HomeMy WebLinkAbout2018-10-09Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2018.
A workshop meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:03 p.m.,
Tuesday, October 9, 2018, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Tammy De Weerd, Joe Borton, Luke Cavener, Ty Palmer, Genesis
Milam and Anne Little Roberts.
Members Absent: Treg Bernt.
Also present: C.Jay Coles, Bill Nary, Caleb Hood, Warren Stewart, Brian Caldwell,
Charlie Butterfield, Pam Orr, Dale Bolthouse, Alex Frietag, Laurelie McVey, Keith Watts
and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X__ Anne Little Roberts X _ _Joe Borton
X__ Ty Palmer ___ Treg Bernt
__X___Genesis Milam __X___Lucas Cavener
__X_ Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Well, good afternoon. I would like to welcome all of you to our City Council
workshop. For the record it is Tuesday, October 9th. It's three minutes after 3:00. We
will start with roll call attendance, Mr. Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Thank you. Item 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us
in the pledge to our flag.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of Agenda
De Weerd: Item 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Cavener: Madman Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Item 5-R has been requested to be removed from the Consent Agenda, will
become 6-A, and with that I move we adopt the agenda.
Milam: Second.
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as amended. All those
in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. TWO ABSENT.
Item 4: Proclamations
A. Fire Prevention Month
De Weerd: I have several proclamations and I'm going to move to the podium and our
first one is Fire Prevention Month, so I will ask Pam to join me and anyone she would
like to include with her. Come on up.
Orr: Well, thank you, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. We are going to do a
proclamation today for Fire Prevention Month and Fire Prevention Month is an
opportunity that we have here in the City of Meridian to highly educated the community,
if you will. We are taking our crews and going into the schools and educating on this
year's theme which is Look, Listen and Learn. Fires Happen Everywhere. And what
that theme -- what we are hoping to put across to the children and to the families in
Meridian is to be very situationally aware of the things around us that can cause fire.
So, that we can stop fires before they start and so I have a whole crew of people here
from the Meridian Fire Department that I would like to thank, because this is an
opportunity this month for us to be out doing a lot of education and we are very, very
busy and I think I would be remiss if I didn't invite you all to our open house that's this
coming Saturday from 10:00 to 2:00. It's an opportunity for us to really showcase a lot
of the things that we do from -- on everything from vehicle extrication to fighting fire to
an actual code, you know, to show a quick demonstration to lifting up our -- our ladder
truck -- those are all tools that we have in our toolbox that we like to share with the
public and this gives us an opportunity to do that and this is a joint effort from the
Meridian Fire Department and the Meridian Police Department. So, with that I will turn it
over to Mayor Tammy.
De Weerd: Thank you, Pam. Okay. So, I will read the proclamation and I will present it
to Pam or Sparky, whoever wants to receive it. Whereas the City of Meridian is
committed to ensuring the safety and security of all those living in and visiting our city
and whereas fire is a serious public safety concern, both nationally and locally and
homes are the locations where people are at greatest risk from fire and whereas
Meridian's first responders are dedicated to reduce the occurrence of home fires and
home fire injuries through prevention education and whereas Meridian's residents are
responsive to public education measures and are able to take personal steps to
increase their safety from fire and whereas the 2018 Fire Prevention Month theme,
Look, Listen, Learn, Be Aware Fire Can Happen Anywhere, effectively serves to remind
us all of the simple actions we can take to stay safer from fire. Therefore, I, Mayor
Tammy de Weerd, do hereby proclaim the month of October 2018 as Fire Prevention
Month in the City of Meridian and call upon the community to heed the important safety
message of using all of our senses to protect citizens from fire. And we appreciate
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everything that our Fire Prevention office and our firefighters do every day to be
proactive and preventative in protecting our citizens from this serious threat. So, thank
you, Pam, for what you and your team do and we appreciate all of that.
Orr: Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Do you mind if I introduce Herb.
I am so sorry. Herb, can you turn around. This is Herb Griffin. He is a new member to
our team. I'm so -- so proud to have him aboard and thank you, City Council, for
bringing him on full time.
B. Cyber Security Awareness Month
De Weerd: Our next proclamation is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and I will ask
Dave Tiede to come up and join us and -- and maybe kind of initiate the first comments
and why this is so important.
Tiede: So, the City of Meridian is partnering with the Department of Homeland Security
and providing awareness to our community about Cybersecurity Awareness. So, this is
National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This is really an effort to bring awareness to
everybody in our community about how important cybersecurity is for our nation, but
also our own community. As you know, everyone uses technology nowadays or on the
internet, your banking, or everything and it is all -- all of our responsibilities to keep that
secure and to make sure that we are doing the best we can to use best practices and
standards and with that I will turn it over to the Mayor.
De Weerd: And -- and, really, our system is as secure as our weakest -- weakest link
and so we all have to take this very serious. Whereas Americans are spending more
time online than ever before as more people use the internet for online shopping,
banking, financial management, socializing and they also expose themselves to
increased cyber risks and whereas cybersecurity is not just the responsibility of
governments, companies, groups or individuals, everyone shares the responsibility for
cybersecurity. Whereas October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a time to
focus on how cybersecurity is a shared responsibility that affects all Americans and to
raise awareness about the importance of cybersecurity for everyone and whereas the
City of Meridian is joining the Department of Homeland Security, the National
Cybersecurity Alliance and others to raise cybersecurity awareness across the nation to
support the overarching theme of cybersecurity is our shared responsibility and we all
must work together to improve our nation's cybersecurity and whereas during the month
of October and every day we can all follow these simple online safety tips from DHS,
enable stronger authentication, make your passwords long and not rememberable -- I'm
sorry, I threw that one in. If that's even a word. Make them long and strong. Do not
share your passwords. Keep a clean machine. Share with care and secure your WiFi
network. Therefore, I, Mayor Tammy de Weerd, proclaim the month of October 2018 as
Cybersecurity Awareness Month in the City of Meridian and call upon our community to
join me in recognizing how serious cybersecurity is and the steps each of us can take to
present -- or to protect ourselves and our community. So, Dave, thank you to you and
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your team for everything you do to protect the system the city has and to educate our
community on how we can all protect ourselves.
Item 5: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of September 25, 2018 City Council Regular
Meeting
B. Victory & Ten Mile Rd Water Main PRV Easement
C. Release of Baraya Subdivision No. 2 Sewer and Water
Easement
D. Utility Easement Contract between The City Of Meridian and
Michael and Vickie Chaney of 3045 West Victory Road.
E. Irrigation Crossing Agreement with Bureau Of Reclamation at
the Calkins and Givens Laterals for the Victory/Ten Mile Water
Main Extension Project
F. Final Order for T M Creek Subdivision No. 4 (H-2018-0095) by
SCS Brighton, LLC , Located off the SE corner of W. Franklin
Rd. and S. Ten Mile Rd.
G. Final Order for Trilogy Subdivision No. 2 (H-2018-0102) by
Conger Management Group, Located near the SE corner of W.
Chinden Blvd. and N. Black Cat Rd.
H. Findings of Fact, Conclusion of Law for Belveal Subdivision
(H-
2018-0076) by TTS Development, LLC , Located at 385 S .
Locust
Grove Rd.
I. Agreement for Use of Sheriff's Community Service (SCS )
Workers
J. Resolution No. 18-2111: A Resolution Vacating The Westerly 1’
Of The 6’ Wide Utility And Pressure Irrigation Easement On
The East Boundary Of Lot 2, Block 14 And The Easterly 1’ Of The 6’
Wide Utility And Pressure Irrigation Easement On The West
Boundary Of Lot 2, Block 12 In The Oaks South Subdivision
No. 5., Located At 5860 & 5840 W. Quintale Dr., In The NW ¼ Of
Section 33, Township 4 North, Range 1 West., Boise Meridian,
City Of Meridian, Ada County, Idaho; And Providing An
Effective Date.
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K. Resolution No. 18-2112: A Resolution Vacating An Existing 20’
X 20’ Water Easement Located Near The Northeast Corner And A
14’ X 13’ Portion Of An Existing Water Easement Located In
The
Southwest Corner Of Lot 11, Block 2, Gramercy Subdivision
No. 1, As Shown In The Attached Exhibit “A”; Located At 2667 E.
Gala Ct., In The NE ¼ Of Section 20, Township 3 North, Range
1 East, Boise Meridian, City Of Meridian, Ada County, Idaho; And
Providing An Effective Date.
L. Resolution No.18-2113: A Resolution Of The Mayor And The
City
Council Of The City Of Meridian Approving City Council
President’s Appointments Of City Council Members To Serve
As
Department Liaisons, Committee Members, Commission
ExOfficio Members, And City Area Contacts, And Providing An
Effective Date.
M. Approval of Contract Amendment No.3 to Varsity Facility
Services for FY19 Janitorial Services for the Not-to-Exceed
amount of 219,881.32.
N. Approval of Change Order 2 for Discovery Park Landscaping
and Landscape Irrigation Services to Franz Witte Landscape
Contracting, Inc. for the Not-to-Exceed amount of $72,890.00.
O. Approval of Change Order 1 for Discovery Park Shelters to
Playground Hound dba Lucky Dog Recreation for the Not-
to-Exceed amount of $96,020.00.
P. Appr oval of Change Order 2 for Discovery Park General
Construction Services (Concrete) to Landon Enterprises, LLC.
For the Not-to-Exceed amount of $69,664.00.
Q. Approval of Change Order 3 for Discovery Park A&E Services
to
The Land Group for the Not-to-Exceed amount of $56,590.00.
S. Approval of Change Order 5 for Discovery Park General
Construction to Knife River Corp. – Northwest for the Not-to-
Exceed amount of $199,342.00. T. AP Invoices for Payment
10/10/18 - $1,023,609.39
De Weerd: Item 5 is our Consent Agenda.
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Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: With the notation of moving Item 5-R to 6-A, I move we approve the Consent
Agenda, for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda as changed.
Mr. Clerk, will you, please, call roll.
Roll call: Borton, absent; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea;
Bernt, absent.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. TWO ABSENT.
Item 6: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
A. Approval of Cooperative Agreement between the City and
Valley
Regional Transit for “Annual Dues and Service Contribution”
for a Not-To -Exceed amount of $295,020.00.
De Weerd: Item 6-A is the former 5-R and that is the approval of the cooperative
agreement between the city and VRT for the annual dues and service contribution.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I think -- Council Member Borton wasn't here, but he had some questions that
have been raised about the dollar amount, so I have -- I have pulled together those line
items just to address that and put it on the record. The question was about the 139,539
dollars and its inclusion in the 295,000 dollars. The way that's broken down is that is
41,011 dollars for the annual VRT assessment, 57,333 dollars for the limited stop
service, 32,935 dollars for the express service, and the additional intercounty route of
5,260 dollars. The remaining amount will be used -- is used for the Harvest Transit
program and for the senior transportation program. So, just so everyone is aware, that's
where the dollar breakdown. Now, it's not 139,000 additional dollars, it's just that
amount being separated out from the inclusion of the total assessment from VRT.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you for that detail. Any questions? Okay. I would entertain a
motion.
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Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I move that we approve Item 6-A, approval of the cooperative agreement
between the city and VRT for annual dues and service contribution for not to exceed
amount of 295,020 dollars.
Milam: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Mr. Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll call: Borton, absent; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, nay; Little Roberts, yea;
Bernt, absent.
De Weerd: The ayes have it.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE NAY. TWO ABSENT.
Item 7: Community Items/Presentations
A. Light My Fire Check Presentation
De Weerd: Item 7-A is under Community Items/Presentations and I don't know who is
going to do this. Pam, are -- are you going to introduce this? Light My Fire is an
organization that is in front of us on an -- an annual basis. They raise a lot of money for
our burnout fund and other activities. They raise an extraordinary amount that really
helps our community and our -- our fire department. So, Pam, I will turn this over to
you.
Orr: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You did a great job with
explaining exactly who these amazing people are. I would like to introduce to you this --
these folks are part of our board. They not only serve our board, but they also serve on
the committee as well and so Steve Cilley is the president of our board. Mary Cahoon
is the -- I would say the president of our group as far as our -- you know, our
fundraising. And, then, Andrea Bradshaw is the vice-president that -- that works to that
as well. So, they are representing a very large group of people -- of volunteers and
today they have something I think incredible for us. So, I will turn it over to I think Mary.
Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Cahoon: Thank you. It is a huge pleasure to be here and today is a really great day for
us, because we get to give you money.
De Weerd: And that's a great day for us, too.
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Cahoon: Yea. So, 2018 marks our 25th anniversary and we did a Cheers For 25 Years
and was able to really bring in a lot more money this year and this marked, during that
25 year span, we have almost reached 450,000 dollars that has been donated. So, we
were short by about 4,600 dollars. So, it's pretty amazing. Bob and Judy Ricketts are
the ones -- or have been here since the very beginning and so they are watching a
grandson at boot camp graduate today. So, it's pretty exciting for them. So, we are sad
that they are not here, but we will remember them, because they have been here from
the beginning. And Pam already introduced our committee members and so, anyway,
this year we were able to raise 45,000 dollars at our dinner auction and also our golf
tournament and the donation is a 40-60 split between Meridian and Boise and so today
we get to give away 18,000 dollars and so if Chief Butterfield would come up. To you I
want to present 10,000 dollars.
Butterfield: Thank you.
Cahoon: You're welcome. Which will automatically be doubled through that grant
program that you have, which is match, 20,000 dollars. And, then, if Battalion Rountree
-- Battalion Chief Rountree would like to come up. And Darin Jones. Awesome. So, for
you guys we have 8,000 dollars for the burnout fund. So, in 2019 we are going to have
another gala event and we are hoping to bring that up to 50,000 dollars if we can and so
we want to invite you to attend. We have the invitations here for the save your date and
it's going to be the day after Valentine's Day. So, it's that's Amore. Thank you.
De Weerd: Well, yeah, so now those that got up out of their seats to -- to applaud, we
expect you in the seats of this event.
Orr: I just want to say thank you again and thank you to this amazing group. So, I have
been working with them for 13 years now and I can just tell you that they have so much
love for the -- this that they do and for the community and I'm just blown away year after
year after year of just how -- you know, how awesome those packages are, their
donations from the community is, and how much they rally around, not only public
education, but around our burnout fund. So, all of it -- a hundred percent of the money
that we make goes back into the community of Meridian and Boise and I think that's
amazing. It's absolutely amazing that we have people who would do that for us. So,
thank you for allowing us to be here today.
De Weerd: Well -- and these are very familiar faces that have been doing this probably
as long as the Ricketts have. It is a labor of love to put on the auction event. I haven't
been to the golf event. You don't want me to. But the auction is a wonderful evening full
of a lot of energy, good food, good conversations and -- and as Pam mentioned a lot of
generous donations from the community that supports our fire prevention and our fire
service activities. So, we do hope to -- to get elected officials there, it does show that
support, and I know it goes a long way in saying how important your activities are. So,
thank you. You -- your team, your group knows how to have fun. That is obvious. So,
thank you for your generosity in supporting our activities as well. We appreciate you.
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B. Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho
(COMPASS) Review and Update
De Weerd: Item 7-B is under our COMPASS review and update. Good afternoon. I am
so used to saying good evening, so -- I actually remembered this time.
Parker: Good afternoon. We are part of the COMPASS resource development team.
De Weerd: If you will, please, introduce yourself and --
Parker: Okay.
De Weerd: -- and pull the mic a little closer.
Parker: Okay.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Parker: All right we are part of the COMPASS resource development team. I'm Cathy
Parker and this is Ton i Tisdall. She's our team leader. And our job is to bring as much
funding into our region for transportation projects as possible and our region is both Ada
and Canyon counties. So, who is COMPASS and why do we exist? COMPASS is the
forum for regional collaboration in southwest Idaho that helps maintain a healthy and
economically vibrant region, offering people choices in how and where they live, work,
play and travel. The mission of COMPASS is to conduct regional planning, facilitate
coordination and cooperation, serve as a source of information and expertise on issues
affecting southwest Idaho and assist member agencies in accessing funding to
accomplish local and regional goals. I promise I'm not going to read all of them. So,
who are we? COMPASS is an association as cities, counties, highway districts and
other agencies who plan together for the future of Ada and Canyon county. We are our
members. Currently we have 19 general members. You are one. Five special
members and three ex-officio members. Our board is made up of representatives,
primarily elected officials, from each of our member agencies and the board meets
bimonthly and provides policy direction on the future of Ada and Canyon counties. Our
board also plays a strategic role in planning activities in our region, including oversight
of the long range transportation plan, which is completed every four years and also the
Regional Transportation Improvement Program or the TIP, which programs projects
within the various federal funding sources that are available for projects and they
provide input into federal and state policy positions, as well as the COMPASS program
budget. This is definitely not an exhaustive list, but these are the primary
responsibilities of the board. So, the board makes decisions based on
recommendations of both policy and technical communities, as well as work groups on
a variety of topics and some of those work groups are active transportation,
demographic advisory, grade advisory, Rails With Trails, public transportation, all kinds
of different transportation related groups. We are two of the 18 COMPASS staff
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assigned to various departments to provide services, activities, and functions for our
members. So, exactly what does COMPASS do? Our goals are to plan, implement and
provide technical expertise and facilitate and we will go into those a little more with you
in just a second. So, through a joint powers agreement COMPASS is tasked to conduct
and coordinate services as they relate to both planning and regulatory responsibilities in
several areas that you see listed here, all in light of their relationship with transportation.
COMPASS is a metropolitan planning organization or MPO. Why and how are MPOs
formed? They are federally required for any urbanized area with a population greater
than 50,000 and they are designated by the governor, in agreement with local units of
government, and the MPO must represent at least 75 percent of the urbanized area's
population. COMPASS is somewhat unique in that we represent two urbanized areas,
both Nampa and Boise. That's in addition to the entire rural area of Ada and Canyon
counties and because those two urbanized areas fall into two different categories
because of their size, they are eligible for different funding sources. So, membership in
COMPASS definitely has its benefits. Pass it off here.
Tisdall: So, first and foremost you get a seat at the table as regional planning and
policies are discussed. The board's decisions affect the regional transportation system
and affect the quality of life for the residents at the Treasure Valley, as well as those who
pass through our beautiful region. A few of the primary services COMPASS provides to
its members -- and I will just list a few of them. Mapping and GIS. Ortho photography.
We also have grant assistance, including grant writing, and also bicycle and pedestrian
counters, just to name a few of them. Some of the hot topics currently being addressed
by the COMPASS board are the regional transportation priorities, both long term and
short term, insufficient funding to meet the needs of our member agencies, lack of
dedicated funding for public transportation, as well as ensuring active transportation or
the bicycle and pedestrian community have a safe access to our regional facilities. So,
how do we conduct ongoing planning while simultaneously addressing these hot topics?
And you have seen these before. We plan, implement, provide technical expertise and
facilitate. So, now let's dig into each of -- each of those. Our planning team is led by
Liisa Itkonen. Her primary responsibility is to oversee the long range transportation
plan, that's known as Communities In Motion 2014 or soon to be 2042.0, as our
COMPASS board is expected to adopt the new plan by the end of the year. This plan
for the future of transportation system is based on the previous vision and goals of
Communities In Motion 2014. There are eight planning elements incorporated into the
long range plan. As each relates to transportation, those elements include land use,
housing, farmland, open space, health, community infrastructure and economic
development. In the past we really only looked at housing and transportation, so we
are looking at a whole bigger picture as all those things relate to how transportation is
developed. Part of the plan consists of identifying and prioritizing both funded and
unfunded projects to meet both the short-term and long-term needs, taking into
consideration the current status of the transportation system and what improvements
need to be done to accommodate the growth by 2040 and we do expect that by 2040
that the two county population will be over a million people. The plan not only identifies
regional needs, but establishes goals, performance measures and targets, which
provides the foundation for determining where progress is being made and what parts of
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the system need more attention. Long range planning for our transportation system is
carried out by looking through the lenses of four transportation components. Those are
roadways, bicycle, pedestrian, public transportation and freight. Also taking into
consideration those other eight elements that we just talked about. Economic
development, housing, open space -- all of those. This map shows where the greatest
long-term needs exist. The blue lines you see here are considered long-term funded
projects and the orange lines are considered still unfunded. We do encourage you to
contact us at any time if you have questions about transportation needs or through the
Mayor or Caleb, they serve on our board and committee. COMPASS does performance
base planning using a performance measure framework. We measure how well
proposed projects align with the goals of our long range plan and use this information to
make informed decisions. The planning isn't the only way we help our members move
the needle on Communities In Motion. We also provide data and feedback to assist in
their decision making process. COMPASS provides technical expertise to help measure
projects. The technical services team is led by MaryAnn Waldinger, she's our modeler -
- that is models that help determine the impact of projects. COMPASS gathers heaps of
data, which is assembled by our technical team for use in local and long range planning.
We serve as a clearinghouse and provide analysis to modeling and mapping of
transportation related data. COMPASS also serves -- provides analysis of proposed
new developments by conducting reviews for local jurisdictions that demonstrate
whether these developments are consistent with the goals and vision of Communities In
Motion 2014 and that can be helpful in the local decision making process. I hope that
you all are using those. This process also informs the COMPASS demographic
estimates and forecasting process. The population estimates are made available to
cities, counties, and others and the forecast demographics includes population,
households and jobs and those are fed into the models and the mapping that we use in
the transportation planning. The population currently is -- for both counties is about
690,000. Boise, of course, is the largest city in the area at 232,000. Meridian, as you
know, just past a hundred thousand at 106,000. And Nampa is shortly behind at
98,000. But the entire region is seeing growth. COMPASS has also served as a
mapping resource for several decades. Transportation activities necessitate the
development of maps for analysis, review, and public display and geographic
information systems allow for spatial data analysis to support local planning efforts. In
addition to being a regional data center, COMPASS also brought together a group of
regional agencies for a multi-agency orthophotography project starting in 2000 and that
flight has been growing every three years since. The last one in 2016. So, the next
flight is scheduled for 2019. All the staff on our technical resources team works very
closely with our communications team to bring all this data to the public in a way that's
understandable. So, another group of services that COMPASS provides is facilitation
and that group is led by Amy Luft. As stated previously, COMPASS is the forum for
regional collaboration where the cities, counties, highway districts, ITT and others come
together to make decisions in the best interest of the region and its residents, but we
also ensure collaboration with the residents themselves. Through our outreach team
we provide outreach, which takes many forms, such as presentations like this. We have
leadership in motion awards, which are presented to individuals, agencies, and leaders
of our community when they have projects and help reach the goals of Communities In
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Motion. We also have an educational series where we bring national speakers in to
speak about transportation related themes. Those are done both for the general public,
as well as your technical staff, and they also oversee a robust public involvement
process for when we have projects, including hosting public open houses, which we
happen to have one across the street for Communities In Motion today.
Parker: So, another role COMPASS plays, a very important one, because that's what
our team does, we implement the long range transportation plan. Our team is led by
Ton i and we manage three federal programs and two local programs that fund our -- our
members' projects and we are constantly looking for new funding sources, because, as
you all know, there is not nearly enough funding to go around for all of the needs in the
region. So, we are currently focused on maintaining what we have, trying to increase
funding and, then, securing those additional resources. We have been in maintenance
mode in the Treasure Valley for a long time, but growth is starting to catch up with us,
so we have been recently able to add some capacity and widening projects to try to
keep up with that growth. But maintenance is still our primary focus. We are trying to
keep the roads we have in good shape, because, as you all know, they cost a lot less to
keep them that way than it is to try to fix one that has deteriorated and our resource
development team works really hard to secure funding and find those resources to fund
all of our members' projects. Our goal is to bring as much funding as possible into our
area and the first step in our plan is to figure out what our members needs are and we
only know if you tell us. To help meet those needs COMPASS has put together a
funding application guide for your staff with directions on how to fill out an application for
funding. They are submitted to us, then, by each jurisdiction and, then, we match them
with available funding sources as far down the list as we can go and while some other
projects do get programed for funding, many others do not. All of the project
applications that we receive in any given year go into what we call our resource
development planning and that's basically the marching orders for our resource
development team. We work all year long on all those projects to try to find ways to
fund them. So, all the jurisdictions that do have those many projects that didn't get
funded, we frequently notify all of our members about miscellaneous funding sources
that become available throughout the year. We send out a funding news e-mail once or
twice a month with all different variety of funding sources. Many of them are small, but
sometimes a little bit goes a long way. And in addition to trying to find sources for you,
we can provide lots of other types of grant assistance. We can help you determine
whether you're eligible for a grant. We can help you write a grant. We can provide a
review of a grant that you have put together if you want another set of eyes on it.
Anything grant related we can help you with. So, this is one example. The 90 million
dollar grant that ITD recently got for Interstate 84 between Franklin Boulevard and
Karcher Road was a team effort between our staff and ITD and so we can't guarantee
we are going to get 90 million for you, but we will do our best to get as much as we can.
So, our locally managed federal program and two local programs, those are the CIM for
Communities In Motion implementation grant program and the Project Development
Program. They fund our region's top ranked projects and we continue to work with --
even with our members on even funded projects to help facilitate documentation and
helping to make sure that they can be completed within the required time frames. One
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example of a project funded with a CIM implementation grant are the city of Garden City
wayfinding signs. They were looking at ways to improve walking and biking between
their businesses and one example of the Project Development Program is the
completion of a pre-concept report for the Eagle Road corridor pathway, to construct a
continuous multi-use pathway along the east side of Eagle Road. Any of you who have
looked at that and even have been there know that the sidewalk just stops in many
areas. There is no continuous pathway there. And last, but not least, for the funding
programs that COMPASS manages is the array of federal aid programs that fund those
top ranked projects. Traditionally, like I said, much of that funding has been focused on
maintenance and, then, also some of the funding that we get is dedicated specifically for
public transportation. But all of the projects that are programmed for funding and the
TIP is funded up to five and even six years, they must be consistent with the long range
plan that we talked about. So, you can kind of see how all of these fit together. So, we
have covered the programs that COMPASS manages, but we don't want you to forget
about all the other funding sources out there that we can help you access. We really
urge you to reach out to us, because we will do everything we can to help you find a
grant, write a grant and find partners for a grant, you name it. We will do anything we
can to help. The top right, the build grant in this picture, that's where the 90 million
dollars for ITD came from. It's not a traditional every year federal funding source. So,
we have covered the COMPASS as an association of local governments that facilitates
regional cooperation and serves as a regional technical resource. In addition, we work
hard to provide support for projects that meet both local and regional needs and
conduct long range planning resulting -- resulting in Communities In Motion 2014, which
is our plan for the future of the Treasure Valley. That is a Toni photo.
Tisdall: But we did want to open for discussion, but let me cover -- we have got -- these
are the projects that we have in the resource development plan right now. The projects
at the top are the projects that the city applied for last year and, then, we also included
focus areas and those are a little bit broader things that you -- you still have a focus on
that maybe don't have an application in for that and the reason for that is because as we
look for a grant, if you have ever dug through grant materials you always find what
you're not looking for, so the more information that we know, the better we can help you
with your needs and get them funded. And, then, these are the projects that we have in
the federal program in the TIP right now for the city and so we wanted to open for
discussion any projects that you know are coming up or just any projects that you know
of that are coming, anything that we can help you with or questions that we can help
you with and we would like to get that process started with the application.
De Weerd: Thank you, Toni. Council, any questions?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Just a question and, then some commentary. Do you know how much you
spend on broadcast advertising in a year?
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Tisdall: I can get that for you. I will follow up. So, I can find out how we do on
broadcast.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. The reason I ask is knowing if that's coming from somebody
else or whether it's coming from the -- the dues that the city is paying or, you know,
other taxpayer funded sources. It was about a year ago -- maybe it was a little longer,
but I remember it running for a long time. There was an ad that said if just every citizen
would pay two dollars a day extra in taxes that we would get fund all the road projects
any of us could ever dream of. Well, that would be 4,400 dollars a year for my family
and so if I'm paying tax dollars to the city, who is, then, going to COMPASS to, then, run
ads to tell me I'm not paying anywhere near enough taxes, it's just frustrating as a
citizen. So, really, that's my big gripe with COMPASS is I'm paying people to tell me
that I'm not paying enough.
Tisdall: Okay.
De Weerd: That's not a question. Other questions from Council?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I'm gun shy, because I don't have a question either. I just wanted to thank --
De Weerd: I just didn't want Toni to feel like she had to respond to --
Cavener: Well, I didn't think she needs to either and she doesn't need to respond to this
either, but Ms. Tisdale participates --
De Weerd: Can you pull that --
Cavener: -- as an ex officio member of our transportation commission and I have
appreciated your expertise and feedback in that committee. I know that our committee
members do as well where we have a citizen led transportation commission, having true
experts in the room to provide that expertise has been very valuable. So, I just wanted
to say thank you and, no, you don't need to respond either.
Tisdale: Thank you.
De Weerd: You know, Toni, I think what was helpful in your presentation is you have
talked to -- you noted Garden City's wayfinding sign program. I think it would be great if
our parks department or our parks commission knew more about that and -- and it's
been a while since we have talked about the pedestrian improvements needed on Eagle
Road and it would probably be helpful to this Council to see what is anticipated and
envisioned, so have -- bringing an update back on that -- I think they are aware of the
Rail With Trail pathway and -- and some of the activities and I know in 2019 there are
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some discussions that are moving forward, so making sure that you come back and
bring an update, but it is helpful to know what other cities are requesting, to even have
an idea of what might be an opportunity for our community, because it seems that our
community doesn't see some of these activities like you saw in the Eagle Road corridor
pathway project and how they have been working to connect the -- the Greenbelt. We
would like to see more of those projects and more maybe safe routes to school, but --
and working with ACHD and COMPASS that come about over in the city of Boise and I
know that depends on West Ada School District to get the information to COMPASS , but
those are the kind of things that would be helpful for us to know more about.
Tisdale: Okay. We do have the first phase on the Eagle Road pedestrian
improvements. It's in the TIP. It's an in and out year. I think it's in -- it's currently in PD
right now. So, it's working its way up. I think design will start in the next couple of years
and it is a fairly expensive project, so it's probably going to take a lot of phases to -- to
get funded and we are working with Caleb, as well as ITD. Caleb's asked me to get a
meeting together about right of way issues and maintenance issues, so we will be
working on that soon as well. And before I leave I do want to introduce Daniel
Hernandez. He is --
De Weerd: Hi, Daniel.
Tisdale: -- our newest employee and he started a week ago, so this is all new to him,
but -- and we do have -- have some help now and, anyway, we do want to work with
your -- your staff. It's a pleasure to work with them. We always have a good
relationship with the City of Meridian and we do want to help bring more money into the
region and the more we know what your needs are, the better we can help and we will
try not to say two dollars a person anymore.
De Weerd: Thank you, Toni. And I -- I guess one more thing is -- is I was traveling
down State Street last week, it -- it's so nice to see the pathway that runs parallel to that.
As we look at Chinden or Highway 16, I-84 improvements, that pathway connectivity
certainly from city survey results, our citizens would like to see more off road detached
bicycle and pedestrian opportunities that as those road improvements are talked about
that that's also one of the things that is part of those discussions.
Tisdale: Yes, ma'am.
De Weerd: Okay.
Tisdale: Absolutely.
De Weerd: Anything further from Council? Thank you. And as Councilman Cavener
mentioned, thank you for your involvement and the discussions we have at a city level,
too.
Tisdale: Absolutely. I enjoy them. Thank you so much for your time.
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De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 8-C is an update under the Fire Station No. 6 and I
assume that Charlie is -- is very excited about giving the next update.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: Are we moving over --
De Weerd: Oh, I guess I -- I skipped Finance. I didn't do that on purpose.
C. Meridian Development Corporation Quarterly Report on
Development and Activities in the Downtown Core
Cavener: And MDC and Lime.
De Weerd: Oh, gosh, I did a whole section --
Cavener: As excited as I am to hear from Chief Butterfield --
De Weerd: Well, I guess that is MDC. I skipped a whole section. We were just going to
save the best for last really, so --
Squyres: Of course. Well, you all have seen me so much lately I thought you might be
kind of sick of me, which that's okay, too. Good afternoon, Mayor, Members of the
Council. For the record I am Ashley Squyres, I am the administrator for Meridian
Development Corporation. I just started my eighth -- had my eighth anniversary with
MDC as of October 1. Happy to be here. My mailing address is 104 East Fairview
Avenue No. 239 here in Meridian. In your packet is a detailed report that -- with
supporting information that gives all the details as to what we have been up to this last
quarter. Again, you have seen us a lot lately, so you kind of know what we have been
up to, at least in some of this, but I'm going to hit some highlights. I'm not going to hit all
of this and, then, I'm happy to stand for any questions you may have. As the Council
approved the purchase price for old city hall at last week's meeting, we are going to be
reviewing and discussing the development agreement and the purchase and sale
agreement tomorrow morning at our MDC meeting. Barring that there is any issues with
this, which I don't think there will be, this will be back in front of your agenda fairly
quickly in the next coming weeks. So, we are excited about that. Thank you for this
partnership. It's important to our downtown. Our goal is to transfer -- have the transfer
completed by February of 2019 and ground being broken in March. So, again, thank
you for this. Second, I -- I provided an update as to the status of the Pacific lease
application. There is not much to report. I wish there were. I'm so sorry. I have been
pushing. But in recent discussions with UP staff, about a week and a half ago, they
have had a lot of internal chaos and reorganization. Luckily we still have our person for
Idaho. He -- his district has changed a little bit. He was initially Idaho, Montana,
Wyoming, he is now Idaho, Oregon and Washington. So, he is trying to get up to
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speed. His boss is new as well, too. So, we talked about trying to get the first round of
comments back on these applications, which I have included all of that in this packet as
well by the end of this calendar. He knows we are anxious and want to start moving
forward. We also were able to give him an update on the Frontier Tire structure. Many
of you know that that has been complicated. The -- the structure owners did not have
the underlying ground, so UP and the structure owner owed back taxes to 2011 and so
UP was in a little bit of a pickle, because they no longer have a lease with these folks.
The folks went through bankruptcy court. So, after a little bit of research and trying to
figure out how do we solve this issue, legal counsel for MDC and myself met with the
county commissioners for Ada county. The county commissioners have waived the tax
-- back taxes for the structure. UP is now going to go back to that structure owner and
say you either need to enter into a new lease or you need to move or demolish your
structure and we are hoping that we can find a solution that's amicable for everybody in
order to move that forward as well. I know there has been a lot of interest in that
structure. We have also been working to alleviate the Nine Mile flood plain issue, as
some of you all know that is basically encompassing most of the properties between the
rail line and Franklin Road. The only property in the draft 2016 that is out of it is Eric
Davis' property, the retail property on the immediate south side of the Main Street and
the railroad tracks and -- the east side of Main Street. Excuse me. I don't really have
much to report, other than to say an update from what you will have in your packets is
on Friday FEMA called us and said that they were going to be able to get the draft
modeling that we need for the compromise that we have come to for the flows. Initially
they were saying with the draft 2016 maps the flows were going to be about 146 cfs,
which is a substantial and a huge increase. Our engineer for MDC looked at it, took it
down from a 30,000 foot level to the 10,000 foot level and said, no, it should be at 80
cfs, which is a huge difference. We have been able to split the difference in our favor a
little bit and we have agreed upon 98 cfs. FEMA is at no cost to us, remodeling and
redoing their hydro -- hydraulic model. Once we receive that we can get that to MDC's
engineer, they can look at it, figure out what improvements are needed to get the
properties out of the floodplain or at least the majority and what those costs are going to
be and so our goal is to have all of that information to be able to present back to the city
hopefully next spring, so fingers crossed. Also in your packets I have included the most
recent update for the Ten Mile Urban Renewal District, Brighton Corporation. It used to
be every month, now it's about quarterly as well to -- provides us an update, including all
the land use decisions and entitlements, building permits that are being pulled, new
leases -- all of that is in your packet, along with some of the updated photos. We are
anticipating being able to give our first TIP reimbursement to Brighton Corporation by
the end of this year, so excited about that. We also heard rumors that the other
property owner in that district is looking at potentially coming forth with a development
plan. We have not seen anything to date. Obviously we will be in conversation with you
once we know a little bit more about that. And, lastly and sadly, MDC has been
unsuccessful in obtaining bids -- or appropriate bids I should say for the Carlton Avenue,
East 5th Street, CDBG sidewalk project. In May we put it out to bid. We did not receive
a single bid. We met with staff. Caleb has been awesome to work with. We decided
we are going to go back out to bid in August. We left it open until October 1. As you
can see in your report we received four bids. We have a budget -- a construction
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budget of 162,000 dollars. The lowest of the four bids is more than double that. So,
Caleb and a representative from finance and I met on Thursday last week. We are
going to recommend to our board tomorrow to reject all the bids, go back out to bid in
December, leave it open until the end of January and, fingers crossed, hopefully get
more reasonable bids. In the meantime, Caleb and I are going to be working on
alternative plans and alternative funding sources in order to supplement -- be able to
bridge the gap, because this is a very important project for our downtown. So, fingers
crossed that we can figure that out. So, as you can see there is -- there is a number of
other projects that we have been engaged in, but I'm going to stop here and I'm happy
to answer any questions you may have.
De Weerd: Thank you, Ashley. Council, any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: So, a comment and, then, a question. Appreciate the very thorough report. I
wasn't aware of the public outreach videos that MDC had done. Had a chance to watch
those. Very well done. Is there a plan to -- a communication plan associated with that
to promote downtown? Do those just live on the website? Talk to me a little bit more
about that particular process and the goals you hope to attain.
Tisdale: So, they live on the website. We also have distributed those to our partner
agencies, including the city. I have not seen that go live on the city's website at this
point in time, so I'm not sure what that protocol may be, but they do live on the Boise
Valley Economic Partnership website, the chamber websites, and the Downtown
Business Association website as well, too. We have sent out a couple of blasts. We
have promoted through LinkedIn and other means, especially surrounding the ribbon
cutting and -- or at least the groundbreaking for the Main and Broadway block project I
think we will do an even bigger announcement surrounding those, but they have been
widely distributed and viewed.
Cavener: Madam Mayor. And for Council I would encourage you to check them out.
Specifically there is one that has downtown business owners talking about why they
choose downtown Meridian that I thought is really compelling and I knew some of those
voices, but not all of them, and so I thought you did a great job of capturing kind of the
spirit of downtown. Additional question if I may, Madam Mayor. I have been told two
different things, so I'm hoping you can provide some clarification about debt on the
buildings that are part of this redevelopment project. I have been told there isn't debt. I
have been told there is debt. I have been told there is debt, but that the board is
working to address it. So, I just figured that you might be able to give me some
clarification about what is reality, so that I know when I'm asked that I can respond
competently.
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Tisdale: So, in 2010 with the COMPASS VRT project, the board at that time chose to
enter into a three-way partnership with MDC, COMPASS and Valley Regional Transit to
be able to fund that project. It was going to be a catalyst project for downtown. We also
rolled in the loans for 703 and 713 into the overall project as well, too. COMPASS and
Valley Regional Transit's portion, unfortunately, did not pay fully for the cost of the
building and so, yes, there is some debt. As of the end of this fiscal year -- so,
September 30th I believe we have about 379,000 dollars in debt based on our current
payments -- payment -- payment plan we are poised to pay that off in March 2022. We
talk about this every time through the budgeting process. We are very transparent
about that. I think, obviously, with what is happening with the Main and Broadway
project with the COMPASS VRT building, they are solid investments for our downtown.
We do and are looking at the possibility, depending on how some projects may go this
year, to maybe pay that off a little early. But, again, we are not trying to restrict funds so
much by paying that off in order not to be able to do other projects that are more
immediate for this downtown.
Cavener: Great. Madam Mayor, follow up. No additional debt, then, on 702 or 713?
Tisdale: No.
Cavener: Thanks.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: So, 703 you said is the one --
Tisdale: 703.
Palmer: Which is one of the -- Josh's buildings; right? So, now we have two buildings
in downtown Meridian that have debt on them that the taxpayers are paying the debt on,
but they don't actually own the buildings.
Tisdale; They have -- the debt was rolled into the COMPASS VRT loan, yes. And that
was debt taken in place in 2006, 2007.
De Weerd: That debt is on the VRT building, not on those two.
Tisdale: Yes . It was rolled into that VRT loan.
Cavener: On one building.
Palmer: Madam Mayor? So, there is only one building?
De Weerd: Yes.
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Tisdale: Yes.
Palmer: Okay.
Tisdale: It was -- it was three loans rolled into one.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. Not that that's good, horrible, but when you have -- never
mind.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions from Council?
Cavener: How did you get the county commissioners to forgive the taxes?
Tisdale: We asked them to.
Cavener: Be commended for that. That's pretty -- pretty remarkable.
Tisdale: We aren't -- we asked for a meeting. We had a meeting and we got an e-mail
two days later that said this is what we did.
Cavener: Pretty impressive.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further? We appreciate you coming in and giving an update
and look forward to your next one.
Tisdale: Yes.
Cavener: This has been really good. Really good.
Tisdale: Thank you.
D. LimeBike Update
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. I won't skip a handful of others. Next up is -- I was so
excited about Charlie's update I just couldn't stand myself. Okay. 7-D is under our
Limebike update. And, for the record, Councilman Borton has joined us. I know our city
clerk does note that, but for everyone viewing in our viewing audience, he is here.
Thank you for joining us.
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. After last week's meeting --
we had a meeting last week in the Mayor's office, myself, members of the police
department, including Chief Lavey, Robert Simison from the Mayor's staff. We met with
Limebike representatives Aaron Kindall -- or is it -- it's Kindall, yes. Sorry. Aaron
Kindall. They had a couple representatives on the phone, as well as representatives
from Bird, another competing rideshare program that uses a similar model to Lime.
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Good news to report. It was a very productive meeting, very positive conversation by all
parties. A c ouple things that are happening you may or may not be aware of. Lime and
Bird are both launching a program in Boise as of next week. They are each going to be
putting approximately 250 scooters out in the downtown core of Boise between BSU
and the downtown area, the Capitol Building. Boise did implement an ordinance
primarily mostly to add that type of device into their bicycle ordinance, so that it was
clear that it was covered under their bike ordinances. Their ordinances are slightly
different there. They do allow bike riding on the sidewalk there. Even these motorized
scooters are allowed on the sidewalk in certain areas. So, they are excited about that
launch and we were excited, because it gives us an opportunity to see how this can be
done differently. They have done a little bit more outreach over there. They have
worked with the city a little closer. They have been working with ACHD to get an
agreement with ACHD, which they hadn't done here. So, what we asked them was we
would like to pause to get all of these pieces in place. We would like to see how this
works in Boise and what happens with this rollout. We would like to evaluate Boise's
ordinances and see if maybe now, based on what little impact -- or little experience we
have had, that maybe there are some things in Boise's ordinance that might be helpful
in a roll out here. With the weather, obviously, the biggest factor on these type of
devices -- there is a window where they are either used very sparingly or not at all
because of the weather and so Limebike was agreeable to all of that. They would like
to work with us closer and they would like to work with police especially, because that's
where the impact of these devices end up with code enforcement and patrol officers and
things like that. We want to find safe places for them to go, safe places for them to get
there, how we can roll this out in a better fashion, so the public is aware of what it is.
We have received a number of concerned e-mails or phone calls from the public and
business owners on how these are being implemented. So, we would like to make sure
that they are part of the conversation. Lime has spoken with the Downtown Business
Association as well to, again, get them on board as to how this can work and be of
value to the downtown businesses. They basically would like a city representative to
work with through the next few months. We have targeted March 15th and it really was
not a hard date, it was more of let's figure out how long will it take us to evaluate this,
get a real rollout plan and real public outreach plan together, evaluate those ordinances,
bring those back to you if that's necessary. We think that's where we need to go. Using
the weather as a factor, figuring we -- if we -- we could be pretty ambitious and get a lot
of this groundwork done over the next couple of months and, then, if -- again,
depending on the weather, the winter, if it's light, maybe they can launch even before
that if it makes the most sense to everybody, including all of you. Again, they were on
board with all of it. They were very agreeable. They have done some demos. They are
going to do some more demos. We think that's a good way to, again, introduce the
public to this concept. They did one last weekend at Centennial Park. They are going
to be part of trunker treat and so they want to do some outreach, so that people can use
them a little bit, use it in a small window of time, so that we can introduce it, but not
necessarily just keep flooding the market with them, but use them in a more controlled
way, so people can understand how these work and how they can work, at the same
time when we are looking for locations for them to be, like between here and the parks,
between here and the business centers and things like that. Again, all of it was very
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positive, all of it was very receptive to Lime to do that and to make this a more
successful launch here in the next few months.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Council, any questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: I'm not sure who this question is for. Bill and I had a chance to talk earlier
this afternoon. I was surprised when I saw a city news release that the city had told
Lime that they aren't able to operate in our city until March, before this body had an
update, and so I think it brings a bigger conversation about when the city is speaking for
the City Council and when they are not and how -- it's always challenging when I get a
phone call from somebody saying you guys did what and I get to say I don't know what
you're talking about and they said, well, the city just sent something out to say no Limes
in Meridian until March and so it would be helpful for me to have some understanding as
to who -- who spoke for the city when they said no Lime until March and what that was
based on, because I watched the meeting last week and I don't recall any part of this
body saying no Limes until March. What I heard was there is some issues that need to
be resolved, get your issues resolved, and, then, we will take it back up and so help me
understand the timeline as to what's changed and why someone or some ones are
speaking for the Council without us even being updated on it.
De Weerd: I don't think that was in response to the Council, but for -- in response to the
conversation that -- that this group had based on the instruction of Council to -- to
discuss. So, I don't know if Robert or you want to address that.
Nary: So, Madam Mayor, I mean it was a date that we discussed at the meeting and we
were trying to -- in discussing this with Lime and, again, with Bird -- and let me update
you about Bird as well. They -- what they indicated is they would like to come and
located in Meridian at some point. They aren't looking to locate here currently. They do
plan on getting an agreement with the city when they do. So, they were actually very
supportive of trying to work out all these kinks ahead of time, because, then, it probably
would be more seamless for them. There is a couple of things that need to occur. They
still do not have a license agreement with ACHD. That is necessary. So, that takes
some time. We wanted some evaluation time of the Boise rollout and how that works.
So, that was another factor we discussed in the conversation. We want to plan on how
this is going to be communicated to the public, but we also wanted to plan on where
these are going to be on a daily basis getting parked, because there is a factor that we
recognize that it's very difficult for the companies to control is where the users leave
these things and so trying to figure that out -- because police end up with the burden of
dealing with them in right of ways and disable -- or disability pathways and things like
that. So, we needed some time to work with police to figure out how is this going to
work without it becoming a police burden. So, taking -- and, then, of course, as I said,
the weather being probably the most significant factor of all of those things, that Lime
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recognized that although they do operate in cold weather climates, like Minnesota they
used as an example, they recognize that when the snow flies, whenever that is, that that
really sort of hinders how they do things. So, that's a good time to really make all of
these types of decisions and discussions made. So, trying to relaunch in the short
window between now and when the snow flies and, then, at the same time while it's --
while we have had a lot of pushback and negativity, it felt to me and it felt to -- I think to
the people in the room that it doesn't work to try to do them simultaneously. We need to
do it right, which is what we had communicated, and all of those things need to be in
place to do it right. So, trying to just launch it, make it work, Band-Aid it, and, then,
really doing the work to make it work -- so, we picked a target date of March and that
was the specific target we mentioned in the meeting that they were agreeable to, but we
also said, again, we are not hard and fast on March, we are hard and fast on getting this
done right. Again, if the weather is good, if we have a light winter, February 1st, fine. I
mean it's not really a date that's critical, as much as the -- the process.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? To that point I think that's accurate. We don't want to pick
March 15th if they are not ready on March 15th.
Nary: Correct.
Cavener: But if they are ready next week I think that we should be amenable to letting
them operate next week or somewhere in between. But it's much different between
what we heard from you, which is once they have everything done right, then, we are
going to be okay with them operating and us communicating to the public that no Lime
until March. Those are two different items. And so I'm still trying to figure out, again,
who spoke for the city and -- and why that communication was sent out before it was
communicated with us as part of our City Council update.
Nary: I can't answer that. I didn't have anything to do with that.
Cavener: Okay.
Simison: Madam Mayor, Council, Councilman Cavener, when saying who spoke for the
city, I made the recommendation or suggestion in the meeting that we pause until
March. They agreed to that from that standpoint. You know, it was not a -- a mandate
that they do that, but from the Council direction that we saw last week it was clear if they
decided to continue to operate this week that there was going to be some Council
Members who were not going to look fondly at that decision if they did not. So, that is
what was discussed in the meeting in that context.
Cavener: Okay.
Simison: And they agree to that.
Cavener: Okay.
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Simison: Today. Officially. In writing.
Cavener: And, then, we sent a release out to say that no Lime until March.
Simison: It was included in our city news, yes.
Cavener: Okay. Pause operations in Meridian until mid-March. Much different than
what was shared with us. Madam Mayor, I know we are not at the other agenda items,
but to make a note, I would like an agenda item scheduled about when staff are
speaking for the city, because I think it's unfair to Council Members, whether they feel
one way or another, to have a staff member represent the entire city, especially on
something that is going to be coming before the City Council. I know we have had this
subject discussed during legislative session about when staff are going and speaking in
favor or against laws representing the city. To me this feels very similar and that we had
one individual, essentially, dictate where the city is going to be on this particular issue,
without it coming before us.
De Weerd: And not having the -- the press release in front of me to even respond to
that, but I know there has been a lot of media attention to it and -- and the notice that
when that meeting would occur was last week, so it was certainly an item of interest.
The city could have said, well, we can't tell you anything that went on in the meeting
until we have it on the public record. I think it was an attempt to address the questions
of the media and certainly City Council can -- can weigh in on -- on that during this
update, but it was an attempt to answer many of the questions that were going on at the
time and it was a result of the -- the meeting that ACHD, our law enforcement, our
planning and legal teams had with the entities that walked out of that room in agreement
with each other, knowing that it would be addressed as well tonight. So, you can -- you
can say we don't care, we don't need to wait until those in agreement and you can ask
our law enforcement and our planning and ACHD that doesn't have an agreement why
they would disagree, but operationally we have to roll it out. So, that is the experts in
the room and -- and the -- the handshake agreement that was walked out of there, it
was out there so that the public knew it is put on hold, that is the anticipated date and it
can always change in -- in this update.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: I think kind of Councilman Cavener's point, that e-mail and NextDoor post and
everything was posted an hour and 45 minutes before this meeting and everybody knew
-- I mean it was -- we were going to be discussing it in today's meeting. I do have it in
front of me and, you know, one tweak to the sentence I think would have satisfied me,
where it says the city has asked Lime to pause operations in Meridian until mid-March.
With the press coverage of last week's meeting it was very much in everyone's minds
that Council was dictating whether -- whether Lime and Bird are going to be operating in
the city, which is far from the truth, and so if -- I think if the sentence would have said,
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you know, Meridian city staff has asked Lime to pause operations. It will be a topic of
tonight's discussion at Council at 3:00 o'clock, not just the city has asked Lime to pause
operations until mid-March. And my phone exploded like mid-March, we are not getting
them back until mid-March and I'm like what are you talking about. I just had to say this
is news to me. We are talking about it in an hour at Council, so -- and, then, got here
and had a chance to pull up the e-mail and -- yeah, I mean now -- to everyone who has
read this, it's Council has said no to Lime until mid-March, which I agree, if they can get
their stuff together in two weeks, three weeks, a week, whatever it may be, if they fulfill
their requests that we had had originally, understanding that they didn't before, but if
they are able to, the time should be irrelevant.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: So, it -- maybe to move on to the next topic on this. This is the first I have
heard of March 15th and I don't have a problem with it if it -- it sounds like it comes from
what Mr. Nary said. The point of the last week's meeting was to get these problems
fixed, if they are fixable, and get the right people in the room to address them and if that
takes one week or one year, the goal is to get those things fixed and hearing this
discussion of March 15th it sounds like from your meeting that you had you thought that
date, along with the winter weather, might be the date, so I don't -- I don't feel any
sneaky purpose behind it. If it could have gotten posted after this meeting when you
come here and describe, hey, here is the meeting, here is what took place, we all put
our heads together in realization of all the challenges we have got to solve and
everyone who has to be in the room, coupled with the winter, boy, it could be
Halloween, but realistically in their experience it might be March --
Cavener: Sure.
Borton: -- that gets told us, we all probably nod and say great idea and you're in the
same spot. So, maybe cart before the horse at least with the release, but it still gets
you to the same spot that, realistically, this is probably -- probably March, unless
mountains are moved in October, which would be great if possible, but that's my take on
it. So, it might have gone out early, but it's still the same end result, but I appreciate the
focus on making sure every part of it is done correctly with all the right people in the
room, so when it is rolled out, again, it is successful for everybody, so --
Simison: And Madam Mayor, Council Member Borton, I will fall on the sword on this
one from the -- from the context of, yes, it --
Borton: I don't -- stop you there.
Simison: -- was -- it was --
Borton: There is no sword. No sword.
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Simison: Well, but it -- you know, I do oversee the -- these issues and I oversee -- I will
get the stuff that goes out to the city and I -- you know, rightly or wrongly, I view this
more as an update to Council and, yes, it was -- since we had an agreement with them I
did not expect this to be an issue in terms of the time or the presentation, since the
parties that we were working with had agreed that, yes, let's work towards that
timeframe, but hindsight, you're one -- hundred percent agree, I could have waited until
5:00 o'clock and ask our communications manager to send out the newsletter at 5:00
o'clock.
Borton: So, Madam Mayor?
Simison: Plus this conversation.
Borton: To that point, one, there is no sword. I think that context, from what I hear,
really helps and it's hard to put all that context in probably whatever was posted, right?
But there is also -- there has to be a good degree of trust and faith in us that you're
going to go through all of those steps to get to the point of posting something like that in
the first place, so -- the order might have caused confusion, perhaps with the public for
sure, among us, but I get where you're trying to go, so -- I don't think there is a sword to
fall on.
Item 8: Department Reports
A. Public Works Department Annual Report
De Weerd: Any other questions? Okay. Item 8-A is u nder our Public Works
Department annual update.
Bolthouse: All right. Madam Mayor, Members of Council, let's shift gears. Let's talk
about water and wastewater and the excitement going on in the Public Works utility.
So, I am very pleased to be in front of you today representing the professionals in the
Public Works Department and offer you up a 2018 annual update. We adopted the
movie theme this year as our backdrop for our slides and whatnot, so with that we will
march on through. So, the activities that we thought we would share with you today is
I'm going to walk you through kind of what we are calling the nominees for best picture
and what that really is is we are going to share with you a lot of the various
accomplishments and things that have occurred over the past year and, then, we are
going to pass it over to our division managers who will gladly share some of the
challenges that we see coming down the road in an area that we call coming attractions
and, then, conclude our effort this afternoon with special rewards and some credits. So,
in the meantime we are going to salt in some facts and figures and those kinds of things
in our effort and our hope is that you will have a few wow moments as we -- as we walk
through our presentation. So, starting with the business division, what we will call their
nominees or efforts. We are going to talk first about communication, education and
outreach and this is a department that's made significant steps the past year. We were
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so excited to hire Shandy into our department and she's really taken the reins and run
with some of the effort that had been advancing rather slowly. I have listed here a
number of things we developed and implementing the communication plan for the
department. We have done some excellent effort on our newsletter, which is one of the
things that we are trying to do as we communicate across the 24/7 operation in multiple
locations and really trying to keep our employees engaged in what's happening on the
Public Works front. We are initiating a number of website improvements and one of the
highlighted pictures here is the third grade tours. We have the pleasure of sharing
Public Works with over 2,000 students as they come through the tours here at City Hall.
So, a great outreach effort that we have a lot of fun with. Furthermore, you saw the
introduction of the Public Works project map this year. That's getting good use where
we are able to communicate exactly those areas of impact on our community. We are
doing a lot of improvements in our project noticing. So, we are trying to reach out as we
touch citizens in their areas and impact them on what's coming, when we are there,
and when we are finished. A l ot of effort on the social media front and you will see,
obviously, the tenth annual Public Works Week where we had another successful
campaign. Over a thousand citizens joining us. A lot of those are children where we
give them education as to a very important role that Public Works is playing in the
community. Environmental programs.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cavener: I don't -- I don't want to interrupt, but I'm going to, because I think it's
important to just share. The work Shandy is doing on social media, engaging the public
specifically about the plastic recycling, you don't find a lot of healthy, collaborative
conversations on social media anymore and that's a place where you're really seeing it
and I just wanted to credit you and Shandy for continuing to communicate with the
public. There were some hiccups on the rollout and the accountability from the city was
great and its willingness to engage with the public was superior and I just -- before you
moved on I wanted to make a special note that I see that happening and I know there
are citizens that really appreciate it.
Bolthouse: Good. Thank you, Councilman Cavener. We will pass it on. Shandy is
joining Kaycee and they are over at Boise State working on ways to improve public
communication even further. So, will certainly pass that on and so --
De Weerd: But, Dale, I guess just to add onto it -- and we talked about this when we
met last week, but how -- the departments are interacting with Shandy and sharing
information, making what Public Works does interesting, engaging the citizens in it from
the number of fire hydrants to the number of miles of underground pipe and those kind
of things. You do have people that are now engaged in an entertaining way and who
would have ever thought Public Works was entertaining, so -- but Shandy is working
with each of these divisions to really get that information out there and to make it
interesting -- is exactly what the goal should be. So, it's -- it's fun and I have been
surprised at how many people are engaging in that.
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Bolthouse: Good. Thank you, Mayor, for the comments. And we do have fun. So, it is
a fun topic and -- in a weird sort of way, but it certainly suits our fancy. So, thank you.
Environmental program. We got a -- here is another one that we saw several
challenges on the front of environmental and an opportunity to improve those efforts.
You know, our program -- we started this year and kind of re -- rebuilt and redesigned
the overall plan, which includes, you know, not only the obvious environmental items,
but floodplain, stormwater, sustainable operations, education and outreach, solid waste
and, obviously, here more recently, you know, recycling. So, it's a -- it's a -- it's a
growing program, it's a complex program and we are pleased that we are making
progress on a lot of fronts. Certainly one more recently, solid waste, you're going to be
hearing more about that in the next few weeks, but that's becoming a very large and
complex issue. We are making great strides on the front of energy conservation and we
have a -- we have a multi-discipline team within the department that's looking for
opportunities to move forward on the energy conservation front. So, one of the
departments that we are just going to kind of give you some facts, the asset
management and GIS, which is part of our business division, is really a critical back
bone for our department, both utility operations and our engineering effort, and as you
will see on the slide here, we have got a number of, you know -- large numbers starting
to show up. We have over a hundred assets that we have characterized and attributed
and we are managing those assets. Work orders and the effort that we do to maintain
that system is -- is also coming out of our IPS and I'm pleased to say that 90 percent of
our efforts are proactive in that front and that we are doing the work to maintain that
reliability that we expect. A hundred and ten project drawings have gone into that
database and so there is just a substantial amount of work happening in this area and
we wanted to acknowledge that. Facilities management. We thank you for your
support in allowing us to reorganize a little bit and dedicate some focus on the areas.
That brought to us a dedicated project resource this year. We have been making great
strides on both maintenance projects, as well as project management efforts. Some of
them that are listed here certainly are the ones that are the TI's that we supported
community development on, fire and police projects, which include a variety of topics
from roofs to mold remediation to a variety of things. ADA compliance projects that
were successfully completed. Welcome to Meridian signs identified there. So, we have
a lot of traction occurring in both our maintenance and our project management areas
and we are -- we are very excited about the advancement in that and we appreciate
your support of that. Workforce development. This is an area that, you know, we
continue to invest in and invest wisely in our department employees. We now have
over 50 percent of our employees on staff that have been through our internal
leadership development program. That's a collaboration with Boise State and gives us
the opportunity to give them some basic education and training in accountability and
team dynamics, continuous improvement, problem solving, communication style. So,
really -- really a valuable foundation and allows us to communicate with our employees
and invest in them. We participated in the city's Peak program. There is a few of us
this year and we hope and know that there will be more coming down the line, but in --
in advance of that we -- we worked to develop a four class continuous improvement
course and curriculum with Boise State and worked 22 -- 22 of our key managers went
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through that program this year to learn about the fundamentals of continuous
improvement and that's -- and we believe that's, obviously, the way to do business.
Professional licensing and training. We have 66 staff who require those kinds of
credentialing and you can see that on the chart here as well. So, we are making
investments to make sure that our people are qualified and skilled to do the important
jobs that you have entrusted them to do. On the financial front I hope you were pleased
with the budget that the department brought forward to you. Alex and his team spent a
tremendous amount of time. We are a large budget, it's very complex, we continue to
optimize in -- in our efforts. The CFP ties very closely with that and really is our normal
time horizon anyhow. We have to be looking out ten, 12 years on our operations and
capital, staffing plans and things in order to -- to stay ahead of it. So, we have recently
submitted that CFP. I think the department did a great job and you will get exposure to
that here soon. Constantly looking at rates, fees, and how we balance relative to our
revenue expense sources and as you're aware we look very solid here for the next
several years and here a little bit later Alex is going to talk a little bit more about what
the future holds as we look down the road. Within this team we have got some analysts
working on some pretty cool projects that have yielded some nice benefits. One was
the SCADA SWAT effort , which helped us to, you know, define our SCADA program,
what resources are necessary and how do we move that -- move that program forward
and that resulted in some organization changes and we are -- we are moving down that
road and it will be a guiding effort for some time on that front. The fleet analysis.
Something fairly simple, but -- but going out and seeking out from other organizations,
how and what are the best practices for managing that fleet and the results of that were
nearly a removal of almost half a million dollars of replacement from the previous
schedule that we were working on. So, it does pay. I guess time will tell, but we feel
confident in -- in how that -- that process worked out. On the engineering front we
have, obviously, you know, had a lot of things going on and a lot of things that did occur.
Here is a slide that -- just some facts about engineering. They -- they managed a very
large portfolio of projects and efforts this year, totaling 70 projects. Total capital value of
about 40 million dollars in that -- you know, we are pleased. We are at full staff now, but
that's a complex and complicated portfolio to be managing. As we were seeking to get
to full staff and as we look at the -- the landscape of the labor market, we were faced
with -- with some real challenges and this team took it upon themselves to be proactive
and went out and -- and I guess accomplished a couple of efforts to try to gain some
excitement around the engineering careers that are associated with Public Works and
held and premiered the Dream Big movie, which we had several hundred high school
students attend and also during the education efforts, during the engineering week this
year, we had a lot of students come out and share with them and allow them to tour the
facilities and understand more about what the world of engineering is and how that
relates to the Public Works Department. On the actual water projects front, we -- we
highlight here that our master plan for water was completed and updated. We are
currently defending our area of drilling concern efforts that we had from last year. We
have got a couple of water projects that have -- have or will be coming online very
shortly. Added 12,000 feet of mainline piping and extensions. Also in our replacement
portfolio a couple of big projects. Replaced about 7,000 lineal feet of water main line.
Added a couple of additional pressure reducing valves and I believe we now have about
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26 of those that are helping us to balance water pressure through the five zones of the
city. We also added improved SCADA controls on those PRVs. So, we have better
sight on what's happening at those locations. We completed -- or are in the process of
completing our fourth water treatment facility and that's the one that's at Bear Creek and
that will be coming online here within the next 30 to 45 days and we are in the design
stages of our fifth one, which is over below Black Rock there at Ta conic Avenue. On the
wastewater side, also completed -- or nearly completed the facility plan, which helps
guide the work facility capital investments down the road. Critical lift station
specifications have been standardized and designed. I&I studies. We continue to do --
help direct us towards where we need to be looking at in terms of our maintenance and
repair and making sure that we are not processing groundwater that's finding its way
into our wastewater system, but the highlights of this area certainly are the liquid stream
capacity project, the head works and the -- and the Boise River outfall project, which
replaced a lot of pumps, seal water and efforts, and we look forward to inviting the
Council out here in the next 30 days to take another look. I know we had an opportunity
to go out at the plant last spring. I'm telling you it has really changed and it is very
impressive when you -- when you walk through now and see, you know, the various
buildings and -- and process equipment that's now in place as we -- as we move to have
that particular project completed, you know, late next fall. Just a few things on the
wastewater side. We added 9,500 lineal feet of mainline sewer. That primarily was the
Black Cat phase five, which took sewer down Meridian Road to the -- to the south and
we have one more leg. Warren will talk about that. That will kind of complete that -- the
rest of that effort. We also added 4,100 feet of mainline sewer as part of the ACHD Pine
project that you have seen wrap up here recently and a very important project to
upgrade the pumps at our Black Cat lift station. Almost a third of our flow goes through
that one lift station. So, it's very critical for us. It's performing well and so that was a
good project to get -- to get wrapped up. Streetlights is an all -- an all out program that
we now have and when you start considering that we now have exceeded 7,000 lights
in the city that were responsible for and managing, we added 580 streetlights last year
through both development, city projects, those things -- actually, the city concluded a
number of projects -- six to be exact that culminated in the addition of 82 lights on -- on
some of the critical safe walking corridors and things. That represented almost 400,000
dollars investment, of which a third of that was the money that you have approved
through enhancements and the balance of that was grant monies that we were able to
leverage. You will all see -- also see that we are pretty excited about the fact that we
are bringing in the conversion over to LED lights. We now have almost 1,700. So, all
new lights going in are LED. Any that we touch and replace are also going to LED.
That -- that bodes well as it consumes about half the amount of electricity of a standard
streetlight and -- and maybe equally, if not more important, the reliability and the life of
those lights are significant, such that the -- the amount of maintenance on those is
substantially reduced. So great -- great program, great to have Al heading up that effort
and really managing it and we don't see -- we don't see any stoppage there. I will
highlight that the -- the little screenshot that you see there is that we are in the final
testing phases of a streetlight map, which will be available to citizens as they -- as they
report outages. So, they will be able to go to the map, find the -- find the streetlight,
click on it and report it as an outage. So, stay tuned for that to be coming here very
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soon. Our inspections team. There is no group that feels growth probably more than
this team. Again, we appreciate your support for an additional FTE and I hope you will
recognize that in that graphic that talks about the number of inspections, that that
position was dearly needed and is -- is paying significant dividends. This team
inspected 277 projects this last year and that's a substantial amount of work. We are
very proud of their efforts for the year and, you know, I guess we will stay tuned to see if
that -- that growth continues or if we -- if we see this taper off a little bit. But they are
-- they are a busy bunch. They have to work, if you will, at the -- at the pleasure of the
developers and things that are constructing these projects. So, they require an awful lot
of flexibility in their scheduling and things to be able to be there when they need to be
on these projects and ensuring that that infrastructure is going in right and will serve the
community for years. On utility operations, as I kind of wrap up my section, here is kind
of one of those wow pages the Mayor had mentioned. So, you will see that we are
almost -- we are headed towards 36,000 customers in our water department. We have
added 1,700 plus. You look at 16,600 valves that we are having to manage and
exercise and -- and, you know, that's an example where GIS comes in. We got to know
where every single one of those valves are at buried in the street, so that we have
access to that. Approaching 600 miles of pipe. We should be there next year at this
time and for the year pumped 3.4 billion gallons of water and just to kind of bring that
home a little bit, we figured out that we could draw a bath for every man, woman and
child this side of the Rockies and that's -- that's to give you a little order of magnitude on
what 3.4 billion gallons means and that's assuming 50 gallons per a bathtub. So, a lot
of -- 68 million baths worth of water that we -- we pump out. The water department
completed some critical activities of the year. Updated and completed all their
emergency response planning efforts. The operation and management of three water
treatment facilities, which were critical to our zone two and some of the challenges we
were having and that in conjunction with the enhanced or accelerated flushing effort, we
have seen a significant reduction of about 50 percent of our water complaints
associated with those quality items, brown water, clouding water, those kinds of things.
So, knock on wood, we think that they are certainly headed the right direction and our
treatment facilities and flushing programs are paying dividends for the community. They
also had a significant DEQ inspection that came in and reviewed the entire water
department's effort and they were one hundred percent compliant without violation on all
fronts for that inspection and so an excellent accomplishment by the water group.
Wastewater. A f ew facts to chew on there. So, here is your -- here is your miles of pipe.
We -- we added about 19 miles of wastewater pipe this last year through the projects.
Obviously, a number of those are developer driven. You can see the graphic that I just
picked the month of July and I said let's just look at a million gallons per day happening
in those months of July and you can see the climb. That's going to suggest we are
going to be over 18 -- or, excuse me, eight million gallons a day next year when we
update you and, interestingly, as we -- as we look at the declining balance reports, if we
approve nothing more we have 13.5 million gallons of flow committed in the
developments that are out there platted and waiting and ready to go. So, it is very good
that we are making progress on our capacity expansion. That will bring that facility up
to 15 million gallons a day capacity. It will be none too soon to gain that capacity. On
the -- on the wastewater operations front, you know, we have completed our first full
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year of NPDES compliance with our new permit and they have done so flawlessly. We
have met all guidelines as required. Also went through a significant compliance
inspection by DEQ and came through that without incident as well. The capacity and
head works projects have substantial requirements to tie into the existing processing
system and that takes substantial coordination by our operations team and every one of
those have been done virtually flawlessly and without disruption to the process and
that's -- that's not without the significant effort of our operations group at wastewater.
Also wanted to point out that we did -- as you're aware last fall getting new NPDES
permit that authorizes us -- excuse me -- a reuse permit that authorizes us for the next
ten years to continue with our reuse water program. Idaho Power asset purchase for
the power lines was completed and successfully navigated and so we -- we -- we own
and operate the distribution system out there at wastewater and are doing so at a
substantial cost avoidance of the facilities charged that we had on our bills. Talk about
a group that's seeing the effects of the new permit -- thought we would throw down just
a -- just an idea of the kind of workload that our laboratory staff is supporting, along
with our operators in order to meet our compliance testing and -- and also the
knowledge and awareness of what's happening in our operation. So, thousands of tests
occurring in our laboratory on an annual basis and I can see by some smiles that you
have -- you have focused in on the -- on the -- the rag ball 2.0. This is part of the
digester five cleaning project. So, we have two -- you know, two large digesters on the
solid side and, obviously, things get through -- these are very large tanks and we had to
clean one of them this year and it -- it was quite a challenge. The little harpoon you see
there was developed by our maintenance group and it's kind of a harpoon that goes
down in and helps extract some of the rags and materials you see. So, I think that they
are pretty proud there of the effort and the victory of getting that stuff cleaned out of the
-- the digester tank.
De Weerd: I think that beat the two -- two ton hairball.
Bolthouse: Actually, this is -- this -- that was a question I asked and this is actually
smaller than the --
De Weerd: Smaller.
Bolthouse: -- than the -- the earlier record.
De Weerd: Hair ball.
Bolthouse: Rag ball. There may be a little hair in there, too, so -- anyway. So, that's --
that's my part of the program and I appreciate you allowing me to share a little bit of the
things, brag a little bit on a lot of the -- the efforts that are happening and I'm going to
turn it over now to Alex and we are going to walk through just very briefly some of those
things coming down the road that we want you to be aware of and under the topic of
coming attractions.
De Weerd: This is the trailer, then; right?
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Frietag: Thank you, Dale. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, good afternoon.
Very pleased to be here to talk just a little bit about the business and administration
teams. Very proud of the effort that these -- these two groups do to support our utility
operations. I'm continuously impressed by the amount of work that they get done on a
regular basis. So, with that, as Dale mentioned, we are going to go into the coming
attractions, which is really just a better look at what's coming down the pike at us, short
term, long term items. So, we will start with financial planning. You can expect our
annual rate model update this winter. We plan on bringing that to you. And in that
discussion you will see our latest ten year projection for the Enterprise Fund balance
trued up against the latest budget growth and CFP numbers. It will show that we still
have a funding challenge out there in years 2028 and 2029. Strategies and
recommendations will be presented at that time. One of the items we will talk about at
that presentation is our pending EPA fee that is actually scheduled to sunset in 2024.
That's four short years away from a planning horizon. So, we garnered about one and a
half million dollars of revenue a year from that fee. So, it's not insignificant. That will be
one of the items that we will discuss when we talk about the rates and fees and what
the future of that fee might look like and potential strategies to close that gap that we
send -- that we see at the end of our ten year plan. On other fiscal fronts, the business
division will be busy working with priority based budgeting. That's the project that
finance is leading and will continue to work on improving our overall budgeting efforts,
reporting capability, and in looking for efficiency to stretch every one of those dollars
that we collect from a rate perspective. Our business programs team is busy. One of
the primary focuses is solid waste management. This is going to be a major initiative
going forward. Through our efforts this past year we have come to realize that this
needs a great focus and probably more directed resources. We have done some
analysis and some recommendations are going to be coming before you very shortly on
directions we think we need to take to continue the focus on those efforts. Our
sustainable operations team has been stood up. We are looking forward and very
excited to see what they are going to be able to provide from an energy conservation,
energy efficiency and cost saving measures. This group is also tasked with working
through our continuous improvement efforts, having identified key performance matrix
for the department, the team will now move on to reporting and fine tuning what that
data is telling us. We look to try to have a dashboard system in place, so that our
division managers will be able to use that data and actually drive their businesses and
improve processes and that team also works very heavily with each of our divisions on
analysis. They do everything from fleet analysis, return on investment, so there is never
a lack of things for that group that they are -- they are working on and, then, finally, in
that area on the workforce development -- Dale mentioned our LDP program. We are
excited. Our next set of students will be going through that this winter. The LDP
program for the Public Works Department is really kind of morphing into a workforce
development program at this point. These are critical skills that we are trying to instill in
our team members to help them with the -- the absolute crazy pace that things are
happening in Public Works, providing them with skill enhancements and problem
solving, critical thinking, team dynamics. These are critical for us to be successful going
forward. Our asset management and GIS team has remain busy. As Dale mentioned,
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we have over 7,000 streetlights in the city now. That asset group needs to be added to
our asset management software. So, that's one of the major initiatives they will be
working on going forward. We need to capture all of those assets, categorize --
categorize them, so that we can generate proactive work against them and cost
tracking. They are also working very hard on ensuring that the data that we bring into
our asset management program is quality. The old adage garbage in, garbage out, that
still applies. So, we have to make sure our data is accurate, so that the decisions that
we are making based on our asset management plan are accurate and effective. On
the GIS front we are going to continue to work on shoring up our accuracy of the
existing infrastructure that we have throughout the city. This speaks to the ability of our
mapping software to actually be able to pinpoint where those buried assets are in the
city and another major effort going forward there will be in realtime data collection from
field personnel. This should help make those efforts easier and faster and anytime that
we can save staff time, save self efficiency and ultimately money and, then, finally, on
our facilities management and capital projects team. As Dale mentioned we have
managed to start to divert that group a little bit. Up until now they have really been kind
of a combined effort on facilities management and -- and project management. Now
that we have them somewhat separated, we are able to kind of focus on the facilities
management side of the house, which is really going forward. It will be two main things.
We have got adding facilities in our city and, then, we have also got trying to maintain
the aging facilities that we have out there. We are looking to develop a full facilities
master plan that will guide us through the next five years. We will look at this plan to
define things, like level of service for city facilities, standard operating procedures for
how our maintenance personnel operate, response plans, and we would like to sync up
all of these efforts with the city's growth projections, so that they are working off of the
same data that the rest of our departments are working off of. We also are going to be
looking to add those facilities assets into our asset management software as well, which
at this point we haven't done. Most of the work orders that those folks work off of are
manually generated. So, once all that data is into our asset management software, a lot
of that stuff can be automated, giving those folks more time to focus on actually doing
the work of our maintenance teams. On the project management side, we are
super happy to have our project manager engaged. She is focusing on two things.
New facilities that the city is adding based on the growth. Fire Station Six is an example
there, but she's also working on projects that will address aging infrastructure and
needs for our infrastructure that may need modified based on what the emergent needs
of the city are. A couple of examples of these might be space planning for City Hall as
we continue to expand. Potentially parking issues. I know we are always dealing with
those kinds of things. We may be bringing before you in one of the future budgets a
look at City Hall plaza, the brick and cement out there may need rehab work. So, just
some examples of some things that are coming down the pike that -- that we are looking
at from the facilities and capital projects team. So, that's just a very quick high level
view of some of the things coming at you from the business administration teams. I am
going to turn this over to Warren now to talk a little bit about the engineering and the
inspection staff, so Warren.
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Stewart: Thank you, Alex. And good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the
Council. I'm going to take just a few minutes and give you a snapshot of what's coming
down the road for engineering and inspection work groups and what's going to be taking
up a fairly significant amount of our time. So, we will start with the water side of things.
Rapid growth is one of the major driver -- driving forces behind much of what I'm going
to touch on today. As the valley grows demands on our water supply will increase.
Administering and protecting the city's water rights that we already have is going to be
essential and ongoing. Flexibility, mitigation, availability are some of the words that I
would use to describe some of the efforts that we are engaged in now with regards to
our existing water rights, making sure that we have the flexibility to use those at the right
time in the future is important and there is ongoing efforts all the time regarding that.
We are also going to be planning and taking steps to ensure that the city has the water
that we need in the future by evaluating options like a reasonably anticipated future
needs application to the Department of Water Resources. We are protecting the source
water for our wells with ongoing efforts as well. We have been working diligently with
the Idaho Department of Water Resources, as well as other stakeholders --
stakeholders to ensure that well drilling practices, as well as well abandonment
practices are protecting our aquifer from human introduced contaminants, as well as
naturally occurring contaminants in our aquifer that we are trying to keep those from
spreading into the portions of our aquifer which we draw water from. In some areas of
town, as you know, it is difficult to find naturally occurring water that is of sufficient
quality to meet our customers needs. In these situations we are constructing facilities to
improve water quality to our customers to meet their -- their customer satisfaction
needs. As Dale mentioned, treatment facility number four is under construction.
Treatment facility number five is in design and there are five more treatment facilities in
the ten year plan. We are also working to construct and expand our distribution system
in a manner that will allow for reasonable and -- reasonable growth and to guide growth
in the way that we would like to see it move forward. So, these are some things that are
kind of impacting both water and the wastewater side. I will touch on them and, then, I
will jump to the -- sort of the wastewater side of things. Engineering and inspections
have also been working diligently to fulfill the commitments made as part of the -- as
part of the south Meridian annexation effort. The final phase of the sewer line
construction in Linder Road and the final phase of the waterline construction in Victory
and Ten Mile are both planned to be started in 2019. So, we -- as of 2019 we will have
basically completed those -- those commitments that we made when we annexed all
those properties in south Meridian. Last year in a presentation to Council I took some
time to talk about the challenge that was coming our way with regards to serving
sections of southwest Meridian -- or southwest Meridian impact area, as well as the
McDermott Road area. This is still a looming challenge for us, both from the standpoint
of logistics and timing and cost and we are going to be initiating the design and
construction process in 2024, but as you know there is a lot of development pressure in
certain areas along that corridor and that -- we will -- we will see how that impacts things
as we move forward, but the plan is still at this point to start the city initiated projects in
2024. Deteriorating infrastructure and the huge cost associated with that is a concern
for many -- many cities across the U.S. Although most of Meridian's infrastructure is
relatively new, it will eventually need to be replaced. The timing of that replacement and
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how it is funded is something that we are currently evaluating. We want to make sure
that Meridian is prepared when that eventuality comes and we know that we don't want
to be in the same position as some of our neighbors to the east. So, we will be bringing
back a presentation to the City Council sometime in this coming year that will share with
you what we have found out and, essentially, propose some options and alternatives
and seek your direction in helping us to adequately prepare to make sure that the City
of Meridian is prepared to address this issue when it comes our way and you can look
forward to that. Okay. Now, I will touch on some of the wastewater side. Much of our
efforts for the next few years, as you can imagine, will revolve around the ongoing
expansion of the wastewater treatment plant. Once the current liquid stream and head
works projects -- projects are complete, renovation of the old treatment plant will
commence, as will expansion of the solid side of the process, with an additional
digester. As a side stream phosphorus removal process will also be constructed, as will
an enhanced tertiary filtration process. As flows and loads continue to grow, the second
-- the second phase of our NPDES permit approaches we will also have to build
additional aeration basins and we will have to look at addressing issues like
temperature. So, you will see in the -- in the little snapshot there of some of the ten
year plan, some of those items and they are significant and costly, but we will be
addressing those and designing and preparing for those. In order to facilitate these
efforts, the engineering and operations teams are regularly evaluate -- evaluating new
technologies in hopes of discovering the most efficient and most cost effective way of
meeting our needs. We are also working to obtain a second access to the wastewater
treatment plant. We have spoken to you guys about that a little bit before. This will not
only make ongoing operations and constructions more -- and construction more
convenient, but is necessary as the square footage of buildings that we have out at the
wastewater treatment plant breaks the threshold required by the fire department that we
are required to have a second access. It's been challenging. It's been difficult to find
willing partners whose conditions to work with us haven't been too onerous, but we are
making progress and we do anticipate that we will soon be able to come to you with
additional information, as well as a possible solution for that. As you saw in the slide
that Dale shared with you, the bar graph of the inspection team and the work that they
have been doing, that workload has been growing substantially with all the development
that's taking place. The sheer volume that they are dealing with is substantial. In
addition to the number of projects that this team inspects, there is also an increasing
demand for the field data to help facilitate the work of other groups, like GIS Accella,
asset management, operations and engineering. Developing SOPs and processes for
these work groups and the sharing of this data takes time and training. It also -- this
group also has to deal with the constantly changing construction methods and
technologies that come into play, as well as the changing specifications and our design
standards. They have to constantly be educated and keeping themselves up on that
and they also have to work to educate our contractors, so that our contractors are
installing and constructing things in the manner that will give our citizens the best quality
and long term value for the infrastructure that is going into the ground. And as you
might imagine, scheduling and resource allocation is another challenge. As contractors
often want to work late nights and weekends, so scheduling is a big challenge. We also
have inspectors that occasionally want to take a vacation with their family, so this is
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always a difficult challenge for the inspection team is just managing all of the various
times that they have to be available. And last for me is streetlights. So, as indicated in
the previous slide, the streetlight program is -- is an expanding work area. This past
year we realized that power lines that run from our meter to our light pole runs had not
been being located when Dig Line called in and requested utility locates. But they
should have been. So, to address that -- well, fortunately, we hadn't -- because many of
these are co-located with other utilities we hadn't had any significant events, but we
realized that that's something that we needed to address and so we have been working
with outside help, getting a contractor on board and working with our purchasing
department to get a contract to provide utility locates for the power lines associated with
our streetlights and we will be able to hear in the very near future when Dig Line calls
we will be able to appropriately respond and get out there and mark those, because this
certainly represents a significant liability to the city that we want to make sure that we --
we close as soon as possible, so we are working on that and we are making good
progress. We are also working on a long-term plan for streetlights that will address the
location of new lights, as well as the funding options, inventory maintenance and
technological innovations as we move forward. Al, who is our transportation utility
coordinator and administers our streetlight program, has also been working diligently
with ACHD and ITD to improve coordination and collaboration on roadway projects that
we believe will result in increased cooperation, as well as funding for streetlight projects
that we do or for roadway projects that include streetlighting with those two agencies
and we are excited to see how that progress -- or how that effort on his -- his part will --
what results will come from that. We believe that there is some -- some projects that will
be coming down the pike where we will see some -- some better collaboration on
streetlights and -- and actually be able to provide more streetlights and we will be able
to leverage the money that we have even more effectively. So, with that I will turn over
the time to Laurelie.
De Weerd: Thank you.
McVey: Hi, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Thanks for giving us a few minutes
of your -- I guess it's now evening. So, I have spoken to you quite a few times over the
last few years about advancements in laboratory detection levels down two parts per
trillion and beyond. With these advancements in detection levels there has also been
advancements in studies completed by EPA around safe levels of constituents in our
drinking water. The great news for Meridian is that we have plentiful clean water in our
aquifer. However, we regularly watch the regulatory horizon for new or lowered health
advisory limits and it's important to note that these aren't regulatory limits, but we still
strive to meet these to protect all of our citizens. The good news Meridian's drinking
water is below these advisory levels and are proactive installation of the treatment
facilities that both Dale and Warren have talked about, are a big part of why we are
there. You will continue to see advanced drinking water treatment as a trend around the
nation as we maximize the utilization of the precious resource that is water. In support
of that will be completing several important additional steps in the water division to
prepare ourselves for continued growth and regulation over the next few years. Oops.
Sorry. One of those will be completing the UCMR4. What that is is a nationally
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required set of samples that EPA requires for new constituents that they are curious
about that we have to monitor for. So, that will be a big sampling event that will take
place next year. Another improvement is the abandonment of old wells, like Warren
talked about, that do not produce water quality that meets our standards. Proper well
drilling and abandonment is a critical step to protect our deep aquifer from many of the
contaminants that we just discussed. We have previously abandoned three wells and
you will see future enhancements to abandon two additional wells. These are generally
older wells that were drilled without the standard methods that we drill today's wells
with. Another big step that we are taking to keep up with advancing the treatment
technologies is the requirement for -- for all of our water division operators to obtain an
Idaho drinking water treatment one or higher license over the next year. You may have
cringed at this math and chemistry, but that's what's on these tests. They are certainly
not simple, but we are committed to getting our staff through this as a group over the
next year. We are already putting together internal training classes to help all of our
staff members succeed. These licenses not only ensure our staff members hold the
minimum required levels of knowledge to operate our treatment facilities, but they also
bring professional distinction to our staff in the city. With this added value over the next
few years we will need to continue with HR to look at our organizational and
compensation structures throughout the utilities to ensure we keep and retain our
qualified highly trained, highly licensed staff. This coming year we will also finalize our
corrosion control treatment study. So, understanding the specific water chemistry and
its interaction with the pipes in our system is really critical for us to provide safe drinking
water. Pipe corrosion due to specific water chemistry has become national news a few
years ago and the regulators are reacting to that. It is an obligation of large water
systems like ourselves to study and understand the impacts that their source water has
on the pipes in their system, to ensure no harmful contaminants are leached from the
system pipes. Large systems must also study and develop track and treatment
strategies to employ if corrosion is found to be a concern, either now or in the future.
This study represents a move towards best practices and is proactive, rather than
reactive, which is where a premier city like Meridian should continue to be. We are
currently working with Sensus, our water meter provider, and we have a great
opportunity to evaluate an AMI system over the next year to better understand the value
of this type of system for our city. An AMI system could improve our automated data
collection and endpoint customer service and is likely the utility service reading and
billing of the future. With this system we could eventually be able to see realtime water
meter data from our base station, rather than having to drive to each specific meter in
our system. We could do things like leak checks and final reads from our main office
hub. It will be exciting to evaluate the costs and benefits associated with this system in
the coming year to make the best decision for the department and ultimately the
citizens. In our water utility it's really exciting to see Meridian on the forefront of further
educating our staff, conducting important proactive studies, and continuing to evaluate
and install treatment technologies to allow us to continue to provide safe water for our
citizens now and into the future. So, something that touches both of our utilities is our
SCADA system. It's an essential program element for both. We have come a long way,
but we still have a long way to go. I am pleased to announce that we are making
progress on filling our SCADA and instrument tech positions and over this next year this
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team will be busy learning and improving our system, which will further reduce our
reliance on outside contractors and improve the robustness and reliability of our ever
growing SCADA network. Instrumentation and automation only continues to grow as we
add additional wells, lift stations, and treatment facilities, both at water and wastewater.
Planning on how to keep up with this new automation, integrating it into our system and
keeping up on ever evolving technological trends will be an important part of our
upcoming SCADA master planning efforts. In our wastewater utility we also show a
pace that is not slowing anytime soon. We have made significant progress on our
current construction projects, as both Dale and Warren mentioned, but we have to start
planning now for the next phase of upgrades that will be required to meet our final
permit limits in 2026. To do this we will begin retrofitting our existing plant nearly as
soon as the new plant comes online. Tying these two plants together and learning how
to operate them in parallel will be a significant challenge for our staff over the few
coming years. You will see that diagram down on the lower right is our staff's effort to
understand how all of those pipes interact and connect. Additionally during the short
window we will also be adding a side stream phosphorus removal facility, which will help
us form struvite where we want it, not in our pipes, valves, pumps, mixers as it does
today. That's the picture up on the top struvite plugging up our pipes. Learning how to
run and optimize this facility will be another significant hurdle for our staff. We will also
be adding tertiary filters and additional aeration basins as Warren mentioned. To give
you a little bit of an idea about the magnitude of these tertiary filters, I wanted to put this
diagram in here. So, as you can see, a human hair is 50 to a hundred microns across.
Our current filters at the plant are ten microns, which are proportional to those little blue
dots. The new filters will be even finer than the little red dots, allowing us to remove
trace amounts of phosphorus and other constituents to meet our final permit limits.
These new facilities will give us the treatment capacity and attention time to treat down
to the ultra low levels that are required to meet our permit limits in 2026. Learning how
to operate and fine tune what will essentially be a brand new facility, operating in
parallel to our older plant, is a daunting task facing our operators and mechanics. We
will need significant training and additional staff resources to meet these new demands.
As such we have began to move towards 24/7 staffing at the treatment plant. Thanks to
your support for an additional operator this fiscal year we will be able to reduce the
unstaffed overnight hours at the facility by two hours each day. To fully reach 24/7
staffing by 2020 we conservatively estimate an additional three staff members, two
operators, and one mechanic will be needed to cover these new shifts. As the facility
grows in size and complexity, the permit limits become more and more stringent and
every single minute counts towards meeting compliance. These new staff members will
join our talented operational maintenance crews in keeping our facility running 365 days
of the year while meeting these increasingly stringent limits. Speaking of new limits, we
will be faced with a permit renewal, which may add new limits or lower some of our
limits in 2022. I know it felt like we just got a new one, but another is coming. However,
we are lucky several of our neighboring cities get to go first and our operations and
engineering teams are watching closely and working collaboratively with them to
understand the changing regulatory horizon and its potential impact on Meridian. As
Warren mentioned, one of the issues we are watching very closely is what the
temperature limits that the city of Boise and city of Nampa are faced with meeting in the
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near future. It's important to note that Meridian does not have a temperature limit, but if
we were, it could have significant financial and operational implications. So, both the
city of Nampa -- or city of Nampa and city of Boise are considering innovative strategies
to deal with these limits, such as looking at variances and looking at producing Class A
reclaimed water to be utilized in irrigation canals. Both of these strategies are newer to
our state and have not been approved yet, but as I mentioned, we are actively engaged
in understanding the limitations and opportunities of -- for Meridian around these topics.
I would like to mention another one of our teams that's been significantly impacted by
staff changes. Our collections team. Since early 2017 we have had seven staff
members leave out of a team of eight people. This means a lot of transitions, hiring,
and training has been occurring in this group. We have found it very challenging to
retain some of our entry level positions in this highly competitive job market.
Unfortunately, this has also slowed down our cleaning and TV'ing goals, since you can't
operate the vehicles without the people. We are continuing to work on getting caught
up and back on the established schedules. Getting this group staffed, keeping the
equipment up and running, and catching back up will be -- continue to be a high priority
for the wastewater division over this coming year. In closing, there are four major
themes that I think resonate for the two utilities that will keep us extraordinarily busy
over the next few years. One, keeping up with increasingly advanced technology. Two,
learning how to operate new and complex facilities. Three, more stringent regulations.
And, four, challenging staffing resources and new advanced licensure requirements.
With your support we will continue to tackle these challenges as we have in the past.
So, with that I will turn it back over to Dale for some closing remarks.
Bolthouse: Thanks, Laurelie. Every time I get done looking at what engineering and
operations and the other groups do I'm just stunned and proud to be part of a team
that's able to manage, you know, a 38 million dollar revenue, 36 million dollar expense,
capital complexities. We just have an excellent team with the capability to manage this
in a very professional way and so I want to just take a moment -- we got a special
recognition that we want to acknowledge. So, one that you're familiar with is that, you
know, Alex was honored with a supervisor of the year for the city. Jason was also
honored as an employee for the city. We have a number of individuals and teams that
were recently recognized in our department. Each year during our annual picnic we
have peer nominated projects and individuals that we try to acknowledge and you can
see a very distinguished group of contributors to the department. Don Case was -- was
voted the employee of the year. Chip Hudson, who I think is the longest tenured
employee in the City of Meridian, as a supervisor. You can see some very deserving
teams. We talked about the challenges that had been met by inspections and the
maintenance team and wastewater. The conclusion of the Black Cat five trunk sewer
and the Bower Street parking facility was even -- was even acknowledged. One of the
more worthy and notable accomplishments is Adam and Jason, who took this year's
cornhole championship at the picnic and that's -- that's significant because they did
dethrone a two time champion in their -- in their efforts. So, the -- also the kickball
award winning team was water, but that -- that decision is still under review, so -- we
have got some regional winners. We have got a couple of folks at wastewater, Nate
and Keith, who were acknowledged for the respective professional areas by SUOS. We
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have a number of individuals who have achieved elevated certifications or licensure
milestones and you can see the -- the names here listed. I do want to, I guess, point
out that just as recently as Saturday Travis Kissire, our wastewater superintendent,
achieved his third required certification at the class four level and he now is one of four
in the state that has that distinction of having that level of licensure. Of course Laurelie
is one of the others that we are -- we are pleased to have on our team, but that's a --
that's a substantial accomplishment by -- by Travis and we certainly congratulate him on
that front. He -- he hit the -- the trifecta, if you will. And, finally, you know, we
acknowledge some of those individuals, but it -- but it really does take a whole team to
deliver the kind of effort throughout the year and allows our department to contribute to
the premier City of Meridian and so I'm proud to present the Public Works team. So, I
think what they say is let's roll the credits. Alex was going to sing for some music
background here, but we decided --
De Weerd: Thank you, Alex, for turning it down.
Bolthouse: Thank you for allowing us to take a minute and -- and put a face to all that
effort. So, with that we are done and would be happy to stand for any kind of questions
and I have got the great expertise in the room that would be happy to answer any
questions you might have.
De Weerd: Thank you, Dale. And great information. It is mind boggling at times to
really absorb everything that your divisions are handling and -- and juggling and -- and
doing so well. So, thank you, again, to each of you for what you contribute to the
success of this department and -- and for a job well done. Council, questions?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Not a question, a quick comment. I was fortunate enough to be the Public
Works liaison for the past year and, honestly, I was really intimidated when I was
assigned Public Works and I really just want to credit Dale and your whole team for
investing in me as a Council Member to make sure that I was educated on -- on what
was going on within your department, so that I could be a better asset. I think Council
Member Little Roberts is taking over and -- and you can't ask for a better department.
The evolution of Public Works over the past four years has just been remarkable and I
just did tribute it to your leadership and the culture in the department and really all of
your staffs' commitment to excellence. I was just -- I really think you're a gold standard
for a public works department in our country and I appreciate your great work. Thank
you for your nice comments and we will make sure our team hears that.
De Weerd: Thank you. And no questions?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I'll offer one. Two, really. Can you e-mail this presentation around to us?
Bolthouse: We can. Absolutely.
Borton: It's great data in there. The earlier slide -- I think it was on Warren's -- the deck
that he presented had the growth related capital expansion plan at the treatment plant
and is that sequence of improvements budget -- budget constrained or is it sequenced
in a manner to match our projections? Meaning would we do it quicker if we could?
Bolthouse: No. Actually, that -- the bulk of those major expenses are sequenced to the
permit requirements and our capacity requirements. So, we -- we start with that and
kind of work our way back to confirm that we have the -- the proper revenues and
budgeting, you know, in -- in the proper years. So, those -- those are matched to when
we need those investments.
Borton: So -- Madam Mayor. Doing them earlier isn't -- wouldn't be part of the plan if
revenue was available?
Bolthouse: It would not be part of the plan necessarily, no. And, in fact, some of those
opportunities that Laurelie referenced as we watched some of our neighboring cities
prepare for their next permit requirements and some of the more innovative options
could even suggest that we may have the opportunity to delay or defer portions of those
investments, which we would, obviously, choose to do if we -- if we could. So, right now
we have a base case on how we plan to achieve the NPDES compliance requirements
and that's what's reflected in the current CFP and our -- and our solvency projections as
a department.
De Weerd: Which on that solvency you will need to have further discussion.
Bolthouse: Yes, we will. We will be back, because, as Alex indicated, we have got --
although we are very solid for the next several years, when you look out in years nine
and ten and, actually 11 and 12, we are anticipating another substantial investment
required for both regulation and growth and that has yet to be considered in our funding
modeling and so that's what we will be back to talk to you about. It's probably prudent
that we start thinking about that sooner than later.
De Weerd: Well, thank you, and thank you, again. We appreciate you being here and
even more so we appreciate all you do.
B. Finance: Purchasing Policy Update
De Weerd: Okay. Item 8-B is under our Finance Department.
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Watts: Thanks, Madam Mayor, Council Members. The update or revisions that I am
presenting to you for consideration, which will be next week I'm told, but for discussion
today is going to -- will help the Public Works team actually accomplish things a little bit
quicker. What -- the changes that I'm proposing are very minor. They are, essentially,
just taking advantage -- or complying with the new state statutes that were passed in
2017. So, we are below the limits that the statutes currently allow and this is going to let
us move up to take advantage of what is allowed by state statute. I have sent you a
couple of e-mails and, then, give you a draft policy to review. There was one change in
the -- in one of the e-mails that I sent -- the last one that I sent did have a change in the
Public Works construction dollars, which I will go over with you, but, essentially, the --
the policy is going to comply with statute and statute essentially tells us when we can go
out for an informal bid versus a formal bid. That's what the statute really tells us.
Anything underneath that informal bid process is set by the city and I have some
recommendations in here for that as well. The one change for Public Works bonding,
the statute does move up to a 50,000 dollar threshold and what -- what we tried to do
when we -- when we changed the statutes back in 2017 is we tried to make it a 50,000
dollar flat line all the way across. So, then, agencies and employees wouldn't have to
guess what was it 25 years, at 30 years, at 50 years, at a hundred, so we made it a flat
50,000 dollars and that's where the statutes first take place or -- or discuss
requirements of agencies. For -- for goods and services where the statute allows us
to require just written quotes up to 50,000 dollars and, then, from 50 to a hundred
thousand dollars we must issue an informal bid. Those are issued by purchasing and,
then, at a hundred thousand dollars and above, the formal bid process must take place.
That's where I am recommending is that we move up to that. Currently ours is at
25,000 dollars is where the informal bid process. We are going to move that from 25 to
50 and, then, take that up to a hundred thousand dollars for informal bid and a hundred
thousand dollars -- or above a hundred dollars will be a formal bid process. Currently
staff has to get three written quotes at 10,000 dollars -- of course, staff's always trying to
get us to bump that up as high as we possibly can. I am recommending at least moving
it to 15,000 dollars, if Council has any other recommendations. As you know in today's
dollars 15,000 dollars even doesn't get us very far, but that's the starting discussion
point for obtaining three written quotes. For contracted services that is going to follow
that same dollar limit as goods and services. Quotes are required at 15,000 dollars.
Three written quotes from 15,001 up to 50,000. And, then, an informal bid or RFP
process will be from 50 to a hundred thousand and a formal bid process again at a
hundred thousand, which all complies with state statute. Public Works construction
bonding -- previously bonding was required for every project that you let and it was not
practical at all and if you had a 1,500 dollar tile job out here in the lobby you would have
to get a payment performance bond and a lot of sureties won't even issue a bond for
that small of a dollar amount. So, it was irrelevant. When I called -- several years ago I
called the State Public Works manager and asked his advice and his advice was use
common sense and -- because the statute didn't address it properly. The statute now
addresses the payment performance bonds at 50,000 dollars. I have discussed that
with legal. They also agree that that should be a starting point. So, we are not
spending money on bonds on the projects that we are least likely to have problems with.
The bigger problems are, of course, where we have issues with payment performance
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bonds, so that's where we should focus our time. Public Works construction. Currently
we have quotes required -- I believe -- I will have to go back and look at my original
policy here. I believe it's at 10,000 dollars and we are -- we are suggesting that we take
that up to 25,000 dollars for construction as a minimum. That will -- that again -- and I
hear from Public Works staff telling me that 25,000 dollars isn't going to get them very
far, but it's better than 10,000 dollars that we currently have before you have to get three
quotes. So, anything above 25,000 dollars to 100,000 dollars will require three written
quotes. From 101,000 to 200,000 dollars that will be an informal bid process where we
just send it to three contractors. We don't have to formally advertise it. And, then,
anything over 200,000 dollars will be where the formal bid process begins. So, that, in a
nutshell, is the -- the changes and the reasoning behind it. It's just to comply with state
statute. I will state that we are the last agency -- I did a poll from the Idaho Public
Purchasing Association and I'm still on the board and everyone else has implemented
these changes without any issues at all. We are the last ones to implement this and it's
not a bad idea to let everybody else go first and see if it works out as well as we thought
it would, which it has. So, with that, if there is no issues or -- or questions on this -- I am
on vacation next week, but I -- I believe Bill could put a resolution together to put it up
for a vote next week and I have had several projects that are coming up and I have
recommended to the project manager to wait and see what happens with the
purchasing policy, because it will affect some of those projects that are -- that are in the
queue right now. So, with that I stand to answer any questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Keith. Questions from Council?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Briefly, Keith, can you kind of explain to us what the difference is between a
formal and an informal bid.
Watts: They are -- they are the exact same document. I use the same document. The
process is the only difference. With an informal bid you only need to select three
vendors or contractors and send it to those three, you don't have to put it up -- out in the
open. And, then, a formal we advertise and post it on our website and we leave it up for
a minimum of 14 days.
Cavener: Great. Thanks.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions or comments, concerns? Okay.
Watts: All right. I will ask Bill to put a resolution together for next week and we will bring
that for you next week. Thank you.
Borton: Thanks, Keith. Good job.
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Watts: I will also state we are working on a couple of very minor changes for the
upcoming legislative session that we might bring next year as well. A couple more small
changes. But all that's to help everyone get through the process quicker. Thanks.
C. Fire Station #6 Update
De Weerd: Thank you, Keith. Item 8-C is an update -- maybe a couple hours later than
I first asked for it. Hi, Charlie.
Butterfield: Madam Mayor, City Council, thanks for the opportunity. Just a brief update
on Fire Station No. 6. Okay. Well, following up from the last presentation that I was in
front of Council on September 11th, last month, in the discussion we had around the
schedule, we are proceeding with the original timeline, as opposed to going with the
quicker timeline that we talked about. So, with that we did have a design and budget
review on September 18th. It was with the entire team, the design team, construction
team and the team from the city. It was a very productive meeting. We continue as we
move through this process evaluating the budget and looking for places for cost
savings. So, with that, continuing in that process. Right now where we are at --
engineering and finalizing the construction documents this month and into next month.
A couple examples. Emergency signalization that we are going to put on Overland
Road, the design of that, along with the permit from ACHD takes a little bit of time, but
we are working through that this month and next month. Also Idaho Power, it takes
them about six weeks to turn around their engineering for the structure. So, once we
have a pretty good design of the structure and what equipment is going to be in the
structure and what kind of power is going to be needed for the structure, we can give
those plans to Idaho Power and, then, they design the size of transformer and the kind
of feed that they need into a building like this. Another area for value engineering that
we are looking at right now is the landscape plan. So, initially, the plan was given to the
landscape architect, the landscape architect treated his plan of the landscaping around
the building and we have taken that back now to our team, both our internal design
team, city team, and looking for ways to cost saving -- to save costs. Within this there is
so many trees that, for example, have to be on the property this size, but we recognize
that he had about six more than what was needed. So, through that value engineering
we said, well, let's reduce some of these trees and save some money, but still end up
meeting code. Towards the back of the property as you can see on this particular slide,
a lot of area -- the landscape architect had put in perma bark, which is pretty expensive
and we recognized through value engineering can we just put in some natural grasses
in that back area. It will probably end up being an area where the firefighters will
practice flowing some water into and they are just going to wash perma bark around if
we put perma bark and perma bark is pretty expensive. So, through some of these
conversations in this engineering we are saving costs and identifying some ultimate
needs that are going to be best for the property and for the fire department. So, as we
move forward next month we will be applying for a building permit through the city. We
should have our final construction documents done next month as well. Final bid
packaging will head out early December and head out to all the subcontractors for their
review and for them to put into their -- their bids into ESI and, then, looking for a bit
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opening in January. So, again, a pretty brief overview of where we are headed, but
that's really where we are at right now during this month, next month, and a couple
months ahead. So, with that I would stand for any questions from Council or the Mayor.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, any questions?
Cavener: Thanks for the update.
De Weerd: Thank you for the update.
Cavener: Appreciate it.
Butterfield: Absolutely.
D. Clean Indoor Air Ordinance Discussion
De Weerd: Okay. Thanks, Charlie. Item 8-D is the Clean Indoor Air Ordinance
discussion.
Cavener: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it is, it's a lot easier to talk to all of
you down here than over there off to the side. As you all may recall, a number of
months ago we collected a whole host of ideas or proposals, things that Council
Members had a desire to work on and address and we kind of established I think what
Council President Borton has called the parking lot and we have been slowly chipping
away at a number of these ideas. As you may recall, we have talked about post offices
and we have talked about how we do elections and parking and a whole host. Some of
those have come with an ordinance, some have just been staff updates and this is just a
further evolution of these conversations that we have been having about implementing a
clean indoor air law. A little bit of background. We in Meridian first started hearing
about this around 2011 when I was actually an employee here. In 2014 there was a
coordinated letter writing campaign to the Mayor and Council. The Mayor provided an
update in her blog and on the Meridian Press talking about it was something that
Council would look at. In 2017 we asked our citizens in the citywide survey their
feelings on that. Seventy percent of our citizens said that they support implementing a
Clean Indoor Air Law. So, this is something that the Council has looked at over the past
six, seven years and I think before us today is a question. Do we want to explore
language and -- and I guess my request would be as we have kind of talked about this
idea of let's -- let's present an idea, if there is some desire amongst the Council to look -
- in this situation it would be getting some language crafted with the Mayor's approval,
myself , or other Council Members could work with city staff to come up with language
that we would bring back to you in a month or two months, give everyone an opportunity
to look at it, review it, and, then, invite that out for a public hearing. So, no action really
today, just more direction from this Council. Is this an issue that we want to look at as a
body and, if so, then, we can start laying out a timeline to get -- I'm not saying that you
are in favor or opposed, but more do we want to have that conversation with City
Council.
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De Weerd: Thank you, Luke.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: What would be your kind of anticipated results of the ordinance? What -- what
would it do?
Cavener: Sure. So -- Madam Mayor. Appreciate the question. I think it's also
important -- I think all of you are all aware, but I think it's also important to put on the
record I work for the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network. In my capacity
with that, my job, I work with municipalities across the state to implement Clean Indoor
Air Laws. I have talked with Mr. Nary about this, whether the City of Meridian takes
action or doesn't take action has zero impact, I won't receive any financial incentives,
nor will they fire me if the City of Meridian chooses not to move forward. But within that
capacity I think I have got some -- some expertise and so -- but for me I don't want this
to be Luke Cavener's Clean Indoor Air Law, this is something that if that's something the
city wants to do I want to collaborate with all of you. Those that are in favor and those
of you that may have some opposition to it. We could bring something back I think as
soon as probably 30 days. If this is something that there is a lot of involvement it may
take longer. Again, the city has been talking about this for eight years. I see no reason
to rush it and bring something back quickly. Rather I -- if this is something the Council
wants to do to be pragmatic about it and do it right.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor. So, what would the law do if it was whatever you wanted it to
be?
Cavener: So, Madam Mayor -- and this can be something we could talk maybe more in
depth in a public hearing to hear from our citizens, but a little background. A number of
years ago -- I believe in 2010 the state passed a Clean Indoor Air Law, which,
essentially, says you can't smoke indoors. Within that law there were two what I would
consider loopholes and that's for -- for bars and businesses that don't serve the public
and employ five or fewer people. Now, that's to me the only example that I can come
up with is you own a business -- like an eBay business, you're selling stuff on eBay and
you don't face the public, you would, essentially, be able to smoke in your place of
business if people aren't coming in to purchase your products. What most people think
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about are bars and so -- and if -- if I had my magic wand I think the direction that I would
want to look at it is something that's comprehensive, so if you serve the public you can't
smoke, whether it's a -- it's a bar or a bake shop, a barber -- again -- and, Mr. Palmer,
perhaps it's because I -- I spent my time as a bartender in college and I look at it as a
trade and I think that we need to be providing the same type of protections to
employees, regardless of the trade that they serve.
Palmer: Madam Mayor? So, you're in -- your draft that you would possibly come up
with would just be that scenario, not necessarily, like you mentioned, your eBay
business or -- the reason I ask -- that intrigued me, is because, you know, we had the
room full of people confused about Scentsy, so if -- you know, if you operate as Scentsy
or whatever business out of your home, do you anticipate that kind of thing or just if
you're serving the public?
Cavener: So -- so, Madam Mayor. I think that's -- that's a great conversation. What
you have seen is, again, a -- a business. So, a -- a retail business, not necessarily a
business that is operated out of your home. Now, if you -- as we -- we have heard from
some individuals during our conversations, there were people that were selling leggings
and had turned their garage into a retail store. Well, I think there are some other major
code issues about that, but that aside would be a public facing business in my opinion.
I would want to get some direction from legal. Sorry, Mr. Coles, I touched a button. But
to me it's -- you know, if you are a public facing business you would be included in this
proposed ordinance.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And from my understanding if you employ anybody -- five people or less. So,
the -- I think the main -- your main concern is for the employees, not the business owner
who has no employees and no public. If you're just doing eBay by yourself and you
don't employ anybody and nobody comes to your house, I don't think that counts; right?
Cavener: And, Madam Mayor, I think -- sorry, Madam Mayor. I think this is -- these
questions are great and is not necessarily the -- the scope of today's conversation. It's
more to see is there some interest, do we want to answer those types of questions.
Again, while I have worked with municipalities across the state to say here is what we
would call some best practices or some model language, we as a City Council, it's up to
us to determine what we think is best for our community. A n umber of weeks ago we
voted to enact a nondiscrimination ordinance. We didn't just copy and paste another
city, we took it upon ourselves to craft language that we support it or not, that best
represented our community. I would see this as no different.
Milam: Madam Mayor? So, personally, I am adamantly against this.
Cavener: Okay.
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Milam: I think it's a -- it's a law that is just a law for the sake of having a law for the most
part. It -- it has such a small scope of effectiveness and on the -- the number of
businesses and -- and it's kind of giving -- we have had these conversations before
about allowing businesses to make those decisions for themselves and since we are
only talking about three or four, maybe, businesses in the entire city that we know of
that serve public -- now I'm not talking about the one that may have the one employee
or -- or whatever, but the bars, the people that go there go there because that's allowed.
The people that work there work there because that's allowed and there are hundreds of
other bars and restaurants that they could employ at without being affected by
secondhand smoke. So, I have done the research, because this came up several years
ago, and so I went around and I talked to the business owners and I talked to the staff
and that was the feedback that I got. I know that if I want to go out and I want to not
smell like an ashtray I go somewhere that doesn't allow smoking and that's my
prerogative. Also the people who do want to go there and smoke somewhere that's not
outside in the ten degree weather have -- have that right and the business owners have
that right to serve them. So, that's where I stand on it.
Cavener: Okay.
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor, I had a question to start with, but I think it's more -- if we
get as far as having a conversation, so I do tend to agree with Councilman Milam that I
think we have got the situation where the laws have taken care of such a large
percentage that I think we are down to the minutia and may not need this.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: I'm open to seeing a draft. I appreciate you saying that, you know, the plan
isn't to just rush and do it. I have heard that before. So, I'm really hoping that that's --
that's the case, because I -- just sitting here I mean, like you said, it's not really the point
is to have this discussion to go into all the details, the ideas, but I have some ideas and
some more or less questions as to what may or may not be possible with it that I would
like to explore and contemplate a draft and -- I mean we had a public survey where the
majority said they didn't want it, we did it anyway. Now, we have a -- in the same
survey a large majority of people who said they do want it, so I think it's at least worth
contemplating a draft and seeing -- putting it out there to get the public's input on it.
De Weerd: Well, oftentimes I think that depends on how you ask the question. There is
just a handful of businesses -- would they have answered the question differently.
Cavener: And, Madam Mayor, I think you bring up a great point. Just for context, while
I was not involved with this, because I was working for the City of Meridian at the time,
smoke free Idaho conducted a survey amongst their citizens. Sixty-eight percent at the
time said that they supported it. The same question was asked again in our city survey
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and it showed a two percent increase. So, I think the response has been consistent that
there is the vast majority of our citizens that are saying they would support something
like this.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And I agree with you and I understand the points on the survey and the
percentage of people, but the thing is probably 90 percent of our citizens don't smoke.
So, the people that are answering the questions aren't affected by this either way. They
are not affected now, nor will they be affected if this law was enacted. The people that
are affected are not the majority. So, they could never have a majority on the survey
and those are the business owners and the people who tend to frequent those
establishments. So, I think -- I think somebody who it doesn't affect answering that
question for somebody that it does affect is -- isn't quite the right way to fix that problem
either. Like I make decisions what you can do, but I don't do it.
Cavener: And, Madam Mayor, the goal tonight was not to defend or present
scientifically validated information to support why this is a good decision, why it supports
I think our citywide strategic plan, et cetera, it's more just to say is this something that
Council wants to take on. As I -- as I mentioned, if there is desire, I'm happy to work on
it. If there is not desire, as Mr. Burton can attest, we have a large parking lot of issues
that we can -- we can choose to focus on, but I would look for direction for moving
forward one way or another.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Council Bernt is not here, I don't know what -- if you had a chance to visit with
him. I don't, quite frankly, know -- I don't know what I don't know on this issue. That
being said, I'm supportive of the process of this group having ideas vetted. So, I don't
know if I really would be supportive of not -- you know, the state found some data that
was compelling enough to restrict it in certain environments. Other cities have found it
compelling enough. There is -- you know, I would like to see the data behind it --
Cavener: Okay.
Borton: -- pro and con. There is the city survey that is of some value of what our
community might want, depending on the question that was asked. So, all of that
piques my interest. So, I probably would want to learn more and maybe see a draft that
Ty is talking about and what other cities have done.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
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De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: And I agree, I mean that's the reason we do this and I brought -- I brought things
forward and you're like, hey, yeah, let's talk about it and it's still didn't go through. So,
I'm okay talking about it and with the process, but I just wanted to give you an idea
where I was coming from first. I don't think data is going to change my mind, but you
never know and I'm totally open to having the conversation and having a public hearing
and -- and find out how the public feels about it.
Cavener: So, Madam Mayor, I think, then, what I'm -- what I'm hearing -- I just want to
make sure that I'm -- I can appreciate sometimes the -- the challenge of staff to -- to
hear a handful of different information and wanting to make sure that the direction is -- is
accurate. Perhaps I can work with staff to come up with some model ordinance
language that I could circulate to Council, perhaps either myself or someone else who
works on this issue, could present to Council -- at least answer some of those
questions, specifically Council Member Borton, a little more history about the state and
why they made the decision that they -- they made and at least provide some greater
context. If after that, if there is not a desire from the Council to move forward to that
point, we stop. If there is, then, perhaps we schedule a public hearing with more
additional information to be provided before we would ever render a decision. Does that
sound sufficient? And recognizing that this might not happen in a three month span,
this may take longer, it may -- we may hear from Council Member Bernt and say I have
got no desire to address this and I would feel comfortable at that point not necessarily
moving forward. My goal tonight was just to say is this something as a Council we want
to look at and if the answer is we are at least open to looking at it, let's do it. If there is
a -- we don't want to look at this, then, let's move on.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: I guess another thought I just -- I don't know if it was good to spend a lot of time
creating an ordinance when the ordinance -- if we were to move forward with anything
might be crafted through our conversation, so if you have an ordinance that some -- isn't
what we -- I mean you could always amend it and change -- you know, obviously, it
wouldn't be going through that day anyway. I just don't want to see you -- you and staff
waste a whole bunch of your time -- you know, we might say, well, okay, we will do it,
but it's for businesses with four employees -- you know.
Cavener: Madam Mayor? Council Member Milam, I hear where you're coming from
and I think it's a chicken and the egg scenario.
Milam: Yeah.
Cavener: It might be to your point not necessarily fruitful to spend a significant amount
of time drafting what I think the Council wants, but to at least start with maybe
something generic and say this is --
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Milam: It's already out there.
Cavener: This is -- this is what other municipalities -- we have I think 28 states in the
United States that have a statewide no smoking law, about 83 percent of municipalities
across the country are covered by a comprehensive law. So, we can poll what other
cities have done. There is a small handful of other municipalities across the state that
are having these same conversations in their council chambers, so I could bring some
of those kind of boilerplate and, Council Member Milam, to your point, if there is a
change that this body wants to include or omit, we at least have a starting point.
De Weerd: Well -- and staff resources. I have to also talk to -- I know Councilman
Borton did the lion's share on the NDO and there was some review from the legal team,
but also to see what their workload is and -- and what kind of time constraints or what
kind of time you will need to -- to help with, so I think everyone's plate is full and where
this would play in the priority of -- of that and how much time is actually needed.
Cavener: And, Madam Mayor, I think it's difficult for me to say, not recognizing the -- the
workload of the legal staff, that this would take five hours or 50 hours, I think that we --
again, my goal is not to have legal staff spend a significant amount of time researching
all that stuff, but merely to provide that. Again, best practices what other cities across
the state have done for their review. It sounds similar to maybe how we began with --
with the nondiscrimination ordinance, merely to bring back some boilerplate for Council
to discuss and if at that point the Council doesn't want to move forward and it's been
very little time of the Legal Department. If there is desire at that point for the Council to
want to continue to move forward, then, I think we would want to engage the legal staff
a little bit more to make sure that it falls within everything else related to Meridian code,
so that we don't have any issues as we get to the public hearing point. We are very
fortunate Mr. Borton is an attorney, I'm not, nor do I try to play one on -- on TV and so
relying on a resource like the city attorney's office or something like this to me I think
would fall within the scope of what a council member would ask of legal staff. I don't
think it's an out of line request. I don't anticipate it being an incredibly taxing request on
-- on legal staff and I think that we all as a Council feel that if that's the direction that we
are hearing from legal staff is that something is boilerplate language for model
ordinances is taxing them, I think we as a Council would want to hear that anyways,
because I think that may be more telling of an overall larger work issue for our Legal
Department.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, I do want to make sure the majority is interested and I do want
to touch base with our city attorney on -- on workload and -- and we can follow up
during our one on ones and -- and follow up next week with Council.
Cavener: Okay.
Borton: Did you get -- hang on a second. Did we get some general direction or do you
feel like you got some direction?
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Cavener: No. Well, I thought I did until -- until we heard that we are going to come
back and talk about this again next week. So, I thought we had a plan, but now I'm
hearing maybe we don't have a plan, so --
De Weerd: I think I need to know what kind of workload it is and how that fits within our
city attorneys and -- and I didn't hear a high priority on this, I heard it -- we can take
some time. So, I need to look at time resources and see what -- what that does to a
timeframe.
Borton: Madam Mayor? For -- for my interest in it going forward, the I don't know what I
don't know part, you might have data available that might not be Meridian specific, but it
might be from -- from the health benefit to municipal organizations and savings and
protection to employees and -- I'm just winging it what there might be out there, but
whatever data you have that might be ground level data that -- that piques the interest
of a municipality to say, oh, there is some -- some unknown dangers perhaps to this
segment of our community that I'm not aware of or we are not aware of as much as we
could be and sharing that, you know, you might have that available, you may be able to
send that to all -- all of us to look at that might have some impact on interest.
Cavener: It's the number one preventable thing we can do to stop cancer. Average
household spends 640 dollars a year to cover cancer related costs in the state of Idaho,
so there is -- I think there is some compelling arguments to be made that I make on a
daily basis. Again, I think that's up for this body to say is -- are those issues that we
want to weigh in on.
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: I think if there is -- if there is a third of a body of lawmakers that are interested
in -- in seeking some help from that body's attorney in drafting a law, I think even if there
is not a majority at the beginning saying, yeah, we are interested, if -- if there is more
than one then -- I mean what -- are we lawmakers or are we just here to pass the
consent agenda and talk about stuff. I think if he wants to get some help in drafting an
ordinance for something that, like you said, 83 percent of other municipalities have
done, like why in the crap wouldn't we look at some language, instead of just coming
back to talk more about data. I mean we get meetings until forever. I mean we can all
stay in office for probably a long long time just having meetings, but he wants to move
forward with some language. Let's put it together and, then, the rest of us will have
something to look at and say, okay, I might be interested in this if we strike this and add
this or, no, we don't want to have anything to do with it. Yeah. We used some staff
time, but we found out that we weren't interested in doing what 70 percent of people
with one version of the question were interested in us discussing.
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De Weerd: All's I'm saying is we will come back with some kind of a timeline once I do
know -- I -- I have never created an ordinance. I don't know what that means. And my
resource is sitting at that end and I would like to chat with them and, then, we can bring
back a timeline to this body and see what the thoughts are.
Borton: Madam Mayor. It would probably make sense --
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: -- for your office and Mr. Cavener to work direct and Mr. Nary to talk about that
as well. So, thanks. Speed it up.
De Weerd: Definitely do that.
Cavener: Great. Thanks.
E. Council: Commission and Board Updates
De Weerd: Thank you. Under Item E is -- I assume last workshop you gave updates on
anything really burning or pressing or -- or going on in -- in your roles as the city rep.
Borton: Madam Mayor, we did. It was outstanding.
De Weerd: I'm sorry I missed it.
Borton: Everybody did an excellent job. So, we could do that again. I think when we
did the liaison changes we anticipated this probably being in the last update of any
external boards that we were on before. I don't know if there were many changes, now
that I think about it, from the external board. So, nonetheless, if there is external liaison
committee group updates of importance that you want to share, please, do. If not, you
can pass. Mr. Cavender, The Conch is with you.
Cavener: Well, thank you, Mr. Borton. Just one thing, because I think from a City
Council perspective, it's -- it's a fascinating process that VRT is going through, so VRT
participates in PERSI, like city employees, but for a period of time have also had Social
Security taxes withheld as well, so one or the other and so the state controller's office
brought that to VRT's attention, they are going through that process to rectify, but with
that a portion of the employee contribution, the VRT board essentially gets to decide --
no. Sorry. The VRT's portion -- VRT gets to decide what to do with those dollars. Does
VRT keep them? Does VRT turn them over to the employee as part of a match? Do
they fund a separate program? And the interesting piece about it is that the -- the
employees themselves have to vote. Are they going to be part of PERSI or are they
going to be part of having their Social Security taxes withheld and once they make that
decision, then, it's up to the VRT board to decide what to do with those funds. So, from
a really odd type of sausage conversation that's what VRT has been somewhat involved
in and it doesn't have an impact necessarily to we in the City of Meridian, but has been
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a fascinating discussion amongst the board about what to do with these particular set of
dollars. And Council Member Milam had brought up an interesting point, just to make
sure we are on the record on that, is that the employees have asked the VRT board to
make a decision about what they would do with the dollars before they would vote to
either stay in PERSI or go back to having Social Security taxes withheld. So, it's been a
wild conversation and the board I think will be making a decision here in the next few
weeks. Happy to answer any other questions about that if you want to go cross-eyed.
De Weerd: Interesting.
Milam: Madam Mayor. I'm trying to think. There is not a whole lot of exciting stuff. I
know that -- well, with SWAC the -- they had purchased those orange bags with the
community recycling fund and that program has rolled out. It's been wildly successful. I
think they had a -- sold out in just a very short period of time -- sold out of free bags and
there was a question board on a Facebook page for it, which is -- gets tons of questions
every single day on what could be put in there. So, the community is definitely engaged
in the program. Hopefully, it ends up being very successful and the right stuff is getting
put in the bags, but it seems like it's really gotten a lot of community engagement and
now you can go and buy the bags from Albertson's, so I'm assuming there is more
participation than just the original 1,500 that signed up.
De Weerd: I like how SWAC actually rolled it out so that you had an opportunity to
know what goes in the bag. In the grocery stores you don't have that and I know that
there is a cost when there are things in the bag that are not supposed to be there. So, I
really applaud the idea behind the rollout. I don't think SWAC or the City Council knew
that when this approach and plan were put in place that we would have the opportunity
to purchase the bags in the grocery stores or we probably would have done things a lot
different, so -- but kudos to SWAC. Mr. Palmer.
Palmer: Madam Mayor, I have nothing to report.
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor, I am the alternate on a whole bunch of -- of items, all of which
you attended. I think the Allumbaugh House was cancelled, that last meeting. So, there
is -- I didn't make it. You must have made it. So, I don't have any external board
updates to provide.
De Weerd: Thank you. Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor. We had high hopes from the Air Quality Board that
something would take place between the last meeting and now. There was a meeting
with the software vendor scheduled and I understand that today they had it last --
attempted to have it last week and cancelled it 30 minutes into the meeting and now the
soft -- three of the software people are scheduled to arrive in town tomorrow. So, I'm
hoping that by Monday's meeting -- because it's been a year since the software was
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selected and still no progress and we are looking at charging our people out in the field
50 cents more a test in order to cover the extra expense that's been ongoing and so I'm
hoping that Monday will give us a lot more information and a lot having been
accomplished this week, because we are -- we are reaching what I feel is a cliff that
needs -- something needs to happen differently.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: For Council's clarification and maybe to add to the frustration, I was the Air
Quality Board liaison over a year ago and so through Council Member Little Roberts'
entire tenure as liaison this project has been delayed and I know that we have voiced
frustrations about delayed projects here at this level and, unfortunately, the air quality
board, they are taking it to a whole other level in being delayed. So, look forward
hopefully next month to -- to good news. That has such a huge impact on all valley
citizens, we really need to get that situation resolved quickly.
Item 9: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: On Allumbaugh House, I think there is a looming debate coming on -- on
that regard, too, as the state has pretty much said we are not going to increase our
funds any longer and -- and the county has also done the same. I -- at this point the
funding subcommittee is -- is looking at -- I guess seeing if Medicaid would be a
reimbursable, which is what the county had asked, to close the gap of funding. So,
those -- those discussions just started. The director of Health and Welfare came to the
last meeting to kind of give a state perspective, which is interesting, because it really is
their responsibility in the mental health and the two partners that really were the
champions of moving Allumbaugh House forward where the county and the state. So,
we look forward to continued discussions on that. You are all invited to Boise Valley
Economic Partnership fourth quarter stakeholder summit, which is October 25th at the
Boise Center. If anyone is interested we can do RSVPs and get you further information
on that. They have had an increase in their request for information and they have a
large number that are currently active and so they are excited about that, about the
opportunity, and they are getting better wage jobs that are doing these inquiries, so --
COMPASS is considering their TIP on the agenda next week. AIC board met last week.
We had -- primarily the board meeting was on upcoming legislative topics from IACI, the
-- the Fire Chiefs Association, the police chiefs and -- and the building officials group.
So, they are -- what they are trying to get is from the various groups, the water users
groups and those -- those on what they are seeing, anything that might have an impact
on cities. We will be having conversations -- we have talked to a couple of our local
legislators, as well as the Council liaison to Community Development, in regards to
some of the challenges that we have had in hiring plan inspectors and building
inspectors, so we will come back with a discussion with Council, as well as area of
impact discussions as we start seeing the elections close, what -- what happens in the
legislature. But we have gotten good dialogue so far on a couple of the issues, such as
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area of city impact and in some of the qualifications for the building personnel that we
are trying to hire. AIC also -- I can't remember what the looming issue was, other than
our own, which is area of city impact and -- and we kind of had an impasse with Jerry
Mason and his opinion on it. So stay tuned. We are continuing discussions on -- on
that. Yeah . Oh, yes. And the fireworks discussion might be an interesting one as well.
So, we can -- I did get a handout on that one and so will scan it and e-mail it out to you
so you have that information available. They didn't have anything printed and this is just
a pre-discussion before the legislative meeting that AIC will call in November. The faith
ambassadors, we had a faith luncheon last week. Thank you to Ms. Little Roberts for
being in attendance. We have a strong faith community that is locking arms and
working with all of our personnel on various issues to continue to have a safe, healthy
community and so we appreciate their partnership. We had two grant requests last
month for ACEM and it was to round out the -- the vision goggles that the law
enforcement agencies need and those requests went to Garden City and Ada county for
a night vision and that really is the substance of the number of different things I'm
involved in.
Item 10: 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 and 74-206(1) j): To consider labor contract matters
authorized under section 74-206A 1)(a) and (b), Idaho Code
De Weerd: If there is nothing further, we can -- I would entertain a motion to adjourn
into Executive Session.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Before we do that, for future -- just on future meeting topics, to reiterate from
my point earlier, it would be great perhaps at the next workshop for us to have a
conversation about who and how the city or the Council is being represented. I know
we are in October, but January will be here before we know it and the legislature will be
in session and I would like to make sure that we are all on the same page, either in
terms of a policy about how -- when somebody goes to speak for the city what steps
has that staff member or the Mayor's office went through before they are purporting to
be representing the entire city. I think our issue this afternoon related to Lime only. Re-
emphasizes the need for us to have that conversation. Second, I would like to get an
update from code enforcement. I don't think the Council has ever really heard from
code enforcement about all the issues that they deal with day in and day out. I, for one,
have a couple of -- I think ideas about maybe some changes to code and I think it would
be, first, important for us to get an update from code enforcement about their work
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before we have those conversations. Maybe another workshop meeting, but sooner
rather than later would be ideal.
De Weerd: Okay. With that do I have a motion?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: Just real quick. I had mentioned -- when you mentioned that I had mentioned
that to the Mayor and I think the idea was -- as part of that to have code enforcement
kind of come walk through that process of here are the kind of the complaints, here is
how we process it, here is who does it, here is what happens next --
Cavener: Great.
Borton: -- and educate us on -- on not only the types of issues they are seeing, but how
they handle them. A second -- before we go in, it was just important to note that our
finance director this Thursday receives the Excellence In Finance Award. A m ajor
award. Is claiming to be wanting to be called his excellence when you see him after
Thursday. So, he might have a medal or a crown of some sort, something to -- some
outward display of his excellence, so -- but Todd is fantastic as you all know. Well
deserved. It's great. So, we are going to be there to help celebrate with him and he
and his department are wonderful. So, tease him as much as you can. I will pick up a
crown. Oh, a sash would be great. He would love a sash. Madam Mayor, I move that
we go into Executive Session pursuant to Idaho State Code 74-206(1)(f), (1)(j) and
206(1)(a) -- (a)(1), excuse me, (a) and (b).
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Mr. Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Bernt,
absent.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
EXECUTIVE SESSION: (6:21 p.m. to 7:41 p.m.)
De Weerd: I would entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session.
Milam: So moved.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried:
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MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: Do I have a motion to adjourn?
Milam: So moved.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor? All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:41 P. M.
(AUDIO R D+NG-GN-PLP OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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MAOA MY DE WEERD DATE APPROVED
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C. J& COLE&I CITY CLERK