HomeMy WebLinkAbout2019-12-10 Work Session MinutesMeridian City Council Work Session December 10, 2019.
A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4:32 p.m., Tuesday,
December 10, 2019, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Joe Borton, Luke Cavener, Genesis Milam, Ty
Palmer, and Anne Little Roberts.
Members Absent: Treg Bernt.
Also Present: Chris Johnson, Bill Nary, Warren Stewart, Steve Siddoway, Jeff Lavey, Joe
Bongiorno and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll Call.
A. Meridian City Council
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: I will go ahead and start the City Council Work Session for December 10th.
It is 4:32. We will start with roll call attendance, Mr. Clerk.
Item 2: Adoption of Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the adoption of the agenda.
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: There are no changes, I move we adopt the agenda as published.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. All those in favor say
aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 3: Consent Agenda [Action Item]
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A. Approve Minutes of November 26, 2019 City Council Work
Session
B. Approve Minutes of November 26, 2019 City Council Regular
Meeting
C. Final Order for Stapleton Subdivision No. 1 ( H- 2019- 0117) by
C4 Land, LLC, Located at 4435 S. Meridian Rd.
D. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Waterwalk (H- 2019-
0111) by dbURBAN Communities, Generally Located on the
West Side Of N. Eagle Rd., North of E. Franklin Rd.
E. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for 840 E. Ustick Rd. ( H-
2019-0098) by Scott Lamm, Located at 840 E. Ustick Rd.
F. Approval of Sole Source Purchase of ArmorMax Armor Plating
for the Police Rescue Vehicle from International Armoring
Corporation for an Estimated Amount Not-to-Exceed $79,000.00
G. Development Agreement for Inglewood Place Subdivision ( H-
2019-0099) with The Pointe at Meridian, LLC, Located at 3250 E.
Victory Rd.
H. Resolution No. 19-2178: Adopting Updated City of Meridian
Finance Policies
I. AP Invoices for Payment - 12111119 - $ 339,015.19
Item 4: Items Moved From the Consent Agenda
De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda, so we will move right
into -- the Consent Agenda. How was that? Mr. Borton.
Borton: Madam Mayor, I move we approve the Consent Agenda as published, for the
Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Mr. Clerk, will
you call roll.
Roll call: Borton, yea; Milam, yea; Cavener, yea; Palmer, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Bernt,
absent.
De Weerd: All ayes.
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MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 5: Department/Commission Reports
A. Parks and Recreation Department: Key Performance Indicators
De Weerd: Item 5-A is under our Parks and Recreation Department and I will turn this
over to Mr. Siddoway. Who, by the way, put on an amazing parade. Him and his team.
It was awesome. Good job.
Siddoway: It was definitely a team effort and I got to give props to Renee as our chief elf
when it comes to parade-related items, but I thank the Council Members that were able
to come and participate in the -- in the festivities. I think it was -- I think I say it every year,
but I mean it every year, that I think it was our best yet and the crowd was amazing. I
think the weather maybe had something to do with that, because it's a little warmer than
usual, but huge crowd, but -- and the people that brought the floats, I just want to say they
really stepped up the floats this year. I mean there were some quality floats. It was a fun,
fun parade, so -- so thank you.
De Weerd: Who did the Under the Sea?
Siddoway: I don't know, but I can find out.
De Weerd: It was amazing.
Siddoway: With the mermaid. Well, thank you. And so you have heard from some other
departments already on KPIs. My purpose in coming before you is -- is to ask, you know,
about -- we have been doing research on KPIs trying to identify -- you know, what we
usually provide. What you might want to hear that we haven't provided and we just want
to know if we are tracking the right things from your perspectives and -- and so I won't
read this to you. You know the mission, vision and values. But I put this on here for a
reason. Everything we do related to KPIs has to tie back to this . It's -- it's imperative to
me that it furthers our mission, ties in with our values, and so as we are, you know, create
charts that, you know, will track these -- I have these at the top of all of them, because I
think the question is if we are tracking this, does it -- does it further this mission? Does it
-- does it enhance this vision? Does it fall in line with these values of quality, community,
and fun? Now, for me one of the most important things that I have learned in going
through this exercise through the summer until now -- I have found three types -- three
categories of KPIs that I divide my KPIs into and I think most would fall into one of these
three categories. Outputs are what we typically present to you. Those are -- when I come
before you in May and we do our strategic presentations , you see the graphs and the
charts that look -- look like this, that have, you know, our registration numbers, I -- you
know, I put by the numbers, because that -- those are the numbers -- the output measures
are the things that we can pull out of our system. In terms of KPIs they are the easiest,
perhaps, to get and certainly a meaningful measure of whether we are growing, we are
stagnant or declining in certain areas, but I think the holy grail of KPIs is not necessarily
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the outputs, but the outcomes. Those are harder and more costly to measure. They
usually come from surveys, but that comes -- you know, the impact on the citizen and as
much as we can I'm interested in -- in those measures and not just the numbers, but
what's the -- what's the impact on a citizen. Now, we have a habit as a city of doing bi-
annual citywide surveys and right now that's where these numbers would come from. So,
these numbers are not monthly, these numbers are not -- you know, we can get monthly
numbers for outputs. Outcomes are going to come when we do a survey and, then, cost
recovery, there has been a lot of added focus and discussion on that and we have adopted
policies in the park system master plan for certain categories of cost recovery and these
-- the ability to track -- now, we track these internally already, but KPI type tool -- I would
like to develop. This is not developed yet. This is an idea to work with Brad Purser in
Finance and just like they are working on all their models for priority based budgeting, I
think we would create some -- some ways to -- to track cost recovery on some of these.
So, with that overview of kind of the three categories, let me tell you the kinds of KPIs that
I see. We are going to go through them in this order. In the parks division we have KPIs
related to public parks, pathways, urban forestry. In the recreation division we have KPIs
related to the things that our recreation manager does, specifically field reservations,
things like that. So, we will have sports, classes and camps, community events and
volunteers. And we have KPIs related the HomeCourt division and our admin division.
So, the first one was -- was public parks. Output measures for public parks. Total acres
that are developed, you know, it's a number that we track. It's an output. Our acres per
thousand LOS, level of service, is one that I think we are all familiar with and one of our
key performance indicators into how well we are keeping up with growth in terms of
providing parks to our citizens. Now -- and this third bullet is not one that we currently
track, but one that I would like to. I call it the community wide effective LOS level and we
have looked into this number once before and what this is is if we were to look at -- I'm a
citizen, okay, and as a citizen my feeling of how many parks are out there is not just based
on the city's public parks, but my HOA park that's across the street and all these other
open spaces, including the schools and things, I would like to work with IT to develop an
ability to look at what I'm calling the community wide effective level of service. When we
looked at it a few years ago, you know, our level of service as a city was about three acres
per thousand. The effective level of service when you included all the private HOA parks
and everything was closer to ten and ten is the number I most often hear nationally as the
national -- they fall short of calling it a national standard, because they know every
community is different, but I -- you hear the number ten acres per thousand a lot out there
and it was interesting to me to see that. Well, when we look at everything, not just our
own, but what the -- what the private sector provides as well, that effective level of service
tends to be closer to that level. So, not to spend too much time on that, but I thought that
needed a little bit of explanation. Outcomes. Now, these -- I took these straight out of
the last citywide survey. So, the questions we asked for outcomes were citizens' ratings
on the quality, appearance, and maintenance of city parks, the quality of our athletic fields,
the number of city parks and the percentage of households who visited a park in the last
12 months. So, those are citizen outcomes that are currently being asked -- have been
asked in the last couple of surveys. So, we would like to see them continue to be
measured whenever -- when a survey does go out. Pathways. We can measure the
linear -- linear feet of pathway added to the pathway network annually. This wouldn't be
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a monthly measure, but -- because they don't happen that fast, but each year we can take
a look and we currently measure those are ones that we do. I think -- you may remember
-- or you may not remember, because you have a lot of strategic presentations, but I
mentioned in my strategic presentation last May that I had just discovered that week that
the number of pathways out in the community was much higher than what I had been
reporting, because we were just focusing on the ones that we do. When we worked with
GIS and looked at what had been constructed through development , there was almost
three times the length of pathways than what we knew. So, that's something I would like
to continue to track. Linear feet added by us, by the development community and, then,
change -- change those same two into totals. What's the total number of pathways that
we maintain and, then, what's the total number of pathways out there that HOAs or our
business owners associations with the private sector maintains. Then in those surveys,
the outcome measures include citizen ratings for the number of pathways and the quality
of those pathways. And, again, I would like to see those kinds of questions continue to
be asked. In urban forestry we track the number of trees that are added to the system
annually and, then, the total report on that and those numbers are needed for our annual
applications to the Tree City USA and those kinds of things. And, then, in the recreation
division I mentioned that our recreation manager is over field reservations. The first one
I have down, though, is revenue. So, total recreation -- recreation revenue, including
sports classes, events and contracts. That's a number that we can track. The field
reservation revenue is actually separate from those and, then, the field reservation hours
that are -- you know, the number of hours that people are reserving in our parks. There
-- I just realized that outcome measure just says citizen rating. I think there is one in the
-- but whatever it is that's in the survey that's been going out, we would want to continue
that. For sports, this is -- we have the output measures for the number of sports teams,
as well as the sports revenue. Outcomes include the -- the quality and the number of
adult sport -- sporting programs that are available to their citizens and, then, here is where
we have an adopted cost recovery philosophy for sports programs and are we meeting
that benchmark. So, we would like to develop the tool to report on that. Classes and
camps similarly has outputs for the number of activity enrollments by ye ar. We also track
it by guide. So, that -- and by guide what that means is we have our winter, spring,
summer and our fall. So, we have three different activity guides each year. So, we -- we
track the -- the reservations by -- by guide or by season, if you will, as well as for the year.
And, then, the revenues for those. Outcomes from the surveys include the quality and
variety of those programs and, then, the number. Are we offering enough? People -- do
people want to see more? And, then, we have a cost recovery philosophy adopted by
Council for classes and camps as well. That takes us to community events. Outputs is
really just our list of what events we are putting on. We have attempted to do other
outputs, like the number of people was the obvious one. There is no turnstile on events,
though, and the best that we have been able to do is a guesstimate on how many people
we think are here. That's proven to be inaccurate and not something that we think is
really reportable, but -- but outcomes, again, from those surveys would be citizen ratings
on the number of events that are put on, as well as the quality and variety of those events.
And, then, we have independent cost recovery measures adopted by -- by event and they
vary a little bit. So, like independence day festival, we put so much toward the fireworks
that we don't recover, but the other ones, like Christmas, we recover these and, you know,
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movie nights almost completely break even, whereas Gene Kleiner Day we just put on.
So, there is a variety of different cost recovery philosophies adopted for those and we
would like to track those. Volunteers is a great one. Our outputs in terms of numbers
would be our volunteer hours and our number of volunteers. Outcomes would be the cost
savings to the city that come as a result of that and, then, HomeCourt, we are looking at
the number of hours of court reservations, the number of monthly court memberships,
which is primarily pickleball these days, and the number of open gym participants an d
check-ins. Cost recovery measures we look at the HomeCourt revenue versus those
expenditures for both personnel and operating and how those compare . Excuse me. In
admin -- so, the -- the shelters could -- could be in parks as a -- as a revenue item. In the
budget they -- they exist in the admin division. It's our administrative staff -- sorry -- that
take those reservations and that's where it resides. You know, we could -- where ever
you want to report it we can report it there. But shelter reservation revenue, shelter
reservation hours, and, then, we are starting to look at the number of online enrollments,
you know, since we have changed over our system we have been seeing people migrating
from only calling to -- to more people able to register online, which is great. Interestingly,
I also recently did a -- I would expect the phone calls to have reduced because of that .
The number of phone calls coming in are still increasing and I don't know why yet, but I
want to start tracking the why and see if I can figure out, you know, why people are calling
and how we might be able to get that information to them better. And, then, the other
output measure would be the -- our number of Facebook followers, which we have a large
presence on -- on Facebook. Our outcomes would be our citizen rating on the information
and availability -- the availability of information for our programs. So, that's an overview.
This is what I am proposing that I think makes sense to report to Council. I would like to
know if you think we are measuring the right things. Are we missing something that you
would like to see that I haven't noted? Are we measuring some things that you don't care
about? Because if that's the case, we shouldn't be spending the time doing it . So, with
that I will stand for any questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Council, any questions?
Borton: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Borton.
Borton: I will answer your question with a question. I love the data. I think it's great.
Invaluable the way you presented it. And definitely worth tracking. But do you think it's
also worth us recognizing the distinction in any particular region of the city as we have
grown now, is it -- are we getting to the stage where we need to track some of these
metrics, whether it's a north-south of the freeway concept or --
Siddoway: By geographic region?
Borton: Right. Just to see if we have distributed some of these resources more --
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Siddoway: I don't think the numbers that even can be tracked -- maybe there is
something, but I -- I don't think there is a meaningful distinction there. The only place that
is meaningful is looking at a map of where we are providing these park resources in
particular. Pathways, too. And we do look at that and that would be something for us to
present is the geographic dispersion of parks in particular and are we -- are we just
serving one group of our citizens or are we serving everyone? And that's, frankly, one of
the things that I love to point out. Whenever I make a community presentation I show our
map, because I think it shows that we have made a concerted effort to go to every area
of the city, but in that aspect I think it's worth looking at geographic distribution . But in
terms of -- I don't know how we would get to like sport registrations by geo -- not with the
data that we collect.
Borton: Sure. Yeah. Madam Mayor. And that doesn't certainly apply to some of those
metrics, but I was just wondering if there is some that -- and maybe we are not there yet
either -- that we are curious on how our pathways or tree development or --
Siddoway: And as this goes forward, if you -- if anyone sees something that makes sense
to look at in a regional basis, you know, I suppose we can always pull that out.
Borton: Thanks.
De Weerd: Or perhaps you get a question from a citizen and you think why aren't we
tracking that? We are currently not. Always -- always looking for those.
Siddoway: Yeah. What's meaningful.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Thank you. First, Steve, thanks to you and your team for not just the parade,
but for the Council's float and the Parks and Recreation float. Theirs always glows a little
more brighter than ours, but I'm not complaining, it's about --
Siddoway: You're very welcome.
Cavener: The parade gets better every year and we sure appreciate your team and all
they do for us. A couple questions for you. One, what I loved is -- as you were talking
about this I'm writing down, well, what about this and the next slide you would cover it and
what about that and on the next slide you would cover it. So, I think you did a good job
of trying to encompass the variety of different questions you may receive. Part -- one of
the things that you wanted to get some citizen feedback on was related to our pathways
and I want to get some more insight from that . What do you hope to achieve? Are we
asking them what they think of the quality of our pathways or is this more where would
you like to see more pathways?
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Siddoway: The way the number -- the way the questions have been asked so far is do
-- rate the number of pathways we have available and that's typically been fairly low,
because people want to see more. It's asking do you think we have enough pathways
might be a better way to ask that. I captured the way it's been asked in the past. So, if
we were going to continue asking it kind of as a benchmark, then, that's how it was asked.
But the idea is to ask both about number and quality. Do we have enough pathways?
Would you like to see more? How is the quality? Are they being kept well? Are they in
disrepair? That -- we are trying to get at that.
Cavener: Madam Mayor. Steve, I think the reason why I ask is at least for me if I'm
always asked do I want more pathways, I'm always going to probably say yes and so --
Siddoway: Good point.
Cavener: -- there has got to be some point where we say, okay, we feel that we have got
a -- the right amount or this is the goal that we are reaching for and you have been a great
proponent of talking about, you know, acres of open space or acres of parkland per citizen
and that's a metric that can get behind it and I think as we continue on, being able to say
this is how many miles of pathway per citizen or whatever we want to have, would -- would
-- would be something that we can at least -- at least I know when a budget request comes
we want to do X amount of dollars towards pathways and that's going to get us that much
closer to our goal, that's something for me, who is a big proponent of pathways, to wrap
my head around, because we are building towards a goal. So, just food for thought as
that is further addressed. You talked a lot about -- which I appreciate about the adoptive
cost recovery policy and it almost sounded like this is an already adopted policy and I
don't know if I just missed it, if I don't remember it, or if this is something that is happening
internally. So, help me get caught up to speed on that.
Siddoway: I'm talking about the adopted philosophies that are in the match plan that was
approved by Council five'ish years ago. I -- we have those pulled out. I think I shared
those with Council, even -- it was either earlier this year or last year as a refresher, but I
know a lot comes your way. I would be glad to -- to resend them.
Cavener: I -- I would love that.
Siddoway: Yeah.
Cavener: And, then, the only I guess question that I have -- and I don't know if it's
beneficial for Council or for staff and I'm just curious to your thoughts is if -- along that line
about the cost recovery is if we are weighing the cost of parks programs or the cost of
operating our parks in general, cost per citizen or, you know, cost per -- I mean to me cost
per citizen is the thing that I come back to you. So, as a citizen this is what it's costing
each of our citizens to operate and is there a national benchmark against that? What --
what do cities spend per citizen on parks? And who are the cities? I think that we are
one of the best when it comes to parks. So, are we a leader with doing things the way
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Meridian does in a very fiscally prudent way? Are there other lessons to be learned from
other communities? Those are the things that I'm always going to be looking at.
Siddoway: And I -- I have never seen a standard to benchmark against nationally. We
always have the option -- opportunity to, you know, look at where ever we think is a city
that we consider to be similar or like or -- because cities -- cities vary so dramatic. That's
why they won't give us a number of acres per thousand as a national benchmark, because
they -- they won't even give you acres, let alone cost, because they vary so widely city to
city as to what each city thinks they need. But it's an interesting thought and I will give it
some more thought.
Cavener: Thanks, Steve.
Siddoway: Yeah.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Thank you, Steve, for your report. I find that interesting what Councilman Cavener
was talking about and I think you have covered everything very well. But as we look at
like priority based budgeting and, you know, what programs to keep doing and you're
talking about not knowing how many attendees we have at certain events, I think at some
point that -- that might become something that you need to focus on in order to prioritize
events and -- and change things up and maybe have new events and get rid of some old
ones that aren't doing so well and I don't know how to do that, but maybe have a booth
at the beginning where everybody has to walk by with a raffle or somebody -- get a ticket,
put your name on it to win, you're still not going to get a hundred percent participation,
but you would probably get quite a few people putting their name in.
Siddoway: Internally we still estimate crowd attendance. We know if it's roughly a
thousand or ten thousand; right? But -- and I think we can watch gates like movie night
attendance and we can know if it's increasing, decreasing, or staying about the same, but
the only real way for us to do it is -- is anecdotally. We -- you know, it's -- we know it's
decreasing, we need to look at this, ask ourselves why, so we are not just ignoring the
fact. You know, events live their lives and we have finished them and move on --
Milam: Sure.
Siddoway: -- to something else all the time and so we are not afraid to -- to ask those
questions. But there is not a good way to do the -- the actual turnstile count, but we do
keep an eye on is it increasing or decreasing. Yeah.
Milam: Thank you.
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De Weerd: And I think it's more -- less counting heads on the big event -- I mean it's the
big events you have a hard time estimating and those aren't the ones that are really
threatened to say we are not going to do it anymore. It's really like the Barn Sour Run.
Siddoway: Barn Sour. That's a --
De Weerd: And, you know, as those numbers were declining we said shelf life --
Siddoway: That one we did have a turnstile, because we had registered -- they had to
register for the race and they were declining and there was a lot of new races in the valley
and we decided, you know, these other races can take over, we can put our resources
elsewhere.
De Weerd: Right.
Siddoway: Yep. That's a good example. Okay. Anything else?
De Weerd: Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor. Steve, thank you so much. Great ideas. Great report.
One thing that I think would be kind of interesting -- and I don't even know if this is kind of
reasonable to do, but I know that with the master plan on pathways, I think it would be
real interesting to see like what's left, what's still needed and how you chip away at it each
year.
Siddoway: Yes. We are constantly looking at that and I would just say, yes, I agree.
Little Roberts: Okay. Thank you. And thank you that -- all that you and your team do.
Siddoway: Okay. All right. Thank you very much.
B. Legal Department: Key Performance Indicators
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Okay. Under B we have Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of Council. This is probably not quite as cool
as Steve's, but if it looks familiar it's because I blatantly stole this template from Todd. So,
this is our -- our KPI update and this one is -- this one has been a challenge for a couple
reasons. One -- and we don't really have a lot of metrics in our bus iness. Whatever
needs to get done we get it done. That's really the metric I follow the most of. Make sure
nobody's asking for it, make sure it's done when it's timely, make sure it's done correct
the first time. That's really the metric that means the most to me . But we do have a few
different things in the Legal Department that we do address and so we wanted to talk a
little bit about that. First, the area that we do have at least some metrics that are created
for this -- and this is in the risk management area. So, our strategic plan 4-D-1 is the one
strategic plan objective that we have had. We have been working on creating a team,
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creating a much more comprehensive program for the city, a much cleaner reporting
system, a much cleaner review process. We have a team that's made up of primarily
directors of the various departments, myself, Public Works, Parks, Police, Fire, HR,
Finance to talk about the various things that we do track . So, we can start with -- we,
obviously, get claims that come through the clerk's office, we get a number of claims per
year, we also have the claims that are paid. So, we know how many -- how many claims
we get and how many that are -- get paid through ICRMP and, then, of course, we know
what our premium is with ICRMP. So, what's the purpose of tracking all that? Well, again,
we want to evaluate the types of claims we have. We are looking for trends. We are
looking for consistencies of types of claims and with that we then have to look at is training
necessary, is it an equipment issue, is it something else? And we discuss it on a quarterly
basis with our team, to look if we could do some cross-training. One of the things that's
come out of this -- this exercise is we have had a lot more information sharing among the
departments, especially Police, Fire, with Public Works, because many of these things
are very similar in nature in training wise from a safety standpoint. So, there has been a
lot more opportunity to have some cross-training or at least some knowledge also of what
we are doing. And the secondary thing -- one of the things that's really helped I think with
our team -- it's helped a lot of the directors to understand the bigger picture of the process.
In the past -- all the directors are pretty aware of what happens with their claims. They
are not very aware of anybody else and they are not very aware of what types of things
are occurring citywide and so, again, we are looking at trends in regards to -- for example,
driving issues, that we have a lot of driving types of issues or claims, we can look at that
and see whether or not we can do some cross-training with the departments that do a lot
of driving, like Police and Public Works and Parks. So, we really want to maximize that
value of the information that we have and that we are already using and so that's been
another thing we have been able to use and try to evaluate that . Again, like I said, we
use that to help establish training and be able to have , again, that sort of cross between
the different departments of the different things that we do . Questions on that particular
piece?
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Just a quick question, Bill, and this -- a KPI being based on claims filed, is that
something that -- I mean your department has very -- has nothing to do with the amount
of claims that are filed against the city and so is that a challenging KPI , because it's not
something that you guys -- I mean -- I don't think that we have had any complaints filed
against the city attorney's office, so --
Nary: No. You're correct. These -- every -- so, every tort claim that comes through our
office --
Cavener: Sure.
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Nary: -- and so we can see the bigger picture of the types of claims that we are getting
versus Police versus Fire versus Parks versus Public Works. Those are predominantly
where the claims are coming from and so we do see them all and so what's been
happening with our team now that all those different directors are getting to see what's
happening with the other departments that they weren't aware that they had driving issues
or they have had claims. Certainly -- you know, we track two types -- two types of claims.
We track claims when we cause some sort of damage to the public. Sometimes it's our
fault and we repair it. Sometimes it's really not our fault and we may not repair it. And,
then, we track the things that damage, of course, us. People run into the cars, people
run to our equipment, those kinds of things. So, those are the two predominant types of
claims that we get and we tend to look -- again, we -- we evaluate each of those claims
and determine how we are going to handle it, whether we are going to -- whether we are
going to settle it, resolve it, whether we are not. But I think a lot of that is -- you know,
having the number I think it's just -- it's a metric that's good to know whether the claims
go up or down. We can't control most of them certainly.
Cavener: Sure. Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Those claims also will show maybe areas that we need to do training in and
that's where the departments look at them, but also by them going to one single point, we
can also see if any of those trends go beyond one department and you start seeing
something, citywide then -- then that's the risk management piece that Bill heads up a
committee that, then, discusses those and put strategies in place to -- how to avoid those
claims and be more proactive instead of reactive.
Cavener: So, Madam Mayor, if I -- if I am hearing things right, then, this is listed as a KPI
because under the risk management banner you are engaging with departments on
education and training to reduce the likelihood of claims in the future?
Nary: Yes. Certainly. That's exactly correct. Because we are looking -- and, again, the
control that we have, obviously, is the potential damage that we may cause to other
people. Obviously I can't predict somebody running into our cars.
Cavener: Right.
Nary: But the other way around, we can , hopefully, alleviate the number times that we
run into somebody else's car. The other thing that we do on the training piece, too, in
evaluating trends is we look also at human resources as part of the team , because they
manage all of the workers comp claims. So, we can see if there are injuries related to
some type of internal activity, sometimes training or something else . So, we can
determine, again, do we need to do different types of training or different other information
to departments to help alleviate that as well. So, the next area we are looking at and we,
obviously, gather data in regards to our prosecution and police services. So, this -- again,
we are looking at the number of cases that we transfer to the city of Boise. We also, then,
look at the percentage of caseload, because that percentage of caseload is directly
related to the cost. We pay for that service. If you recall back when we were having the
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discussions with the court, the court was saying to us at the time the City of Meridian was
approximately 20 percent of the countywide caseload. We also found we were about 20
percent of the City of Boise's case -- caseload. Now that number is closer to 26 percent
So, it is increasing as we grow and so those are numbers that we at least need to be
aware of, so we can forecast on the horizon the cost per case, which , then, will relate to
the cost and the services that we can pay for that we need to -- whether we provide that
either ourselves or in another method or continue to do it the way we have been since
2002 with the city of Boise. The quality of service we have been receiving has been very
consistent. They have been very high. The Police Department has been very pleased
with the service they have been receiving all these years and so we haven't -- we haven't
had any desire to move, but we have had the ability to at least go evaluate the cost of
that service if we were to do it with another agency or to try to provide it ourself, to
determine whether or not the value that we are paying for is really an actual value that we
think is reasonable and to this day we believe it is. So, again, that's the cost benefit piece
that's the last number and, then, that way we can evaluate the bigger picture, because,
again, as we grow, the larger the caseload becomes, we have to make that decision .
Partly why we were looking at over the last year is we didn't want to get ca ught short
handed. What happened when the state decided they no longer could do our building
services any longer and simply said we are done and give us a very short window to do
that. The criminal prosecution world is a lot more complicated even than th at and that
was pretty complicated in itself, but for us to ramp up to doing that in a very short window
would be very difficult. So, we were trying to look at what alternatives are out there in
case that were to happen or in case -- again, you know, things change, people change,
different things happen that that could -- that could occur. We just wanted to make sure
we were prepared if that were to happen and we certainly haven't been addressing that
or haven't had a need to address it to this point. The last area is one of the harder ones
for me to try to capture in these metrics, because this is the things that we do day in and
day out and as a -- as much of a dinosaur that I feel like in this area of capturing metrics,
you know, we do capture -- in our annual report -- I know you're all looking forward to, it's
in February, you guys can tune in if you're not here and the annual report we do track a
lot of these things that we do by numbers. You know, we track the number of resolutions.
We track the number of ordinances we do. We track the number of development
agreements. We track a number of other agreements that we do. It's -- it's all relative to
a bigger picture; right? I have said many times to the Mayor when she's asked, I said, you
know, we could do one agreement that we might take six months to work out and we
could do ten agreements that takes us less than an hour, because they are very similar.
So, it really is -- it's -- it's just a snapshot of some of the work we do and how we do it.
So, what's the purpose of even looking at those numbers? Again, as we grow and things
become more complex, what I have tasked our team is we need to figure out a way to
start evaluating the more complex matters that we deal with, you know, whether it's a
complex contract, a complex issue of -- like with Verizon, we have had a long discussion
with Verizon over three years of having an agreement with Verizon regarding 5g. That's
been a very complex issue. So, we have got to be able to capture that, because I think
future mayors, future council, are going to want to know, you know, when you -- when we
-- when we feel from the Legal Department that we need more assistance, whether its
internal or external, we have to be able to show that. We have to have some metric and
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some way to show that example of why we don't just feel busy, but we actually are busy.
And so we have got to do better in capturing that kind of data to be able to provide that
-- that kind of information to the Mayor and Council in the future. And, then, again, we
also want to see how much time we are dedicating to the different departments. As most
of you know, we don't dedicate one attorney to a particular department or two or three
departments, we really try to deal with the subject matters in a very broader context,
because we think we get a better product. I hope that we can continue to do that. I don't
know whether or not the changing landscape of the city or the changing landscape of the
legal world will make that more difficult to do, but that's really our goal is to continue to do
things the way we have. We think it's a model that's worked pretty well. A lot of other
cities, you know, look to us as an example on how to do this internally. So, what we have
to be able to capture of how much time does is that take? When I ask other cities around
the state how they did it, they all had the same question. Well, we don't do that. We don't
track any of our time. We just track the time -- you know, we just do the work and get it
done. And I have asked them back the same question. Well, how do you, then, establish
when you need another person? Well -- and so far most of them haven't been able to
answer. So, I'm hopeful we can maybe lead the way on that discussion as well and say,
well, we can really show why it's busier and it's not just because we feel busy, but we
have actually got some data to show that. Those are the three areas that we are going
to capture. I'm going to bring it back with our annual update with some numbers attached
to those. As we start to collect this data some of it we have, some of its kind of new to us
for -- we are trying to capture, but that's kind of our objective and that kind of makes sense
to everybody. This is our team outing this year. We got to go on the Blue and we got to
go tour the athletic facilities of Boise State. It was tough. I didn't wear my Vandal shirt,
because I thought that wouldn't be very nice . So, yeah, but it pretty fun, so -- anyway,
questions?
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Council, any questions?
Nary: Thank you.
C. Police Department: Annual Report and Key Performance
Indicators
De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 5-C is our Police Department. Our annual report and
KPI discussion.
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, thank you for your time this evening. Before I get started
I would just like to give my thanks to the men and women of the Meridian Police
Department. Any successes that you hear today is because of them . I can tell you that
we have a great team. They do great work and -- and I'm awfully proud of them. Reading
the -- the news today there was a business in Baltimore that -- that gave their profit sharing
divided amongst their employees, 10 million dollars, which averaged about 50,000 per
employee, but if you were there long enough, you got 250,000. I can't do that for them.
But I could -- if I could I would. The other thing I like to do is recognize a few people up
there on the kiosk. Council Woman Little Roberts and Council Woman Milam and
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Councilman Palmer have all been police liaison s over the years and they are all leaving
us, so I would like to thank you for what you have done for us and for our community. It's
-- it's appreciated. And, then, Mayor Tammy, all I can say is it's been an honor and you're
going to be missed and more on Thursday, how is that? Technology challenged. Let's
start today off with -- not going over it, but just letting you take a review of the mission and
vision. One of the things that makes us successful is our culture. It's one thing that we
pride ourselves on and it's the other thing that -- you know, Mayor Tammy has a lot to do
with it, is that we had set expectations for our -- for our team and -- and it's taken us quite
a while to get there, but we cherish what we have. We love our reputation. We are
seeked out from other states to come here and it's something we are proud of and it really
starts with -- with our mission and what it's all about and we can't do this alone, it has to
be in partnership with our -- our community and -- and it's not all about just writing tickets
and throwing people in jail, it's educating people to do the right thing and preventing crime
when we get a chance, because if we can prevent it, then, that's less work we have to do
taking reports and so our people get it I think our community gets it, and that's what makes
us great. But had to include that in there. One of the things I have to do is go just a little
bit faster than Steve, because I thought he was the police chief talking there for a little bit
today with that presentation. Throughout our presentation today we are going to have
some key performance indicators mixed throughout just to talk about, but the reason why
this one is in here is this is one we are probably the most proud of and if you look at what
you're -- you're seeing is -- is our response times and our response times -- we track them
on code one, code two, code three. Code three is emergencies. Code two are urgent.
Code one are just report-type calls and we track this -- trend this by five years we look at,
but in this particular case we just -- it wouldn't all fit on the screen, so it's a smaller
representation of what we have, but because of the positions that you have appropriated
and because of the training and getting the officers on the road, we have been able to
reduce our response time significantly. One of the things that we look at when we are
tracking these is three to five minutes is the average that we are shooting for on code
three responses. Emergencies. Of course we would always like to have it less than three
minutes, because if it's -- that's three minutes that you have to protect yourself until we
can get there. So, it's -- the quicker it can be the better it is, but three to five minutes is
the standard. For code two we strive for six to eight minutes and you can see that we are
meeting that and, then, for priority one calls, ten to 20 minutes, and we are meeting that.
Calls for service. This should not be surprising to anyone. This is far more than I realized,
but this covers both officer initiated and citizen initiated calls for service . The one thing I
will note is all of the 2019 figures that you're seeing here only go through November. So,
they don't go through the end of December. So, they will be higher than what you're
seeing there. This probably doesn't surprise anybody. One of the things that,
unfortunately, comes with a growing city when the infrastructure doesn't grow is additional
crashes. Now, it has increased, but it hasn't increased drastically. That's -- that's the
main thing is that -- but we are seeing an increase in crashes. Citations. These are the
citations that the officers are writing. These could be misdemeanor citations or infractions.
You will see that the number is a little bit lower. Keep in mind that's only 11 months for
2019, but I think you are going to see a decline in citations written this year and looking
at the trends, it's because -- and I will show you another slide coming up -- is we are doing
more public initiated calls than we are officer initiated. We are just frankly getting a lot of
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911 calls and calls for service from the citizens, which takes -- which are reactive and not
proactive. These are the number of calls for -- or not calls for services. These are the
number of citations -- or not citations -- reports. That's it. Reports. This is the number of
reports that have been written to date. This is probably a point where listening to the
questions that the other directors have gotten over the last couple of weeks or so is just
to point out that we track these by city. We track these by areas. We have three areas
in the city. And we track these by what we call reporting districts, which are square miles .
So, I don't put those forward facing, but I can tell you how many reports we are taking
within a square mile with any part of the city. So, if it's ever desired I can get that and
that's what we often use when we are pulling up the stats for homeowners association
meetings and sometimes when the Mayor's office will ask us about certain areas in the
city. So, we do track that down to the square mile. One thing last week when I was
listening to the public records requests from Chris' office, I'm going I think I got you beat
just by a little bit, but I remember when C.Jay was here, he would talk about his 300 public
records requests and I said, well, let's talk about my 3,000 and now you can see that we
are up to over 8,000 public records requests. I will tell you that this is a job for two FTEs.
Unfortunately, the one FTE only does it part time, but it's -- it's one and a half FTEs just
to complete our public records requests. We conform to state law, which is three days to
ten days. Oftentimes we will get requests that are much broader than people realize and
it would take significant staff time to provide them with the information they request, i.e.,
body worn cameras, if they want video of hours and hours and hours they don't like the
bill that they get or the estimate of the bill that they get , so we have to narrow that down
a little bit. We can't ask them why they want something, but we can help them focus their
scope a little bit to get them what they need without any cost to them . So, we have Boise
paralegals that do our public records requests and, then, for the big ones they are
reviewed by our Boise legal through our contract. So, in June and July I believe it was
we have had MADC come in and have -- crime prevention committee come in, gave you
their own presentations. So, I'm not going to get into that too much. I will tell you that --
there is a couple highlights, though, that I want to mention. Crime prevention is working
on their 19th -- 19 -- one nine -- public safety academy. That's going to start on April 2nd.
And the drug prevention -- or MADC is updating their bylaws and their strategic plan
currently.
De Weerd: Chief, in response to the -- the academy, we used to have an alumni group
that -- that came together and -- and there was some continued involvement with the
Police Department and/or Fire Department. Do we see continued engagement from
those that participated?
Lavey: Yeah. I'm happy to say that we do see -- the alumni do come back. Not the whole
group, but we do see some that come back. They always show up on the first night and
kind of give an update of what -- for the group to expect. They often will serve the treats
and refreshments and some, too. And I'm proud to say that two of them are continued
police volunteers today. Been there for years and years and years. Come in every
Tuesday and Thursday. So, it kind of ebbs and flows. You get a lot. Sometimes you get
one, maybe, or two the next time, but they do come back and we do hold onto them. I
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can't speak so much for the Fire Department, but I do believe they also have the same
thing that show up there. I'm getting the nod yes.
Bongiorno: Thumbs up.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Lavey: It's awesome to see and they are better spokesperson than we are when they
talk to the group. You know, that's a funny story. I still remember back when we used to
do a citizens academy. It was a police citizens academy and it went okay, depending on
who was running it, and, then, the Mayor wanted to do a public safety academy and this
is back when police and fire were competitors and I guess we are still competitors, but
we didn't work together well and we were sitting here going how in the heck are we going
to -- to make that happen and be successful and it's -- it's happened. It's -- it's been 19
-- or 18 of them now. So, kudos to the Mayor on that one.
De Weerd: I didn't do anything.
Lavey: It was your idea. We never came up with it. Or someone's idea. Just briefly on
this one, without dragging us back in front of you, the cool thing that I want to recognize
here is -- is -- is Stephany Galbreaith and the initiative that she's taken to educate our
citizens and it's just been remarkable. This is the logo that they came up with. You will
see a website on there. If you click on that or bring that up, it will have a copy of the full
ordinance. It will have frequent -- frequently asked questions. It will have a copy of the
PSA I think you have already seen and, then, it has a form -- forms free question -- open
question where if you want to leave a question for us that's not included you can do that
as well. I did ask the question if we have received any yet and I was told just one and
they asked if the ordinance included stop lights and we said yes and they say great. Sorry,
Genesis, but they were supportive of it, so -- that was the service. About three years ago
we brought in front of you the PAM allocation model, patrol staffing model, presented to
you and you approved and that's been the guideline we have used over the last three, I
believe, budget workshops and when you look at what's in front of you now, it's actual
numbers versus goals and what we have in light blue is officer proactive time and that
would be unobligated time. We are shooting -- what we are shooting for. The blue would
be -- the dark blue would be public initiated calls, 911 calls , calls for service and the 15
percent or nine percent that you're seeing there is administrative. This is mostly court.
And so we are actually doing good there, where we estimated we would be in court 15
percent of the time, we are only in there nine percent of the time, but you will see that our
public initiated calls for services is much -- much higher than what we projected. It's
getting better. This is the only slide I have in here on the PAM allocation model and the
reason why is -- I can bore you to death and your eyes would glaze over and you would
have no idea what I'm talking about, I would probably have no idea what I'm talking about,
I can just tell you that there is a mathematical formula, it takes about 20 inputs, which you
will see is -- is on workload requirements, the personnel policies, performance objectives,
roadway characteristics. Examples of those. How long does it take to write a report?
How long does it take to write a crash? Desired levels of service, proactive versus
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reactive, which is what you saw in that last slide . Types of roads. Miles of roads. Mile
-- or speed limits of roadways. And, then, the personnel policies are actual time officers
are available. You know, how -- how much obligated vacation time are they allowed under
city policy, because that's when they are not here to work. How many hours are they at
training, which they are not available for calls for service. That's plugged in there. And,
then, it outputs the number of patrol officers and traffic officers that's expected to run the
city based upon those -- those inputs. I will tell you three of you probably don't care
anymore, so three of you that are staying with us and, then, the three Council that are
coming on board, if you really want to look at what happens behind the scenes, the best
thing I could have you do is come to our office, sit down with our crime analysis group
and we will explain it to you, walk us through it, and show you how it works. It's -- it's not
really magic. It's an Excel spreadsheet based upon a mathematical equation that's been
adopted for 22 years. So, that's all you're going to get on the PAM model this year. Took
me two years to figure out to keep it brief , but I guess third time is a charm; right? Once
you plug in all of the inputs, this is the output that we currently get . It's 90.5. Now, what
does that mean? Well, when you go back and look at what it was indicating what we
needed last year, we adopted all but three and, then, this year it's -- it's indicating an
additional two. So, right now we are five down what it says for allocated staffing for patrol.
I will tell you, though, that this is just the numbers that are appropriate. These aren't the
numbers that are necessarily fielded right now. We currently have eight officers in
academy. We are currently working on filling eight additional slots for the April academy.
We will be offering -- or making job offers for them in -- in January and five additional
openings of patrol officers, a couple officers on light duty, one officer on over a year
military leave. So, when you start doing all that we are about 30 officers down currently.
Kind of jumped the gun a little bit, but those are the -- those are the numbers. I guess we
will see if I had it right or not. We have 13 openings, so the eight and the five that we are
working on. Three openings are on the non-sworn professional side. Current background
eight people -- eight officers in the current Meridian-Nampa joint police academy, that's
academy number two, and, then, the academy number three is slotted for April 2020.
This is the time where we just want to recognize some of our g reat people. Because of
our growth we have created a training division . If you will recall back in the budget
workshops you approved a training sergeant position and that went to -- excuse me. That
went to Sergeant Tara Smith and so there is a picture of her. Training corporal is Justin
Northway. And, then, patrol troll Sergeant was Kyle Ludwig. We have had some
promotions and assignment changes. We just wanted to give you a picture and some
names of a couple people that moved up into detective . Steve Hansen. Matthew
Ferronato. Just for the record Matthew's nephew is one of our CSOs, community service
officers, who is slotted for the academy -- the patrol academy in April, which is kind of
what we had in mind when we put community service office rs in place is we could build
them up to be a police officer. He's going to go to the academy in April. First one. A lot
of pressure on him being the first one. Laura Curley is our senior crime analysis. She
was promoted within the agency. And, then, of course, we had to have Stephany on here.
It ends with Stephany. She is our public information officer. If you recall this is not -- this
is a position that took me a year to fill. I don't know why it took us nearly a year to fill
when you had the best candidate within your own ranks.
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De Weerd: Great question.
Lavey: Yeah. Well, I think I have -- that -- that question has been thrown back at me a
couple times, so I can acknowledge that it takes a while for us to get it. Since then
Stephany has been very active in both the police and the fire side . Crazy busy, but one
of the things that we are getting ready to launch here in January is a public outreach forum
and it is through Nixle, but here is just some of the current things that we currently have
going on as far as contact -- social media contact with our -- our citizens and, then, this
is the Nixle. You will be able to opt into this to get anything put out by the police
department, public press releases, missing persons, emergency information, whatever
we want to send out. If people are interested in -- you can get some options at the top
here. If people are interested in it they can opt in, so they are not getting annoyed by us
sending them things. It's their choice and if it gets to be too much they can opt out just
as easily. More for that will be coming in January. And I didn't put their pictures in here,
but just to give some advance notice, in the next three weeks we are doing command
staff rotations. This is a scary time for me, because I have adapted to the people in their
positions and their strengths and it's hard when you -- when you reassign, because you
have that learning curve, but I think it -- ultimately it's what's best for the department. It's
certainly what's best for the staff, because it gives them a chance to grow and work on
some of their succession planning, but that just gives you an idea of where everybody's
going to be and if you see down at the bottom, you will have special projects lieutenant.
This is a temporary assignment and this is going to be an assignment while we go through
our capital projects and, then, he will be assigned to patrol afterwards. But kind of segues
into my next slide here. We currently have four capital projects going on in the police
department. We had the -- I guess I probably should go in order. It's on the slide. It
would make more sense. The department remodel, the parking lot expansion of the main
building, the public safety training service, scenario village, and the new substation
northwest precinct. Just to give you an idea of where we are at on those. Parking lot
expansion, the conceptual design has been completed and the work will start in the
spring. The public safety academy, I think there is an RFP being prepared for the
construction manager. They have worked in designing it, but they haven't solidified the
plans yet, because they want to get a construction manager on board to have true costs
and more realistic costs as their -- as their final designing it. The new substation, we are
supposed to have contract legal work in our hands this week , then, I will turn it over to
Bill's office and purchasing, so they can start reviewing it. Their timeline out there is a
February break ground and a late summer, early fall move in . And, then, the remodel is
-- is attached to the scenario village and we are going to use the same construction crews
and so we will actually start the scenario village and, then, move into the police
department afterwards. The capital replacement on the body worn cameras, if you recall
you approved a third generation body worn camera. Not only will they give better sound
and better resolution, it has gunfire detection, which means that if it hears gunfire it will
automatically turn the camera on 30 seconds from the buffer, so any officer that shoots
their firearm would -- that would be captured on video, whether they wanted to turn it on
or not. It has camera location, so if you -- it's kind of like where's my iPhone? So, if you
lose it you can actually track it and we can go retrieve it and if we can't retrieve it we can
retrieve the data off of it, even if we can't locate the camera. So, those are some of the
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-- the significant things on it. Oh, it has GPS tracking, too, so we know where the officers
are at. So, it's an officer safety function as well. Those are being deployed mid January.
And I just wanted to talk briefly on the -- this focus area on the safe, healthy, and secure.
We have eight tactics that's listed under this, but I just wanted to give some highlights on
three of them, because we have done some significant work. So, under the traffic safety
strategies we have covered focusing on educating our community on traff ic laws. This
includes Alive At 25, Mayor's Senior Advisory Group on safe driving, defensive driving.
Specialized and mobilization initiatives such as aggressive driving, seatbelts. DUIs.
School zone violations. Special traffic enforcement. Crosswalks. And, then, our hands
free ordinance educational stops. Under crime prevention, under the apartment
community crime prevention program it's 60 percent complete. We have sent Sarah
Herrick to CPTED for multi-housing units and she's rolling out a three phase approach for
crime prevention within our apartment communities. And, then, on our communication
plan, it is currently 50 percent complete. It's kind of probably one of the things that we
noticed about Stephany is when we started asking her in the interview about a
communication plan, she threw it on the table and said here you go. So, it will be included
in the packets for new council on the 20th and , then, we will make sure that it's in the
hands of all when it's ready to go. I think we will end it there. There is just so many things
that we have covered over the year that when I was sitting down with Stephan y we just
kind of had to grab some snapshots of some of the things. Otherwise, I would be here all
night and you don't want to listen to me all night. So, I thank you for the time and I
welcome any comments or questions you may have of me or anything that you would like
for me to take back to our members.
De Weerd: Thank you, chief. Council, any questions? Mrs. Little Roberts.
Little Roberts: Madam Mayor. No questions, but thank you, chief. Thank you for your
report. Thank you for all that you and your team do for this community. It has truly been
-- and I'm not a person that cries, so this is interesting. It's truly been an honor to work
with you and your team.
Lavey: Thank you.
Cavener: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Cavener.
Cavener: Jeff, thanks for the report. The first the part I think to take back kind of echoes
Council Member Little Roberts' comments and that's -- that's thank you. In a day and age
where law enforcement is so unfairly criticized and every question -- every decision
questioned, I think the Meridian Police Department continues to rise above and really
serve our community and that -- it kind of gets to maybe a suggestion that speaks to 4-A-
4, which talks about the perception of public safety in our community and just a thought
for KPIs is to also maybe include in that report the amount of complaints that we receive,
because as I understand it's fairly low and I think it's something that is really worth
celebrating and the fact that it's already really low, but I know that that's not low enough
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Meridian City Council Work Session
December 10, 2019
Page 21 of 23
for the department, would be a great way to communicate to our citizens that we take the
feedback seriously and we are always working to improve despite being really, really
exemplary.
Lavey: Madam Mayor and Councilman Cavener, that's -- that's a good suggestion and
you're absolutely correct, I think over the years you have me report that when we added
,body worn cameras our complaints dropped to 67 percent. I can tell you that we have
not been successfully -- or not even been sued for excessive force or wrongful arrests .
Something that we are -- we are quite proud of. When you do get the complaints, once
you offer to let them see the video, they disappear, you know, and we are human, so
occasionally we do have some complaints, we do have some professionalism, rudeness
type complaints where the officers could have done a much better job and we admit it,
we take it as a training opportunity and we move on. We track every single complaint that
comes in our department, we just don't put it out forward facing, so that it would be a
discussion, but I don't see that as long as it didn't have any personal information and I
don't see that it's -- it's protected by any means. So, we will take that under -- I looking
over my shoulder, because Stephany has always got a notebook and she's always writing
everything down. Anytime I say anything she's writing it down, but I noticed that she was
typing in her phone, because she doesn't have her notebook with her. Right? You were
writing on the phone, though. There you go. That's why when you were talking I was
looking over my shoulder to see if she was capturing it and she was. So, thank you, we
will take that under --
De Weerd: Okay. Any -- anything else? Yeah. I will echo what Council Member Little
Roberts and Milam said, we appreciate the work of your department and if -- it's mind
boggling when you start looking at the data and you look at the number of openings you
still have, you have some great staff and they are doing a phenomenal job and just let
them know how much we appreciate that.
Lavey: I will do that. Thank you, Mayor.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Excellent job. Those numbers are amazing. I need to ask you a favor, since I
won't be -- have a chance to go there, can you give everybody a hug for me in the
department?
De Weerd: Oh, yeah, I want to be there.
Lavey: Every single person?
Milam: Yeah.
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Meridian City Council Work Session
December 10, 2019
Page 22 of 23
Lavey: Actually -- actually, that could be doable, because in February -- you only have to
wait until February. In February we have something special for all the members -- all the
command staff, so I may not be able to hug every single one of them, but I can get one
night with him.
Milam: All right. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, chief.
Lavey: Thank you.
Item 6: Action Items
A. Public Works: Request to Provide Water Service to Un -Annexed
Property at 5060 S. Locust Grove Rd.
De Weerd: Item 6-A is under our Public Works Department and I will turn this over to
Warren.
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this next -- excuse me. This next item
is a request by Morgan Holmes, who is developing, essentially, ten acres on 5060 South
Locust Grove. It's just south of Amity and Locust Grove. The intersection there. They
are in the process of going through the city to basically deve lop a subdivision on that ten
acre area of ground. I have asked that you all get some additional information there,
which, really, the two pieces of information that I gave you was the ordinance language
that we changed after the Butte Fence -- when they came in and did this we decided to
make some changes to make the process a little bit more thorough and straightforward
and I gave you that information so you would know that we have followed the process
and in this case they are actually -- because those two -- those two five acre parcels are
now vacant. They have gone ahead to the county and started construction on one of the
homes and they are going to include that in the overall subdivision when they go through
that process, but in the meantime, they would like to connect up to the water -- the water
line that runs right in front of the property and not drill a well and, then, have to abandon
that well in a few months when they are able to incorporate that into their subdivision and
come into the city. So, this is really a request for them to connect this one home that they
are in the process of constructing to our water system prior to taking the entire
development through the entitlement process and, essentially, bringing it into the city as
part of the -- the overall subdivision and we met -- not only has Public Works looked at
this, but I met with all the other departments, talked to them to see if there was any issues
or concerns or conditions that they would want to place on this particula r -- in this scenario
and, essentially, everybody was pretty supportive. I think everybody was, in fact,
supportive of letting this one move forward, it seemed pretty -- pretty straightforward.
They are going to come in, they are going to do the right thing and, basically, allowing this
connection seems like the right thing to do, as long as certain conditions are met. You
see in the letter, the memorandum that we put together, a lot of those conditions are --
are iterated there. If you approve or give us direction tonight to go ahead, we will, then,
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda January 7, 2020 – Page 27 of 552
Meridian City Council Work Session
December 10, 2019
Page 23 of 23
prepare the agreement, which will ultimately have to come back for the approval of this
Council and that's where we will -- we will finalize all those conditions and make sure that
everything is in there. But we are really here just seeking direction from you. Do you
want us to go ahead, move forward at this point and put an agreement together. And with
that I will stand for questions.
De Weerd: Okay. Council?
Palmer: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Palmer.
De Weerd: Do you want head nods or a motion? Or commentary from everybody?
Stewart: I don't know if maybe, Bill, that's -- I don't know if we need a motion or if we just
need direction to go ahead and prepare the agreement that we will have to come back
later for approval.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, direction is fine, because we are going to
have to prepare an agreement and bring that back for approval. So, if there is no objection
from the Council we can move forward.
De Weerd: Okay. Council, all thumbs up? Okay. Very good. Thank you, Warren. Okay.
We are at the end of our work session agenda. I would entertain a motion to adjourn.
Milam: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mrs. Milam.
Milam: Move that we adjourn.
Cavener: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:50 P. M.
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