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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006 07-05 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meetina JulV 5. 2006 The Meridian City Council meeting was called to order at 5:30 P.M. on Wednesday, July 5, 2006 by President Councilman Shaun Wardle. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Shaun Wardle, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. Staff Present: Bill Nary and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X Shaun Wardle X Charlie Rountree X X Joe Borton X Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: The published agenda for Item NO.4 was Valley Ride budget presentation and we need to reschedule that because Kelly could notmake it tonight. So, with that I move that we approve the revised agenda, which is Item No.4. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It's been moved and seconded to approve the revised agenda. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(a) - (to consider hiring a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent, not to include. This paragraph does not apply to filling a vacancy in an elective office) and (d) - (to consider records that are exempt from disclosure as provided in chapter 3, title 9, Idaho Code): Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5,2006 Page 2 of 10 Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67- 2345(1 )(a) and (1 )(d). Rountree: Mr. President if the maker of the motion wouldn't object, I assume we have a visitor here to talk to us about Item four and maybe they would just as soon as go home and not wait for us for 45 minutes. Nary: He is here for the Executive Session. Rountree: He is here for the Executive Session? Okay. So, you are going to talk to us about the Item 4 or Item 5? Nary: No, they will be here - Rountree: All right, I will second that motion. Wardle: Motion has been seconded to adjourn into Executive Session. Roll Call: Bird, aye; Rountree, aye; Borton, aye; Wardle, aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Wardle: I would entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It's been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 4. Valley Ride Budget Presentation by Kelly Fairless: NEED TO RESCHEDULE PRESENTATION Wardle: Item NO.4 on our agenda has been removed and will be rescheduled. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 3 of 10 Item 5. Presentation and Request for Boise City Prosecution Services: Wardle: I will turn this over to Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you Mr. President, members of the Council, Madame Mayor. Tonight on the agenda is the presentation from the Boise City Attorney's Office regarding prosecution services for the next fiscal year and what has been accomplished this year and what is for next year. We have the proposal in the budget presentation and we will see that next week, but Cary Colaianni, the Boise City Attorney is here with his staff to update you on what has been going on and what they are looking forward to in the future and what is going to be presented as part of the budget. So, I will turn it over to Cary. Colaianni: Good evening, Madame Mayor, Council members. As Mr. Nary mentioned tonight is our presentation to the Boise City Attorney's Office proposed fiscal year '07 contract and my Chief Deputy, Steve Rutherford has now provided a flyer for your courtesy and help follow along with the presentation. Thank you. With me tonight is Steve Rutherford, the Chief Deputy, also Allison Tate the City Attorney's Office Division Manager for Public Safety, Tina Perkins the Supervisor for the Boise City Victim Witness Unit and Doreen Queen, the Administrative Manager of our office. Before we discuss the details of the proposal, I would like to take the opportunity to say that the Boise City Attorney's Office believes that we have added value to the Meridian contract every single year. This year is no exception. We will give you a quick run over, but we will detail that later on in the presentation. First of all, the Meridian contract caseload has increased every year in the last three. For instance, in 2003 there were 4,560 cases. In 2005, 5,472 and if we estimate based on current numbers that we have that the caseload this year will be over 7,000. Also and many of you may have seen this in the Statesman that just this past Saturday the paper reported that Meridian's DUI has increased from 147 in 2004 to 274 in 2005. Also you should be aware that in the coming year, the Fourth District Court has added another magistrate, which will require that we cover seven courtrooms and that includes obviously your case load as well. That is no small task for us to do, but we intend to absorb that in our current operation. So, as you can see we continue, we believe, to add value to this contract and certainly handling the case load, a significant case load that Meridian has and we think in an efficient and effective fashion using our numbers and our office, quite frankly, that we are fortunate to have as well as some innovations that we have made in technology that are helping us keep track of your case load and as we go forward in the future. I would like to introduce Allison Tate and I know I have previously, but I will let her take over and talk to you a little bit about some of the things that were happening in Public Safety Division and Prosecution contract. Tate: Madame Mayor and members of the Council let me give you just a little bit more detail of what we do criminally. We have made a few changes to our Meridian City Pre.Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 4 of 10 screening team. Our screening team is the people that take things from the Police Department and get them into the criminal system. We review all of the misdemeanor citations that come from police that come to our office we review them, we make changes to them. We also review all the police reports that come in. We make charging decisions. We notify the parties involved by mail of the charging decisions and we now notify the pOlice officers by email of our charging decision and tell them what else we might need in a case, why we are doing something and why we are not doing something. We also review when people are arrested the night before, we do what we call a bond out review. We look at that case before it goes to court for arraignment the next day. As Cary mentioned we prosecute all the infractions and misdemeanors for Meridian. It is now seven courtrooms, plus a part time domestic - or will be seven courtrooms, plus a part time domestic violence courtroom. So, there are a lot of courtrooms to cover in Ada County. We also provide on call service to the Meridian Police Department, which is a pager - a police pager. So, when officers have a question, they can page one of us on the Public Safety Division and ask us a question 24-7, middle of the night and they also have our cell phone numbers. So, sometimes, I think they decide who they want to call and they will call me with a particular question if they think they might get the answer they want rather than someone else. But, we provide that service. Two days a week we provide some onsite services at the Meridian Police Department. We have three attorneys that rotate going out there. We provide - part of what we do is we just - it is face time. We answer officer's questions because it is easier for them to come in and sit in your office across from you rather than having to call you up on the phone. We also review the responses to public record's requests when we are out there. It looks like we have done about 500 public record's requests this last year. As people become more aware of their right and ability to inspect public records they make more requests. The record's department at police prepares a proposed response. Marsha Beaman and her people out there just do a really, really good job and then we do a legal review. We review all the redactions, we review everything before it goes out and sign off on it. We provide legal training. This is something that we have really tried to develop over the years that we have had the contract and tried to add value to that. We do a block training, which is two full days of training for all the officers every year. We do an advanced academy, which is new training that we are doing. When the new officers graduate from POST, they take part in advanced academy at the Police Department and we do a full day of legal training with them, give them an update on new cases that have come out. We do some courtroom testimony and we do some mock trials, put them on the stand and someone is the defense attorney and someone is the prosecutor. We do everything we can to sort of help them meld into working with us better as they head into their job. This last year we did some specialized training on domestic violence and then some new training that we are working on right now is some scenario based training that we hope to do out at your new K-9 facility and we have done some in Boise that was interesting and fun. We used real drugs and some legal scenarios that we came Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 5 of 10 up with and you have a prosecutor on scene and then various officers and so we are hoping to do that out at your new K-9 facility, which would be a great place to do it. I am looking forward to that. Legal bulletins - we do specific bulletins at the request of police officers if there is an issue that they want covered. We do some regular bulletins like a legislative update every year, which we just issued. That was the most recent legal bulletin that we issued. The third attorney that we have rotating out here is Terry Durden, who works on my team. He lives in Meridian, so he is able to - he did a ride along with the police last week. He is available more evenings and is actually out here to provide a little bit more advice on scene. That is the details of what we do from a criminal basis. Does anyone have any questions? Bird: I have none. Tate: We have found it to be a pleasure to work with the Meridian Police Department. Thanks. De Weerd: Really? Perkins: Madame Mayor, members of the Council I appreciate the opportunity to come speak with you again as I have for the last three years. Historically speaking victim services are associated with victims of violent crimes and unfortunately very traumatic things happen to people and they endure a lot of trauma that really has no criminal element to it. It is with just great pride that I see your Police Department providing victim services to those members of your community that would in the past be left struggling on their own to deal with their trauma and to deal with it in their own way to piece together the pieces of their life. What I am referring to is things like suicides and to mention an incident in specific the job site accident that happened behind St. Luke's West. We provided services to those individuals and responded there six times. I think it is a great testimony to your Police Department and your police officers that they get it, that they understand that those individuals need services as much as the victims of crimes and their families. It is for that particular reason that it is very important that victim services are housed with the Police Department because victim services in the Prosecutor's Office have a place and they are very important, but there are so many victims of all kinds of things that need services that really never see a Prosecutor's Office, where the paper work never goes in front of the prosecutor. I wanted to tell you how much I have enjoyed working with your Police Department, how great of a city that you have and what great officers you have. Our unit looks forward to working with your Police Department and with your Victim Witness Unit in the future and we will always have a very strong partnership. Thank you. Do you have any questions? De Weerd: Mr. President. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5. 2006 Page 6 of 10 Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess I did get feedback from people regarding that incident that you noted that the Police Department and I certainly passed it along with our Chief that I trust passed it down the lines of the professionalism of everyone there on site of the victim witness coordinators, the pOlice officers and how they respected what was going on and protected the victims in that case to exposure from the media and that is nothing about you Katy. But, you know in situations like that they just said - and yes, you Frank, sorry. You were hiding. But, the sensitivity and all of the emotions going on at those particular incidents are really sensitive and I think it was dealt with very professionally and we have gotten a lot of comments, so just to pass that along to you all too that it does take a team in many of those incidences and it was dealt with very well. Perkins: Thank you that means a lot to us. De Weerd: Thank you. Rutherford: Madame Mayor, members of the Council in a great act of delegation, I am the closer and here to bring the dollar figure to you. De Weerd: Congratulations, Steve. Rutherford: The bid for this year came in at $200,197.00 and that nets out to $16,683 per month. Now this number does exclude the victim witness services that we have provided in the past with the understanding that those services will hopefully be performed by folks that are part of your Police Department. Really the other increase in the numbers when you take the old victim witness portion off, comes in terms of recovering in directs. We talked about that last year. It is not really a bump in directs, it's that when our per employee health insurance amount goes up, we obviously add that to the two prosecutors that we attribute to this contract. In addition, we have been trying to keep pace with other jurisdictions, particularly Ada County, but a little bit of Garden City surprisingly and our friends up at the state who are paying their lawyers more money, particularly the intro level folks, the folks that are prosecuting these cases - those folks who start with us and work through their first two or three years, we find are at the almost $50,000 range in the Ada County market and we start our folks at somewhere in the $45,000 to $47,000 range in an effort to kind of try and keep pace. We really haven't been able to keep actual pace, but we are getting close. So, there is an increase in the costs of those in directs as well. Again, we believe the contract brings value to both our organization and to your city and again, I would be happy to answer any questions or clarify why that number is what that number is. Anyone? Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 7 of 10 Wardle: Steve, I don't have the percentage increase from this year to last. Do you have that handy? Rutherford: It is actually - oddly, it is a 20 percent decrease, but there is the take away of the victim services, so it was somewhere in the 160 and change area last year. We took away what amounted to - De Weerd: No, it was 260 because once you take out- Rutherford: Doreen has those numbers and I will gladly hand off to Doreen with the numbers. Queen: Sometimes I wonder why I come to these meetings, Madame Mayor and City Council members and then I understand why. As you do remember last year's total contract bid was $240,480 plus change. What we ended up doing was we subtracted out the victim witness portion of that and then we added five percent for just a five percent cost of living increase. Unfortunately, then we also had to add on an additional six percent and again those additional costs were related to the increase that we are giving to our attorneys because it is becoming more and more difficult to compete with Ada County and the State of Idaho in bringing in attorneys on the base line level. We also - our health care costs went up from $8,000 per person per year to over $11,000 per person per year. Those two were the biggest chunks of that other six percent increase. Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: We got a five percent and then six percent on top of that? So, in other words we got about a 12.5 percent increase? Queen: Madame Mayor, City Council member, yes. Bird: Excuse me, follow up? Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: We took basically $80,000 for the victim witness out of last years --? Queen: We took out about $61,000. Bird: But in the same token that is coming through in the police budget, also? Right? Queen: From what I understand it is coming through in your police budget. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 8 of 10 Bird: Thank you. Wardle: Thank you very much. Colaianni: Madame Mayor, Council members, Steve was wrong. I will do the closing. I wasn't going to, but something occurred to me as I look at this. To give you a little of my background anyway, I spent years in private practice before I went to work for Greg Bower to be his Chief litigator in all things civil. So, I have got a pretty good perspective of the costs of these things and the value in a contract like this and I could tell you for $200,000 and change, there is great value here. I think you all had this contract at one time in the private sector and that is fine and I am sure they all did a fine job, but with the services that are provided under this contract, the things that Ms. Tate went through are pretty hard to replicate, truly, in a private sector setting or in another public sector setting it is just great that we have this synergy and that we have the folks available to provide this service, but just think of the backup factor. If there is a problem and attorneys get sick, we have the ability to put people on the job and get the job done, not to mention the training and everything else that goes with it. To replicate it for those dollars, I think would be a pretty difficult task and we certainly thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation and we look forward to serving you this next year_ Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Mr. President, I do have a question. Why did you decide to withdraw the victim witness coordinator? Colaianni: Well, a couple of things that I think these - Tina can bring more detail to it. But, a couple of things Madame Mayor and Council members. One it is probably time, given the city of your size, to transition these services into where they belong, rather than in a prosecution contract. Because if you look at other cities of your size and jurisdiction that is where they put those services. It is important for the synergy of Police Department and victim services because they go out on calls obviously or in the same place, it is important, we think, to make that transition for you all. We did this over the past year, in terms of assisting in the transition and provided some input to your Police Department to help them with that transition, but it is probably time given your size to take on those services. It's typically where they are and we think along there and we will continue our resources to back up and to help and assist in the transition, but our resources and victim witnesses are still available. Perkins: Madame Mayor, members of the Council a huge function of what we do is community resources. While I understand that Boise City and Meridian are attached in a lot of ways, Meridian is really its own entity and it is growing bigger and bigger all the time and as your community grows, your own resources are Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 9 of 10 growing and the members of your community deserve to be given the resources from their community and not just piggy-back onto Boise City. I don't know if I am explaining that as good as I possibly can. Also, Boise City, the Victim Witness Coordinators with Boise as Boise City's area grows, we become stretched thinner and thinner as well without getting additional manpower or person power I guess I should say for our unit there. So, in seeing what your community needs have become over the last three years, I just see such great value in you having coordinators that know your community itself and the resources that exist here, rather than us just referring everybody to Boise City. As your community grows and your Police Department grows, we are so deeply integrated in our Police Department, we are a part of protocols and procedures at Boise City - our response is dictated by protocols and procedures and I would just like to see and assist you in developing that kind of professionalism for your very own unit that belongs to Meridian. De Weerd: Remember that was just your budget presentation (inaudible). Nary: I was going to get the tape. Chief Musser's budget presentation about that. Perkins: Thank you. Wardle: Council one of the things that I was looking at is and my question to Steve was in relation to the growth and this dollar figure verses the growth in the city and the growth in the cases that we have experienced it seems that certainly we have increases in cases and those dollar figures are increasing, but I don't think at the same rate. So, I appreciate the presentation. Any additional questions Council? Bird: I have none. Rountree: No questions, but thank you. Wardle: Thank you for your services here. Cary, Steve, Allison, Tina and Doreen thank you very much for coming today. Council that brings us to the end of our regularly scheduled Pre-Council agenda. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Rountree: So moved. Bird: Second. Wardle: Okay, it's been moved and seconded to adjourn. All in favor. Meridian City Pre~Council Meeting July 5, 2006 Page 10 of 10 ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:54 P.M. 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