recommend taking D out as
well.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council, any other comments on this one?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Robert, I -- I just don't feel there is the right information in this to even be
asking that question. I mean it worked for a year on something and you only got
three -- no other -- one other Ada county fire district to go in, but your big ones,
your two larger didn't come in. I just -- I just think it's -- there is no way you can
get out the right information for a survey.
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Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, I'm not here to advocate for anything.
There are some I will advocate for from a personal level, but on a professional
level I'm just here to present the information and take your feedback.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Good sideboards there, Robert. Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And that was the reason I was asking is this to the same agreement that
we have been discussing and if it is, then, I think that it should be clear which
other -- which cities we are talking about. I don't mind -- if you want to ask these
questions, then, ask these questions, but, then, it should say that this fire
department, along with Middleton, Caldwell, and Star, whatever the other ones
are -- that should call them out in there, because they are so far the only ones
that are even willing to work with us as far as I know.
De Weerd: Okay.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I will throw a wrench in it. I question the original question --
De Weerd: I think there already has been.
Borton: Well, here is another wrench. I like it. I think B and C -- I think B and C
are the same thing. I mean I would be curious to know -- you know, give me the
ends. The citizens, are they receptive to the concept of consolidation and, you
know, the lack of autonomy in a fire department or is it just the opposite. As I
say, I would say pick one, pick A or pick D. If you had to pick absolu tes -- I think
I know what we would get, but --
De Weerd: A or D?
Borton: D as in dog. Correct. Because what you are trying to capture from the
citizens is that concept of local control or broad based efficiencies, and which -- I
mean that’s kind of what we want to hear. That's what I want to hear. I think the
citizens -- I have got a good sense of what I think we would find out, but B and C
are the same thing. They are different ways of kind of saying the same thing.
There is a mushy middle.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
Borton: Yes or no. Black and white. Pick one.
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De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I agree with what Joe is saying on that, because regardless -- well, we
are going to do B and C anyway. Kind of. You know, to some extent.
De W eerd: D, not C.
Milam: Or B. Okay. B. Or, you know, where we -- we already work together
and if we can work together in other ways for saving money and ordering and all
that type of stuff, we are already doing that or we plan on doing that. So, I -- I
agree that A and D are really the only two that matter.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: How do you -- you know, potential cost savings and better effectiveness,
that's -- not's not right. We should have the cost savings regardles s of whether
we are Meridian fire Department or whether we are Treasure Valley Fire
Department and I -- I just think it's -- it's not enough information to allow
somebody taking a survey to make an educated guess.
Borton: Yeah. That's a tough one. Madam Mayor, on Item A I probably would
remove the phrase regardless of cost. That sort of steers them one way.
De Weerd: Misleading.
Palmer: It is a bit.
De Weerd: And I think that's what the -- when Robert forwards this on to the
professionals, they will say, no, that's leading. This is -- so -- and that's -- that's
why he said this can change in its verbiage. That's a good point. Okay. So --
I'm not getting a sense of consensus up here.
Simison: Madam Mayor, I can help lead the conversation from a standpoint in
terms of by a nod how many people would like to leave this -- or take this
question out entirely? I see some version of it stays in.
Borton: We are getting vague nods.
Simison: How many people would like to see it say in with only A and D
included? Okay. Question -- we will move forward with that and make those
changes and if -- for any reason the fire chief says that that doesn't give him any
valid information from his standpoint, we can re-cross that bridge over the next
week if necessary. Question 17 and 18 and I will defer to the sponsor of those
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for any comments, Mr. Cavener, on that, but 17 is regarding -- just add the
words --
Cavener: On the discrimination ordinance?
Simison: On the discrimination ordinance. From that standpoint. So, let's just
start there from that standpoint and -- great conversations.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I definitely want to see that question on there. I think it's important and
as we have been talking about asking and outreach on that, this is a good
opportunity to do that.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I agree. I think it is important that we have the question
on there. It being the 17th question and really it's question like 45 after all the
other options are presented. So, I think it's important that it's -- it's worded in a
way that can't be confused with, well, a lot of cities are doing what we did. As a
city we are not going to discriminate on those bases, as opposed to -- that we are
going to enforce that on everybody that owns a business or rent s a home or does
any of that, so -- I wouldn't know how to do that, but I think it should be a little bit
clearer that it would be imposed not as the city on our people we are hiring, but
on the citizens that live -- that operate within our boundaries.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: You guys are going to be in for a big surprise. I think it -- I don't think we
need something like that in there. I don't believe -- I don't believe we have a
problem. If we do I don't think we ever had to come forward. I don't -- I don't
think a survey is the place to be asking for ordinances.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: To answer the question that Councilman Palmer brought up, if it's
phrased would you favor or oppose a city ordinance making it illegal within the
City of Meridian to -- blah, blah, blah -- speaks to the scope of an ordinance that
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would apply to all of its citizens within the city. If that's -- or don't do that is the
intent to your question -- we are asking about it -- only should be applied to city
employees. If you want to do it citizen wide you would make that change.
De Weerd: And I think it's -- it's within the city, but for businesses, landlords --
and I know there is a third one that's typically in there. Yeah. Business.
landlords. Which would be the -- or -- yeah. Businesses.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I think Councilman Borton had -- had a good point in
saying with an or -- maybe it being or should that decision be left to business
owners, landlords -- I don't want to make it too complicated, too long, I just want
to make sure they don't think that it should the city have that isn't policy for
themselves.
Borton: Madam Mayor? Yeah. I read it be broader. I thought the intended
scope was should the city pass an ordinance making it illegal for those within the
city -- so, not just internally to the operations of government , but citizens and
business owners and hoteliers, up or down, that concept.
Simison: And, Mayor, City Council, I would defer to the person who knows that
was how --
De Weerd: Yes. Don't ask Robert.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: And I guess Members of Council. I solicited survey groups that have
asked this question in the past. Our body has discussed on multiple occasions
putting out a survey specifically on this issue, which would allow for more broad,
more pointed questions to be asked, but the groups that I spoke to felt that if
you're just -- if you only have one question to ask, this will give you a good sense
of where your community is on this issue, whether they support or opposed it, I
think this is a question that I think all of us have been asked either as part of a
candidate forum or a candidate questionnaire. The Meridian Press has a few
articles about this very issue. And I felt this would be a good opportunity for us to
know this is where our community stands on this particular issue. Whether we
take action in an ordinance or not, having this information I think allows us to at
least address to questions being asked.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
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Palmer: And so that maybe the question is fine with only adding the words
citywide, if we give context immediately before it saying in 2016 the city made it a
policy for the city itself not to do this. Should --
De Weerd: As an employer.
Palmer: Or -- yeah. As an employer -- I don't know. Maybe, again, that
complicates it more. But I think it gives context that as an employer should we
make everybody else do it.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, what I would suggest is after we -- if this question were
to stay in and after we get the results that we feel as a body that we need more
clarifying data on this particular issue, then, we can convene and say we want to
go and do a secondary survey about this and any other issues . I think that it is
beneficial to keep this question -- as with most of these questions -- broad in
nature, so that people can take whatever context they have when they come in
and respond.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I think that it's very clear the way it's written and may be adding a couple
words that Councilman Borton suggested, because we don't offer housing. I
don't -- I don't think you can really take this and -- and misconstrue that it -- we
are talking about some kind of city employee thing, because we so don't most of
these things, so --
Palmer: Madam Mayor. The vast majority of our population are people that
came from other places and in a lot of those places they may have come from a
municipality where the city does subsidize housing and controls that aspect of a
lot of people's lives and may have had, you know, that -- that level of influence on
those things anyway.
De Weerd: Well, adding within the -- the city to --
Simison: And, Madam Mayor, if I could just -- I do want to clarify something for
Councilman Cavener. I -- the wording exactly as you said it is not what is in
here. Mrs. Kane from legal had a hand in helping me wordsmith slightly on some
of that as well. So, these are not identical to what was originally proposed and
they still may not be identical, even after talking with the survey company to that
concept. But I understand the clarity of City of Meridian ordinance and -- to
capture those changes. Question 18.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: And don't get me wrong, Luke. Nobody hates smoking worse than I do. At
76 I'm paying for 40 years of it. I tell you, as bad as I hate it, I wish they had
never made a cigarette -- one cigarette in the world -- I'm not here to tell some
businessman, restaurants and stuff where they -- where they have public come
in, I understand. And bars -- I guess if you want to frequent them with smoke,
that's your privilege. But I have a hard time telling this manufacturing company
that's got a smoking -- designated smoking area for his workers, that they can --
that they can't smoke or do that. I just -- that's -- that's my deal. I wish nobody
ever smoked.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I'm still clarifying, I -- the question isn't saying the City Council is going
to do this, it's more gauging the public's thoughts on this and it's just
happenstance that you're aware -- it's already against the law if a manufacturing
company that employs more than five people, then, they already aren't allowed to
have an indoor designated smoking area. That's already the law.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I mean we are talking about a survey here, so I don't necessarily have a
problem with this being on there. However, we are down one more, so we are
down to like three maybe, like bars I'm talking about in the city that allow smoking
and we have like 60 that don't or -- I don't really know my numbers. I'm making
these numbers up. But it's something like that. So, I think if you want to go to
one of the three bars that allow smoking, then, you should be able to -- people
should be able to do that and so I'm not -- I'm not -- right now I'm not all for
passing a law to disallow that, but I don't have a problem with it being on the
survey.
Cavener: Just a question.
De Weerd: Well, I know, but it's -- it's misleading. No one knows that we really
don't have very many places you can do it and so it is misleading.
Borton: Yeah, but -- Madam Mayor. It goes to the same -- analogous to the
argument why 17 is appropriate, because if you have one act of discrimination is
one too many and if you have one unhealthy work environment, perhaps, that
may be one too many. I'm just saying the survey is to get data to see what the
citizens think.
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Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And, again, I think that the vast -- the vast majority of -- of our population
doesn't smoke. So, you're going to get a very biased answer to that question, I
do believe, because you're talking about a small percentage that smoke . I,
actually, a couple years ago went out and did my own -- so, I was doing my own
survey, because I was very interested in this topic and I talked to employees of
these establishments and I was shocked , because the answer was that's why I
work here, because I can smoke, not that they were feeling like they were like
forced to work in an environment where they were -- where the smoke was
forced upon them, they chose that line of work and that particular location,
because that's what -- the environment that they wanted to work in. So, I left it --
so, I kind of backed off and left it alone.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, how awesome would this discussion be if we had any
idea what the citizens would like to hear. I -- there is no way I would vote for an
ordinance that did that, but I am very curious to know what the citizens think. I
mean half the population of Meridian is Mormon, so -- at least half the population
is certainly not smoking, so I'm curious to know if they -- as nonsmokers would
support an ordinance that would be detrimental to property rights. I'm curious
what our citizens feel on that. I certainly wouldn't be supporting with question 26,
any -- any kind of opportunity for us to go into debt, but I am very curious to
know what our citizens think and, then, they elected us to make those decisions
afterwards, but it's all just -- I'm curious to know. If we are paying for a survey, I
want to know what the --
Simison: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, what I would also propose, to
the wording clarity, is make this look similar to the previous one where we will
switch the words around, so it's clear the ordinance -- stuff on those lines.
Hoping that will also make it clear for anyone that there is not a question on how
the ordinance -- as I have this written. I think I have heard from at least three
who say support it and maybe four -- so, I --
De Weerd: You want to speak up?
Simison: At least four -- I can't hear myself.
De Weerd: Well, just pull it up.
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Bird: I can't hear you.
Simison: So, Madam Mayor, the next one to look at is question 23. Had a
couple of comments on that, again, from my conversations with Councilman
Borton, and this is where I get to advocate just a little bit on this question from
those comments. But this question d id go to the Meridian Downtown Business
Association meeting on Friday for comments and feedback as well. While we did
receive some comments from them, they weren't really stuff that seemed
appropriate to incorporate into the survey and didn't have -- it was just some
slight wording change in the -- in the intro where they wanted to make it clear that
we were talking about in the future from that standpoint. So, I did -- I have
reworded that slightly in the front, but with that, if there is any comments or
questions I would be happy to entertain those or give my fantastic rebuttal as to
why it's important.
Borton: I'm glad you brought up -- Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Brought it to the downtown association for input. That was good.
De Weerd: Yeah. I questioned the same one you did. I thought how '50s. I
wasn't born then.
Simison: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Simison: Madam Mayor, the next item is question 26. Moving along to sewer
treatment plant expansion to see if that's something that the citizens are
interested in bonding for. Any objections to including that? Okay. Moving on to
question 28. Had a request from Council Woman Milam regarding adding mental
health treatment onto the list of items. Any concerns with including that?
De Weerd: No.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just to clarify, maybe when you're talking to the surve y group -- and
maybe it's just me. The mental health treatment who I think is a really topic that
we need -- I would like to get citizen feedback on, to me it doesn't really fit with
some of the other options that are being listed on that particular surve y. So, I
guess a question for the survey group. If that placement there is appropriate or if
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
Page 62 of 66
it needs to be its own separate question or incorporated in some other fashion is
all. But, again, I'm not the expert. It just kind of stuck out to me.
Milam: That sounds good. I mean I'm good with that. As long as it's on there.
Simison: Question 30. Another addition. And, Madam Mayor, Council, if I can
just take the -- say this. I think it's great to see some big questions asked, from a
personal standpoint, and I just want to say that I like the fact that we are not
afraid to at least put it out there for conversation. So, for that we will go to option
tax and this is one where again I -- I don't know if this is worded appropriately, if
it's something we need to work with the survey folks or someone else has
something. Space is -- this is really about space. Other surveys that have been
done on this topic that I have seen, there are surveys that are -- that are nothing
about -- except for this topic and they ask ten or 12 different questions on this
topic or they asked multiple questions at leading down . So, this is a stand-alone
question with not a lot of other insight and guidance from that standpoint. So,
again, I think it's open to interpretation, like your other questions on the
ordinance. People are going to read into it what they want to read into it, but it's
there.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Robert, do you think if we kind of said local option tax somewher e in that
question -- that's what everybody knows it as as a local option tax. I love the
question. I mean I'm glad to see it.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird. I think that we can put i.e. local
option tax, for those that do know or are familiar with it, they would at least get
the concept.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Maybe add the word temporary -- it would be a temporary increase until it
was funded.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Again, I agree with having this question in there, even though I would
never support it, but I think what might be more valuable data to us would be to
ask the question almost assuming the option was there . Would you support a
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March 28, 2017
Page 63 of 66
local option tax increasing sales tax within the City of Meridian to support
infrastructure, whatever, however you want to word it, as opposed to would you
support allowing it, because to those of us who are well-versed in the issue it's
super easy for us to understand, because we know every -- the whole
background. For those who have no idea or, again, came from places where it
does exist, I would want to know would you support it, assuming it's allowed.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just a comment on this question. And really all the questions. We are
not subject matter experts on survey questions. I think if they heard from us
good summarizations of what we support and I would just I guess recommend
work with the subject matter experts to create language that they deem is
appropriate, capturing our comments.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Good point, Councilman Cavener, but in agreeance with Councilman
Palmer, which I don't get to do a whole lot, so I need to do that, because a lot of
people haven't heard of local options, they have no idea that it's not -- already not
-- that it's a law and I think involving this opposing estate law part -- portion of
that kind of confuses the question to a certain degree, because it's -- you would
have to already know that it's a law that we cannot even ask the question if they
want local option.
De Weerd: But we are talking two different questions then, because right now,
then, you're leading them to believe that you could and you can't. So, it -- it's just
more would you support the state allowing us to even come and ask -- I don't
know.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council, I would defer to -- Councilman Borton and I
had a fairly lengthy conversation on this -- on this one specifically trying to find
out what would actually get to the answer that might be useful, either to the city
or to our local legislators for that matter, from that standpoint. So, I think from
that standpoint it is a philosophical question, because ultimately when the answer
comes back there is nothing the city can do to act on it from that standpoint, so
asking lists doesn't necessarily make sense, because you can't do it. Even
asking if -- what they would support you can't do it. So, that's why we came back
originally to just asking if they would support the concept. For those that haven't
seen it, BSU did their survey. This question has already been asked and
answered to a certain extent, so I feel comfortable knowing how this was going to
be answered as is, but I think it's worthwhile asking the question to continue
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
Page 64 of 66
asking -- continue getting a different data point and different information in how
it's presented.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: But when and how are these going out?
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council Woman Milam, once I got -- had this
conversation my goal is to re-engage the company this week and start refining
the questions at that point in time and that is just getting built into their structure
and we would strive to have the questions wrapped up by the end of this month ,
so that during the month of April -- it takes them at least two weeks to process.
So, once the survey is completed so it could start hitting in residents' mailboxes,
e-mails by the end of April, if we get it completed this week.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further on this? Thank you for the good discussion.
Simison: Thank you.
De Weerd: Ordinance Under 10-A. Do we have a number?
Coles: We do, Madam Mayor. The proposed number is 17-1724.
De Weerd: Mr. Clerk, will you, please, read Ordinance 17-1724 by title.
Item 10: Ordinances
A. Ordinance No. : An Ordinance (Blakeslee Commons
H-2016-0066) For the Annexation and Rezone of a Parcel
of Land being a Portion of Government Lot 2, Section 5,
Township 3 North, Range 1 East, Boise Meridian, Ada
County, Idaho, as described in Attachment "A" and
Annexing Certain Lands and Territory, Situated in Ada
County, Idaho and Adjacent and Contiguous to the
Corporate Limits of the City of Meridian as requested by
the City of Meridian; Establishing and Determining the
Land Use Zoning Classification of said Lands from RUT
to R-15 (Medium High Density Residential) District in the
Meridian City Code; Providing that Copies of this
Ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County Assessor,
the Ada County Recorder, and the Idaho State Tax
Commission; and Providing for a Summary of said
Ordinance; and providing for a waiver of the reading
rules; and providing for an effective date.
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
Page 65 of 66
Coles: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 17-1724, an
Ordinance, Blakeslee Commons, File No. H-2016-0066, for the annexation and
rezone of a parcel of land being a portion of Government Lot 2, Section 5,
Township 3 North, Range 1 East, Boise meridian, Ada County, Idaho, as
described in Attachment "A" and annexing certain lands and territory, situated in
Ada county, Idaho and adjacent and contiguous to the corporate limits of the City
of Meridian as requested by the City of Meridian; establishing and determining
the land use zoning classification of said lands from RUT to R-15 (Medium High
Density Residential) District in the Meridian City Code; providing that
copies of this Ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County Assessor, the
Ada County Recorder, and the Idaho State Tax Commission; and providing
for a Summary of said Ordinance; and providing for a waiver of the reading
rules; and providing for an effective date.
De Weerd: It doesn't look like anyone wants to hear it read in its entirety, so do I
have a motion from Council?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I move that we approve Ordinance No. 17-1724 with suspension of rules.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve this ordinance. Mr. Clerk,
will you, please, call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little
Roberts, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 11: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Just a reminder of Hillsdale Park groundbreaking on April 7th at 2:30
and Initial Point Gallery will have a new artist reception next Tuesday -- what is
the 4th of April? Yes. Next Tuesday. It says 6:30, but I imagine it is 4:30.
Please join the -- the new artist for this -- to commemorate their gallery event
and, lastly, the Closet Bowl-a-thon fundraiser by Leadership Meridian is
tomorrow at Big Al's. 6:00 p.m. Be there. Anything further for future agenda
items? If not, I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Meridian City Council
March 28, 2017
Page 66 of 66
Bird: So moved.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
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