HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017-10-10Meridian City Council Workshop October 10, 2017.
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:00 p.m., Tuesday, October
10, 2017, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Joe Borton, Ty Palmer, Luke
Cavener, Genesis Milam and Anne Little Roberts.
Others Present: Bill Nary, C.Jay Coles, Jaycee Holman, Dale Bolthouse, Warren
Stewart, Laurelie McVey, Alex Freitag, Brent Bjornson, Emily Kane, Jeff Lavey, Mark
Niemeyer, Steve Siddoway, 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 first by welcoming everyone here.
I always like to see people in the audience, especially friendly people. It's nice. Thank
you. For the record it is Tuesday, October 10th. It's 3:00 o'clock. We will start with roll
call attendance, Mr. Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Thank you. Item 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us
in the pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of All 2. Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Under the Consent Agenda Item H, the resolution number is 17-2040. Under
Department Reports we need to -- under the Mayor's Office add resolution 17-2043, which
is appointment of Michelle Jensen to Seat Five and Mike Pipen to Seat Two of Meridian
Parks Commission. And for that I move we -- oh. Item 6-C the resolution number is 17-
2041 and with that I move we approve the amended agenda.
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Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the agenda as amended. All those
in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of October 3, 2017 City Council Regular
Meeting
B. TM Creek Subdivision No. 2 Pedestrian Pathway Easement
C. The Oaks South Subdivision No. 5 Pedestrian Pathway
Easement
D. The Oaks South Subdivision No. 6 Pedestrian Pathway
Easement #2
E. The Oaks South Subdivision No. 6 Pedestrian Pathway
Easement #3
F. The Oaks South Subdivision No. 6 Pedestrian Pathway
Easement #4
G. The Oaks South Subdivision No. 6 Pedestrian Pathway
Easement #5
H. Resolution No: 17-2040: A Resolution Declaring A Police
Radar Trailer as Surplus Property and Donating the Radar
Trailer to the Wilder Police Department
I. Acceptance Agreement for Display of Artwork in Initial Point
Gallery, Meridian City Hall between City of Meridian and
Bonnie Zahn Griffith, for a quarter gallery November 2017
Mark Davis, for a quarter gallery November 2017
J. Final Order for Volterra Commercial North (H-2017-0108) by
WH Pacific, Inc. Located on the south side of W. McMillan
Road west of N. Ten Mile
K. Final Order for Volterra Commercial South (H-2017-0123) by
WH Pacific, Inc. Located on the south side of W. McMillan Road
west of N. Ten Mile
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L. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Barger Subdivision
(H-2017-0120) By Maverik, Inc. Located at 1515 E. Fairview Ave
M. Development Agreement for Overland and Linder Apartments-
H-2017-0093 with Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
(OWNER) and Southridge Development Company
(DEVELOPER) located on the southside of W. Overland Road,
west of S. Linder Road in the NE 1/4 of Section 23, Township 3
North, Range 1 West. (Parcel #S1223120620)
N. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Brickyard
Subdivision (H-2017-0107) by John Carpenter located at 3611
N. Centrepoint Way
O. Final Order for Brickyard Subdivision No. 1 (H-2017-0125) by
John Carpenter Located approximately 1/3 mile north of E.
Ustick Rd. on the east side of N. Centrepoint Way
P. Final Order for Brickyard Subdivision No. 2 (H-2017-0126) by
John Carpenter Located approximately 1/3 mile north of E.
Ustick Rd. on the east side of N. Centrepoint Way
Q. Approval of Award of RFQ and Agreement to KELLER
ASSOCIATES for the “QLPE PLAN CHECK SERVICES” for a
Not-To-Exceed amount of $50,000.
R. Approval of Purchase Order #18-0017 for New and
Replacement Sensus Water Meters to Ferguson Enterprises in
the Not-To-Exceed amount of $450,000.00. This PO is a sole
source purchase per the previously approved Sole Source for
Sensus Water Meters.
S. AP Invoices for Payment 10/11/17 - $999,258.59
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: As stated Item H is the resolution number is 17-2040 and the Consent Agenda also
moves -- approves paying invoices up to $99,250.59 --
Borton: Second.
Bird: With that --
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Borton: Oh.
Bird: I move we approve the Consent Agenda. Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest.
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda as read. 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 5: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 6: Community Items/Presentations
A. Light My Fire, Inc. Check Presentation
De Weerd: So, we will move to our next -- Item 6, Community Presentations. We will
kick it off with a presentation by Light My Fire and I will go ahead and -- chief.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is a great time of the year for us
again. We do this every year and we are very honored to have the Light My Fire folks
here on behalf of a lot of the work they have done to benefit our city and the burn out fund
and so with that, Bob or Mary, who is doing the speaking here? Mary is. Go figure.
Cahoon: Yeah. Go figure. It is such a privilege to be here today. This is one of the
things that we work for ten months out of the year to do and that is to bring you guys a
check or two and behind me we have Terry Ogden with Disaster Kleanup, Andrea
Bradshaw with Balfore. Chrissy Kay with CTR. Bob Ricketts with Ricketts & Associates
and there is a collective group of us agents, disaster cleanup type of companies that bond
together. We lay down the land, we work together to make money to help in areas that
will -- where people have a house that burns down or fire safe ty and prevention. Pam Orr
is another one of our committee members and Joe Bongiorno. I calculated up this year.
Over 400,400 dollars has been contributed over the past 24 years and this year we get
to celebrate the 25th anniversary, which is going to be really exciting for us, and we are
hoping that you're going to come and show up and help us to raise the funds for these
people that are burned out of their home and it helps save people's lives by being able to
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get out of that fire in a hurry. So, with that I have for you, Chief Niemeyer, 8,496 thousand
dollars --
De Weerd: Wow.
Cahoon: I said that wrong. Oh, my goodness. But that magically doubles, because you
have a matching grant fund, and so that turns into 16,992 dollars, which is awesome. So,
thanks for matching that. And, then, for the Burnout, Joe Bongiorno, for you we have
5,664 dollars for Burnout for when people really need that help. And, then, on February
the 23rd we are having our 25th anniversary celebration. It's Black and Bling and so,
anyway, we invite you to come and celebrate, have a dinner, come to the live and silent
auction and help us raise more money.
De Weerd: Now, see, Mary, you're going to have to figure out how to do it online , too,
because I have been to most of them, but not last year, and I can tell you that those three
women in the back are usually -- I mean totally blinged out. They -- you all follow the
theme of the evening and they never make you feel bad if you're not . So, encourage all
of you sitting on both sides of me to -- to come and experience one of those events. They
-- they are very heart warming, it's for a great cause, and there is a lot to bid on. You
guys work your tails off getting items that -- that we get into -- usually Bob's wife and I get
into a real bidding war. We seem to gravitate to the same items, so --
Cahoon: Judy's already been talking about that.
De Weerd: It's not advisable. Yes, I will win. But thank you so much. Your dollars not
only our doubled, but they go to those in -- in a time of crisis and we greatly appreciate
the efforts that your organization, your efforts bring to our -- our community and to the
personnel that -- heart strings are always pulled saying we wish we could do something.
We wish we could do more. And you allow that to happen. Bob.
Ricketts: Madam Mayor, I'd like to maybe give a little shout out to prevention here. I
know Pam works awful hard at all this and the thing about fire prevention that we don't
really have a good handle on, that is, you know, how many lives and how much property
is saved by the efforts that fire prevention does. That you can't measure, you know, we
can measure the amount of money we give out to burnout funds and things of this nature,
but we can't measure the fire prevention and that's something that -- that really, really is
needed and they do a fantastic job at it and I know I visit with some of the students and
things -- my wife even takes her Boy Scout troop -- or Cub Scouts, I guess, over to Pam's
and they are coming back very knowledgeable about, you know, what to do in case of a
fire and so that's something that -- that we are really, really in support of, so --
De Weerd: Thank you for pointing that out and certainly Pam's efforts -- especially during
Fire Prevention Month and beyond, she -- yeah. She always goes above and beyond
and never in the spotlight, always behind the scenes quietly making it happen. So, thanks
for pointing that out, Bob. Chief or Pam? Joe?
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Niemeyer: I won't make Pam come up here during Fire Prevention Month. Just to echo
what you said, Mayor. I do want to thank Light My Fire. They have been a strong
supporter of our fire prevention efforts, certainly has helped Pam do more with less
sometimes and so, again, a reminder, this is Fire Prevention Month, we have a ton of
activities going on, both through our prevention division and with our crews and so these
dollars that get donated to us help and support those efforts throughout the year. So,
certainly want to thank you again very much.
De Weerd: Thank you. Maybe -- Pam, another opportunity to just tell us what activities
are left for the remainder of the month.
Orr: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. So, for the rest of this month --
actually, tonight in just a few hours -- well, first of all, before 5:00 o'clock I have to get the
posters up for our poster contest winners and so we did run a poster contest event for all
the elementary schools and we do have an event coming up on the 17th where upstairs
on the third floor we will honor those little poster contest winners. Got some great posters.
The great thing about that is is that those kids were able to take that message home to
their families and ultimately it's families that are the game changers in order to be able to
make us safe; right? And so that has to be done by the end of today and, then, this
evening is our very first of -- for the rest of this week we will be doing Dominos Pizza
deliveries with Dominos and so they partnered with us at the corporate level, which is
awesome, and what that looks like is that we go out to people's homes who have donated
-- who have ordered pizza and we follow along the delivery drivers with a fire engine. I
will be along with them. And we offer the family free pizza if we can come in and take a
look at their smoke alarms and so if the smoke alarms are operational they get free pizza,
if they are not either I will at that point bring their smoke alarms back up to service, if I can
do that, or we will set up an appointment or give them the tools, essentially, to be able to
get that done, so it's a win-win. They either get free pizza or they get working smoke
alarms and hopefully we will have the media out for that. We have certainly requested
that. So, hopefully, media will come out, because ultimately it's not about the media, but
it's about the message; right? It's about the message. And that's what we are doing. We
are in the schools all -- all this month and so I think we have been in there -- just today I
think we had like three or four programs in the schools that the crews went on. I taught
the new recruit academy this morning for a few hours. So, that was really awesome to
be able to do that and to instill in our brand new recruits the prevention message and that
operational firefighting is one thing, you know, getting that wet stuff on the red stuff is one
thing, but for me it's putting that ed stuff on the red stuff if we can prevent fires; right? It's
the best way to go. And so we had an opportunity to do that this morning as well. This
coming Saturday is Table Rock Challenge, which is a race that we work with with the
Treasure Valley Fire Prevention community all together. There are a group of us in the
community that are structure firefighters and wildland firefighters that come together and
do a group of events throughout the year. Those are our clown and puppet shows, right,
that -- that we are able to take a joint message throughout the Treasure Valley and so
because generally most departments, including ours, right, you really can't do the big
events without a whole lot of people and so they help us to do that. That is our fundraiser
and so that's a race, the Table Rock Challenge. It's the 35th year that we have run that.
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I haven't run it personally, I just work with the program. So, that's this coming Saturday.
Last Saturday we had our big open house and we had over 500 people that came to
Station No. 1 and that was our Public Safety Day. That was a joint effort between police
and fire, because this is -- police -- you know, Crime Prevention Month as well. And so
we were able to do that and really get our education message out there as well and we
will just continue with this month just taking full advantage of every effort that we have
and every opportunity that we have to get into the schools and into people's homes
through their little ones educating them on being safe from fire. So, again thank you very
much for the opportunity to be able to even give that spiel and -- and thank you. Light My
Fire community, I -- my heart -- I got to tell you, I can't tell you how hard these people
work. They work so hard and I'm going to keep it straight and not cry, but they work so
hard on our behalf and to think that they do this month after month after month, year after
year after year. It's the 24th year -- we just finished the 24th year, going into the 25th
year that they do this and they do it to give a hundred percent of the proceeds away, it's
just -- it's humbling -- very humbling to me and as a person and part of that public trust, if
you will, right, we want to do well with those dollars and so thank you for the support that
you give to our program and thank you to Light My Fire for that as well.
B. American Heart Association Workplace Health Achievement
Award
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 6-B is under the American Heart Association. Our
HR Department, do you guys want to come forward, too? And Julie. But a lot of the effort
by our wellness committee and Christena Barney has lent to this award and Julie asked
if she could come and make a presentation to the Council. We had Christena and Crystal
at the dinner last Tuesday night accepting the award and so, Julie or Christena, I'm going
to turn this over to you.
O'Meara: Thank you very much. I appreciate this time. I'm the executive director of the
Idaho chapter of the American Heart Association and this is a huge honor for you guys.
So, we have a program that is called Worksite Health Solutions and it is free to any work
site in America to assess the health and wellness culture of the company and their
employees and Mayor Tammy and her team have really taken this on and in the first year
of this program they are one of four companies in Idaho or organizations in Idaho that
received a bronze level in the very first year of the program . So, here is their plaque,
which is wonderful, and we will get a picture and, then, a cling for your door. But it really
is wonderful to see her leadership in instilling that , that the policies and the actions and
the culture, as well as the benefits for the employees at the City of Meridian, really are
around health and wellness and prevention and are taking those steps to give a healthy
workplace for the employees here, too. So, we applaud you for that very much.
De Weerd: Thank you, Julie. Christena, do you want to talk a little bit about what we
have been doing?
Barney: So, I coordinate with the wellness program -- or the wellness committee to offer
a wellness program for the City of Meridian employees and we have quarterly challenges,
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we have quizzes, we have newsletters, we have events and e-mails that take place
throughout the year to provide healthy choices and alternatives for people who just need
that extra boost to make those -- the proper choices in their life and so in doing that I saw
-- this award is actually part of the Fit Friendly Workplace previously and we participated
in that and we were recognized for Fit Friendly Workplace, but they have changed the
program and changed the parameters. It's a little tougher to meet this time. So, I was
happy that we got awarded, happy that we got the bronze level, but we do have some
work to do going forward, so that we can maintain that bronze level, so --
De Weerd: And that's great.
Barney: -- that's the recognition.
De Weerd: And you have a good level of participation, too. I -- I think we just did healthy
food bingo and -- and some of those fruits and vegetables I had never heard of. You had
to actually look them up just to see -- and I wondered where you could even find them in
a grocery store, and lo and behold, there they are.
Barney: That was the idea was to try to get -- you know, get you out of your box and
thinking about different things and how you can incorporate that into your -- into your diet.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: And, Julie, do you want me to come up?
O'Meara: Yes.
De Weerd: And I will point out our HR team has really taken -- and our wellness
committee has taken this serious and -- and we have seen that in our experience rating.
So, we -- we are achieving not only these kind of milestones, but also seeing it in our
insurance rating. So, that's good news. So, thank you. Thank you, Julie.
C. Resolution No: 17-2041: A Resolution Affirming the City of
Meridian's Commitment to Supporting an Amendment to the
Idaho State Constitution to Provide Equal Rights for Crime
Victims, Commonly Known as Marsy's Law
De Weerd: Okay. Item 6-C is Resolution 17-2041. Todd, do you have anything you want
to say before we take action on this? I mean Senator Lakey.
Lakey: Thank you, Madam Mayor. And as always it's a nice mix between senator and
Todd and whatever one is --
De Weerd: Whatever. You don't want the whatever.
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Lakey: I will answer to whatever. Madam Mayor, this is a -- like you said, a follow up to
our previous presentation on strengthening victims rights in the Idaho constitution and we
have had an opportunity -- we appreciate -- had an opportunity to review the resolution
that's been proposed by the city. We appreciate that resolution. Agree with its terms.
This I think will help us in our efforts to give crime victims an effective voice in the criminal
justice system in Idaho. So, we would ask for your support of the resolution. I would be
happy to answer any questions if you have them.
De Weerd: Thank you. Council, any questions for Senator Lakey?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you.
Lakey: Madam Mayor, thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, with that I would entertain a motion on Item 6-C.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve resolution number 17-2041.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve resolution 17-2041. If there is no
discussion, 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 7: Department Reports
A. Amended Mayor's Office: Commission Appointments
Resolution No. 17-2042: A Resolution Reappointing Creg Steele to
Seat 4 and John Nesmith to Seat 3 of the Meridian Parks
Commission.
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Amended onto agenda: Resolution No. 17-2043: A Resolution
Appointing Michelle Jensen to Seat 5 and Mike Pepin to Seat 2 of
the Meridian Parks Commission.
Resolution No. 17-2044: A Resolution Reappointing Dawn Cronk to
Seat 1 of the Meridian Historic Preservation Commission.
De Weerd: Item 7-A is under the Mayor's Office and in front of you you have resolution
17-2042, reappointing Creg Steele and John Nesmith, who have been on our parks
commission and have served faithfully. Yesterday the commission chair Sharon Borton
and I conducted interviews from the submitted interest that we have received and in front
of you is resolution 17-2043 and these are to appoint Michelle Jensen and Mike Pepin to
the parks commission and I would stand for any questions. And I see that Mike is here
and I will ask him if he has words after we take action.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Seeing no discussion, I move that we approve the appointments of Creg Steele and
John Nesmith under resolution number 17-2042 and also approve Michelle Jensen and
Mike Pepin under resolution number 17-2043 to the Meridian Parks and Recreation
Commission.
Little Roberts: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? 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.
De Weerd: Mike, would you like to say anything? No. You have to say it up here. I know
you have a voice that carries, but it has to go on the record.
Pepin: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. I just want to say I'm excited to
help the commission do the work of this great community and thanks for the opportunity.
De Weerd: Thank you. And thank you for joining us.
Pepin: You're welcome.
De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-B is under our Public Works and --
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Bird: You got a resolution.
De Weerd: Oh. Sorry. I was rushing things. Under -- also under 7-A is resolution 17-
2044, reappointing Dawn Cronk to the Meridian Historical Preservation Commission.
Dawn has been someone that's been a solid performer and someone who has contributed
a lot to HPC and I have her in front of you as -- to be reappointed for another term.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Ms. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Hearing no discussion, I move that we approve resolution 17-2044
reappointing Dawn Cronk to the Meridian Historic Preservation Commission.
Palmer: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? 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. Public Works: Annual Department Update
De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. Bird. I was so excited to get on to our annual update from
the Public Works Department I almost forgot it. So, I will invite Dale Bolthouse to join us
in the front.
Bolthouse: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, thank you for that enthusiastic invitation
to spend some of your time here tonight. We appreciate that opportunity to give you an
update. It's been a busy year in Public Works and we are anxious to share that with you.
We are well represented. I appreciate the support of members of the Public Works
Department across the landscape. So, buckle your seat belts and let's -- let's go for a
little ride. So, today we are going to take a little road trip, if you will, and I'm going to offer
some opening comments here and, then, I will pass it on to some senior division
managers to give an update in their areas and, then, we will wrap up that session with the
opportunity for you to ask some questions. So, FY-17, easily a year we could say came
at us with some significant challenge. We started the fiscal year with a fair amount of
excitement as we saw our senior management -- about three-quarters of the senior
management turnover in the first few months of the year. We regrouped, we redesigned
and we realigned, we did all the re's possible and through several promotions and things
we -- back filled and I'm pleased to say that we have got an organization that's working
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well and -- and moving us forward. Additionally, we face some of the highest growth the
city has ever seen. I think my records show the third highest in city history. We saw a
drastic shift in the regulatory landscape and that was not only the wastewater that you
are familiar with, but also on the water front and we are seeing some additional pressures
coming on that area and we -- on top of it we tackled one of the largest portfolio projects
that our department has seen in some time and in spite of it all I believe we were able to
meet our department's mission and that is to anticipate, plan, provide exemplary services
to the facilities and support the evolving needs of our community. So, I would be remiss
if I didn't take an opportunity to talk about recent the acknowledgment that we made in
our department and that comes through the annual Public Works picnic and our Public
Works award. So, the world is full of great people and our department is more than
blessed with some awesome contributors and so I just want to briefly walk down through
here and recognize these achievements. So, we have five awards that we annually hand
out. Those are nominated by peers and voted by the executive team for that
acknowledgment and I will just quickly work down through here. So, the team
achievement award this year went to the collections team and as you may be aware they
were faced with substantial challenges, they had a lot of management turnover, but
showed incredible resiliency through the -- through the winter and on through some
significant organizational changes led by Miguel Espinola -- and I know he's here, along
with Tony Parks back there. They have pulled up their boot straps and they are doing --
and have done a tremendous job for the balance of the year and we recognize them as
the team of the year. Another cross-functional team, which spreads beyond just one
division in our organization, we recognize the struvite and digester team and Laurelie is
going to give you more education on struvite than -- than maybe what you care to have
today, but I just would say that between engineering, operations, and our maintenance
teams, they spend a tremendous amount of effort -- amount of effort resolving a problem
or a challenge in our digester three and so we acknowledge them as the cross-functional
team. Employee of the year, we come down, we actually ended up with two. We could
not decide, you know, amongst many good nominees, but I'm pleased to acknowledge
Nate Howell. Nate works in our lab group. He's a rock star out there. He's very good in
programming. He helped us on the integration of our LIMS and W IMS systems out there.
He's identified many process improvements to our laboratory staff . Cost-saving efforts.
So, just a -- just a great effort by Nate. Over in our engineering team we also recognize
Garrett Nelson. Garrett's had one of those exciting years himself where he's completed
his PE licensure, passed his exams, promoted to a Staff II engineer. Taken on a lot of
miscellaneous assignments everywhere from streetlights to water to wastewater projects
and that diversity and on top of it all he's just a tremendous CARE values advocate,
customer service advocate in our department and is also recognized as an employee of
the year. Supervisor of the year -- I know he's here. Tony Bernard. Tony just exudes
natural leadership. He runs our maintenance team in the wastewater division and he is
a significant contributor to many of the things that we talk about happening out there, but
he is -- motivates, he encourages, he inspires his team and as such is recognized as our
supervisor of the year in Public Works. And our final award that we added this year was
for project of the year and this could be any kind of project, large, small, one that hopefully
came to fruition across the past fiscal year and we just could not let Kyle go without one
more acknowledgement of several years of effort in the area of drilling concern and the
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results of that and so he was acknowledged, along with assistance from others, but he
was really the driving force that brought this thing home and that effort will protect the
water supply of Meridian for years to come through that effort. So, great, great team of
people exemplified by these individuals and these awards .
De Weerd: And, Dale, before you move on, all of you that were just recognized, will you
stand up so we can show your appreciation. Thank you.
Bolthouse: Thank you. But, you know, we talk about big moments, but it takes -- it takes
more than just the big moments to make a success and, you know, there is thousands of
positive activities that happen every day, including things like saving ducklings from the
storm drains and that was a collections team effort there that did that.
De Weerd: You were just trying to outdo the Fire Department.
Bird: How did you beat the firemen to that?
Bolthouse: We beat the firemen to it. Yeah. There you go. No. So -- anyway. So, that's
a great thing. You know, success also takes foresight and only a water guy would think
to scamper up the 137 steps to the top of the water tower to capture an event that may
be the only time we get a chance to see that here in Meridian and that is take a photo of
the eclipse while it was occurring from a very amazing vantage point and many in the city
enjoyed this particular picture. And the next one -- this one -- this one brings -- this one
brings a tear to my eye. No. Really. This thing stinks so bad that it's the only thing that
can make you cry and puke at the same time.
De Weerd: It's a giant hairball.
Bolthouse: Not everything we do is delightful. But I appreciate those that are willing to
do the tough jobs and, I'm telling you, this is a tough job and this -- this beauty really put
the city on the map.
De Weerd: Yeah, it really did. We were proud of that one.
Bolthouse: So, there is just a couple of the moments that we would reflect back on as we
look -- we look past the last year here. So, we are going to -- I'm going to pass it on here
to some other division leaders here pretty quick. But here is the format. So, as you would
expect -- fairly intuitive here -- but we are going to talk a little bit about what's behind us,
the rear-view mirror kind of thought. Current initiatives that are being faced in our
divisions. What's outside our windows today, if you will. And, then, an opportunity in
those specific areas to look down the road a little bit and see what's coming and share
that with you. So, with that I'm going to pass it over to Laurelie McVey, who is our deputy
director of utility operations.
McVey: Thanks, Dale. So, we have had a really exciting year of progress in the utility
section, including some significant new events, like the first permit in 13 years. New
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challenges like Dale talked about, the massive construction and unprecedented growth
and some crazy challenges from our environment as well . So, I'm excited to get to tell
you guys about the progress that our utility section has made despite the many challenges
that we face. We also get to do some fun things once in a while , like entertaining -- I
mean educating the Council. We do want to thank you guys, for those of you who were
able to make it out to our busy construction site, and the offer still stands if you weren't
able to come out, we would love to still have you out there. So, our first major milestone
that I'd like to cover is the arrival of our long waited NPDES permit. So, the permit went
live in August. This is the first new requirement we have had in 18 years and I'm proud
to say that it's been a smooth, seamless transition thanks to our amazing staff and the
many years of planning and preparation. The lab specifically, thanks to the new building,
the new equipment and the new software systems, all approved by the Council, has
helped us transition and achieve one hundred percent compliance so far . We have
implemented impressive new software systems -- these are screen shots of a few of them
-- that greatly help us increase efficiency and accuracy of the data. With your support we
implemented WIMS and LIMS, which converted copious amounts of paper copies all to
electronic data available at the click of a button. Automatic transfer of data from SCADA
and the lab. I am continually impressed with the amazing in-house talent that this group
has, the ability to implement this software and also complete several important studies
and permit required documents. We have talked about a few of these with you previously,
but these are reports that were completed in house that would have previously been
contracted out. These were completed with exceptional quality and saved the city tens
of thousands of dollars by doing them in house . Some examples are the reuse annual
report, the Biphthalate study and the emergency response plan. Another significant
challenge that was faced by our groups this year was last year's heavy winter . So,
significant efforts were made by the entire water division to keep the sidewalks and storm
drains clear. With the help of Parks, Fire and Police, we all did the best job we could to
keep the sidewalks and roads clear for residents and schools. However, the snow packed
storm drains caused significant challenges at the treatment plant when we experienced
rapid snow melt. So, as the snow melted -- so, imagine this flow going into this manhole
times almost 11,000 manholes. We knew that as this ice cold water headed towards the
plant we were going to have a problem. So, we received over 60 mgd all at once at the
treatment plant that night. At the -- and the facility is designed to treat ten. So, you will
see that spike in the circle in red, that was that evening. Our staff stayed all night long,
we had to bypass directly into the UV system, completely bypassing the entire treatment
plant, but we were able to minimize and avert a serious environmental disaster . So,
preparations are already underway for this year's winter. Hopefully, it's not as bad.
De Weerd: No. We just learned a lot, so we will be smarter.
McVey: Right. Another challenge that was overcome with excellent results was our
struvite issue that Dale talked about. So, you've heard us talk quite a lot about struvite
over the years, so I figured I'd tell you a little bit about what it is. So, struvite is made up
of phosphorous, ammonia and magnesium and as we move to remove more of the
phosphorus from going out the effluent, it has to go somewhere and where it goes is our
solid stream in places like our digesters. So, when the combination of those three
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elements are just right and the conditions are just right, which happens to be our
digesters, our pumps, and piping, the struvite crystals form. As you can see from the
photos, it drastically reduces the pipe capacity, even in some places plugging it
completely. It ruins equipment and causes us serious operational problems. So, to get
rid of struvite we are focusing on long-term permanent solutions, which you will see in the
next few years in the CIP portfolio. It's called sidestream treatment. However, in the
short term we have been forced to be pioneering and find new and innovative ways to
mitigate the struvite problem. This year we tried two new technologies, a chemical
treatment and an electronic device that changes the cond itions in the pipe with great
success. So, the struvite issue consumed over 400 man hours over a period of seven
months for us to deal with this year. So, a significant strain on our operations. But with
innovations found by our staff, like the two that I talked about, it allows us to keep moving
forward until the longer term solutions can be constructed . We have also had great
success implementing innovative mobile solutions with the help of our internal city IT
group that have resulted in better efficiency, effectiveness and improved customer
service. The IT group developed in house a vehicle locating program that allows us t o
view our mobile fleet in realtime. This allows us to better strategically dispatch crews to
issues and assist customers. However, the real efficiency in this program is the devices
that provide our field staff with connectivity to the city network when they are out in the
field. It allows them to complete work orders, service reads, and collect data seamlessly
in the field. A big part of this mobile solution has allowed us to make our pre -treatment
inspection process completely mobile, which has greatly increased the efficiency of this
work group. They can look up business files, reports, and have access to their database
all in the field without having to return to the treatment plant after every site visit . On the
water side we have increased efficiency and accuracy in several of our program areas as
well. One of those being backflow. The backflow program has implemented a new
software platform, which has eliminated double entry and has tied this program into our
billing system. The backflow program is a critical piece to keep our water infrastructure
protected. We have also completed another stage of asset management , asset
identification on the water side. So, as we collect and GPS more of these assets it gives
us a better ability to protect it, to maintain and protect our system and, then, the UVS
system has been fully implemented and operational for a year. So, this is a huge effort
to bring our billing system and our staff utility reading system onto one platform. It created
realtime, paperless service orders and billing information that improved efficiencies ,
communication and customer service internally and also externally to our customers.
This was a huge, huge effort from our water team, asset management team and MUBS
team. So, we have also made significant strides in our collections program and we
promised you an update on this. So, we received our new hydro cleaner right before
Christmas. However, right before Christmas we also received a severe winter. This
winter prevented us from really getting the new cleaner out and running until about March.
We have also, as Dale mentioned, had some significant staff turnover and changes during
this period, which affected our production. So, we have had five staff leave, four new
hires and two promotions during this period, all within a team of eight guys. So, however,
even with these challenges the group has really persevered. That's why they won the
team of the year and since the beginning of this year we have cleaned 35 miles of pipe
and CCTV'd 29 miles and our goals for 2018 are to maintain a full group of staff and all
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four running tracks and are aiming to clean 109 miles and 66 miles -- and CCTV 66 miles,
which I know we will be able to accomplish.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: On that point, I think the standard to the whole city to be cleaned every two years
or 2.2, are we -- are we now on that pace?
McVey: Councilman Borton, that's a great question. So, we are not quite yet, because
we have not had full staff . We are just barely at that point. But this coming year, starting
-- well, this October through next October, if we meet those cleaning goals we will be back
on -- on schedule.
Borton: Okay. Thanks.
McVey: So, we have had also a great year moving forward to our safety program. So,
our safety program coordinator Tim is now certified to provide many of the required
trainings for our staff, saving time and money and improving the quality of training that we
receive. We have implemented new safer equipment along with the training, which has
continued to increase safety awareness and practices by our employees. We
implemented a new mobile SDS program, so our staff can have access and information
to the chemicals that they work with at any time or any location and we also had a fun
safety logo contest, which you will see up there on the screen, which was won by one of
our wastewater operators John. So, another true success for us is the quality of the
employees in the utilities. These staff members, as Dale, mentioned perform day in and
day out doing important, complex and sometimes really dirty jobs. A few of them have
received state and local recognition. Licensure is also a big deal for our staff. We are
required in our field to hold professional licenses and we have had multiple staff members
receive new licenses or higher level licenses. So, as you can see we had a very big, very
busy year in the utilities and now I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about some of the
ongoing projects and initiatives that are currently underway. So, as Dale mentioned,
growth continues to drive the projects in our utilities. So, as -- as the city continues to
expand we are challenged on both the water and wastewater sides to keep up. We have
pressures from new regulations, especially on the water side. As our population exceeds
100,000 it triggers new regulations, such as additional sampling and corrosion control
studies, which we will be completing this next year. We continue to strive to provide
excellent quality of water and customer service. But, again, our challenge is as the city
continues to add more infrastructure, more miles of pipe, more residents. However, we
do have significant projects underway on the water treatment facilities that help us
maintain and improve our water quality. However, learning how to optimize these new
facilities and technology is an ongoing effort for our staff. Another major initiative for us
is our SCADA program. So, SCADA is a critical system that's required for compliance,
protecting public health, the environment and critical equipment. It's our central control
center. So, it brings in all the critical data from our sites and allows us to control a complex
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system remotely. If we didn't have SCADA we would have to significantly increase the
staffing to have people go out and manually check all of these pieces of equipment every
day. This program touches nearly every asset in our facilities. So, as our SCADA system
has grown over the years, we have really fallen behind on resourcing this program from
a day-to-day operation standpoint. We currently only have one staff member on board to
operate, maintain, and update this critical program. So, we are taking a step back to look
at this, look at the resources that are needed, develop this as a program and our initial
analysis has shown that were severely understaffed in the area of SCADA. We are
currently spending significant amounts of money on consultants to bridge this gap. Once
we complete this analysis this spring we plan on bringing that information back to you
guys and updating you to let you know what type of resources are needed for this
program. Our reuse permit is currently out for public comment and will be renewed .
Nothing major has changed on it and they are actually looking at renewing it for a ten year
cycle. Additionally, on the Idaho Power side for the power line buy out, we have received
the initial buyout agreement and it's currently being reviewed by our legal teams and we
are still anticipating ownership in early 2018 and just a reminder this is a really critical
project timingwise, because the two new big expansion projects do not have power until
we get this agreement executed. So, we have a couple of objectives that are on the
horizon that will have significant impacts to the utilities in the coming year. As many of
you saw on our construction tour, we are in for some really big changes out of the
wastewater side of the utility. We are doubling our assets on the site and we will have
the unique challenge of operating two treatment facilities. Additionally, during that time
period our permit limits will continue to get more and more stringent. With all of these
changes we, obviously, need staff to support this massive complex expansion and we will
need to move to 24/7 staffing sooner than later. We can't leave a facility of this size
without 24/7 operation for much longer and to do that we, obviously, need more staff and
shifts in our operations and maintenance groups. Another challenge that we will face in
the next few years is the renewal of our NPDES permit. I know it feels like we just barely
got it, which we did, but they come up for renewal every five years . So, we will see a
renewal in 2022. This could bring new limits, new monitoring and new requirements that
we have no way of really predicting what those are today, but we are staying actively
engaged in that process and will bring you guys updates as we receive them . On the
water side of the house, our challenge continues to be around improving brown water
issues. So, I wanted to take a minute to explain to you guys the brown water cycle , what
causes it, and why it continues to impact us. So, iron and manganese occur naturally in
our aquifer. It's dissolved, which means that you wouldn't be able to see it under normal
conditions. However, when we pump the water from the aquifer we are required to add
chlorine to it and when you add chlorine, the iron and manganese precipitates out and it
settles to the bottom of the pipes. So, this poses a couple of challenges for us. It takes
up capacity in the pipes and, then, when we flush the system, which is required by DEQ,
it stirs -- or have construction projects, it stirs up the sediment, which makes its way into
people's homes. While it's nontoxic, it's definitely unsightly and below the expectations
that our customers have. So, to remove this issue we have to have a two -pronged
approach, otherwise, you just keep pumping iron and manganese out of the aquifer and
into the system. So, the two-pronged approach first includes installing treatment facilities.
So, like I said, unless you install these facilities to actually remove the iron and
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manganese from the water, you will continue to have the issue. We have successfully
completed three of these treatment facilities and have several more planned for the next
few years. However, these are not cheap and take several years to design and build.
Another important prong to the approach is the implementation of a unidirectional flushing
program. So, we have years and years of buildup in our system and the only way to
completely remove it is to strategically turn valves to ensure a one-way flush of the whole
system. This may sound pretty simple, but with the thousands and thousands of valves
in our system it's actually pretty extensive planning, takes equipment and staffing. So,
with the addition of the treatment facilities and the unidirectional flushing program , we
should be able to significantly reduce the brown -- brown water issues in Meridian.
However, like I said, both of these take time and resources, both personnel and capital,
to complete, but they are underway in our planning efforts. So, as you can see on the
utility side, we have had a tremendous year of accomplishments of progress , but we still
have quite a few important initiatives to keep our plates full. So, at this point I'm going to
turn it over to Warren Stewart to speak about the capital projects and engineering side.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Laurelie, I just have a couple of questions if I could.
McVey: Yes.
Cavener: Can you share with us a little bit about this moving to a 24 hour staffing structure
and how many employees you think that's going to require, when you would estimate that
would need to occur. That's the first I have heard of this and so it definitely stuck with me
very quickly.
McVey: Yes. Councilman Cavener, that's a great question. So, we are working on
analyzing that. I don't have a specific number for you today. But we are actually looking
at a phased approach. So, it wouldn't just happen overnight. We would strategically add
a few staff members, gradually reduce that amount of time that the facility is under staffed,
to eventually reach full 24/7 staffing in 2020 is our goal.
Cavener: Okay. Madam Mayor, additional question. You touched on the brown water
and I don't know if I'm just hearing about it more or if we are experiencing it more or
somewhere in between and I'm just curious if Public Works has had discussions with
MUBS, with the Mayor's Office, about responses that we can provide our citizens who are
experiencing this. I know that I have seen a lot more commentary about it on social media
and when I have been connecting with our citizens and I'm just curious if -- I love that we
are taking an approach on what we can do to prevent it from happening, but do we have
a response in place for what our citizens are experiencing today?
McVey: That's a -- Councilman Cavener, that's a great question and comment. So, we
have put together -- and Alex will touch on it a little bit in his presentation, but a call map
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that's allowing us to pinpoint the types of calls, which will allow us to better strategically
put these treatment facilities, do the flushing programs. We have really stepped up efforts
in outreach and notification utilizing social media , the NextDoor app, to try to get that
information out to the residents that we have to flush our system twice per year and when
we do that is when it stirs up the -- the sentiment. So, we really want to continue that
effort, want to continue to put together possibly information on our website, our literature,
that we would be able to give to customers to let them know that, you know, the water is
still safe, it just doesn't look great. You know, here is some things that you can do to flush
it out of your house, things to avoid when the flushing is happening, like laundry and that
type of thing.
Cavener: Okay.
Stewart: Good afternoon. Laurelie is kind of tough to follow, but I will do the best I can.
I'm going to follow sort of the same format that she did and talk a little bit about the past,
present and the future situation that we have within the division . So, first I want to talk
about an accomplishment that may be slightly out of the ordinary or one that you wouldn't
normally think of, but the Public Works Department was proud to bring the movie Dream
Big to high school students in the Treasure Valley. While we were preparing to do our
Public Works Week activities, this announcement that this movie was going to be
produced by the American Society of Civil Engineers in conjunction with Becla
Corporation and Hollywood movie producers, came out, we were hoping to be able to --
to bring this movie and show it at that particular time , but due to logistical reasons we
weren't able to bring the movie to the Public Works Week. But we have worked with our
high schools and our consultants, the ASCE and the Village Cinemas over the past few
months -- months and were able to bring this movie to the theater just a few weeks ago,
where we had over 400 high school students from the Treasure Valley watch the 45
minute production. The intent of the movie was to inspire young men and young women
to take up careers in engineering-related fields. The feedback that we received was very
positive, both from the teachers and the students, and two young ladies who watched the
movie even commented that they were going to change their career path and go towards
engineering based on what they had seen in the movie . You may ask why do we -- why
would we be interested or why would we do that? Well, the bottom line is it's somewhat
selfish, we have had difficulty as a city, as well as engineering firms across the valley,
attracting a good volume of quality individuals to fill our open positions . We have been
able to do that, but sometimes it's taken a long time to fill vacant positions in the
engineering-related fields and I know that there is other engineering firms that are going
through the same thing. So, our hope is to be able to -- in the future to attract and interest
enough people that in the future we will be able to get highly qualified, talented people to
work for the city to design and construct the infrastructure that we will need to serve the
city into the future. I want to take a moment to thank -- to our sponsors which was JUB
and Keller Engineers, whose financial donations made it possible to obtain the movie and
the venue and also to thank both Aubrey Ploetz and Dean Stacy for their coordination of
this event and I think -- we hope to be able to do this again in the future and provide this
opportunity to students. We think it was very valuable and the feedback we got was
extremely positive. Next I'd like to talk to you a little bit about some of the projects that
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we were involved in this past year. We finished the UV disinfection project at the
wastewater treatment plant. This project was the unit process with the smallest capacity
up until this project occurred and now we have a quality project that will serve the city for
many years into the future. We had a few challenges along the way, but we were able to
overcome those and this project actually came in under budget . We also completed the
installation of several programmable logic controllers for both the water and wastewater
facilities. These components are part of the brains that Laurelie talked about in the
SCADA system and are going to allow us to utilize and communicate with those remote
facilities from our SCADA systems in our operations facilities. We also purchased and
implemented new software that would help us to prioritize mainline replacements in our
sewer system and Kyle and his team were busy with the ABC project, as well as water
rights project, trying to project our water rights and our source water for the city and the
-- the water rights efforts that they were able to do will provide us with a lot of flexibility in
how we are able to utilize our wells and provide service to our citizens in the future . We
also added a treatment system to Well 27 to improve water quality. That makes three
treatment plants, as Laurelie mentioned, that are in service and two more in the design
phase. These plans, coupled with the unidirectional flushing program, will greatly improve
water quality throughout the system. Additionally, we completed several mainline and lift
station projects to add capacity to our system and replace old and deteriorating
infrastructure. Our inspections team provided inspections on over 105 projects during
this past year. That is a really outstanding effort when you consider th at there was a
significant portion of the year where there were only four inspectors. Our engineering
team also played an important role in negotiating our NPDES permit that Laurelie spoke
about. The wastewater engineering team also completed a new sewer master plan for
our collection system. 2017 was also significant -- a significant year for our streetlighting
projects. In addition to an intersection improvement project where we added lighting in
neighborhoods that had close proximity to schools, we also teamed up with ACHD to add
streetlights to the Settlers Park area with the -- the Ustick and Meridian Road project and
also down Franklin Road associated with the Franklin Road streetlighting project. Now,
we are going to take a little look at current initiatives. So, the wastewater treatment plant
and the capacity expansion project that's going on there is , you know, going to dominate
things for the next couple of years. However, this is just one of several projects that are
taking place at the wastewater treatment plant right now. The headworks expansion
projects, the centrate project, and the Boise River outfall pump station project are also
under construction. So, there is really four major projects taking place out there all at the
same time.
De Weerd: Warren?
Stewart: Yes.
De Weerd: I heard you were starting a beach out there.
Stewart: Ssshh. No. We are just trying to make the -- make the ground stable. Outside
the treatment plant we are designing and constructing several mainline extension
replacements. The most significant of which is the south Meridian project, which I will talk
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to you a little bit more about in the near future -- or, actually, not in the near future, in just
a few minutes, but -- the final phase of construction on Well 30 and 29 is progressing
rapidly. These new wells will provide water in pressure zones one and five and Well 32
is also in the final phases of design and will be completed in 2018. These new wells will
allow for development in the northwest and south portions of Meridian. Water quality, as
you have already -- we have already touched on is an area we are focusing a lot of
attention. We are in the final design phase of a treatment facility for Well 22, which is
Bear Creek park. Not only will this new facility provide improved water quality for the
residents in that area, but it's also going to improve water quality for Roaring Springs,
which has also been a challenge for us over the years. We have decided -- we did --
started design work on a treatment facility on -- for 28, which is near Black Rock. When
complete this will be the fifth well to receive a treatment plant . These systems, in
combination with our move towards unidirectional flushing, will greatly improve our water
quality like we talked about. We are also in the process of developing a new facility plan
for our wastewater treatment plant that will guide our growth for the next five years and
beyond. We are also involved in two grant funded streetlighting projects. One is a CDBG
grant that will improve streetlighting in areas around schools and the other one is a joint
project with ACHD that will provide streetlighting on Cherry Lane between Meridian Road
and Linder, which, actually, goes by Meridian Middle School. All right. We are going to
take some time and look ahead here just a minute and talk about some things that are
challenges in the future. As I stated, the capacity expansion and headworks project will
be ongoing for the next couple of years. But in addition we will be designing and
constructing a side screen treatment process that will help to remove phosphorus in our
system. This is one of those things that's going to help to minimize struvite formation in
our wastewater treatment plant operations. Our final -- to meet our final permit limits we
are also going to have to enhance our filtration capacity out at the wastewater treatment
plant before we can discharge to Five Mile Creek. Another emerging issue for us is
access at the wastewater treatment plant itself. As the wastewater treatment plant grows
and we add new buildings to the treatment plant , a secondary access for emergency
services, as well as for operations, will be required and I think Dale spoke with you a little
bit about that here a few weeks ago. We are also watching the development of the Boise
River TMDL trading framework, as this will have an impact on our reclaimed water
program. The rapid pace of new development is increasing the cost of construction, along
with increasing our inspection workload, and we are seeing that in the bids that are
coming forward. Water rights and water rights mitigation is also a concern. Our ability to
deliver water during years of drought, which will certainly come, is a major concern and
we are taking steps to make sure that we are able to provide the services necessary into
the future. Long-term infrastructure replacement is another challenge. Many cities across
the nation are struggling with this issue. Recently I read an article where one of the cities
here in the U.S. has -- was facing a situation where they were challenged with over 400
mainline breaks a day. I can't even imagine the amount of resources and mo ney that
putting that many band-aids on a system costs and so we are working to make sure that
we have a plan, so that the citizens of Meridian years down the road are not faced with a
similar situation and that we can adequately tackle and address this issue before it
becomes an insurmountable problem for us. So, we will be coming back to you with a
little bit more information with regards to that in the future. Looking ahead also I'm going
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to talk a little bit about south Meridian issues now. The sewer line down Meridian Road
from the Ridenbaugh Canal through the Simplot property and through the Citadel property
and ultimately back across Meridian Road, has been a challenge, but it is out to bid and
we anticipate construction will begin before the end of the year. It took over a year for us
to negotiate the easements associated with that sewer line and we are very glad that we
have finally got it to this point. As you can see also, though, we are -- we are going to be
constructing two new water lines in the next couple of years, as well as in year '19 finishing
with the final phase of the sewer line project down Linder Road. After these projects are
completed this will complete, essentially, the infrastructure improvements that were -- the
city committed to accomplishing a couple of years ago . So, those are the projects that
are left in the years that -- that they are going to be completed in and we are underway to
make sure that all those happen. Fortunately with the other projects we are not required
to obtain any easements. They will be in public right of way. So, that will help. Now, I
want to talk to you about sort of an emerging issue. The Victory Road sewer shed, which
is what you see here on the map, is going to present some challenges for us going
forward. This -- the topography of this land, essentially, flows from the right-hand side to
the left. In other words, it flows back towards the left-hand side of the page. There is
already significant pressure for development on the right-hand side or the upper end of
the drainage basin. But the infrastructure that serves this drainage basin actually, which
is this lift station over here on the far left side, and the trunk sewer line that gets all the
effluent back to the plant, doesn't currently exist. So, we have an interim plan. There we
go. So, to address this in the short term, we will allow for the installation of three
temporary lift stations -- small lift stations that will pump back up over the hill into the
drainage basins to the north. However, this is simply borrowing capacity from that
drainage basin, which will ultimately be needed to serve that area. So, this is just a
temporary solution and we will need to implement the long -term solution before the
capacity is needed elsewhere. So, I wanted to take just a moment and talk about what
it's going to take to accomplish that. So, this is a picture of the McDermott Road trunk
sewer line, which, essentially, goes from where the Oaks lift station is now, that's the lift
station at the top of the page, which is listed as North McDermott lift station, that is an
interim lift station that currently exists that will have to be upgraded . But the trunk sewer
line that will run from there to the south across the interstate , eventually to this South
McDermott lift station, which is the one that does not exist, and the sewer line that -- that
runs from there to pick off the last of the -- the little temporary lift stations, which we will
allow, as shown on this map, that McDermott trunk sewer line is a 15 million dollar project.
The lift station and force main are estimated at 3.6 million dollars and the Victory sewer
needed to pick off that last temporary lift station is 1.6 million dollars. Of course, we can't
do all that in one fell swoop. We know that that's going to have to be phased in. But it is
going to be important that we start that work in the not too distant future. Our newly
revised master plan and updated CIP have broken this McDermott Road trunk line project
into a seven year phased project that will start in 2025. The effort to build this
infrastructure will significantly impact our budget during that time frame. One of the other
things that's important to note is that the -- because there are no large parcels along this
path, it is unlikely that development will pay for any of this. So, this is something that we
are going to have to address as a city moving forward if we want to provide service to this
drainage basin and it's a significant issue. We will be providing more information and
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updates to you in the near future. But as you can see we are busy planning and
constructing and trying to figure out how we are going to provide both on the water side
and the wastewater side the infrastructure necessary to support the growth and
development that the city is seeing, but there are challenges and some of those
challenges come with some fairly significant price tags and we will be working with you
and talking with you more about that in the future. I'm going to turn the time back over to
Alex at this point, so he can talk about some other issues and concerns , as we will be
bringing most of this stuff back to you in another format in the future.
De Weerd: Thank you, Warren.
Freitag: Madam Mayor, Members of Council, good afternoon.
De Weerd: Good afternoon.
Freitag: How is everybody doing? We are getting there. I promise. I'm here to talk a
little bit about the business division and our accomplishments over the last part of the
year. On the financial front we completed the FY-18 budget process. We also just
completed the ten year CFP. Both efforts were large, involved, took a long time and my
thanks to our utility analyst Connie Moon for the work that she did on that. We also
completed a review of the department's service fee schedule. This update -- this updated
all of our service-related fees to ensure proper level of cost recovery is occurring in our
fees and it also now aligns those fees with the city's annual timelines regular fee updates.
The asset management team completed phase four of the water asset program . This
effort works primarily on management processes for many of our water distribution assets
in the city, such as lines, hydrants, and pressure relief valves. This is enabling us to kind
of take asset management from just collecting data and assigning work orders and PMs
to assets, to being able to actually start to cost account against manpower , resources,
and future planning. The GIS team was able to create the water quality call mapping.
Councilman Cavener, to your question earlier, if you look at that image on the left there,
that's an example -- that's an example of that -- that application right there. We can now
plot display on command all customer concerns by various criteria , such as type, location,
and frequency. So, that should help our water division quite a bit on that front . We
conducted outreach meetings for the upcoming proposed FEMA map changes on Nine
Mile Creek. This was a chance to kind of talk with the public about proposed flood plain
changes, answer questions, all ahead of what we expect will be potential implementation
of that plan in 2018. You might remember our environmental coordinator was before you
last month to outline our new revitalized environmental excellence awards program to
help recognize those entities in the community that are helping to make Meridian
sustainable, healthy and a premier community. Our capital projects and facilities team
completed or supported 11 capital projects here just in our city facilities and responded
to over 1,250 cases regarding customer concerns. So, moving into some of the current
initiatives our team is working on. We are working on updating our rate model. We were
-- you might remember we were before you back in the springtime where we talked a little
bit about where that model was at. With the new CFP completed we are finalizing our
current efforts with work from our utility analysts. We expect to come before you and
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conduct the second part of that discussion , which will provide our latest projections and
potential impacts to the utility rates and fees. So, stay tuned on that. But as you can see
on this chart here, that's a picture of the rate model. Those last couple of years will
probably be a point of discussion as we -- as we move into those conversations. Another
project that we have in motion is an update to the city code with regard to how we calculate
connection fees for our commercial customers. So, a review of commercial class types,
methodologies, and what is right for Meridian and its customers is also going to be
expected outcomes from that effort. Our asset management team will move into water
asset phase five. That will capture additional thousands of pieces of water infrastructure
that we put into our asset management program. Our manhole assessment certification
program interface replacement -- talk just a moment about this. The manhole assessment
certification program is, essentially, part of a national standard that allows the city to -- to
apply standards to how it inspects and identifies defects and maintenance in those assets.
This is a pretty exciting improvement for that team . Currently when the field collections
guys collect that data, it's a fairly cumbersome process for them to take that data and
move it from the field software to our asset management software . It involves the working
of a third party interface. We are going to move all that to in house and in addition to
increasing the efficiency on that we are also going to save the cost of having to pay that
third-party software management agreement. So, it's a win-win for us on that. So,
efficiency and cost savings. Our GIS team will continue to work on layer improvements
to our GIS mapping to provide further accuracy and visibility to the infrastructure in the
city. We would like to thank IT for some assistance in helping us develop a
departmentwide tactical plan database. They stole the database that the city is currently
using for the strategic plan and reworked it for us and we are now able to put all 18 of our
department level tactics into that database to help us with tracking that. It's a great reuse
of a resource that we already had out there. So, again, thanks to them for that. We are
working on devoting efforts departmentwide to further define what we mean when we talk
about level of service as well. Establishing what that standard is now and what we expect
the level of service standard to be in the future and, then, once we have that we can distill
that down into meaningful -- meaningful performance matrix that we use to drive our
business positively and improve those levels of service . We also now have a working
draft of our Public Works Department communications plan. Our communication
specialist has been hard at work defining how we communicate with our customers, goals
to meet, and how to improve standards and tools we use for everything from quality
complaints to public outreach events. So, just taking a look ahead, obviously, on the
fiscal front before we all know it FY-19 budget process will start. It always seems like we
are in a budget cycle somehow. We are going to have to address a forecasted funding
gap that goes back to the rate model discussions that we will have with you and I pulled
that picture back up again. You can see there at the -- the end of that ten year period we
are relatively certain that we are going to have some kind of deficit there that we are going
to have to address as we go forward and in this last bullet I mentioned funding strategic
investments. If you look at that chart you will see that the ending fund balance hugs that
solvency line pretty close through the next six, seven, eight years. That really gives us
very little tolerance for emergencies, for maybe strategic investment opportunities that
come along and so the analogy we have been thinking of is that sort of -- the Enterprise
Fund living paycheck to paycheck during that time period . When an unforeseen
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opportunity comes along we might not have the cash on hand to take advantage of that.
Situations we might want to take advantage of would be perhaps securing additional
water supply for future generations or taking advantage of certain land acquisitions as
those opportunities become available. The flexibility in being able to leverage some of
those kinds of opportunities when they may be far less expensive for the city and may
alleviate future challenges is not to be underestimated. We are also going to be working
on fleet management. The Public Works Department has over 50 vehicles just in our
department. We recognize that the management of these assets requires more effort
and costs every year, so we are looking into where efficiencies and standardization
across the department can be exploited. One of the first things we hope to address on
that in the upcoming budget cycle is a more defined and standardized approach to how
we evaluate and decide when vehicle replacements are needed for the department . We
continue to implement philosophy of continuous improvemen t in the Public Works
Department. So, we will need to further define what matrix we collect to use and make
changes to our processes to ensure we are exhausting every efficiency and resource on
the expense side of the equation before we resort to looking at revenue changes. Our
environmental programs will focus on conservation and sustainability efforts to support
an eco-friendly approach to everything we do and , finally, on workforce development we
remain committed to our most valuable resource in the department, which is our people.
We look forward to our next class of leadership development candidates. This is going
to be our fifth leadership development class that we are able to do in the upcoming year.
This is an evolving program that we customize for each group of participants and it allows
us to immerse them in a culture of continuous improvement, impart the ideals of Public
Works, our mission, our goals and focus on how every staff member of the department
has a role to play in problem solving, efficiency, and leadership. That's a little bit about
business division and with that I'm going to turn it back over to our director Dale.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: One question real quick on the -- the Cliff's graphs, so to speak. Is the -- do you
anticipate the concept being brought forward that the -- the emergency reserves of -- I
think it's ten million reflected there, that that expands or we should utilize a different
additional type of reserve?
Freitag: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Borton, that's an excellent
question. I'm not sure I have got the right answer for you just yet. That would be certainly
one of the things we could look at . We are also going to try to bring forward options in
multiple ideas about whether or not an indexed rate approach might be the way to handle
that. Currently we don't update our rates every single year and it's already been almost
four years since we have raised our rates last time. So, we are running the analysis now
to determine whether or not -- what those -- those pictures look like.
Borton: Okay. Stay tuned.
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Freitag: Stay tuned. Yes, sir.
Borton: Great. Thanks.
Freitag: Yeah.
Bolthouse: Thank you, Alex, Laurelie, and Warren for the updates in divisions. So, I'm
going to take us home here in the next couple of minutes . But before -- before we
completely wrap it up, I -- I want to give you -- we have been on a little bit of road trip here
through -- through the various areas, but I want to kind step it up and I want to take a look
at the Public Works world ten years out. So, let's take a little journey to 2027. That's the
Jetsons for those of you who don't remember. So, what does the -- what does the city
look like in -- in ten years out? What about our utilities? I have got a couple of fun
benchmarks to take a look at and share with you here. So, how about the city? Well, just
looking at some of the common matrix, we are going to add about 40,000 people to our
city over the next ten years and for those of you who like analogies, that's adding three
and a half Garden Cities on top of our current population in the City of Meridian. About
12,000 dwelling units. We are adding about seven square miles to our city limits. And
as you can see the Mayor will be -- just be completing her sixth term in 2027. How about
our water utility? Almost 14,000 new accounts. Additional water pumped in a year 1.6
billion gallons more water needed in a year. So, I was trying to figure out how to drive
that point home and just how much is 1.6 billion. So, if you took 3,200 water towers and
line them up side by each, as we would say in Wisconsin, you would end up with a row
of towers 60 miles long. That's how much more water we are going to be pumping on an
annual basis. So, I hope that -- that leaves a little visual. That's to Wilder and back if
you're interested. One hundred and seventy miles of water line. That takes you from
Meridian to Cascade and back home again. That's how much water line we are going to
lay between now and then. Five additional wells. Five additional treatment facilities. And
thousands and thousands of valves being added to the system . On the wastewater side
you look at about -- that similar, 14,000 accounts. 3.5 million gallons per day is what -- in
addition to what we are seeing today. So, we will be approaching 11 million gallons a day
headed to our waste treatment plant . That's equal to two million toilet flushes a day that
-- in -- in extra volume headed that way. A hundred and forty-four miles of sewer trunk,
which is a small journey from Meridian to Twin Falls. Four to five thousand more
manholes. Hopefully, not filling with water like we saw from Snowmageddon. The
additional aeration basins to process. That's the biological part of the waste treatment
plant. We will add 150,000 pounds of more microscopic bugs eating -- eating away in our
biological process. And as you have heard, not only are we looking forward to one more
permit, but by 2027 we will have had two more rounds of our NPDES permit.
De Weerd: Todd, do you know that Pacman -- was that around?
Bolthouse: Now you know why we have 66 inch pipe out there going in the ground.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, there is one out there at Boondocks. Or whatever it's called now.
Wahooz.
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De Weerd: Oh.
Palmer: It's a big Pacman game.
Bolthouse: We may have to deploy that for our --
De Weerd: I thought maybe that was just aging you, but I guess it's still around.
Bolthouse: So --
De Weerd: And me.
Bolthouse: -- in order to get where we need to be and support the city in 2027, we must
plan now. That -- this is our planning horizon and so what do we estimate today? Well,
our CFP portfolio shows about 200 million dollars in capital and replacement costs to
support that 2027 vision and that does include the initiation of that McDermott trunk line
and some of the things that we have talked about here today. We estimate about 32
FTEs in our department. Those are boots on the ground employees supporting 24/7
operation in waste treatment and many of the other areas where we just see support and
the growth required. Uncertainty of the regulations. We think we understand what's
coming on some fronts, but certainly we do not have the full picture of what -- what
regulations we will be facing ten years from now. And the growth numbers in our plan,
quite frankly, are conservative. We have a history now of the last several years of
exceeding those growth numbers and so that will only challenge us further. So, hopefully,
it gives you an idea of kind of what we are looking at, you know, today and longer term
as we are planning and although this is the kind of stuff that keeps us up at night, we are
excited to -- to face that challenge and I am confident that this Public Works team can get
us where we need to be. So, with that I want to take one quick moment and thank Susie
for putting together the presentation. She worked tirelessly to help us pull this all together.
So, thank you, Susie. And I'd be glad to stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: Fantastic.
De Weerd: I think they were asked along the way.
Bolthouse: Appreciate that.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Borton.
Borton: Just one. I didn't quite catch -- what is it they say in Wisconsin? Side by what?
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Bolthouse: Side by each. You know, next to each other.
Borton: Side by each.
Bolthouse: Side by each. I was only there two years and I picked it up. Thank you,
Council.
C. Building Division: Overview of Process for Adoption of 2015
International Building Code, 2012 International Residential
Code, 2015 International Existing Building Code, 2017 Idaho
State Plumbing Code, 2015 International Fire Code and
proposed local amendments
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you for all you do. We greatly appreciate it. Okay. Item 7-C
is under a building division.
Bjornson: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I would like to thank
you for your time to listen to me discuss the overview and the timeline for the building
code adoption. As you know, the building codes in Meridian -- there is quite a few of
them, close to eight, and the codes, to give you a bit of background -- I will keep this fairly
short -- they run on a three year cycle. So, all the building codes, they are all different
years based on the model of the code and when it initially was adopted and so some are
2012, some are 2015. There is a couple that are 2017. But it happens on a three year
cycle and there is a solid process for what is the best for the state of Idaho. Part of that
process is public hearing per Idaho statute, through the negotiated rulemaking process.
There is a lot of participation by the public at large . There is participation from area
jurisdictions, area code officials, and, then, you have got the Idaho Building Code
collaborative. That building code collaborative board amends and recommends changes
to the code process after seeking that participation and the varying views from the public
at large and the area professionals and it ends up with a package of codes that it presents
to the house committee during the first regular session for -- for building code adoption.
So, that's kind of a sneak peak about how the building codes get vetted for what is best
for Idaho. There is a thorough process and there is a lot of input. Once that happens,
then, it becomes, by Idaho statute, the area municipalities adopt these codes January 1st
following the year that the state adopts. So, essentially, the draft ordinance before you is
32 pages of building code. Exciting, isn't it? Thirty-two pages. But in those 32 pages
there is probably eight codes all wrapped into that package . A lot of it is housekeeping
for our local amendments. But, then, we have got some changes that we are doing to
follow the state in its adoption with the International Building Code, the Idaho Residential
Code, energy codes, electrical codes, some of those. Currently Sam Zahorka has helped
me do this work. He's been a great asset and a valued opinion. He is at the BCA
presenting the same information for us and I guess at this point I would like to see if you
have any questions to go through these 32 pages. I don't know what level of detail -- I
don't want to go through it all. I will tell you that the packages that are in front of you --
that you received I believe last Thursday, there has been some changes already. It's a
draft copy and those changes are just clean up some errors and things that we said -- it
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looks. We deleted that and we didn't want to delete it. But I will tell you that everything
that is contained in the 32 pages is state minimum code. We are not making any changes
that would be more restrictive and our local amendments are just getting shorter and we
are cleaning up, keeping it simple. Thirty-two pages simple. But I'm going to stand for
questions and we can talk through this if you like to whatever extent you feel comfortable
with.
De Weerd: Okay. Council?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. You mentioned BCA. Are they -- do they have any opinions on
anything that we are doing that we are above and beyond the minimum that we have to
do?
Bjornson: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Palmer, I have attended
the BCA -- I have attended every month in the last three months in a row. I have let them
know that, you know, this is a work in progress, so they are aware of per Idaho statute
we have to notice the BCA and probably 25 other organizations, which we will do
tomorrow per Idaho statute. Those notices are going to go out with a draft copy before
you -- the updated copy and so I will discuss the timeline here with you, too, before we
close up, just a brief timeline on this proposal and look to your recommendations. But,
yes, the BCA is aware and they don't oppose in any way. Therefore, because we are
following the state minimum this has been vetted already.
De Weerd: Other questions from Council? I guess not at this time.
Bjornson: The timeline, just in a snapshot -- I'm not sure -- I don't think you have the
timeline. What we are looking at is mailers tomorrow are going out per Idaho Code
Section 39-401-1-6, which is the list of area professionals and others. The Meridian Press
will be notified, essentially, of a public hearing, which shall be November 21st for the
public hearing and first reading and, then, we will move through November, December
with the second and third reading, with an effective date requested as January 1st, 2018.
That really concludes what I have to present. But, again, I'm willing to answer any
questions that you might ask.
De Weerd: It doesn’t look like there is any at this point in the process.
Bjornson: All righty. Thank you for your time. I appreciate it.
D. Clerk's Office and Legal Department: Proposed Updates to the
Temporary Use Code
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De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Brent. Okay. Item 7-D is under the clerk's office and Legal
Department.
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you very much. I'm following
Brent's exhilarating report with some more code update proposals that we have before
you today. In your packet was a memo prepared by Emily Kane in the Legal Department
talking about some proposals we would like to make to the temporary use code. In that
memo are five highlights that address some of the issues and problems that we are trying
to solve with this code update. A lot of it stems from our partners at ACHD over the years
-- currently the City of Meridian has a citizens use permit as part of our temporary use
permit package. That is for any events that take place within the right of way. We take
those applications in and, then, we transmit those currently to ACHD. They have staff
over there that reviews those and they provide comments, they approve or deny, and,
then, we either approve or deny that permit based on their comments . They have decided
to institute at ACHD their own separate permit for events occurring within the right of way.
That occurred -- that was implemented on October 1st. Over the course of the summer
months we spoke with our friends there at ACHD, worked with them, they have their own
timelines that they are working with on their permit, which were different from our timelines
on our permit, so a lot of what we are trying to do special event wise was remove our
citizens use permit, because that is completely redundant with ACHD's special event
permit, try and line up our timelines closer to what their timelines are, so that if an
applicant comes to us for an event that's happening within the right of way and they
haven't met ACHD's timeline, but they have met our timeline, we don't want there to be
any confusion that they can get our permit, but they can't get their permit, which would be
a moot point. So, we are trying to line up our timelines with -- again with ACHD so that
applicants aren't confused or they are denied one and granted another one. We are --
like I say, we are taking out the citizen's use permits. We are instituting -- or proposing
to institute a large scale temporary use permit, which would effectively replace the
citizen's use permit and that is for events occurring within arterial roadways, collector
roadways, major roadways. For those events occurring on local streets, essentially, block
parties and that sort of thing, we are looking to not call them large scale events, but,
rather, just keep them regular small scale special events. Again, changing our timeline
to meet ACHD's timeline. So, right now we currently have a 21 day process. We want to
go to a 30 day process on the regular, if you will, special events. The large scale we are
looking to bump that up to 60 days, again, to get in line with ACHD's application and their
timeline on their process. Some of the other cleanups that we are trying to make within
the temporary use code are adding a provision for unauthorized vendors at special events
and outdoor markets. If you recall at the Dairy Days parade there were some issues
about unauthorized vendors being within the parade route, creating some public safety
issues there. So, we are looking to address that within the code saying that if you are an
unauthorized vendor of that application of that event that that is a prohibited act. If you're
uninvited, essentially, by the event organizer that you're unable to participate in that event.
Again, trying to mitigate any public safety issues that we might have there. We are
eliminating the permit requirements for temporary indoor events . We don't have any of
those. It was -- when that was created it was created for a potential indoor venue that
never materialized and we are looking to take that out, because that is not a permit that
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we issue right now, so we want to take that out of the code. And we are also looking to
extend the timelines allowed for temporary sales units. Right now we have 90 days. We
are looking to bump that up to 120 days. The idea behind a temporary sales unit is
seasonal. Your snow cone shacks, essentially. Right now 90 days is not long enough.
It doesn't cover an entire season for those seasonal activities , those seasonal vendors.
So, we want to look to increase that to 120 days. Along with that, though, we are providing
a clarification within the code that if you are on property, but you are closed, that that still
counts as a day of use of your permit. This is similar to -- if you look at any business
across the City of Meridian within the UDC -- if you have a restaurant that's closed on a
Sunday, the use on that property is still a restaurant. It doesn't cease being a restaurant
just because its closed. It's still a use on that property. So, we are finding more and more
that there are some temporary use -- or temporary sales units across the city that might
be on the property year round, but only open for 90 days and so they are creating some
use issues on the land where they technically should only be there for the 90 days. We
are providing clarification within the code, bumping up the days to 120 days, to hopefully
allow for the true seasonal activity, which is the intent of this permit. And, then, we are
also making some house -- housekeeping and cosmetic updates, rearranging, making
some number changes throughout the code, making it easier for applicants to find what
they are looking for in the code, especially in the online version with our codifier, being
able to click on a specific section and having everything associated with that particular
permit located right there, instead of having to jump around a little bit. So, I know that 31
pages seems lengthy for a temporary use code , but we are really trying to make it more
manageable and easier to navigate for applicants and also for staff here to be able to find
what they are looking for, instead of having to jump from section to section. I will tell you
that we have spent some considerable time with our temporary use team here at the city,
which Nancy in our office heads up. She would have loved to have been here today,
unfortunately, some family circumstances prevents her from being here with us today.
But she has worked tirelessly with just about every department within the city to talk about
these updates, to get their input, to rework some of the updates. It's been a month-long
process. Also Emily Kane, she has worked tirelessly alongside with Nancy, doing that
very same thing and we have also reached out to about 20 or so applicants that are
frequent applicants with the city through all different types of permits that this covers, to
obtain their feedback or let them know at the very least that this is coming, would you like
to provide feedback, what is your insight, what is your input. We did hear back just from
one of those applicants, that was the Dairy Board, saying they appreciate the opportunity
to provide feedback and their feedback was that they really like the section about
unauthorized vendors, because they did feel like that presented some issues along the
parade route there. So, in addition to that, if Council is amenable to these changes, we
are also looking to update the fee schedule associated with these permits to get them
more in line with what they actually are. We would like to move ahead first with -- with
the code updates -- or I should say move those along, because the -- the fee schedule
would have to go through a public hearing process. As I said ACHD -- their fee -- or their
permit went into effect October 1st, so we are trying to make sure that we are staying in
the line with them, so that there isn't any confusion with applicants that may come to us
first. We want to -- we want to be good partners and make sure that we offer the ability
and opportunity for applicants to have successful events and not be turn ed away,
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because they didn't meet one deadline and they met the other deadline at a different
agency. So, with that I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, questions?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor and C.Jay, under number four what happens when a snow cone
shack owner comes to you and says, hey, my shack is in place, I'd like my permit, but it's
been there since last season?
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Palmer. So, if I
understand the question correctly, if the snow cone shack vendor comes to us and says
my snow cone shack is in place, it has been in place year around, and I need -- I'm just
coming to re-up my permit, essentially?
Palmer: Right.
Coles: Then we will permit them for the time allotted under the code. So, if it moved
forward it's the 120 days. But inform them that at the end of those 120 days that the snow
cone shack needs to be removed. It should have been that way anyway, but informing
them that that is what the law reads. The snow cone shack needs to be removed. We
do inform applicants of that anyway as they -- when they come in, but that's what we
would inform them.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Palmer: What's the enforcement if they don't remove it? What -- I didn't know they were
supposed to be moved. I don't own one, but I see them around.
Coles: Code enforcement. Code enforcement officers go in and speak with the individual
and, if necessary, write citations.
Palmer: Madam Mayor? The reason I -- I ask is -- I don't know that it's -- I don't know.
Maybe I'm alone, but I don't have a problem with them staying. I don't -- maybe it is a
problem with other less -- I don't know. More unsightly structures. Just seems like a bit
much for government.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Bill, stop me if I get off base here, but I believe the actual buildings of these snow
cone shacks and stuff -- and I'm like Councilman Palmer, I know two or three of them that
they are open from Memorial Day to Labor Day, but the building stays there, but they are
on private property. They are not on the right of way or anything like that, they are -- they
are on a piece of private property owned by that deal. So, what we are actually --
temporary sales is just a business, isn't it, it isn't the facility?
Nary: Mr. Bird, Members of the Council -- or Madam Mayor. So, you're right in the sense
they are, but the -- but I think the use is tied to the building and is not -- normally wouldn't
be allowed there but for that temporary use. So, that's where I think the nexus is why the
building is not supposed to be there, because without that permit it wouldn't be allowed
to just construct a building out on the -- in the driveway or in the parking lot.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor. C.Jay. So, in this case like -- and maybe, Bill, maybe this
is better addressed to you. So, the case of the snow cone shack that used to be by the
pool, it was my understanding to eventually bring something like that back it wouldn't be
able to happen under the current code or the new code? Is that -- am I understanding
that correctly?
C.Jay: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Little Roberts, it can --
it can come back the following year. It's -- it can't just -- it doesn't just go away and, then,
it comes back the next weekend under a different permit. It is a -- it is a calendar year.
But it can come back the following year and, then, the following year. But, again, the 120
days -- or currently the 90 days, proposing to the 120 days, does allow for that, but it is a
January 1 to December 31.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor, follow up? The ones that they had before the remodel of
the pool was a permanent one and just opened and closed and it was my understanding
originally talking to the people at the pool, they were hoping something like that would
come back and I know this past summer we had a temporary one there , which was
awesome, since it was a YEA kid, but -- so, will there not be opportunities to build a
permanent structure to do things like that?
C.Jay: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Council Member Little Roberts, I am
unfamiliar with the specific snow cone shack at the pool. Certainly I -- I would imagine
there would be an opportunity to build a permanent structure. However, we do run into
to some UDC issues. So, if that structure is tied to the -- the use of the pool and it's a --
a retail use that the -- the planning staff and the UDC can figure out how to make that a
part of that operation, then, that's certainly something that can be explored. If it's a
completely separate use, then, yes, it would be -- fall into the temporary use permit, but
if -- if it can find its way into a certificate of zoning compliance in connection with the pool,
then, a permanent structure could be -- could be built. What we are looking at here is
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literally temporary structures that -- with a temporary use permit we are able to bypass
for the specific -- specified period of time, certificate of zoning compliance is in the UDC.
Without a temporary use permit, then, you fall under the UDC and the certificate of zoning
compliances and all the other planning requirements that the city instills. So, that's where
-- that's where the temperature use comes in is we can say, no, you don't need -- you're
not required to do everything that a certificate of compliance applicant would or that the
UDC requires, we can -- for 120 days we can bypass some of those requirements. But if
it's a permanent structure, then, yeah, you're looking to go certificate of zoning
compliance and UDC standards.
Little Roberts: Thank you.
Bird: Any other questions, Council? Emily, you got anything to enlighten us or --
Kane: Thank you. I will take that opportunity. Members of Council, the -- just to add
something to this part of the discussion, the issue we are running is snow cone shacks
are one thing and there are kind of permanent concessionaires and that's -- as C.Jay
mentioned, that's -- typically in that situation part of the permanent use of that property.
What we are running into is these typically -- more typically temporary sales, like lawn
ornaments or rugs or blankets or things that set up kind of a sales area and , then, stay
there all year -- typically they stop in the winter, but for months and months and months
or kind of just set up an outdoor store, essentially, and there -- the way the code reads
now if they are closed for business they can leave the store there and so it's, essentially,
a -- competing with bricks and mortar stores, without the store. So, it looks like a garage
sale, but it's there all year. So, that's the more typical problem that we are trying to
address with this to make it clear that if you're -- if you're there a day, but, then, kind of
deal with the seasonal aspect by making it a longer period of time that you could be there.
So, that -- that is something that's been requested by snow cone shacks, because they -
- they do want to be open from Memorial Day to Labor Day and not have to haul away
their shack to accommodate that 90 day period, so --
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: So, I feel like by -- by going this route that we are saying your -- your permanent
business is only welcome if you have a permanent structure or could somebody get 120
day permits over and over, while not being open, just to be able to leave their things in
one place?
Kane: Madam Mayor, Council Member Palmer, the -- the intention is that that would be
120 days in a calendar year in a year. So, you're done after that 120 days. And you can
come back next year. But, the intention of the code is to accommodate temporary uses
without also kind of taking away from our bricks and mortar businesses that have made
those investments and, you know, having -- have a building and a lease and just the
accouterments of a business. So, there are some uses that are suited for a temporary
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outdoor use, like -- like the snow cone shack or the lawn ornament sale. But the idea of
the code -- or the intention of the code originally was to make it so that we -- we have
both.
Palmer: Madam Mayor? By what mechanism is the hot dog place over on Main
operating?
Kane: They are special. I would defer to Bill on -- on that.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, so the Chicago Dog stand that you're
talking about next to that, that is an accessory use of the business that's there. So, the
Rite-Aid business actually is the applicant for that business to be there . So, it's -- it's
treated differently as a temporary, because it's actually, essentially, considered to be
accessory or use of an existing business. We used to have the same when -- I think it
was Home Depot used to have a trailer placed there, too, and it was an accessory use of
the business itself. So, we treat those differently than those, because, like C.Jay said,
you talk about a lot of those -- those snow cone shacks, those are not usually as
problematic, but they are -- they are held to a different standard than a permanent building
on the site, because you're looking at the UDC requirements and whether or not they are
allowed in that zone and those types of things . We just -- here we will allow them for
those limited periods of time, so that we can -- you know, like Emily said, have business
that kind of fit that model, but we don't want it to necessarily be sitting there the rest of
the year as this old building or this old trailer that isn't being used in just unsightly on the
properties.
Palmer: Madam Mayor? And under that would a snow cone shack be able to work out
a deal with the business owner which they have their place in their parking lot, to go that
route, as opposed to a temporary use?
Nary: If it was -- Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Palmer, I mean
it would have to fit the same model. I mean it has to be, essentially, an accessory use of
that business. That's why the -- for example, the Chicago Dog used to be out in the
parking lot adjacent to the street and we got exactly those complaints from existing
businesses that didn't want this stand across the street from them, when they had paid to
upgrade their business there on Main Street. But that's why it moved back, because then,
it, basically, became part of the -- the footprint of that business that's there. So, if the
Rite-Aid goes away that would be a problem, but as long as the Rite-Aid is there and it's
part of their business that they are requesting to do that, that's why it falls under our code.
So, a snow cone shack could do that if a business wanted to -- to make that part of their
business, they could certainly ask for it the same way.
Palmer: Thanks.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: You know, this is touchy, because a couple three of these snow -- snow cone shacks
-- I know that families have of -- help get a few kids through college. It's a way they get
through and -- and I don't -- I don't see where they are really competing head to head
because they have got -- I guess they still have the Flushies or whatever you call them.
De Weerd: Slushies.
Bird: They -- I have outgrown some of that stuff finally. But, anyway, I -- I hate to -- I hate
to put such a burden on a -- on a business like this that is very popular and is very -- I
mean I don't think we have ever had any problems around any of these snow shacks or
anything. I have got to think a couple of minutes on this before I would -- I could go for
this kind of a writing in the ordinance myself.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: While Mr. Bird's pondering, I think whether it's snow cone shacks or hot tubs or
rugs or lawn gnomes or whatever it may be, I have a hard time telling a -- a property
owner who has found a way to monetize their parking lot or their empty lots , tell them
you're only going to be able to monetize that for 120 days per year. Even if it's across the
street from a brick and mortar store of the same thing. I mean we live in a free market
society for a reason and it -- I don't see it as -- as a problem. Maybe an inconvenience
for competition, but that's a great thing. I love all of this, especially the extension, short
of -- of that limitation and that enforcement of it has to be moved afterwards.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Question for C.Jay or Emily or both. I appreciate what you're bringing to us.
Could you just tell -- maybe articulate to us what -- what the large issue is that we are
trying to solve by doing this? Is it that we want to limit the amount of these -- I don't want
to degrade the industry, but swap meet style businesses? I don't -- I don't hear anything
-- you talking about snow cone stands, even though it sounds like that if they leave their
buildings they are -- they are in violation. But maybe walk me through what -- what's the
problem that we are trying to solve with this?
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener, I think the
largest issue -- this particular part of the code that we are trying to solve is the -- as Emily
pointed out, the -- the conflict we have with the UDC. So, the UDC governs land use
within the city and when you build any sort of store -- a retail store, a restaurant, any sort
of service or good that you're providing in the city, you have to go through the planning
department and you have to fall under whatever the UDC prescribes for your particular
use you're putting on that property. With temporary use applications we are able to
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bypass the requirements of the UDC for whatever, again, the good or service is, rugs,
lawn ornaments, hot tubs, snow cones -- whatever the service is or good that's being
provided and we are able to say the UDC for this amount of time -- or up to this amount
of time, doesn't apply, in essence. You don't need to conform to or -- or you don't get to
come up to the standards that the city has -- has prescribed. So, if -- if -- at this point the
clarification within the code isn't provided to say that your stand s can stay there for -- year
round. You don't have to put in any of the landscaping. You don't have to put in the
parking. You don't have to do anything that the UDC prescribes for that particular
location. So, some of the feedback that we have received is -- I have to go through and
do these things and come up to the standard that is the City of Meridian if I'm a brick and
mortar, but if I'm not a brick and mortar I can just get a TUP and, hey, I'm there year
around. So, that's -- we are trying to solve some of the conflict that we see between the
UDC and the temporary use permit and make them talk to each other a little bit better.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? Just an additional question then. Where do -- where do food
trucks fall into this conversation?
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Cavener. So, food trucks -
- we don't have a provision specifically for food trucks. They are mobile sales units
specifically. That's where we would -- we would put them within. Also would they fall
within promotional sales? I'm not sure.
Kane: They could also be a temporary sales unit if they park for more than two hours.
So, they would be subject to either or both. Many of those vendors do get both, so that
they can both rove around and stop where ever they can over the lunch hour, but, then,
also park for a longer amount of time.
Coles: So, they continue on that. We don't have a specific provision that is food truck
specific, such as other communities -- some of them do. We don't. I know of one food
truck within the city that was put in place prior to that going into effect and t hey are kind
of grandfathered into their location where they are located. If they were to cease that use
in that allocation they wouldn't be able to -- actually, we spoke of one and they could open
an additional and if they -- yeah, if they cease that use and moved on and they wouldn't
be able to re-establish, according to what -- to the current.
Cavener: Uh-huh. Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? I'm not sure if we have any clearer direction.
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we are looking to -- like I said, come back
with these draft changes being codified and I did briefly mention also the -- the fee
structure that we are looking to adopt, which is included in your memo. None of those
fees are higher than what we currently charge . We had to do a re-analysis based on
including large scale and taking out the citizen's use permit and do a re-analysis to make
sure that our -- our fees made sense where they were located based on staff time and
the department that review each application that comes in and what they are looking for
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and how long they take. So, again, we came back with those fees as currently presented
that would -- we are hoping would be two weeks, three weeks from now. But the code
updates we would like to make sooner than that, again, to get us in line -- mainly get our
timelines in line with ACHD on permit application submittals.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: C.Jay, one more question. On these -- and I'm particularly talking about the snow
cone shacks. They have got electric in it and they got -- I think water to it. Are they
inspected? I mean we surely inspect them for safety and stuff like that.
Coles: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Bird, I know that the
building does look at those permits. Whether or not they go out and inspect based -- as
a condition of approval on those permits I -- I can't say yes or no either way. But I know
that they are included in the application review process if they feel an inspection is
necessary on that particular one they might include that, but they are included in the
review of the application.
Bird: Follow up, Mayor. Mark, does Kenny or Joe or anybody look at them once in a
while?
Niemeyer: Councilman Bird, I think to answer your question -- to answer your question,
I think it depends on the use. So, if -- certainly if there is cooking equipment in those we
would absolutely go out and inspect. If it's more of a shed-type environment, we typically
don't inspect those. I can certainly follow up with -- with Joe to get that answer. But my
-- my history tells us we don't typically go out and inspect those.
Bird: If it's got electric or something in there you could -- and to run the machines they
certainly have that in there. We will find it's probably a box -- panel box. I know you got
to go forward with this, but -- I don't know. I have got -- I got to see what it goes back in
the form that I -- I just don't want to hurt those -- I mean I -- like I said, I know too many
families that have helped get their kids through college because of those snow shacks.
De Weerd: But this -- this is helping them. It's -- it's not restricting them. This is allowing
a --
Bird: Except they have to move them.
De Weerd: Well, they already do.
Bird: No, they don't.
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De Weerd: They already do. They just -- it's just, apparently not all enforced. A couple
phone calls and says so and so hasn't move it -- code enforcement doesn't go out and
look for those things.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Any chance of -- and I don't know the complexities of doing this -- of splitting it
as two different conversations. One as the 120 days and all the other provisions, except
for the -- the enforcement -- the requirement that they be moved annually and, then, have
that conversation and decide whether we want to enforce that or require it or put it in
there.
De Weerd: Well -- and what that -- leaving it permanently known by permit, what that
does in changing -- in zoning, parking requirements, landscaping requirements -- if it
triggers square footage type of issues per the building code and those kind of things,
because those -- that is why it's required to move, is because, otherwise, those things are
triggered. Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, I actually had a question for Mr. Siddoway, since he's in the
audience. I know that we have a couple of snow shacks that are tenants in our parks. I
assume we require them to remove their facility at the end of the season if we are in
compliance.
Siddoway: Yes, we do. If we get into too many specifics I may have to get Colin Moss
down here, who manages these contracts, but we have multiple snow cone contracts with
like Tully Park, I think Bear Creek. We have had one in Centennial. We have been
looking for someone to come in the Storey Park to replace the one that used to be on the
ward with the swimming pool. They do remove those facilities and come back in spring.
Cavener: Great. Thanks, Steve.
De Weerd: Okay. Staff -- oh, Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor? If any direction, at least in my mind I think what you guys have
done is fantastic. The subject isn't whether or not we should allow temporary uses , as I
see it in the city. I mean that's just a sales and we have got a structure that we have been
doing for years that -- that allows for it and what you're doing here without increasing fees,
you're trying to expand the -- the opportunity for the season to be served by the business
-- all of that makes sense and it doesn't add a new obligation to remove property, it
probably tries to make it a little more clear what their obligations are and it has some
enforcement mechanism for the city to have people comply and do it -- do with their
property as they were agreeing to do in exchange for receiving a permit in the first place.
So, it seems to make sense going forward -- or to bring it forward. I'm supportive of it.
Dialogue of whether or not we should regulate gnome sellers or rug sellers in parking lots
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-- that's a totally different conversation. That's a -- should we have a concept such as a
temporary use in the first place, which isn't really what we are doing here. So, I see the
-- we have described the UDC and the existing objective consistent rules of the road, for
better for worse than, operating a business in Meridian we all play by these rules. And
the city at some point said, well, let's try and help out and provide to our citizens these
additional opportunities to have goods and services that might be seasonal , for a rug or
a snow cone or something that wouldn't otherwise be able to invest in the city to provide
what would be a year round experience for seasonal activity . So, this is a solution to a
problem to provide -- and that's what these temporary users are trying to do is to provide
an additional opportunity for goods and services that wouldn't otherwise be available or
be provided, even if it's a snow cone or a gnome -- can't have a gnome or a snow cone
business perhaps 12 months a year. That's the whole genesis of these temporary use
permits and it's been that way for a while. So, this improves that existing permissive
opportunity for vendors. So, I think it should come forward. I think you guys have done
a great job and great outreach, too, and trying to get input from others and the pros and
cons. The -- the discussion of do we regulate people in parking lots I think is interesting
for sure, but I think that's a different one. I think you can go forward with these changes,
these improvements to the existing process, and still have that discussion.
De Weerd: Okay. Just bring it back.
E. Fire Department: Joint Powers Agreement (JPA) Update
Coles: Thank you very much. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Item 7-E is under our Fire
Department and with an update on two JPAs -- or one JPA and one --
Niemeyer: One JPA.
De Weerd: Yeah.
Niemeyer: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, good evening. I am here to update
you on what is known as the Treasure Valley Fire Service Joint Powers Agreement. As
you recall months back we signed onto that agreement and, then, we had a hiccup in the
process where Nampa did not and so through conversations with all of you, you asked
us to go back to the drawing board and look at mo re of a memoranda of understanding.
I think Councilman Bird suggested that. That is less binding, less intrusive, less language
of authority, all that kind of good stuff. Emily Kane has been kind enough to draft that up.
That's in the hands of the fire chiefs currently being reviewed. I anticipate that review to
be about 30 to 45 days. Just going back to what happened, then, versus where we are
at now -- and I think, Councilman Borton, you asked this question when we did this
originally is what about Kuna and Eagle and those are two specifics that you brought up.
So, things have changed in this valley since the time that we talked about the joint powers
agreement. One is, as you know, Kuna has a new fire chief. He spent one meeting with
his commissioners and said here is what's going on, we would like to participate and they
said absolutely. And, then, in Eagle they have a new fire chief, his name is Rusty Coffelt,
he came from the Anaheim area. He is very much interested in what we are trying to do,
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simply to cooperate and work together. That was kind of the norm in the Anaheim area
and it's the norm in California. So, he is very much interested and engaged in what we
are trying to do. Really, the question boils down to why do we do an agreement in the
first place. We are talking about fire chiefs getting together to cooperate, do our training
together, figure out operational plans together. We don't necessarily need that
agreement. We do need an agreement -- and it can be done in the form of an -- of an
MOU, a memorandum of understanding, if we want to do such things as any kind of joint
bulk purchasing, such as firehose, those four agencies have fire hoses that need to be
bought in the same year and we want to, at a minimum, maintain cost to contain it and at
best find savings in cost by doing bulk purchasing, we need to have some agreement in
place, so that when I hand that off to Finance they say where is your agreement, I can
show them the agreement. The auditors really like when there is an agreement in place
like that. The other big area that it is very important to have an agreement is when it
comes to mutual aid and automatic aid. We have in Idaho what's called the ISRB,
otherwise known as ISO in other states. ISO comes in and does an evaluation of our --
of our water department, our water system and of our fire department. They give an
overall rating or score to our fire department and that, in turn, then, goes out to the
insurance companies, who use that to figure out insurance rates for either homeowners
or commercial business. So, those are the two areas, as far as an agreement goes,
where it is important. If it -- again, if it were simply let's get together and train we wouldn't
need an agreement to do that. So, that's where we are at as far as the memorandum of
understanding. I have looked extensively through the document that Emily created. I
think it meets our intent, it meets your intent as far as the language contained within that.
As far as the current joint powers agreement, I think you have two options. You can ask
the Mayor to send a letter, that's in the agreement today, 30 days notice to rescind that,
or you can leave it in place, so there is no financial obligation to it right now, there is no
other obligation you have. So, really, it's a choice on Council and what you would like to
do with that current joint powers agreement. I have no preference either way. We can
rescind it, knowing we will work on the other and we will bring it back to you as the MOU
for your consideration. Just real quick before we -- we get to the end here. I want to
update you on a couple of things we are doing together that I think are worth mentioning
and very important. One is the joint recruit academy that's going on. We are eight weeks
into that. We have five agencies participating in that and sharing in the cost of that joint
recruit academy. Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Kuna and us. All of the staff that we hired to
go into that academy are still in that academy. So, eight weeks in and we still have all
eight in, which is a good thing for us in the fire department and, then, we also have a
fourteen week officer development program that we put on. This is mandatory for any
future company officer or captain. The organization as they go to promote it's fourteen
weeks of education, not only in command and control, but in other firehouse issues, like
human resources, conflict management, and some of those issues that -- that we know
our supervisors are going to face. We have eight agencies participating in that, including
Boise. And, then, we also just during the final stages of the RFQ process for station
architects, we had seven agencies involved in that RFQ process, the seven that we
discussed earlier as far as Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Kuna, Star and Middleton. We are
in the final stages of that, working with Keith Watts to select the -- up to three qualified
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architects for future fire station design. So, some success stories there as far as working
with others and with that I will take any questions on the JPA or anything else.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Chief, when we see the MOU come back who will be the -- what entities will be
signing it?
Niemeyer: We will be last, I can tell you that. But the agencies at the chief level that have
committed -- and they have been in communication with their -- with their boards and their
councils -- Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Kuna, Star, Middleton and us. So, seven agencies.
We will be last.
De Weerd: Other questions? Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Chief, do you anticipate any substantive changes being made to the current
version that the chiefs are reviewing?
Niemeyer: I don't anticipate that. I think it's really well written. It got rid of all the board
language, authoritative language, voting language. Basically a financial clause that
allows us to work together on joint purchasing, but it -- it does not bind boards or councils
to anything.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, follow up?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Cavener: Chief, can we get a copy of that?
Niemeyer: Absolutely.
Cavener: Send it to us -- I guess seeing it sooner rather than later. Sometimes those
documents are meaty and often require more than three or four days to be able to dive
into.
Niemeyer: Yeah. I can tell you it's a lot less pages than it was before.
Cavener: That is also good.
De Weerd: Chief, I just -- I hope that you would also give any kind of an update. We
signed the EMS JPA a couple weeks ago and would like any kind of an update you can
provide on that.
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Niemeyer: Yeah. I think, really, the message -- and I know Chief Lavey is here and we
had an interesting conversation this morning. The message I continue to send on the
EMS joint powers agreement -- for those of you that were here eight, nine, ten years ago
when EMS was controversial and agencies were tied up in lawsuits and all of that good
stuff, because we weren't working together, the biggest thing it has done is brought us
together, it forces us together on a monthly basis, we work together, we have
standardized protocols, we have standardized our medical direction, which we had not --
we had inconsistent medical direction, but through that also the relationships that have
been built and how we are moving forward now in problem solving and solution oriented
approaches and I bring that up, because we had the other day a fairly complex call that
involved law enforcement, fire, police, we had a little hiccup in that and it was as simple
as one person making a phone call to the other, meeting face to face, and we got it
resolved. That would not have happened ten years ago. So, those are the positives
moving forward. The other big pluses -- you may have seen the commercial that came
out on Pulse Point. Pulse Point is an app that has been pushed out by our EMS system
and is being promoted by our EMS system. So, if you saw the commercial you had all of
the fire chiefs and the EMS chief standing side by side, shoulder to shoulder, talking about
saving people's lives through community CPR. So, there is those things that are
continuing to evolve today. How we distribute the CPR -- I always called them a thumper,
but that's my gray hair coming out, because that's what we called them 20 years ago, but
in our EMS system we have now distributed those out across the county, so that we have
those things -- those items available in a cardiac arrest more readily and easily. That's
the level of cooperation that continues to occur today. So, anything else I can answer on
that I would be happy to.
F. Citywide Strategic Plan Update
De Weerd: Okay. Looks like nothing further. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Okay. Item
7-F is the citywide strategic plan update. I will move to the podium. Thank you. Okay.
So, I am back with a bi-annual update on the strategic plan and so tonight, this afternoon,
whatever it is, I'm going to go over these six different areas. We have a dashboard to
share with you, a close-out report on those items that had been completed at a hundred
percent. Discuss the high priority objectives and some of the activities that are currently
underway in those and, then, I did want to bring back the objective discussions that you
had in June and to give a brief overview of that and have a specific objective that we
would like to pose to you, get some feedback and, then, go to next steps. So, these are
an overview dashboard, just a snapshot of where we are at with our 64 total objectives.
The pie chart gives you that update and where things are in the process of this five year
strategic plan and the objectives that are related to that. On the -- the gauges on the side,
the first one shows you six out of the 64 objectives have been completed and the bottom
one, the 22 percent tactic completion and we are going to be adding this to the quarterly
dashboards that you get, so you have that on a quarterly basis. So, these are the different
objectives that were one hundred percent complete when we discussed it in June and I
will go through each of these briefly as -- and highlight a couple of the different areas.
So, in 1.A.2, this area was -- was agreed upon and is currently an urban -- the first
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economic urban renewal district in the state specifically for ED and while that is a hundred
percent complete, I do think it's important that biannually we bring back an update as to
what's going on in those urban renewal district areas. It was anticipated that the MDC
would be here and give an annual update, but I think that this is an integral part of our
strategic plan and certainly set in place by the City Council, so we want to make sure that
you have those updates in a timely fashion. So, the area was confirmed to be somewhat
of that economic development headquartered area. Already two headquarters are
locating out there, Ameriban is 75,000 square feet. It's an investment of 7.2 million dollars
and they have their 605 employees out there. By the end of the year they will be growing
to 700 and growing over a hundred employees for the next several years each year.
Brighton is bringing a 63,000 square foot four story building and part of that will be
Paylocity, which is expected to grow to 500 jobs over time. So, this performance
measurement has been completed. But, again, we want to bring this back for biannual
updates.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Palmer: A five story building.
De Weerd: A five story building.
Palmer: For Paylocity.
De Weerd: Okay. Okay. I guess I better update that. I didn't count the floors. That was
the last I heard as part of the report. So, Objective 2.A.2, this was as related to economic
development and I'm -- I'm just going to do the whole thing instead of having people get
up and get down and if you have any questions certainly we can have one of our directors
give you more meat to the discussion, but this completed objective is also -- in my
opinion, needs to be ongoing and bringing back information to you as we continue to
develop better tools and business attraction. So, one of those activities they completed
was the steering committee and one of our council members was intricately involved in
this, Mrs. Little Roberts, in developing the steering committee. It had a number of
chamber representatives from the private sector, as well as public sector with the City,
CW I, and MDC, as well as other community partners and this was basically utilized for
two different things and probably the most time consuming was the downtown multi -use
center and the RFI that went out as -- as it related to that. It was also used in the Project
Clipper site visit in developing an approach to how we could best attract Project Clipper
and that was a great exercise in bringing the various partners together and what we could
do collectively and in collaboration to attract an employer to the area . The second area
was -- instituted monthly meetings. Brenda meets monthly with brokers. This is to
strengthen our relationships and what is available in our community and as she visited --
visits with these brokers, the partnership and the greater awareness of what is available
and how she can get participation by these brokers when we do have a company looking.
It gives more rapid response and it allows for equal partners to the table. The third area
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is really utilizing our businesses that are here today through site visits t hat better
understand the contacts that these larger employers have in the community and outside
the community of who might be looking to relocate that meets our clusters, like the health,
science and technology corridor or in our core competencies and pro fessional services
and headquarters and so those relationships are nurtured by both my office and economic
development and so in that realm it's an ongoing effort. And Objective 3.E.1, these were
headed up by our legal team and while the code was updated in 2013, while we were
doing a clean up to add the additional council seats , we also took out some pretty
antiquated language that was -- was associated with it, but this is in some regard ongoing.
We did -- it's really focused on onboarding, whether it's onboarding for City Council, for
our commissions and the next focus is really on onboarding for our directors. As we get
new directors in having that orientation -- I do know that Bill will be reaching out to you to
get feedback on what was helpful as you came on board in your training and what we can
incorporate into that as we look for a new city council member. And Objective 5.A.3. This
was updated to our -- by Todd in August. He brought a report to you on different types
and tools for financing facilities and he outlined the information . We figured that that
closed out that objective. Objective 5.B.2. You heard about this objective in several
different conversations. We certainly rolled it out in 2015 with a one day event and now
it's had two successful seasons. We feel that the performance goal has been met, but
this is an ongoing event that we will bring back annual updates to how it went . We just
had a debrief meeting just last week and just a couple of highlights to bring to you as they
are looking at renaming it, that it would just be the Meridian Farmers Market. It will still
have an emphasis on youth in terms of the canopies and the tables will be dedicated to
those kids, it will be set up for them and we will have that focus on youth, but one thing
that our organizer did hear is those adult vendors give the consistency of product that our
repeat customers come back for and that's almost a necessity. We are also looking at
meeting with some of the downtown -- we have met with the Downtown Business
Association and some of the businesses in downtown that have an interest in maybe
relocating it and so that it's more visible and they can build additional energy on it as it
gets closer to some core businesses. So, we will bring back more information as -- as
that gets further flushed out. So, Objective 5.C.1 also one hundred percent complete.
This came out of the clerk's office where they maintain a list of events, donors and future
funding partners. Additionally, they have done research in identifying different funding
mechanisms that can help support the arts, their programs, and their events and that's
maintained in the clerk's office with Hillary. So, the third area is to focus on some of those
high priority objectives that were listed. There is fourteen of the 64. There are no specific
variances that are unexpected and -- but I will highlight some of the activities or in some
cases what some of the next steps are underway. So, in 1.A.1, this has been pretty active
in working with the MDC and continuing to create a sense of energy and activities in our
downtown. You are all familiar with the placemaking activities along Idaho Avenue. That
is a completed objective. They have been working with the Downtown Business
Association on roadway priorities and getting additional feedback on that and that is an
ongoing and not completed tactic. The city survey asked some questions about our
downtown that we are utilizing that information in first working with listening tours and
getting additional feedback from our citizens to maybe vet out some additional information
on what the answers really meant and next we did some -- three different meetings with
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the downtown business owners in the core from Fairview to Franklin to really bring them
together to find out what their hopes and vision is for the area and to discuss our findings
in our city survey and some of the conversation was really interesting and the Downtown
Business Association has taken that and has created a food and beverage committee for
the downtown to better communicate their events and activities and how they can cross -
advertise what's going on. April in my office has been working every week with Holly at
the Meridian Press in getting in weekly activities that the businesses contact her with.
She's kind of that center point and she moves them on to Holly. The Meridian Press has
been very helpful in focusing on highlighting what's going on in our downtown and helping
us get the word out. So, the one thing is really to work on policies that encourage
redevelopment that -- that fits with the vision. So, our Planning Department does work
with applicants as they come into City Hall and discuss the downtown destination,
downtown vision and work with them on -- in making sure they understand what the vision
was and if there was a role that they can play in achieving it.
Cavener: Mr. President?
Bird: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, before you move on, can you touch on a little bit more about
tactic number three.
De Weerd: Okay. The tactics -- I'm not going into the tactics. I'm just giving you an
overview on what the activities have been. What we envision is the tactics are fluid and
ever changing and at this point I want to show and highlight any obstacles that we are
finding, what activities are going on to move that objective forward , and we will save the
-- the tactic discussions and any changes to objectives for the annual review.
Cavener: Would you just be able to share any efforts that have events and organizations
hold activities in downtown?
De Weerd: I'm sorry. What?
Cavener: I just was curious, then, if you could provide us an update about organizations
or individuals that are planning to hold events in downtown or Generations Plaza.
De Weerd: I -- I'm just giving you some bullets, not an exhaustive list of what's going on
and I can't -- yeah, I can't answer anything specific other than what I've shared. I can say
in the events and activities, like I covered in the Meridian Farmers Market, they do want
to move it closer into the core to where our businesses are, rather than at City Hall that
seems a little more isolated and maybe some barriers to being closer to where those
businesses are and where they can create some energy and they are moving the trunker
treat activity or event into the downtown. We were really constrained with -- with some of
the space. We are expanding down Idaho and Main Street -- not Main Street, but 2nd
Street and I think our -- we will have four different entries into it. We will have a stage.
They have food trucks and so they are really trying to build on that event to make it bigger,
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better and -- better engage our downtown businesses. And so maybe that's the events I
can highlight.
Cavener: Perfect.
De Weerd: Okay? So, 1.B.1 is something that you will be hearing more about. You did
get an update from Community Development. This is really tied to the Comprehensive
Plan update. I do think that noteworthy is the efforts that you just heard from our Public
Works Department and what we are doing in capacity expansion to -- to respond to growth
pressures in both of the wastewater treatment plant and in well development as well and
probably key to the growth goal piece to this is the master planning that's going on in both
of those areas. Also in response to those growth goals and the growth priority for south
Meridian, moving forward and -- and performing on the infrastructure commitments that
were made and that we are a little bit behind schedule because of obstacles that were
unforeseen in working with easements and agreements with those that we needed to run
our facilities through. But, again, that completion date is November of 2019. We think
with the comprehensive planning efforts and those kind of things definitely we will meet
that completion goal. Objective 1.C.1 is looking at our established area of impact
boundaries. We have real firm boundaries both east and west and for the most part in
the north. We have had a couple of businesses talking to us and before we would go any
further that would be a discussion with the city of Eagle, but we do need to amend our
area of impact. When we were unsuccessful in our legislation regarding state code
changes that are needed, we got our teams together in Public Works, Community
Development and my office to work with the citizens in south Meridian, which is -- which
resulted in that large annexation route to protect our ability to provide infrastructure down
in that area. We have been meeting with the city of Kuna on -- and had discussions with
that same team with their equals in Kuna and once we have something -- and maybe it
will have to come to Council for further discussion, but we hope to firm those up. We do
need to get an updated plan to the county and so that is an ongoing effort. The completion
date for that is -- is targeted for September of 2018. Objective 2.A.1. This is identifying
tools and I think you have seen some of that. We appreciate your support of the
community matching fund for tax reimbursement incentive projects that -- like that was
utilized for the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine. We have established the special
economic development urban renewal district that is a great tool in the tool kit and Brenda
has been implementing and working with the outside for access to Meridian's properties
that we can work with investors and developers o n, as she is in the midst of developing
and completing her inventory of different incentive programs and other areas that attract
certain industries and that will be coming back to Council. The completion date is still on
target for December of 2018. Objective 2.A.3, promote job growth and -- and industry
clusters. Certainly that her work with the utilization of op sites, Gem State Prospector
and the database that she's been collecting has been helpful as she gets referrals . She
has, through a grant in partnership again with -- with Anne, developed some great
contacts in the health, science, and med-tech areas and important lessons were really
learned through those exercises, but that's a growing database that she hopes to better
employ as we open up our College of Medicine and we get a new community development
director in to formalize some of those important relationships. She also has been reaching
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out to medical technology companies to tap into their resources of companies and
contacts that they know. She is in the midst of completing her video and marketing
material and I think she highlighted that last month in her report to Council. Objective
3.2.A, improve citizen access to government. We will be going over that here shortly, so
I'm going to skip this one. 3.B.1 is -- the plan that we found in our benefits is competitive.
It's a continuous improvement that they are looking at to be competitive and look at the
increasing challenge in the cost of medical and insurance. That is a large portion of our
benefits. HR is exploring options so that the benefits meet the workers' needs, because
we do understand a one size does not fit all when you have single , single with kids, single
or married, married with families and also different age generations, beginning of career
to ending of career. So, they constantly are monitoring that and looking at what our best
practices and best ways to pay. The requirements for self-funding versus being fully
insured by an outside company is looking for what that exp erience rating is against the
tipping point for needing that change and so this is a stay -- stay tuned. They are working
on it. Objective 3.B.3 is also underway. We appreciate the funding that we received for
fiscal year 2018 and that represents the 15 percent that's completed. HR is focused on
key positions that are hard to recruit for, that are those professional levels that if we don't
remain competitive we -- we risk losing great employees and so they are identifying tools
and skills needed and, then, they will work to create the necessary plans. They expect
to start in the second quarter and complete this third quarter of fiscal year 2018 and the
completion date in our plan has been for October of '18. So, 3.B.4 is -- is also just
underway and that doesn't mean that a lot of efforts have not been going into this . Our
city retention rate is 98.5 percent and -- but she has been -- beginning with researching
key components of a formalized plan for the City of Meridian and one component is the
city -- is the employee engagement survey and that has been funded , is -- she right now
is working with the company that will be doing that next -- early next year and that will
launch and be done early in third quarter. So, looking at what our baseline for city culture
is so that you can start seeing what the movement is and putting a plan in place. Objective
3.B.5 is regarding the compensation plan and, again, this percentage complete, while her
completion date is September of 2018, doesn't really show a lot of the efforts that have
been going on in this area. I mentioned the -- the employee retention rates. It has moved
from the low 90s to the high 90s, but that doesn't mean that this does not need specific
look. We have already completed specific employee groups in Public Works, the police
STEP plan, and we had some activity and analysis in parks. We completed a market
review to ensure that the City of Meridian is competitive to the market in these high risk
employee areas. We completed one third of the internal alignment , which is 67 job
descriptions reviewed to ensure that it aligns with the market and been researching
survey compensation tools that can be used as -- for resources -- resources. So, next
steps include review those top performers and retention rates and compare it to overall
city retention rates, compare neighboring municipality programs and industry trends, and
we are just undergoing a comprehensive wage and benefits survey for our Fire
Department and we will be working on the update of the police STEP plan. Both of those
in this next fiscal year. Objective 3.C.1. This is a boring one, if the other ones haven't
been boring enough. Sorry, chief. I had to throw that one in just to see if they were
looking. We did analyze what it would take to develop our own local incident management
team from certified. It would require five ICS classes, incident command system classes,
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and specific position training that is offered by FEMA. We have reached out and
researched forming a valleywide team, which makes more sense and that would be in
coordination with ACEM and so short of that we do have -- because we do have three
city members on the Idaho incident management support team in a crisis situation we do
have their resources for the first 48 hours and that will be a huge benefit to our city and
our own stand-alone incident management team is, again, being looked at as to what the
cost and what the time requirements would be if we had ours versus a valleywide. So,
that's ongoing. I do want to reiterate what you've probably heard several times and that 's
we deployed an IMT during Snowmaggedon and the positives we learned in that was city
staff integrated well for the common good. Communication to the -- to the public was the
best in the valley and we have heard this time and time again by other agencies and our
own citizens. Our lessons learned is our city staff integrated well. Even some of those
departments that traditionally don't train or talk on a regular basis, the integration of these
teams was almost seamless and I give a lot of credit to our incident management team
and Jaycee, Mark, and Scott Colaianni. So, it really was nicely put together and with the
communication plan by Kaycee Emery. It was -- it was awesome. So, next steps. We
are holding next month a city planning team meeting for Meridian, in particular in
anticipation of another snow event in case there is one and the next step to that is -- is
hoping to motivate that countywide conversation of what should the roles and
responsibilities look like and who would be responsible for what and we hope that that
meeting is called by ACEM. So, they have been invited to our meeting to hopefully spur
the next step conversation by them. Objective 3.D.1. This is really our appreciation to
you with a strategic performance analyst. Recruitment is underway. There has been
phone interviews with applicants and I'm not sure if we will have someone on board before
Jaycee leaves, but we do know that this position will be working with the department s to
-- to really bring a lot more consistency and cohesiveness and working with them on their
specific objections -- objectives -- and objections probably -- and flushing out what are
the existing resources and what are future needs that they would need to bring back in
conversation to City Council and that completion date is December of 2020. 8.E.4. And
this is what really drove our strategic plan in getting a priority based budgeting approach
and what it looked like. You have heard from the -- from various reports from both Jaycee
and Todd on the research that was done over in Washington state on priorities in
government and priority based budgeting approaches. You had a conversation with the
Center for Priority Based Budgeting and after that we did follow up by interviewing
different cities that use priority based budgeting to learn from them was it a useful tool
and would they do it again, were they continuing to use it and all that information will be
kind of loaded onto the position in Finance that they are adding on with the fiscal -- fiscal
analyst and he will lead this -- he or she will lead this objective and they do hope to bring
a pilot project in three departments, in Finance, the clerk, and IT and they will be bringing
that recommendation back to Council and what they are proposing, what it would look
like and how they would recommend piloting it and this objective completion date in
September of 2020. 4.A.4 is all about safe community. And this is really about the whole
objective in 4.A. So, this particular one, this is listed as high priority, but the two objectives
that lead up to this are low and medium priorities. So, we are working to kind of realign
these, so they make better sense in order, but they are looking at identifying the gaps in
service and proposing needed improvements for threats and hazards , but there are very
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-- a lot of activities going on in furthering safety in Meridian. As you see when we get
recognition from these national outlets, a lot of this is based on safe community. And so
now I can see what staff gets to deal with is -- I can read body language, too. Do you
guys want this update report? We are trying to make it informational and interesting.
Cavener: Yes.
De Weerd: Yes. Okay. Mr. Bird, is that a yes?
Bird: Beg your pardon?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: If you could maybe just slow down a little bit. I think that I'm trying to keep up
with everything that you're touching base on and also taking a look at the plan.
De Weerd: Well, thank you, Mr. Cavener. I have never been asked to slow down . That
is awesome. I sure will. On 4.A we really are focused on that -- all of the objectives under
this -- this one area, but I do want to highlight some of the activities that are going on in
further safety in Meridian. So, public safety in our neigh borhoods, they are looking at safe
routes to school where our neighborhood surround a public school and those sidewalk s
and in that Snowmaggedon area is identifying priority areas to keep snow removal as a
first priority. That other area in neighborhoods is additional lighting and you heard a little
bit about that from Public Works as that continues to be a focus and one of the reasons
that Garrett had received recognition for his efforts. The Police, Fire, and Planning
Department continue to huddle on evaluating each of our developments to the crime
prevention through environmental design and our planning reviews. That is essential and
probably even more so as we get these higher density development applications . Our
transportation commission continues to examine individual citizen issues as they bring up
safety concerns about traffic-related issues in their neighborhoods and parks continues
to focus on that connectivity with pathways and planning and evaluating the sidewalk
connectivity as we continue to grow and develop. So, we anticipate additional updates
after some of these activities happen with the -- the safety profile in identifying the threats
and hazards and, then, evaluating our tactics for priority actions and projects and you will
see that at the annual update and what any of those recommended changes are going to
be in those objectives as they stand today. So, the fourth area is really trying to -- to give
a brief touch point on those things that were discussed at the June 27th meeting that
aren't necessarily related to the high priority areas and , then, I will have Robert discuss
the improving citizen access to government objective to walk you through that . So, the
strategic goal of 4.B, again, that's one group together with several different objectives in
that and that's establishing Meridian as a premier health community. We thought we
would have the update from Kindra with Blue Cross Foundation on how a city interacts
with that health profile and, unfortunately, she had some things come up, so you will have
that on your agenda in two weeks. After that presentation we would like to use the
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discussion that Council has to -- to further vet what those objectives will look like. So, this
is another one of those areas that the annual update you will probably see some -- some
recommended changes that we will have a discussion with you and be seeking your
feedback on. And 5.A.2 -- this initially was brought to you last June as to merge two
objectives into one and Council gave us feedback. They would like to see it remain as
two separate ones. So, I know that we were really focused on -- or parks was really
focused on this being part of the south Meridian regional park and we wanted it broader
than that, because that's something that needs to be focused on in looking at public sports
facilities, complexes, and how we can create partnerships to make these happen as we
have in the past with Meridian Youth Baseball or the PAL soccer fields and those kind of
things. Being aware of the concept and development plans for south Meridian, it does
have a sports complex with the software -- or softball aspect and that continues to be a
high priority area for our programs. But we have integrated theming into park design and
looking at activities, such as the acquisition of Home Court and the facility that that brings
in line for this particular objective and, really, the next step is that public softball field in
our south Meridian park. And objective 5.A.4, it's really adding and fostering personalities
and identifying identities in our parks and combining the blending of arts, entertainment,
and culture and you see that not just in the south Meridian park, but you start seeing that
theming in the Hillsdale Park and the Reta Huskey Park with the floral designs, really
capturing the essence of Reta Huskey and the Keith Bird Legacy Park with a wildlife and
the multi-generational uses and in Heroes Park with our Heroes Trail. So, those activities
are all underway. Objective 3.A.2, improve access to government. I am going to turn this
over to Robert and he will walk you through just the process to get some feedback from
you.
Simison: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council. So, I'm going to do my best to not -- I have
gotten really passionate about this topic and so hopefully I don't get preachy on this topic
from this standpoint and we can have a -- get my thoughts, but -- that's great. I know that
the Mayor was able to at least give a primer to some of you over the last month or so on
this topic and if she had time in the time she spent down with you, but this -- this objective
is one that kind of came up and we -- and I know that there is an interest from Council. A
lot of people did -- it really -- you know, we raised this up, it's really about, you know, how
do we improve citizen access to government and I really want to focus on the objective
summary here, that I think this to me -- the objective summary tells you what you're really
hopefully trying to accomplish. I'm going to walk you through to where I got to and, then,
have a conversation about some of the things that we could do to implement this and get
your feedback on those concepts. So, if you look at the objective summaries -- to create
greater engagement participation and, then, I want to highlight facilitates, assists in input
and planning operations and decision making process of the city. You notice this doesn't
say tell residents what you're going to do more. Yeah. That's not what this is about. This
is -- if you -- if we are really focusing on what the objective for this one is, you're saying
you want the citizens' input in the decisions that we are making as a city, you know, from
that standpoint. So, with that -- this is something that I was able to do -- what we like to
do in city government sometimes, I was able to kind of steal this from another community.
This one just happened to be in the southern hemisphere in Australia, so I think that we
are good on any copyright infringement from that standpoint. But this really to me is
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where I have got transformed when I was working on this specific strategic objective.
When you look at the different ways in which government interacts with the community -
- and what you don't see down here is the pre-work that was done kind of identifying all
the different ways that we interact with the community under these areas . The reality is
as a city we spend a lot of time on the left-hand side. We do a lot of informing of our
community. We do a little less consulting, but we still do a fair amount. The further you
move to the right the less we do as a city and I don't think that that's indicative of -- I think
that's just in general -- yeah, I'm not saying that's just Meridian, I think that's government
-- generally that's the way a lot of things operate is we tell people a lot about what we are
going to do, on occasion we ask them, and I think the best ways -- you know, we talk
really about public hearings from that standpoint -- are involved -- our collaboration and
our empowering, given the citizens the -- if you really want to talk about the way to involve
citizens, you give them the decision making power. Now, whether or not that -- you say
that, well, a thousand people will give you their feedback or 50 will give you your feedback,
well, you will turn that over to your citizens is a way that you can truly involve them and
just to editorialize even more on this topic, I think as cities we often complain about the
state legislature not giving us the empowerment ourselves to make decisions , whether
it's local option tax or whether it's plastic bags in grocery stores or whatever the case may
be, you know, as cities we don't like it when people don't give us the ability to make
decisions. So, part of this comes back to us as a body do we feel that that is something
that we feel confident in giving our citizens the ability to make some of the decisions that
we may or may not want to make or think that they should or shouldn't . So, with that I
just want to talk -- I'm going to work my way through those five levels with some actions
that we could take in theory to improve our citizen access to government and , like I say,
I'm looking for feedback on each of these to say is this something that you think is worth
looking into or not from that standpoint and, then, we can go from there and I'm going to
-- so, this is the -- the very easy part on the left-hand side, informing people. We do a
good job with that I think as a city and when you look at the city survey results from this
last time, we actually went up, you know, in this area and we hope to continue to improve
it. We have already done the first action item, the NextDoor pilot project for public
hearings and progress and we will get feedback on that at some point in time to you , but
I think, again, that's informing, we don't even take comments on NextDoor. So, I think
that shows we are just telling people what we are doing and, hopefully, gets them to the
next stage where they do come and they participate . Item two, live streaming of city
commissions. You know, we have the ability, especially with the technology upgrades,
to very easily now start live streaming our city commissions, it would require a little bit of
training to -- you know, from that standpoint, but we have clerks in the meetings, they can
come in, they can start and it would just be a wide shot from that perspective, but we
would record it and, then, could make it available to the community if ever needed. So,
fairly low cost, easy to implement activity. The third one is implementing text cell phone
based messaging system. I know we are already starting to experiment with this a little
bit in the context of emergency services, you know, so you can try to, you know, create
systems, but the thing I really wanted to maybe stop right here and highlight is a lot of
what I'm proposing in some of these things -- this is really the way people communicate
nowadays and I think it's important for the city to think if -- if this is how people are
communicating -- not everybody, but especially more and more generations -- I mean you
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see more and more people -- my mom just got a smart phone. She doesn't know how to
use it yet great, but she's doing that. We need to be trying to focus on how we can
connect with people on these devices in other ways . So, that's really what this is about
is how do we -- how do we implement using phones for the purposes that we want in this
process. So, I will stop right here and see if I have gotten -- if there is any concerns or
thoughts on these items about should we be looking at these opportunities or not .
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Robert, can you give us a little bit -- maybe a little bit more synopsis about the
text phone based messaging system? Is that Coffee with the Mayor this morning and you
should come? Is it -- it snowed four inches, so priority roads are going to be plowed? I
mean what's -- what's the envision of that?
Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, I think it's a little bit of all, you know, and
-- and that's going to be developed over time in the context and I -- I know that Jaycee
has done a little bit of work on this topic from that standpoint, but really starting from the
standpoint of emergency based information, from that standpoint. The interesting thing
with phones -- cell phone specifically is you are limited by the FCC in how you can
communicate, which way to do it. A lot of it's an option system from that standpoint. So,
really, when we start talking about this it is -- if you're looking at creating notification based
systems, they are primarily opt -- opt-in systems. But that is -- yes, when you talk about
that is -- in this case in the informed section that's exactly what you're talking about, ways
to communicate via text to people who sign up for that purpose.
De Weerd: And I think the -- the thing that we have to be cognizant of is how much do
you want to use it. If it really is to be relevant to crisis response, you don't want all the
other stuff in there, because they stop reading it and we get that in all employee e-
mails, you know, you can't put too much out there or people tune it off and so that's going
to be the delicate balance and how you want to phase it in or tier it in to see how it's being
utilized and that sort of thing, it -- that's all to be discussed.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Milam: A thought of that is when -- when people are opting in they can opt in for different
choices. One could be emergency only. One could be city events and emergency or city
events only and, then, if they came from different phone numbers that wouldn't be -- the
redundancy wouldn't be an issue as far as just getting too many messages. If they opt in
for all of the services and they might be getting them several times a week and I think that
-- I think there are ways of overcoming that and so --
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De Weerd: And that's what we do with Pulse Point. You can get everything or only
something specific and so it depends on, I guess, the application.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: I think in the long term what I like to eventually -- over who knows how long --
see is a city app that has all the relevant information on the website, as well as
opportunities to opt in out of various push notifications, but in the short term it is so cheap
to set up these kind of text-based notifications that as Council Woman Milam was -- was
going through the -- being able to opt into various things, whether, hey, I just want to a
text every Monday when the This Week In Meridian comes out and, then, okay, here is
your link to your video for this week or if you want just emergency notification of the city.
If you want a notification every time City Council goes live or every time your commission
you're interested in goes live for the stream, here is your link. The texting is such a cheap
option to set up quickly and affordably, while -- I think we need to work towards that, an
actual application.
Simison: Madam Mayor and Council. And to your -- just to answer some of our questions,
what I haven't done is I haven't developed plans to all these things to look into them . It's
just really looking at the concept at this point time and if we think that communicating via
text phone messaging is a way to go, then, we would start looking at what is being done
in emergency management, is there an app on it or do we need to go a different direction
specifically to do that and so that's why I'm looking -- again, this is the easy -- this is fairly
low hanging fruit, easy, cost effective. Not to say there will be no cost, but I haven't
scoped out what the cost would be if Council says, yes, this is something to do, then, we
begin that process and see where we go from here in working with -- whether it's IT or
public safety --
De Weerd: Or if it's a city app and you have that end in sight, it's -- what are the various
steps to -- to get there considering cost elements, resources, all of that.
Simison: I mean what we see from -- Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, what we
see from other cities is they often have like a 411 system, Provo 411, and we -- I know
we like to look at Provo a lot where they do have that app, they have that functionality,
they have developed that aspect. I can't say what it costs at this point in time, but if that
-- if this is something that we say we want to do, we can start looking at what is the best
avenue to get there down that road. But as also there is a -- as you mentioned there is a
component of people getting annoyed by text messaging . Is that the best way to
communicate. But I think that's the preferred way of the immediate generation right now.
Any concerns over streaming commission meetings?
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mrs. Milam.
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Milam: I think it's a great idea, Robert. I think we just -- to have more involvement from
the community and -- and allow people to watch it and also when we are doing a search
for new commissioners it gives them a resource to keep in touch with and see what --
what do they do and, you know, they can go back and watch several meetings and kind
of do a little bit of homework and, hopefully, we will get some more applicants when those
openings come up.
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, I was going to echo Council Woman Milam's comments. I think
with all three of these it's for us to decide what the best p lan is and I think we are all
supportive of looking at doing this and we want to see what the details are as far as
implementation.
De Weerd: Okay.
Simison: Okay. Now, on to Item 2. So, this is consulting and this is -- you know, again,
just kind of focus on public hearings, you know, you think about public hearings and that
-- that aspect. You're asking the community, but ultimately whatever they say, that doesn't
necessarily matter from that standpoint , you are the ultimate deciders. You know, just
because they say something that has nothing to do with the application or it can have
everything to do with the application, but from that standpoint, looking at the suggestions
here -- and we have already talked about some of these. I know some of you are very
interested in it, but, you know, we can easily set up components to take public testimony
using the text message, you know, where your text to a number and it comes in . You
know, no different than an e-mail. Very basic, simple stuff. The other thing that we have
been exploring is the, you know, phone audio-video technology, taking -- taking public
testimony over Skype, just for lack of a better way to put this. I know there has been
interest in the Council on this. We have -- we believe we can do it and with the -- with
our system. We might need to do some small technical -- technical changes to our audio
system to allow it to occur. Don't know exactly what the cost would be. What we did find,
though, from our own testing of it -- it would be great to be able to use the Skype for a
business platform, but it has -- just because we don't -- I don't expect to be inundated
with people all lining up to testify over Skype, but the person-to-person has a lot of
limitations the way it exists, so that you could only have one person -- you know, this
would be nice to be able to have other ways where you can communicate with people to
say I'd like to do this and you can notify that -- you can have a communication, too, on
the side, so that you can, then, bring them in and Skype for business does that, but it
really has -- Microsoft hasn't put the emphasis into it to get it really up and working. The
problems that we -- we have found IT -- we reached out to them and they said, yeah, we
know that's a problem, but we are not going to experience it. That being said, we could
do something that would probably be not clunky, but could make it available to the
community to use, something like a very basic Skype system, if that's a direction. And,
again, there may be a financial aspect to make the technology side work for the audio . I
don't know if that's a ten dollar pair of cables or more than that to make that occur. But
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from that standpoint. The next one on the list is perform telephone town halls. Again,
that's trying to get at people on cell phones. Some of the things that that allows you to
do -- I mean I think everyone here is familiar with the concept of telephone town halls.
Again, it's primarily land line based, unless people opt in. Those -- those are the
restrictions that you have on telephone town halls. It would allow us to -- to connect with
the larger portion of our community I think than what you currently see at your town halls,
but it has a cost. This does have -- this is done by a third party vendor in order to make
those occur. You know, it's anywhere from, you know, 1,500 to 3,000 dollars per tele
town hall, just based upon the number of -- it's all based on number of dial outs, number
of people who pick up, how long they are on the phone. The more you have the less it
costs. I know that seems ironic, but that -- that is true. But, like I say, it does have a cost
to be able to perform that function and -- but it is a way to connect with people that we
aren't currently reaching them. The third item is, you know, implementing the use of
phone, social media, online polls for proposed changes, not on land use issues, but, you
know, just, again, looking at is there a way we can use technology to get greater feedback
from our citizens on issues that have been this level of feedback. This -- this might be
more along the lines of, you know, the arts commission putting out a survey or a poll,
which one of these do you want from that standpoint. And, then, actually just listening to
the feedback and taking that recommendation type of thing. But that's just -- again, so I
will stop there for any feedback on those three items .
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Are we having members of our public asking to be able to call into town halls?
Is there -- I guess that's something that's new that I haven't heard and I'm just curious
were the motivation to bring that idea is coming from.
Simison: Sorry. Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, let me back up. This is not people
calling in, this is doing telephone town halls where we are calling out to the community
and, I apologize, I assumed most people were familiar with that component. So, this is
what you see a lot in Washington D.C. or congressional -- can even -- Governor Otter did
one not that long ago for the F-35 thing where you -- basically you call -- as a city you call
your residents and say we are going to have a town hall on this topic at this time and they
can get on the phone and participate in that town hall, listen to the discussion. You
typically will have a moderator, so if they want to submit questions that can be asked
through that process, whether it's either on the phone or in writing from that standpoint.
So, I apologize, you know, that is what a telephone town hall concept is about.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? I guess maybe some clarification then. When Governor Otter
did his telephone town hall what was the participation like? Is it tens of people, hundreds
of people, thousands of people? Do you know?
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Simison: Madam Mayor, Councilman Cavener, I don't know. I did not reach out to them.
I just know I received one at my house recently from that standpoint. You know, from --
from the conversations, you know, it's a --
De Weerd: I think this is really throwing things out there at -- for what is -- and, really, we
don't have time to go into it in depth, but if we want to do this more in depth I think we
need to put this on as a specific agenda item .
Milam: Madam Mayor? Could I just make one comment? Not to be -- the telephone
town hall to me -- the whole concept seems fairly antiquated , like we do have computers
and video, why would you want to -- I don't understand why you would -- anybody want
to stand on the phone and listen to something when you can see it .
De Weerd: Well, because not -- there are old people out there, too, who think might need
details on --
Milam: Okay. We will bring it up later.
De Weerd: They have a rotary phone.
Simison: Madam Mayor, I can answer that question at least from this perspective
of --
Bird: Got a land line.
Simison: Those things are -- they are not interactive. You know, when you -- when you
get that -- you can have people that will just listen on the other side. If you want to make
it interactive you really can't do that over video. There is no -- there is only three
companies in the United States that do telephone town halls with the technology and
there is nobody that can do it with a video platform that will allow people to watch and
participate. I mean you have Go-To-Meeting -- that's a one way. You can't have people
comment and feedback to people moderate -- there is -- people can make comments,
don't get me wrong, I understand that people can make a comment, but that's a little bit
different than having a town hall information where we are conveying information and
people can ask questions and you give everybody a response back . So, it's a two-way
communication.
Cavener: So, Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Maybe to move these things along, here is my feedback. As you know, I'm
very much in support of trying to implement a way to let people provide testimony through
a variety of different mechanisms. I love the idea of the text piece. I think we need to
move forward with a Skype or Skype-like technology to allow people to provide testimony.
I'm not there on -- on the telephone town hall piece. I think at the federal level or the state
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level where the halls of government aren't as connected to the people it makes more
sense, but I think that people know if they have got a question or a concern there is a lots
of different places here locally that they can -- they can turn to. I also support the idea of
-- of online polls for proposed changes. I was at AIC and there was a municipality that
they had three proposals for playground equipment. They turned it over to the public and
let the public vote. I thought that was great. And the public responded in kind. So, I think
most of those that are there are things I would be supportive of, just not the telephone
town hall.
Simison: So, these next three just have one component and to this -- this kind of follows
a little bit on what was just discussed -- just mentioned right there. The involvement -- I
look at this from the comments I received back from City Council throughout the budgetary
process and the participatory budgeting and I wanted to take participatory budgeting to
the next level. To me this is an area where you can do just that, where you can even set
up maybe a group that oversees and you can work on a larger scale within the community
using social media, other components, in order to do that. So, this is just, again, looking
at using that for -- for these types of purposes and participatory budgeting was the main
component that I was looking at from that standpoint. I will just run through these next
two, because there only a couple more on all of these. Collaboration. And this is one
where I think it's -- again, not trying to preach, but from the standpoint of the feedback
that I have heard from people who have served on commissions, whether they are ad hoc
or ongoing, is when we ask our citizens to do a job for us and , then, we choose not to
take their recommendations and I think that that -- that is something that is out there from
the standpoint of those who have been involved in -- I'm not going to say community wide,
but to me this is where, you know, again, as a -- as a council when you get further on the
right into that collaboration level and you -- that's where you -- you really are starting to
concede some of your decision making to the residents in order to get back to the overall
mission of this -- of the strategic -- of the strategic plan item, you know, where you're
trying to get them to be involved in the decision making process to that level. So, from
this one it's -- are there areas -- ordinance changes for specific items that would make
sense that would enable certain decisions made by our commissions, basically, to be --
to be the decision of the city. That's kind of the best way I can phrase it from that
standpoint. You can look at the compensation committee as an example, where we have
an ordinance that says that they shall exist and they do work for us and, then, the Council
makes a decision on what their recommendation is. As an example, you know, you could
extend that down into other commissions as well and what they do in terms of where --
what decisions should they be allowed to make through this process that are not
necessarily going to be Council-related decisions. That's something that, again, would
need to be vetted out some more, but that's what that one is -- would be and we want to
have further conversation to the plan. And the final item is really using the public vote
more to determine larger issues in the community and, you know, I just listed some of the
items here. You could always do an advisory vote, where you're not -- where you just
take the recommendation of the community on what they are. You know, those are limited
to when the county would run the elections. Bond measures -- again, not trying to be
preachy, but I have heard several say we are never going to -- we shouldn't do bonds.
Well, to me that's like a local option tax when the legislature says we are not going to give
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the cities the ability, because they don't know what to do. But if the residents want to use
bonding why would we not ask the residents to use bonding if they want -- if they think
that's a way that they can get some things that they would like to see in the community
from that standpoint. Other government agencies have put bonds on the ballot and they
voted no. Is the city in a position where we don't think that they would take the same
opinion on those issues? And, again, not listing things specifically at this point in time,
but just -- I'm just trying to put that question out there is -- these are the types of areas
where if you really want to engage the communi ty, getting them into letting them make
decisions is how you can involve them further in items . So, with that I will rest and see if
there is any comments on these last three items that you would like to ferret out more. If
you want to think about them I'm happy to come back in the coming weeks and have
additional follow-up conversation. But that's where I am on this item and my next
objective is to put together a plan for each of these items and I'm just looking to know
which items I should be looking to implement.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Robert, I really loved the last one. I think that our job is not to assume that we
know what the public -- even though we were elected, but not to assume what they would
like or what they would choose to do with their -- with their taxpayer dollars and I think not
only with money issues, I think there are a lot of things that probably should be put in a
ballot and some things that we have discussed recently, at least on some of those to get
an advisory type of a decision on some tough decisions. Obviously, the financial ones
that need be -- you know, no actual vote, but -- I like it.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: It's a -- it's a vastly different conversation -- the original objective of improving
citizen access to government is a totally different discussion than -- then in delegating
authority to citizens to decide that which you were elected to lead and decide . A huge
philosophical difference. I mean the original objective, which is a fascinating conversation
perhaps, but the objective I thought was focused on access and making what we do and
how we do it open and available to citizens for whatever reason don't desire to participate
in any of these mediums that's their right , but we got to make sure everything we do is
open and available and easily accessible. There is that conversation, which is of more
interest to me. The other one is a hugely different philosophical debate of democracy
versus republic and the role of elected officials that I think is really big. So, if you want
feedback on whether these last ones should be developed -- is more conversation on
that.
De Weerd: I -- I do think, though, that the question in access -- is if you want two way
communication or do you want it just -- how do we better inform our citizens -- or how do
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we better inform and accept comment back , because once you invite them in they are
going to want a voice in it and -- and I think that's the fundamental question here, that
this is -- it is two separate things to a degree, but in some sense -- and you caught that a
little bit in the Public Works presentation. You got a lot of growth and a lot of regulatory
requirements coming down the road that we are anticipating. This last one is going to
come back to you for sure and -- and, yes, it's a different subject, but it does have a lot to
do with access and -- and how we are wanting to communicate and collaborate with our
citizens.
Simison: Madam Mayor and Council, I hope -- that's why we trying to -- at the beginning
-- objective summary, which when we first brought the strategic plan there was a lot of
questions about what does that mean in those things. So, the objective summaries were
developed to further clarify what exactly that meant and that hasn't changed since the
original plan, you know, after that initial thing. So, it is fundamental and I will be honest
with you, I mean that's not where my head was when I first started working on this
objective. You know, I was looking at how can we -- how can we make this occur from
this standpoint and maybe it -- maybe it was wrong to find this other place that -- but I
think ultimately I did -- I became passionate about that when I saw that and I said, you
know, if we really want the community engagement with our citizens in the planning
operations and decision-making process, it's on the right-hand side of this thing. Now,
whether or not we can go there or not, that's why I mentioned, I don't think a lot of
communities are there and, you know, I would argue that most communities -- you know,
they don't really touch that. The elected body here is who makes that decision. So, from
that standpoint, again, it is a philosophical conversation and I encourage people to rest
on this and maybe we can come back in December or January to ferret it out a little bit
more from your feedback and we can start working on the first two items, the easy ones,
where we are comfortable and we spend all of our time as cities. But the other three are
different and, you know, I would welcome one-on-one conversations with any of you about
your philosophical thoughts on democratic -- different -- democracy, republic, and what
makes sense and doesn't and I don't want to take more of your time tonight, so --
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes. Throw the bomb and run.
Borton: Yeah. I don't make those comments to negate -- I think there is tons of value in
everything that's --
De Weerd: It's fundamental.
Borton: -- recommended, in particular the -- the more modern means to receive
communications and input and there has been talk before about, you know, receiving live
testimony online for public hearings, so senior citizens or folks that might not be as mobile
and able to get out can still participate at these public hearings. There is some low
hanging fruit that would be wonderful to utilize improving -- their access to this process.
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Simison: Well -- and, Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, I can get this objective done a
lot quicker if you just help me do the low hanging hepatology fruit and, then, I can move
onto the next item and be happy. But I would love to challenge people and continue the
conversation and see where we can really go with some of this.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: And maybe a last thought from me. Maybe instead of thinking of ways that we
can have an all-encompassing outreach and attempt to get interaction with the public, we
take -- we pick a thing -- one thing that we really, really want citizen participation in. To
me that will be the budget process, whether it's the budget hearing or the round tables or
something and find -- pick one or two, maybe three of the tools that Robert's identified
and implement it for that thing and see if we can drive some participation on the budget
or parks plan or any number of things and if we don't get any --
De Weerd: Comprehensive Plan.
Palmer: And if we don't -- if we don't get any interaction, then, maybe we are just beating
our head against the wall and we are open enough and available enough.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council -- and I'm -- I'm not trying to shoot myself -- maybe I am
-- over the city, but you could put an advisory vote on about whether or not to take the
three percent. I mean if you want to engage the community there is a great way. And
part of that is the discussion of what do you get for that, you know. I mean that -- there
is a great policy example of what you may want to do and that requires a lot of people to
say is that the -- is that the appropriate thing or is that what you were elected to do and
that is a philosophical conversation or a personal one or -- but, you know, I think it would
be great to have a conversation about what you get for the three percent from a city
standpoint. Do you get parks? Do you not? Do you get --
De Weerd: I think you probably would have residents who want to vote on every
annexation, actually.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Okay. I lied. My -- I like the idea of an advisory vote. My hesitation is that you
can't get all the information needed on --
De Weerd: On the ballot.
Palmer: -- on the ballot. While I think that would maybe go more my way when the --
when the vote actually takes place, I would have the same concern with that as I do if we
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are to put a bond on there. There is so much deeper information necessary to fully
understand the ramifications of a bond , that I hate having that on a ballot for all of the
citizens to vote on, I feel like that's something that they put us here to -- to study and to
-- and to figure out for the same reason that I think the three percent is it something that
they put us here to figure out, because you can't get all that information that they would
need to make a -- a realistic decision with how many people just show up to the ballot,
not knowing what's going to be on there until they get there.
De Weerd: Yeah. But that's the same argument of I'm going to go and vote for someone
that isn't even opposed and that is -- that's the mandate, so -- I mean the conversation
can get really big and say, you know, when -- when is it appropriate to ask for the citizens'
voice and what does that mean if they participate. We -- we did that in a public art project.
We went out and asked them to vote and the commission didn't like what they -- what the
result was, came back to the Council and the Council agreed with the commission and
wholly negated the citizens' voice, when we asked them. So, that's -- it gets complicated.
So, I would suggest that you break these subjects out and -- and do the how can we get
better at sharing information and, then, have the conversation that it will be more in depth
and can get -- probably you will find there is a couple more different categories than just
two here, because I think there are, even in that regard --
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De W eerd: -- once you start inviting conversation what you do with the information. Mrs.
Milam.
Milam: Well, in regards to what Councilman Palmer said, just doing it with just the budget,
I think getting people to that point is a great idea, but that's not where you want to start
and it's like marketing, it's going to take time. You have to start little and it's going to take
a long time to get these people actually engage on a regu lar basis and eventually they
are going to step up to the big stuff I think. But NextDoor, for example. NextDoor has
been around for like five years and people didn't really start using it until the last two
years. I mean really heavily. So, it took them a long time of putting stuff out there and,
you know, I think this -- the bulk of the community just kind of got on board the last couple
of years. So, it's going to be a long process. I think the more things you have access for
the citizens the better, not just giving them, you know, a one-time shot and, then, if it
doesn't work give up on it, because that's not how it works. My opinion.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. That was discussion. Next steps. We will be integrating
dashboard information into your quarterly reports, as you saw with the pie chart and the
two gauges, and the objective review is -- is next February or March. I can't remember
what we passed in the ordinance. Do you? It is early in 2018.
Borton: Madam Mayor? Real quick. I think we left the concept of this bi-annual review
where we would have the focus areas and the goals and the objectives and as objectives
got completed we -- we would see the red line through that objective, you know,
completed and a date and as we go forward we are going to be adding new objectives in
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those focus areas. Maybe there is nothing new to add yet, but following these biannual
reports would be good to circulate out that -- you know, the strategic plan as of the
October 2017 report, so we can see those objectives red lined out that have been
completed. Or removed. Because this document will live in over five and ten years and
we will see progress made on our consistent focus areas.
De Weerd: And I -- I think we did -- the conversation as I recall in June is -- you didn't
want them removed and that's kind of why we did -- we did a close out -- you will still see
it --
Borton: Yes.
De Weerd: -- and if, as we -- we bring the updates on the -- not the annual side where
you will be having specific discussions on the objective, but on the other side of that -- oh,
God, I talked long enough I forgot what was saying.
Borton: Yeah. I agree, Joe.
De Weerd: No. I won't agree. We just thought you -- those areas that we are going to
have to bring you back those red lines and have the conversation in -- in the objective
part. I'd like to keep the objectives that are closed out on there, so you can see them.
Some of them, as I noted, I think it does warrant a biannual update just to say what is
continuing to on go. My concern with the plan was some of those areas were ongoing
and they need to be more initiative and specific and so that's what we are really trying to
drill into and will have a more robust conversation next spring.
Borton: Madam Mayor? I think we are saying the same thing. I'm just -- the one page
sheet that I know I have seen from before, all I'm asking is of the six that we talked about
that are completed, just -- we can leave them on there, there will be a red line through
them and it will say complete, you know, June -- right?
De Weerd: We get that --
Borton: So, at least we will have that summary sheet as we go forward we will see
progress first. Progress. New things come on. New things come on. That's all.
De Weerd: And we -- we can do that.
Borton: Yeah.
De Weerd: Yeah. Because we did have one complete between when we talked about it
in June and now.
Borton: And they don't come off.
De Weerd: So --
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Borton: We don't delete it, we just --
De Weerd: Okay. Yeah. We can do that. Thank you. Okay. Any --
Cavener: I guess -- Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: I don't know if this is -- if now is the appropriate time. I have some additional
questions that I was hoping for. First off, Robert's presentation, I don't know how the rest
of the Council felt, but I felt that was like the most well put together component of our
strategic plan that we have had since this whole thing has been crafted. I thought that he
dived in deep, provided some explanation, made some recommendations for Council to
chew on. I hope as this process plays out that we see more of that than -- what we saw
from Robert today than what we have seen in the past. I just think that is -- at least for
me what I have envisioned when I thought we would be having the discussion about the
plan. My questions were about -- I just was curious -- and -- because I don't have any of
my paperwork with me, did the completion dates on some of this stuff change or evolve
from when we last talked about it this summer?
De Weerd: The completion dates that I stated in my presentations were -- were from
what you -- I don't know. I can't answer that specifically. But the completion dates are
-- we did compare it from the original date and I think the only one that changed was
actually backwards. We had it in 2007 and it changed to 2016. So, we are cleaning that
up.
Cavener: Okay.
De Weerd: But some of the -- the items that we will discuss at the annual update is if that
completion date is different from what you last saw and why. Because those are really
driven by the tactics and -- and if there is something that substantially changed in regards
to the tactics -- kind of like you saw with Caleb's is he had to bump them out, because of
-- of staff resources. Same as HR, you will be seeing that. But she can still kind of fit
within the strategic plan and the overall completion date is not what she had on each
tactic.
Cavener: Okay. And, Madam Mayor, we are about -- I just was curious. One of the
elements within the -- the online portion talks about the total budget cost. On these tactics
that we are hitting, are we finding that they are being completed under budget, at budget,
over budget?
De Weerd: The ones that have a budget request as associated with it, once they are
approved by Council it -- it rolls into the budget itself.
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Cavener: Madam Mayor -- right. I understand that. I just -- because of the number called
out on the plan, I'm just curious -- I guess I could -- I could go back through past budget
pieces and apply that. I just was hoping that -- because we have had a dashboard if you
were able to tell did that particular objective -- did it meet its budget request or was it over
or was it under. That's -- that's all the clarity I'm trying to find.
De Weerd: So, that's just regarding a tactic, like when we are requesting resources.
Cavener: Again, Madam Mayor, on the form I know it -- oftentimes it lists an estimate
cost. Sometimes an estimated is zero, but sometimes that estimated cost is half a million
dollars and I'm just curious when there is an estimated cost with these, are we -- are we
hitting that cost? Are we overspending? Are we underspending?
De Weerd: The -- the plan that was -- was early, early on contemplated if the -- yeah.
Sure.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Cavener, originally
when -- I think you're going back to probably when the plan was first submitted to you
guys, we had the objective sheets with kind of wild guesses of -- not wild, but I mean
somewhat broad guesses of what we thought cost would be . We designed into the
software the ability to add an estimated cost to each of the tactics , but we are not -- we
made the decision to move forward with what you see in those costs. As these things
from the strategic plan come forward through the budgeting process that's when a true
cost would be assigned to it and you would see that cost that you -- because it's identified
back to the strategic plan. They are not being tracked as a percentage of completion or
anything like that in the plan now, so -- is that --
Cavener: That helps.
Holman: Does that answer --
Cavener: Yeah. It absolutely does.
De Weerd: Yeah. Because you approve every one of those resources.
Cavener: Right. Right. Madam Mayor, just so -- I want to make sure that I'm prepared
for discussion in six months from now, can you share with us what the goal of the annual
update will be and what you would hope to see from Council during that meeting, so that
we can prepare between now and then?
De Weerd: I kind of touched on some of those high priority areas that are -- what they
have found is the -- the tactics didn't necessarily support the objective or the rating of low,
medium, high were not in sequence with each other. So, in those areas, such as the safe
community and healthy community, those are being reworked by the two leads, the Police
and Fire, and -- as it relates to the other, because those are both kind of multi-
departmental associated. The lead is with one department, but there is many different
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efforts going in those areas. So, at this point I can't tell you what exactly you can prepare
for, but I do think that the departments themselves -- and seeing -- we did reach out and
say are there anything like what Robert did in the access to government discussion,
something that they want to do. If they want to -- if they need to deeper dive into it -- and
I would imagine that in both safe community and healthy community that discussion will
be had. That will be happening in advance of the -- the annual discussion. I don't think
that was a non-answer, but -- I was thinking aloud, too. Because I have to process those
as well. Okay. Anything further from Council?
Item 8: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Okay. Item 8, Future Meeting Topics. You heard of the two park openings.
You do have the invitations in front of you. We also have the faith leaders luncheon on
Thursday, October 12th, from 11:30 to 1:00 at Valley Shepherd Nazarene Church and
Gowan Thunder Air Show Saturday and Sunday.
Item 9: Executive Session per Idaho State Code 74-206(1)(f): To
communicate with legal counsel for the public agency to discuss the
legal ramifications of and legal options for pending litigation, or
controversies not yet being litigated but imminently likely to be
litigated.
De Weerd: So, with that I will move to Item 9, Executive council -- or Session.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 74-206(1)(f).
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn into Executive Session. 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: ALL AYES.
EXECUTIVE SESSION: (6:50 p.m. to 8:02 p.m.)
De Weerd: I would entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session.
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Bird: So moved.
Borton: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Bird: I move we adjourn.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor?
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
thnkasMEETING ADJOURNED AT 8:02 P.M.
(AUDIO RECO ING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
DATE APPROVED
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CITY CLERK