HomeMy WebLinkAbout2004 08-24 PreRevised August 23, 2004
CITY OF MERIDIAN
PRE -COUNCIL MEETING
AGENDA
Tuesday, August 24, 2004 at 6:00 p.m.
City Council Chambers
1. Roll -call Attendance:
X Shaun Wardle X Bill Nary
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
2. Adoption of the Agenda: Approve Revised Agenda
3. Presentation of Spring Valley Ranch Project by Micheal Wardle of
Sun Cor: Presented
(*30 minutes)
4. Discussion and Review of Clothing Policv: Bring back in two weeks
(*10 minutes)
5. Discuss Procedure for reviewing Recommendations from
Commissions and Committees: Discussed
(*15 minutes)
6. Downtown Meridian Transportation Management Plan Update by
Tom Hudson: Presented
(*5 minutes)
*Approximate allowable time set for agenda item may change depending on
discussion. Please use the designated minutes as a guideline only.
Meridian City Pre -Council Agenda —August 24, 2004 Page 1 of 1
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Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting August 24, 2004
The Meridian City Pre -Council meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on
Tuesday, August 24, 2004 by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Bill Nary, Keith Bird, Shaun Wardle
and Charlie Rountree.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Gary Smith, Brad Hawkins -Clark, Tara Green,
Diane Stewart, Doug Strong and Will Berg.
Item 1. Roll -call Attendance:
X Bill Nary X Keith Bird
X Shaun Wardle X Charlie Rountree
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Bird: Mr. President.
Nary: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we adopt the revised agenda, August 24, 2004 was the revision
date.
Rountree: Second.
Nary: It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as presented. All
those in favor, say aye.
ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED.
Item 3. Presentation of Spring Valley Ranch Project by Michael Wardle
of Sun Cor:
Wardle: Mr. President, Madame Mayor, members of the Council. I arranged the
meeting, but Bob Taunton, general manager of Sun Cor is going to do the
presentation and it's my privilege to introduce him to you at this point for this
Power Point presentation.
Taunton: Good Evening. My name is Bob Taunton, general manager of Sun
Cor. I am pleased to be here this evening. We had an opportunity to meet with
the Mayor before she was officially Mayor, after election and we discussed some
of our early ideas for the Spring Valley Ranch property. At that time she actually
had some very good questions and I hope tonight that we are going to be able to
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 2 of 20
provide some answers to some of those questions. Is it possible to get the lights
dimmed a bit, so we can see this more clearly? Okay, that's great. I believe you
have a copy of the Power Point presentation that we will be speaking to this
evening and we will try to do this fairly quickly. I am not sure if — maybe I should
ask initially are people overly or reasonably familiar with the Spring Valley Ranch
property? I have got some slides where we can get into locations and so on, but
I won't spend too much time on it if it's something that everybody is familiar with.
Nary: Council, do you want some more background? Are you folks familiar
enough?
Bird: I don't need it.
Nary: I saw a presentation at the Chamber, but the rest of it —
Taunton: Well, we go through that a little bit. First off, just a bit about our
company. I have had the pleasure of being in the Valley here for a year now,
almost to the day. Our company is based in Phoenix, actually the city of Tempe.
We operate in several states: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and now here in Idaho.
Our company started 20 years ago as a real estate diversification for a power
company known as Arizona Public Service. We are now a subsidiary company,
along with APS of a parent holding company called Pinnacle West (inaudible)
Corporation and our (inaudible) is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Our
primary business is not power generation, it's real estate development and we
are active in master plan communities, business parks and we are even involved
in fun parks. We do golf courses. We do commercial. We have a mid -rise
residential that is just about to break ground, which is new departure forest in the
Phoenix area. So, our company is not as large as some of the larger
development companies, but we do have the wherewithal to undertake the
projects and we are capitalized in an adequate way to live up to the obligations
that we made to the communities that we work in. This is an illustration — that
picture that you will see throughout the slide presentation, Highway 55 is right
here. The barn and the red barn that most are familiar with is up here at the
north end of the Valley. This is a haystack, here in our initial entrance into our
plan community, which we will be discussing in a moment is roughly in this
location. Our company over the last half dozen years has developed a set of
community planning principles and it's really something that I had a lot to do with
in the community that I was involved in actually started in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
That community won't accept anything that is shall we say, imported from
anyplace else and it's a rather unique cultural environmental area and as a result
of that we developed a mixed-use, mixed -density type of village plan that worked
very well for us in that market. It was quite well accepted and it has become
somewhat the standard that we are following in our new communities that we
have undertaken in southern Utah and central Arizona in Prescott. I do have
some material that was meant to be in your packet. That is an article from
Builder magazine from December 2003 that featured the Ranch (inaudible)
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 3 of 20
project and it's useful to maybe thumb through if you have a moment and it'll give
some idea as to the design principles and environmental principles that our
company routinely follows in our community projects. Basically, our principles
can be summed up with integrated land uses. We mix commercial, institutional,
a variety of densities of residential. We believe in product diversity, income
diversity in our communities, unlike some master plan community developers that
will simply put — create a great entry monument and then gate everything off and
deal strictly with the high end. We believe in bringing in a broad section of the
market into our communities. Pedestrian scale is really important to us, not only
in the kind of main street kind of commercial, but also in pedestrian access to the
various amenities that we have in our community and especially we are thinking
of children in this location. The sense of place, that's more of a reflection of we
want to create a community that represents the history of the region, so it's not a
foreign element in the landscape and that it really kind of feels like it belongs.
Architectural heritage is the same way and we look at different methods of
access, not just by the car, but by bike and by pedestrian and we plan our
communities for transit and if transit would be available in the future. These are
some of the principles that we are going to follow here. I guess the — it really
sums up some of the other principles and one of the things that I would like to
emphasize that our goal in all of our communities is to create manageable sizes
of development so that they stand — they can stand alone by themselves or
ultimately we would be part of an overall fabric, so we don't get ahead of
ourselves and the type of real estate transaction that we do with property owners
allows us to be fairly patient with our developments; so we don't have the same
kind of time frame that a lot of developers have where they just have to get out
there and just do everything. The way we structure our deals, it allows us to be
what we think is a really good development company both in a down market and
in an up market. This is an overall map of the Spring Valley Ranch most of you
know that it's very large property, it's 32,000 acres plus an additional 6,700 acres
over here. We are involved in all of the property, not really from a development
perspective, but it just made sense for us to have an interest in all of the
property. We actually don't have title to it. Title is held in First American Title
Company. We are one of the beneficiaries if you'd like of a trust and simply it is
set up so that land can be contributed on a phase -by -phase basis. We will bring
the capital to do the development. So, the property is entirely in because it was
just difficult to come in and divide it up and there is some water resources, for
example, on the west side that may be important to us as we really focus on their
development on the Highway 55 corridor. It's the Shadow Valley Golf Course,
obviously Highway 55 going north and over the Horseshoe Bend hill and down to
Horseshoe Bend. The property runs from Stackrock here on the east, 13 miles
to the west; this is Highway 16 and this would be roughly six to seven miles along
Highway 55. The planned community of Hidden Springs is located right here. It
actually — our south boundary is their north property boundary.
Wardle: You might just mention the three counties.
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August 24, 2004
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Taunton: Oh, yes, thank you Mike. We are involved in three counties. The
property is involved in three counties. This is Ada County, here. This is Gem
County here and Boise County in this location. We will explain in a minute why
we are doing what we are doing in the particular location on the property.
Actually Mike has gotten ahead of me there. This is the master plan area that we
have chosen as our first development location and the Ada County ordinance
allows for the creation of distinct planned communities. There is, of course, a
very lengthy set of requirements and studies and things that have to be
completed prior to a submittal. But, we are just about ready to do that and we
will share some things with you this evening. The minimum size for a planned
community in Ada County is 640 acres. This is 830 acres. It is located right at
the south end of the Highway 55 corridor. Shadow Valley Golf Course is right
here and of course, the main access to this development area, which is entirely
on the east side of Highway 55 is in fact that state highway. You can see that
our property comes down here into these ridges that actually overlook the Dry
Creek Valley. This would be Hidden Springs in this location. This is again the
view of what would be our first master plan area. The land character is a flat
alfalfa field situation adjacent to the east side of the Highway. We have a
(inaudible) corridor. The Spring Valley Creek and some of its tributaries, which of
course we will maintain and enhance. It's a wetlands, but it's also a wonderful
landscape amenity and it will be a great recreation resource for the community.
There are some low ridges that are just to the east of this area as opposed to the
very high ridges that the take for (inaudible) just slightly further east. So, our
development — this is actually — this would be a zoning plan that is part of our
master plan submittal. Obviously, this is 55 — we are now looking north over here
to the left. We'd have a village center, higher density, mixed density, residential
in the lower valley area and over here and then sort of touching the valley and
the lower ridges we would move into a lower density residential that would be
primarily distinct areas that are separated by open space and then there is some
additional area within the master plan community that we have allowed for a very
large lot, residential, more the — you know which potentially could have an
equestrian orientation to it. We have been working with the equestrian folks.
They are very prevalent on the west side of the property if you take Eagle Road
and go north, but while (inaudible) an equestrian community primarily we are
working to establish an equestrian staging area where they could trailer in horses
and then ride on public land. This is BLM property or will be BLM property. The
east boundary in this location actually is surrounded by BLM's state and various
out parcels belonging to the state, so we have a great deal of public ownership
around us. This is — again, looking north on Highway 55, this is a schematic land
use plan that we have developed. It's primarily the circulation plan with some of
the recreational amenities. The riparian corridor will be developed as continuous
parkland. We will develop play fields in this location. We have a school site that
is planned here that we will donate to the public school system. Our village
center will be in this location and basically will have an access point here and
most of the traffic then internally will be distributed on an internal frontage road
so that we will have an access point here and an access point in this location and
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
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then in the future there should be an access point up here. So in other words in
this three mile length valley area, unlike Eagle Road there will be three access
points. In our discussions with ITD they are very pleased at that of course
because access is through a state highway or obviously complications for them
in maintaining the integrity of their highway system. We expect that this area will
be — this intersection will be signalized to allow for safe left hand turns both
coming from the north and certainly our residents going south. There also will be
trail systems that are shown in these dash lines throughout. We will have a
hierarchy of trails, which will be you know paved trails that are multi -use will then
have gravel trails and then (inaudible) finds for a more rural look and then we will
also develop single track and hiking trails and link those — hopefully in the future
with an overall system in the western foothills. This gives us a little bit of an
illustration of how we think the development will sit on the land. Our idea of
course is that it's just going to sit lightly on the property as opposed to something
that would be adverse to the topography. We spend a lot of time analyzing the
land and developing land plans that reflect the character and that goes back to,
of course, one of our basic principles. This would be an illustration what the
village center would be like. Highway 55 would be out here. There would be a
bridge amenity entry crossing and then this would be our one and half blow up
long Main Street. This building is meant to represent the, roughly about 25,000
recreational mixed-use office, sheriffs office, homeowner's association building
that we are already starting to design. It would be developed with the first space
of the community and then there is some additional opportunities for office and
retail and perhaps a restaurant on other parts of this main street. We think this
will be a convenience store location, gas pumps, etc., and this perhaps could be
a bank pad over here. The market will determine, ultimately, what the uses will
be. This is our schedule and we had hoped to be a little further along than we
are, but we will be submitting our specific plan this month. We hope for a specific
plan — call it master plan approval by the County the first part of next year,
approval of our detailed plan and preliminary plat at the end of the first quarter
and our intent is to begin site development in the summer of next year and then
have our grand opening of the community. We will be the primary homebuilder.
We will not do custom homes, but we will do everything else. We will also be the
builder of some of the commercial and we expect to open our model complex,
since that's how we merchandise our product, in the spring, early summer of
2006 and so that's actually when sales would start to the public housing sense.
Our first phase of development, which we think will probably be in the order of
250 lots is what we will develop. We anticipate that we will spend about 50
million dollars in that three year time period. We have made a presentation to
the association of contractors and they were very happy to see that level of
investment taking place in their back yard. Now, a community facility — as you
realize there is a lot of detail here, but you do have hopefully you can read this
line. We have spent quite a bit of time in talking with the public agencies to
determine how we would handle, you know, some of the community facilities. It's
our goal as a community developer to basically take care of everything that we
can and not really rely on the public agencies for the construction — the capital
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
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improvements of the kinds of facilities that are out there. So, with roadways, as I
said we have limited access points on Highway 55. We will construct the
signalized intersection and widen the road as required and we will also pay
ACHD impact fees — not on Highway 55, of course, but as a result of our building
development, we have of course, will develop all the internal roads which will be
turned over to ACHD. The school will donate a public elementary school site,
whether it's a regular school or a charter school, most likely what we will do is we
will develop the parks and play fields as a community amenity thinking that the
school may come a little bit later so that those would be in place for when a
school came into existence and we would have a joint use agreement as to the
use of these playfields, baseball fields, soccer fields and that sort of thing. Fire
protection, we'd been annexed at the request of the Eagle Fire District to their
district and that has occurred. Their existing fire station is about five minutes
away at Floating Feather and Highway 55. They have requested and we have
agreed to provide them with a structure that would be an unmanned fire station.
The structure will provide a location for two apparatus; a brush truck and a fire
truck, as well as some rooms, break rooms and storage associated with those
facilities. They will work with community residence, (inaudible) our staff to
develop an emergency response team, which also will work for the emergency
services, but also would be out there onsite in case there is anything such as a
brush fire they would be the first responders while the professionals are making
their way up the road and again they are not that far away. EMS is provided
through by Ada County and the Eagle Fire Department and ultimately when there
is a permanent fire station out there and the population that is in our master plan,
which is 680 units obviously doesn't justify a full on fire station, but if additional
master plans are approved and development continues, there would be a
permanent fire station constructed that would be manned, but in the interim I
think we are going to have good EMS and good fire protection and certainly the
agencies that we talk to are not concerned. The parks and trails and recreations,
again, we are going to develop those. The trails and the parks will be available
to the public and not just our residents. If the county decides to take those over
for ownership and maintenance, which is not their typical policy, of course, they
would be public access. We are going to do that anyway. We have been
working with Ada County, some special interest groups, (inaudible) the mountain
bike people, horse clubs and other neighbors to talk about how we can develop a
regional recreational plan. Our goal for this community is that it will become a
recreational resource for the entire region and the dream I have is to be able to
develop a plan with these groups that would link up the ridge to rivers planning
that is going on and certainly the open space that has been acquired through the
Boise tax. I think we are going to be able to do the same thing in a fraction of the
cost and create really a great recreational amenity in that whole western foothills
area. The sheriff will have an initial substation in our village center building —
that's the building that I mentioned that will be the recreational center, our offices,
other offices and so on. So, I think we are going to be quite adequately covered
as far as facilities for our development. In order to test this all out and this is
required as part of the application process to the county, we had John Church of
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August 24, 2004
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Idaho economics undertake an economic — well, initially a population projection
forecast and an economic analysis and he has just completed his report. Some
of the key findings are that during the five year build out of what we think this
master plan will take 2.2 million dollars (inaudible) of tax revenue surplus over
the cost of services will be available over the five years and in the fifth year and
on without doing any inflation it's about $700,000 per year in surplus over what
the cost of services would be. He has spoken to all of these agencies, you know,
he sent them letters telling them what our assumptions were in getting
confirmations back. We believe it's a pretty accurate assessment. All of the
public agencies will show us an operating surplus. ACRD, of course, will receive
additional impact fees, which will probably total in the amount of 1 million dollars
from the community. In terms of population, the 684 units from what John tells
us would represent about 4 '/� months of what going on in your community,
although we will take a much longer time to absorb all of that. As a percentage
of new Ada County housing units 205 to 210 will be a little less than four percent
of the total housing units. We are really not going to be a big player in the
market. We are going to be kind of niche player. We are going to offer a
residential opportunity, business opportunity in a location that is just a little
different from other locations in the valley. The transportation system, I think, we
are all familiar with that. Our residents most likely will come down to Highway 55,
some of them will distribute off onto perhaps Beacon Light Road. Most will head
down to 55 and Highway 44 and then there will be some distribution to the east
and to the west and obviously there will be some that will end up on 55 south,
others will end up on 44 going west. Of course, a good percentage will head
towards the Boise area. We don't expect a lot of traffic that is going to be going
north, but there will probably be a small amount on a daily basis. Our community
transportation goals kind of look like our vision plan for our community, Kittleson
and Associates are our transportation consultants and it's been our goal to
integrate land use and transportation to provide safe and efficient system for all
modes to maintain the (inaudible) importance and function of Highway 55. As I
said, we have had quite a few meetings with ITD and assured them that we will
be working with them as they do the things they need to do to Highway 55 over
time to expand and increase it's capacity from a regional perspective. The 2025
COMPASS plan indicates that the thought would be that that road way would
become four if not five lanes with a continuous turning lane. It is that way up to
Beacon Light and so additional widening will have to be undertaken to really the
top of Horseshoe Bend hill. The advantage of our company being involved in
both sides of the highway, we control both the right of way on both sides, so we
have indicated that we will work with them and their long-term strategy and
obviously take care of business relative to what we need to do to provide access
to the highway. The traffic study was undertaken by using the 2010 COMPASS
transportation model. It was updated either in June or July of this year. We held
off until that time to be able to do that because it had the latest population
forecast in it, so we wanted to have the right background traffic in 2010 and then
look at what our impacts are. Findings of course are that there is adequate
capacity on Highway 55. It really is a lightly traveled road except for Friday and
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
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Sunday nights and summer weekends. Our traffic during the week will easily
stay within the two-lane capacity that we have in our particular area. On State
Street and on Eagle Road, the estimates are using the models that we will be
less than five percent of the total volume on State Street, east of Glenwood and
on Eagle Road, also less than five percent of the total volume south of Highway
44, which meant as an average if you were count 100 cars, less than five would
be originating from our project. So, the modeling has been pretty interesting to
see how that turned out. We knew we wouldn't have a great impact on those
roads, but now that we have the model runs it's a confirmation of that.
Nary: Do you have much more, so that we have time for questions?
Taunton: Yes, we are done. We are all done. Thank you and Mike is also
available to answer questions. He has been working with the consultants more
closely than I am and so he may have more details, so if you'd like to address
questions to Mike that's great, too.
Nary: Thank you. Council, are there questions?
Bird: I have none.
Nary: Madame Mayor? You had that I think I have a question look on your face.
De Weerd: You know, I guess when we met I had a lot of questions that still
seem to be unanswered. I did note in your first master plan area you expect 684
homes in the first five years. Which, if you do the math it could be between
15,000 and 19,000 people, if you look at a per household — oh, no, I added a
zero.
Taunton: Yeah, 1,900 people.
De Weerd: ACHD tells us that Highway 55 at State is at capacity and so I guess
I don't understand how you say you won't have an impact there. I guess my first
question is what kind of marketer are you hoping to attract in the housing
development and will they have kids?
Taunton: Well, that is a very good question. Our experience with our planned
communities, such as the model we are following here, which is in Santa Fe and
Coral Canyon in southern Utah and our community in Prescott in central Arizona
is that we really appeal to a moved down market because of the kind of
village/pedestrian oriented mixed use community with trails and open space.
There are those that are simply selling larger properties and moving down. Many
of those folks have grown up kids. We also find that we attract a lot of singles,
some have children, but we are traditionally not a family development. We will, I
think because of the nature of the market place here we will have more families
than we do at our other projects, but we are not probably going to have the same
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August 24, 2004
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type of family structure that you are seeing here in Meridian. Although, I am not
absolutely familiar with what your market breakdown is here. But, that has been
our experience. The other thing is that we will — our product is designed for,
especially in the larger product for home occupations and the community in
Santa Fe over 20 percent of our residents worked from home and a lot of it was
because of how we designed the houses with particular options to develop
offices within the homes. We are also exploring right now fiber to the home,
which would allow for just about anything anyone would want to do or any
business would want to do in terms of being able to have internet access and all
of the telecommunications that folks would want. I think that's probably
something we will commit to, so it will be — that will be a valuable arrow in our
quiver for attracting employment out there over the duration. But, certainly with
our residents we expect to see a good portion of them to be home office people.
I am surprised at the number of people in my neighborhood — I live in Eagle --
that actually telecommutes. It's rather amazing.
De Weerd: I guess my primary concerns and right now we are trying to work with
the schools on the predicament they find themselves in. What school district is
going to serve this? One of the other counties?
Taunton: No, we find — the overall property is in four school districts, but where
this master plan is it's primarily the Meridian School District, although there is a
small portion, the eastern side that is in the Boise School District. Mike can
answer this question better than I because he has had several conversations
with both school districts, but I have also been approached by a parents group
that has been involved in the Hidden Springs Charter School and also the
Charter School that is in Eagle, I just can't recall the name of it right now. It's just
a recent school that's opened. They have an interest in talking with us about
developing a charter school on the property. Meridian School District has also
said the same thing, but Meridian has said they will serve us. When there will be
a school out there, you know, there will be a lot of factors that go into that, if it's a
traditional public school. If it's a charter school, it could very well be there when
our first residents move in. Mike perhaps can provide some more detail on that
question. It's a good question, though.
Wardle: Madame Mayor, the school district has really talked to us about
innovative solutions because they are dealing more and more with other
alternatives rather than just the standard 650 student school. A smaller school
and perhaps even have discussed a K-8 facility. We would generate about 212
elementary students built out of this particular project. Another 100 middle
school students and then about 120 or so high school students at build out.
Secondary schools, unlikely would (inaudible) whatever be located in that area
because of the larger population area that they serve. So, in terms of the district
we did sit down with them a number of times and even as they had addressed
the concerns expressed in the newspaper about their ability and they stressed to
us that they will work through the issues and deal with us perhaps as a charter
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August 24, 2004
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school sponsor themselves and possibly with a smaller facility that would
accommodate a larger part of the population as I said the K -S. So, they certainly
have challenges to face, but one of the mitigation aspects that we would
propose, of course, would be to provide the site fully improved with a lot of the
open space elements that really relate to a school being provided as part of the
community facility.
De Weerd: But, I guess Mike what they are communicating to us is it's even
separate from providing the facilities, it's staffing and maintaining it and that's
their challenge at this point. It would also be a challenge with their bussing.
They, right now, our citizens are very concerned because they are only picking
up on arterials because of the amount of bussing that they are having to do and
this would stretch those resources even thinner. I guess road impact is also a
significant issue that we need to pay attention to in Meridian because any
additional placement of any amount of traffic is going to again pull at very scarce
transportation dollars. Transportation is not funded out of our taxes and it's out
of a pool of money that is very limited and this will put restraints on it. You are
not adding anything into the state improvements and 1 million dollars in impact
fees just doesn't go all that far with ACHD. So, transportation dollars we need to
pay attention to because certainly with the wrath of growth we have had over
here, there is a lot in west Ada County of roads that need attention and this will
place additional competition to those scare dollars.
Taunton: Information that we have had from our consultants and their
discussions with other agencies is that the proposed master plan that we have
and talking about tonight, really doesn't represent additional units, housing units
forecasted over the timeframe 2010. We are just going to be a redistribution of
that, so if it didn't happen where we are, it's most likely going to happen in
another location and I think we — probably those units that they were developed
in the area between Eagle and Star would have a far greater impact on your road
system, certainly on Eagle's road system. Our company pays it's fair share. We
don't ask anybody to pay our way. If ITD says that there are improvements that
we have to do, in addition to what we are doing immediately at the site, we will do
them. With ACHD they are just going to have the internal roadways; a lot of our
traffic will eventually hit ACHD maintained roads, but it is going to be some
distance away from the property. So, it's a regional problem, there is no
question, but I don't think that we are making it any worse in any way that it
would be if we didn't exist and the development just simply took place in another
location.
De Weerd: Well, I guess we will agree to disagree. It just seems that with these
kind of densities on the fringe, does pull and you say redistribute and that's true,
it also pulls services, essential services to the fringes in road maintenance dollars
and safety services and safety bussing and schools and all of those and we have
to pay attention to those kind of things because where the sheriff is pulled to a
fringe, our city police officers fill in and they are taken out of the city to do that
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August 24, 2004
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because of mutual aid. Again, resources are very scarce right now and by
focusing our concentration of growth into growth centers, where they have been
master planned and expected over time is where I see my tax dollar best spent
and where I see the resources best allocated at this point.
Nary: Any other questions?
De Weerd: Didn't I form a question out of that?
Rountree: Was that a question?
De Weerd: And oh, sewer. What kind of sewer treatment plant are you doing?
Is it —
Taunton: What we are heading towards is probably a sequential batch reactor
plant, SBR as it's known. We have done several plants in our company that
have followed that particular process. We did a 4 NGD plant in the Phoenix area
and it produces extremely high quality (inaudible) for reuse. We haven't finalized
on that, we have an engineering study that is taking place, but most likely that will
be the type of plant that we will use. So, it all takes place in tanks with the little
structure on top that can be made to look like a house so you won't see any
ponds. It's all in tanks.
De Weerd: So, you are reuse would be then usable for irrigation?
Taunton: Absolutely. For the community level irrigation. We won't use it on
residential lots, it will be used on common area, open space, playfields, etc.
Nary: What is your long-term build up range? You talk about the 684 section,
but the rest of that other --?
Taunton: We don't have a plan. We don't have a schedule for the entire
property. Our focus is on that Highway 55 corridor and it needs to be because
we are going to invest a great deal of money and infrastructure and so we need
to —
Nary: What is your time period for the 684 units?
Taunton: We assume it will be absorbed within five years.
Nary: Okay.
Taunton: Then probably along the way we will process another master plan for
perhaps the other side of the highway.
Nary: Council, any other questions? Thank you.
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 12 of 20
Taunton: Well, thank you very much we appreciate the opportunity to come
down and speak to you tonight.
Item 4. Discussion and Review of Clothing Policy:
Nary: Is there any questions or concerns about that, if not, I guess is there
direction to put that on the agenda for a resolution?
De Weerd: Mr. President.
Nary: Madame Mayor.
De Weerd: I didn't know if Stacy stuck around for this one.
Rountree: Here she comes.
De Weerd: She did go through a process of bringing to the directors and we
have had it on several of our agendas and it's been tuned and fine tuned and we
appreciate the comments that you submitted as well.
Kilchenmann: So, should I just see if anyone has any questions or do you want -
Nary: Council, do you have questions or does it look okay or is there concerns?
Bird: Mr. President.
Nary: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Some of the changes are not really 100 percent clear, at least to me. To
me, a uniform is if you are required to wear one or if you are crawling around in
the muck or something all the time, then you get coveralls. I don't think we have
a dress policy other than good, you know, nice looking clothes; you know no
cutoffs or stuff like that. I mean, you know your Police and your Fire has to have
the special clothing and we give them allowances. Now, if we are going to do
this in every employee in here, you are talking about a lot of money. I don't know
how long this policy has been in place, but — and if this new one is a lot better
than the new one, I will go along with that.
Kilchenmann: Councilman Bird, I think the purpose of this policy is really just to
address clothes that the city purchases, so it would be just for those — uniforms
are then — like the wastewater plant or the inspectors, where the city is actually
purchasing — well, they already do purchase the clothing and in fact at one time,
we did have dollar amounts in here and then we took them out just to make the
policy easier or to make the dollar amounts — so that the dollar amounts would be
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 13 of 20
budgeted each year verses having to change the — I guess it's a resolution, each
year.
Bird: To my recollection, I think every department whether it's been Public Works
or who it is has purchased shirts or whatever.
Kilchenmann: I think that's why the Mayor wanted us to have a clothing policy.
She was trying to get it to be more consistent.
Nary: Maybe to help out, I think, the area you are probably talking about Mr. Bird
is the portion that's covered as office and managerial staff. I mean, I think the
ones you are talking about the more of what we think of as uniforms for the folks
that are out in the public is covered and the different departments both either
contractually or operationally, but I think the one you are talking about is — at
least where we have had discussions in the past was, essentially buying clothing
for employees, just for general purposes and they are not required to wear them
to work. I think it's written fairly broadly, it's basically the section that begins with
department dollar allowances and capital eye. It's (inaudible) pretty bodily to
allow the departments to make those decisions on whether or not to allow logo
clothing for the employees, whether or not to purchase those as either part of an
incentive program, part of routine operational needs and if you think there is
more specificity that's needed, I guess that's part of the discussion. (Inaudible)
too broad.
Bird: Follow up, Mr. President.
Nary: Certainly.
Bird: I believe there is because some department heads are going to go out and
buy two or three shirts for every employee, other ones aren't going to buy any.
Well, that isn't fair to the employees. We always need to be fair.
De Weerd: Mr. President.
Nary: Madame Mayor
De Weerd: Mr. Bird and that is why this policy was written — to bring consistency
and to kind of reign that in because that was happening and we made that
recommendation to Council earlier this spring in terms to answer to that. This is
just a follow up policy to make sure that it is clear.
Kilchenmann: We only budgeted $35 per person for the managerial/office staff
Nary: That was already budgeted (inaudible)?
Kilchenmann: It is in the budget.
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 14 of 20
Bird: Now, with the fire and the police, we have been told every year.
Kilchenmann: We had it in there once, but consensus was to remove it and the
reason was because we didn't have change (inaudible--).
Bird: Mr. President.
Nary: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Let's get this thing rewrote with everything as it is, not underlined and
scratched out so that we can do it. In the budget we can put that in every year.
Nary: I think you should have got a final one today, I think. I printed it off just
before I came and it doesn't have all the strikeouts. I guess the purpose of today
— I mean if we think there is more work that needs to be done we could certainly
recommend that back to the Mayor and the department heads. If you think it's
just a discussion point now that we could put on a resolution and we can still
discuss it if you think it's not specific enough.
Bird: I do have one question.
Nary: Certainly, go ahead.
Bird: You are seeing field inspectors clothing allowance. Now, are those
contracted field inspectors or are they the others because most of our field
inspectors are contracted like your Building Department, your Plumbing and all
that stuff. But, are they included? It doesn't exclude it.
Smith: Mr. President, Councilman Bird, Mayor this is just city employee
inspectors. These are our Public Works, Sewer and Water inspectors. That is
what it is referencing.
Bird: That needs to be made clear.
Nary: In the purpose statement, I mean, it only applies to employees. It says,
both two times that it is employees that we are talking about.
(Tape turned over)
Nichols: Mr. President.
Nary: Mr. Nichols.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 15 of 20
Nichols: Members of the Council they emphasize that this is an employment
policy, so contractors would be covered by the contract and these employment
policies don't apply to them.
Rountree: Mr. President.
Nary: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I am comfortable with the generalness of this. I think that is good, just
so you don't have to modify every year. I think it would be good to add some
examples of what some of these things mean. For instance, talking about
replacement under normal wear. What does that mean? How many anticipated
pair of coveralls on an annual basis and those kinds of things. Right now, I think
— and I trust the department heads to do this correctly, but just as a way to meet
anybody's expectations, some of examples of what the bounds of this might be
will be helpful. That, too, could be in the general sense so it wouldn't have to be
modified frequently. But, again, my expectations might be different than
Councilman Nary's in terms of what this means and if we got a general
explanation or example then our expectations are going to be the same as the
department heads.
De Weerd: Mr. President.
Nary: Madame Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess what we could do is attach an amended, approved budgeted
type of sheet that then this comes with your budget request every year and can
replace it. But, not to put figures into the policy itself.
Rountree: I agree.
Bird: That's fine.
De Weerd: Then we can bring this back and have it available next week. If you
would like we could put it on the agenda?
Nary: That's fine.
Rountree: One other thing I would like you to consider, Mr. President, is that on
some of this equipment and I know it's probably going to increase the cost of it,
but those people that are working in rights of way and have public exposures, it
probably ought to be safety color types of equipment, international orange winter
jackets and overalls and those — and it probably isn't some of this stuff, but I think
it ought to be spelled out that that's what we are willing to do for the safety of the
employee as well as their winter time protection, but there is more to this than
just that they got work in climate weather.
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 16 of 20
Nary: Council, maybe what we can do is put this on, but rather putting it on the
consent agenda, we will put it on as a regular item so that we can have
discussion. Next week — is that too soon?
Kilchenmann: I don't know if I can finish this and finish the budget presentation.
So, maybe two weeks.
Nary: Two weeks would be just fine. Great, thank you very much.
Item 5. Discuss Procedure for reviewing Recommendations from
Commissions and Committees:
Nary: Do you want to do this one or the Meridian Transportation Plan? We are
getting close to seven. Council, preference? I see Mr. Hudson is out here.
De Weerd: Mr. President.
Nary: Madame Mayor
De Weerd: I guess on Item No. 5, we had asked this to be put on to get any
feedback from the Planning and Zoning discussion with the Commission and not
seeing Anna here, I — is there any comments?
Nary: I think this was also — there were recommendations like we get from the
Parks Commission as well as to how to get that information back to the Council.
De Weerd: Oh, yes, Mr. Strong, perhaps we can just spend a moment with Mr.
Strong.
Nary: Certainly.
De Weerd: Doug, this was more in response to the recommendations that come
up from the Parks and Recreation Commission and how do we know when to
place it on the agenda and that sort of thing because we do get the
recommendations on the form that was designed, but when we work to set the
agenda we are not sure what is coming forth and what is ready to be put on the
agenda and what isn't. So, it's more of a procedural type of question.
Strong: Madame Mayor and members of the Council, typically what's happened
in the past is that following a Commission meeting where there is items that are
recommended to carry forward there are several things that can either allow us to
bring them to Council right away, meaning that they are ready to go, or that some
additional work would be required before we submit them to Council for further
action. Anything that we want on a Council agenda, we typically forward a
department memo requesting that they be put on an agenda. Some recent
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 17 of 20
examples are that we pass through Commission some new language to be
added to our general park ordinance related to recreational activities. I
forwarded that on to Chief Musser to have the code writer look at for language to
make sure that it fits and that has not come back from the code writer, yet, so
when that comes back then we would submit that for Council review and action
at that point.
De Weerd: Okay, so you would normally write a memo to our City Clerk and
request it be placed officially on the agenda?
Strong: Right. To you and the Clerk.
De Weerd: Okay.
Strong: That's the way we have done it historically.
Nary: I think the intent when we were looking at this was just to make sure things
didn't get sort of lost in the shuffle and so that if there was something that needed
to be discussed at the Pre -Council agenda as a discussion item then we could
make sure that we get that done. We were just getting these forms back with
these recommendations, but not really clear as to where we were supposed to
take those next, whether they were a discussion item for Pre -Council, whether
they were going to be a part of a department report or whether or not they
needed to be something else and so, I guess, that's what the clarification was is
to make sure that that didn't fall off the table somewhere.
Strong: Now, we could work with our Council liaison to identify topics to bring
forward and the timeframe for that following a meeting or during a meeting, if that
would help. I think that has been a suggestion.
Nary: That would be fine. Whatever works. Like I said, we just didn't want
things to get lost in the shuffle and if there are recommendations that the
Commission — well, I guess for me, I didn't want the Commission feel like we
weren't taking their recommendations to heart or seriously and really all it was is
that we didn't know what they wanted us to do with it or how it was supposed to
get back for an action to get done. So, I think we just wanted to make sure that
that was — that some process was happening around that. But, if you want to
work with your liaison -- Mr. Wardle?
Wardle: Mr. President. Certainly, I would be happy to work with the department
on how we would bring those forward. My preference and just to ask a quick
comment from the Council, my preference would be to handle the majority of
these housekeeping items in a department report, rather than placed 20 minutes
of a Pre -Council item on something that we need three minutes for. That would
be my preference.
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 18 of 20
Nary: That's great. Thank you, Doug.
Strong: Thank you.
Item 6. Downtown Meridian Transportation Management Plan Update
by Tom Hudson:
Siddoway: I will start with a brief introduction, Mr. President, then I will turn some
time over to Mr. Hudson. We are pleased to be working with the team of the
Hudson Company and (inaudible) Pierce Traffic Consultants. We have
representatives from both firms, here tonight. We did have our first kickoff
meeting today with our Steering Committee. Our Steering Committee includes
members from the City of Meridian, Ada County Highway District, Valley Ride,
COMPASS, Dave Zaremba from Planning and Zoning, we have an MDC
member and Terry Smith who has involved with the Transportation Task Force
for many years. It's a good group, we just got kicked off this afternoon, ready to
move forward and with that as a brief introduction because I know our time is
short, I will go ahead and turn some time over to Tom just to talk about where we
are and where we are headed so we can just make sure we keep the City
Council in the loop and make sure this process addresses the needs and issues
of the Council. Thanks.
Hudson: Madame Mayor, Mr. President, members of the Council it's great to see
you again. We have, I think, 30 seconds left so I am going to go into my fast
paced mode. We have contracted today with the City and we are grateful for the
opportunity to work with you again and we really applaud this partnership that
you have with ACHD. Over the past month we have been in anticipation of the
contracting, conducting research and collecting a variety of information and have
had excellent support from both city staff and from ACHD staff. So, we are
hitting the ground running and have accomplished a lot already despite the fact
that we are just officially started today. The Steering Committee has a wide
variety of experience knowledge and perspectives. I think they will serve you
well and today they demonstrated, I think, a great capacity to provide that breath
of insights. One of the things that I most appreciate is when people are willing to
agree to disagree and we learned a lot from each other as we initiated a process
that I think will provide you with the decision-making tools that I think are
necessary for such a complex set of issues. This is something that has been a
challenge for you for over ten years now in your growth and so in order to serve
you first, what we did today was focus on goals for the program to establish
decision-making criteria that will be highly objective and measurable and become
an evaluation matrix or framework for comparing various alternatives that are
presented over time to the let's say created, reviewed and also presented to the
Steering Committee. We have, I think, done a good job getting that started.
Each time that we meet with a workshop team or the steering team in workshop.
format or have public meetings, we will forward you shortly thereafter our findings
and conclusions to keep you in the loop. We have a September 30th workshop
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 19 of 20
and public meeting established to look at a broad variety of alternatives that are
out there for creating a new transportation management system. From those we
will identify what you might call the short list of six per our contract target. In
October we will work with the team to narrow the group from six to three. In
November in our workshop in public meeting, go from three to one so you can
see the funneling kind of process. In each (inaudible) we will be using our
evaluation criteria that we have established now that are of course subject to
your refinements, but again the object is to create a highly objective process that
enables you to demonstrate to anyone why we would choose to select a short list
and then go from the short list to a preferred alternative. We anticipate moving to
that preferred alternative during the month of November, mid-November and then
depending upon our capacity to get some additional information through our
team in ACHD and the city as quickly as possible get you a final report. This is a
six-month project. That puts us into February at this point. You know that we all
had a hope of getting started sooner than that and being done by December. We
will do everything that we can to still hit your December timeframe. That is
technically possible if we are able to get all the information we need. But, we
now have the timing set up to do that. I'd like to introduce Timothy Taylor from
(inaudible) and he is on my associate as project manager from their firm and I
have to tell you it's an absolute pleasure to be working with him and with his
highly regarded firm. I think you'll be very pleased with him both as a
professional and as an individual. We are dealing with very high caliber people.
That is our situation in brief and we look forward to continuing to give you
updates over the course of the next five to six months.
Nary: That's great. It's always good to see you Mr. Hudson. Is there questions,
Council, from --?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Glad you are on board.
De Weerd: It's nice to see you again, too.
Hudson: Thank you very much for your time.
Nary: Council, we are at the end of our agenda, I guess we could take a motion
to adjourn.
Bird: So moved.
Rountree: Second.
Nary: It's been moved and seconded to adjourn the Pre -Council meeting of
August 24`h. All those in favor, say aye.
Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting
August 24, 2004
Page 20 of 20
ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:05 P.M.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
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