Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003 02-19 Special Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 The Special Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 7:00 P.M. on Wednesday, February 19, 2003, by Mayor Robert Corrie. Members Present: Robert Corrie, Bill Nary, Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird and Cherie McCandless. Others Present: Stacy Kilchenmann and Will Berg Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird X Mayor Robert Corrie Corrie: Welcome all of you here this evening and its certainly a pleasure to have you want to help us in our endeavor to see if we can find new avenues and revenues for the city whether it be a mill levy or bonding or whatever we need to do so. Before we start let me start and have each one of you introduce yourselves so that we can kind of get an idea of who is who. Oh I’m sorry we got a special meeting. Open the meeting for the City Council special meeting th workshop Wednesday February the 19 2003 at 7:00 P.M. and we will have roll call attendance please Mr. Clerk. Thank you. Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda Corrie: We have adoption of the agenda, which is the revenue enhancement taskforce discussion objective. Are there any other additions to the agenda? I will entertain a motion to accept the agenda. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we accept the agenda as published. McCandless: Second. Corrie: Okay motion made and second to accept the agenda as published. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. Again let’s start – Irma you can start and we will go right down this side and then we will go down this side with Jim. Atkinson: I’m Irma Atkinson. Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 2 of 15 Jones: I’m Lori Jones. Corrie: Bob. Chandler: I’m Robert Chandler. G. Corrie: Greg Corrie. Stiller: Rod Stiller. Helm: Fred Helm. Hanson: Madelyn Hanson. Johns: Al Johns. Greene: Rich Greene. Bongiorno: Joe Bongiorno. McRoberts: Darrel McRoberts. Wardle: Shaun Wardle. Gilmore: Brad Gilmore. Keller: Jim Keller. Corrie: Okay. Again thank you all for being here. And what we are going to do tonight is kind of give you a background of some of the things we are looking for from you and some of the things you have to do in open meetings and taking minutes and I’ll give you some background of what we would like to see you do. At this time, I would like to have Stacy if she could kind of give us a background. You all have received a packet here tonight. This kind of gives you a real rundown and I will let Stacy tell you about it, its good reading and Stacy. This is Stacy Kilchenmann our Finance Director. Kilchenmann: This is guaranteed to put you to sleep at night. What I put together is just kind of a packet on some information I thought might be helpful for you to get started. On the top its entitled City of Meridian FY 2003 budget revenue manual. The city has pretty much revamped its budget process in the last couple years and part of that is each year we’ll be or I will be preparing a revenue manual that examines all of our sources of revenue, where they come from, kind of what I see in the future, what direction they are going to go. This was for our budget that we did last year and I’m in the process right now working on the projection for 2004. What this does is kind of goes through each category by fund. This is probably review for some of you but briefly funds are kind of how Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 3 of 15 we organize the city’s business and we have three basic funds. One is the enterprise fund and that is the Wastewater Plant, the Water Plant, Public Works, and they are operated just like a private business they generate the fees that they need for operation. Your committee will not be dealing with those funds but there is a description of them in here and its kind of interesting because some of the factors we use to predict utility revenue we use to predict general fund revenue because we use housing starts, number of utility accounts and so forth. There is kind of a cross of information. We cannot use the enterprise funds in the general fund. We do make an allocation where we take like part of my time and part of our human resource director, part of our computer person because we provide services for those funds so we do, do an allocation of costs to the enterprise fund in that manner but we cannot take the money and use it for anything other than those kind of administrative allocations. Then we have a fund that we call a special service fund, that is where we put our Building Department and Planning, Zoning and they are operated on the fees generated by the Building Department, and they actually are a part of the General Fund as far as accounting classification. What we do is accumulate all those funds we get which are above the amount we need to operate the service. We put them in what we call a capital improvement fund, the council has designated that they want those monies to only be used for capital improvement such as buildings, park development, and so forth, and so we just set those aside. Those are funds that are available and if they were to be used for general operating expense it would take an ordinance change because that is set up by ordinance. Finally, the general fund and that is the one you are going to be primarily interested in. That is all the services of the City that are funded basically through tax revenue or to provide those services that we can’t charge directly for. For example we do have some small fees from permits and so forth. We are talking about having fees for building inspections from the Fire Department and so forth. We have some recreation fees. As a whole, we don’t charge you for police calls or fire calls and we don’t charge you to use the park and so forth. Although as governments face the scrunch down on tax fees that’s one thing that they do look at is well do we need to search out and find all those kinds of services that we can somehow associate them to a user and charge for them. In this packet it’s a description of how the property tax levy works, which is a really exciting process and it’s difficult to explain and so I’m not going to explain it here now but if any of you have questions please feel free to call me and I can kind of walk you through it. When I started here, you know I have been paying property taxes for years I didn’t pay any attention to it. It took me like a year to figure out how it was actually calculated. Like I said if anybody has questions let me know I have more handouts and more information about it. There are a couple other sources, bigger sources of general fund revenue. Those are the state revenue sharing, which if you have been reading the Statesman you have probably heard about those. That is the portion – the state gives the cities back a portion of sales tax revenue. That is along the formula to do it is to develop through lobbying efforts and tax code like we always say in accounting, tax code there is no logic to it its just what lobbyist group had the most money in one particular year. Again, that revenue sharing formula is kind of complicated but that is our biggest source of Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 4 of 15 revenue after tax revenue. We are hoping that the state doesn’t tap into that because that would really make a difference to us. Then there are some smaller fee sources in there like I said we charge some fees. We have park impact fees that we get from building permits and those we use only to develop parkland. We have some fees like from people getting alcohol permits, liquor license and so forth and those are discussed in there too. At the end of that manual, which the pages aren’t numbered but if you go all the way to the end of the manual the last page is 26. If you go to the page after 26 there is a report of worksheet and its called budget projections and scenarios for the general fund and this one it looks like an intimidating group of numbers when you first look at it. What I have done because salary and benefits are probably is one of the largest components of our operating expense. I took some history going back to 1999 and we looked at the actual and then compared it to the budget for this current year that we are in and broke it down into the component that is just salary and the component that is benefits. Because for us are – I’m sure you are all facing this in your businesses and so forth – I mean the cost of our health insurance just sky rockets every year, 35 40 percent increases. This was initially prepared just to look at how those increases would impact us and so the yellow lines just show the increases historically in each of those components the cost for the city. Then the bottom is the operating expense and then the very bottom is total capital outlay. Capital outlay is the amount of money we spend for – what we kind of in a private business you would think of as fixed assets property plant and equipment park development – in the city we count anything that is a thousand dollars or more as capital outlay. A computer would be capital outlay but somebody buys a keyboard that wouldn’t be capital outlay. That’s just how we account for it and designate it. Then in the middle of this worksheet I just show, we are trying to look at how health increases would impact us. So we just say what if we froze basically froze, we didn’t hire new people we have to do some increase because of our police step program and our fire contract and what if we said operating expenses weren’t really going to increase how would health insurance impact us so that is what the middle one is. Then the bottom section of the worksheet is what if we continued to increase, add firefighters add police at the same rate that we have in the last few years. How much money would we have left for those capital outlay items those park development to buying new police cars, buying new fire trucks and you can see that we would have a lot less money left if we continued at the rate that we are increasing. Then the next sheet is entitled budget enhancements for the general fund and this is a history of the last three years so that you can see the kind of items that we have added like where did those historical increases come from what did we spend our money on? We go on a theory, we have what we call a base budget and that’s the budget to say what we would get if we did the same as we did last year in other words we didn’t add any people, we didn’t change anything, we didn’t have new programs we just stayed the same. Then we say the things that we add when we add new people or we buy some parkland or we buy a car or we buy a computer we call those enhancements. This is a list of them from the last three years. We have police in blue and fire in red and parks in green so that’s like accounting painting. That will give you kind of an idea of what we’ve been Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 5 of 15 spending our money on. Then the next sheet is called property tax information and this looks at a projection for the first chart is a historical and projected levy rates and you probably all heard us talk about this in the last two times when we tried to increase the mill levy and basically what happens is when a city is growing faster then three percent – let me see I’ll go back and show you – the legislature caps the growth in property tax at three percent of the prior budget. In a city like Meridian where you are growing faster then three percent that means your levy rate mathematically goes down. That’s just the first chart shows how our levy rate is decreasing. The middle chart takes, there is some other components of property tax revenue besides just the base property tax, which just grows at three percent as long as you are growing, we also get to apply the levy rate to new construction so that gives us another amount of money or a second component and that’s the revenue from growth. From Meridian that’s really kind of kept us a flow because we have a lot of new construction every year so we get that extra amount and then in the middle its showing in the orange line and then added in to that is annexation. If we annex a property that first year, we get to apply a levy rate and for us that really haven’t been really high it mostly comes from new construction. Then the bottom chart just kind of shows you how we are growing, its just like that’s our assessed property value and it just keeps going up at a high rate, so you can kind of compare it to how the levy rate goes down and then the next – Keller: Can I ask a question? Kilchenmann: Sure. Keller: On this Meridian levy rate that’s going down, are you saying that if your previous collections from the Mill Levy tax were like a million dollars and you had a growth, regardless of what the growth was you could only add another 30,000 dollars to your mill levy every year. Kilchenmann: Well to calculate the formula the percentage you could only add three percent but then you get to take – so say you do that and it comes out to be like .0031805 then you get to take that new growth like 18 million dollars and apply the levy rate to that and then as we get Keller: Is it three percent on top of that every year thereafter? Kilchenmann: Yes, because it goes by your prior year budget, whatever the total is. The next sheet is our capital improvement plan that we had for last years budget. This is, it will be updated soon and so I’m sure I will have all your emails and I’ll update it and send it to you but this is all those big capital projects the parks, fire stations, police station payment, police cars et cetera. This one goes to 2013 so it shows how much those items will cost just in it for themselves and then of course you add a fire station you also have millions of dollars in operating costs. It kind of says additional operating total annual cost. That just kind of gives you a picture of the kind of capital out lay and the kind of capital cost that Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 6 of 15 Meridian is looking at. Again, we have those color coordination’s with blue for the police, red for the fire and green for the park. Then finally there is a chart called property tax and property tax levy rates actual projected. These are basically the numbers that support that chart on the graph that had the first one with the levy rates and the middle had the different lines. This kind of gives you in numbers what it looks like each year when the county calculates how much property tax we will get. You can see the amount of property tax from the new construction roll that we get that’s on the top line, that’s the net that we get, its like 18 million something that we can apply the levy rate to get to that and then the annexation which like I say is not much. Then the base property tax and you can see that the base increase by three percent each year and then the percent we get from growth from our new construction for a total increase and then the bottom just for comparison we compared all of our other revenue sources. That kind of in a fast speed through is what’s in the packet. Jones: On the budget 03 percent (inaudible) increase. (Inaudible). Kilchenmann: Yes Jones: And what is the big annexation figure. Kilchenmann: For 02? Jones: 2001. Kilchenmann: 2001. Jones: Fiscal year 2002. Kilchenmann: I don’t know what the exact property was. That was just the levy rate times the actual property we annexed. I don’t know what particular property. Will might now. Nary: Crossroads. Bird: Crossroads was later. Nary: You have to remember that the fiscal year that the collection is the year after they do it so it could be crossroads, it could be Wal-Mart. It could be JaBil. Corrie: JaBil was in 2000 and so JaBil would be 2001 it shows up here. Kilchenmann: And on the growth I do project conservatively. It’s actually like a trend if you look at the dollars and it’s just a statistical equation just doing a regression analysis in the trend of the last few years because right now this is a scary time to do revenue projections. Every month we look at the building permits and they are staying high in Meridian we are staying up there it doesn’t Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 7 of 15 look like growth is slowing but its just like you read the revenue the forecast for the state and its just not good. If, you know I think to depend on the growth to build annual operating expenses is risky. Are there any other questions? Chandler: I don’t think you can project that through your budget but I’m interested I see some transfers going back and forth with the utilities. (Inaudible). Are you allocating costs from the utilities to the general fund? Kilchenmann: No we just allocated from the general fund to the utilities. We allocate half of the Human Resource Department and half of the Finance Department, to the enterprise fund to the utilities. Chandler: So the would be your allocated costs? Kilchenmann: Yes. Chandler: So you are showing impact from Human Resources, what’s the other one? Kilchenmann: Finance. Chandler: Your not showing (inaudible) City Council over the first of the year. City Council, City Clerk, Mayor’s Office that kind of thing. Kilchenmann: I don’t think that you can transfer the cost of the elected officials but we could possibly that is one thing to look at I mean we could allocate some of the City Clerk time and we used to not do any allocation and then we started with the Finance Department and we added Human Resources. You could, that is definitely something you could do is look at each – Chandler: Do an analysis of impact (Inaudible) what kind of allocated costs you could bring from utilities back over to (inaudible) and it sounds like you have done some of that with Human Resources. It would be kind of fun just to do a little analysis of what else you could do (inaudible). Kilchenmann: Pretty much in general government its, besides elected officials we have Finance, Human Resources and the City Clerk and so we are pretty much allocating everything except for half of the City Clerk’s time. Chandler: What about grants, do we do anything (inaudible). Kilchenmann: We have. The police have done some of the cop’s grants. Chandler: Did you get allocated costs from that? Kilchenmann: Well it is all in the general fund so yeah it wouldn’t. In my time we haven’t gotten any utility grants, which is only two years so. Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 8 of 15 Jones: Stacy, which salaries increase doubled from 02 to the budget of 03? Kilchenmann: Let me get back. Okay you are looking at. Jones: On the budget projection (inaudible). Oh I’m sorry. Bird: If it did Lori, somebody is in trouble. Kilchenmann: And if you look at that enhancement that shows you all the personnel we added. Yes. McRoberts: I was wondering on the last page there all other revenue sources. (Inaudible) it is fifteen percent and then all of a sudden it drops down to five percent. Kilchenmann: That is because of the revenue sharing. That is why – I know three we really whacked the budget down on, well one thing that hurt us – well its not as big as revenue sharing but probably next to revenue sharing and we get franchise fees from the gas and electricity and we had some big jumps for a couple years. We were growing, the rates were growing, and now last year they told us for 03 that they were going to decrease rates and it actually didn’t happen so much I think it was electricity that did somewhat. It didn’t in gas but now they are saying again okay now we are going to decrease our rates and there is an assessment formula, payback formula they do that they said they were going to decrease. Actually in the manual, it talks in detail about those sources. McRoberts: That’s why it shows a minus. Kilchenmann: Anything else? Keller: May I make a suggestion? That the committee name change instead of Revenue Enhancement Committee to Revenue Evaluation Committee. Kilchenmann: Okay that’s. Keller: I notice we are here to evaluate (inaudible). Kilchenmann: I agree. Okay I think on the cover sheet has my phone number and so forth so. Corrie: Okay thank you Stacy. What I would like to do and the reason that the whole Council is here is we all believe in what’s being done here today. We really appreciate you looking at these things and evaluating and how we can come up with some revenue to help us along because every year the Mill Levy is dropping whether we should have a mill levy increase you’ll be talking to your neighbors and to the people. What is the best way we can go about this, so one Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 9 of 15 of the things I’d like to have the Council President is talk about some of the objectives that we would like for you to look at in the next two months. Tammy if you would like to do that. De Weerd: Like the Mayor said I’d like to thank you all for being here tonight. Just a little background. I know that Greg is probably the only one that has participated in our past two failed Mill Levy attempts and he can probably give you some of the background as you dove into some of this a little bit deeper. But we determined that as we see the narrowing gap between our base operation expenses and the revenues that we have coming in that we need to do something. The two failed attempts gave us a wake up call and said okay we need to step back and really take a look at this. Our answer is sitting in front of us tonight, we need our citizens to really take a critical look at what we are doing and see if there is any rock we have not turned over and to have fresh eyes looking at this. The protection of the citizens and the taxpayers’ greatest interest and that is their pocketbook. We appreciate you taking valuable time and helping us look critically at our revenues and seeing – we’ll have our staff as a resource to you when you need them. I know understanding that the Mill Levy formula calculations was a real challenge for the citizens committee that we put together kind of in the eleventh hour in the second attempt we did. We are really being able to communicate how that formula is really derived because it’s complicated. I think that Stacy now working with it for two years can explain it in more layman’s terms but it’s a complicated formula that once you think that you have it figured out, you really don’t. We do have capital improvement plans that our fire department our parks department have put together. We have policies put in place by our police department that explains how their enhancements work with vehicle replacement and some of those assets that need to be replaced on an ongoing basis. We also completed last years strategic plan that were making a lot of our budget decisions based on, looking at short long-term plans. Those are all resources available to you when you are at that point that you need them. Again, our staff is a resource so don’t hesitate and I know after already talking to Jim there is going to be a lot of research that our staff will be pulling information together for this committee. We did try and give a sense of direction to give you some tangible objectives. Those are one to conduct a thorough review of the City of Meridian’s general fund revenue streams and provide a comprehensive examination of our current, alternative revenue sources for immediate, and long term needs. The second is to recommend new funding avenues and or adjustments to traditional revenue methods if needed that will assist in meeting the goals and objectives of the city. Pretty broad base but it kind of set the perimeters on what we are hoping for. We tried to also look at a reasonable time frame when we would like to get information back so it can also be used in determining as we set our budgets for next year and we would like to see if we could get a recommendation from this committee back by the end of June so I believe we’ll let you set your times and dates and committee chairman and recorder. Will will give some recording instruments so this is a public meeting so we will want it recorded so if you’ll have someone taking abbreviated minutes that would be helpful for the public record part of it. Again, we really appreciate Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 10 of 15 your help and your willingness to step forward, take a look at our budget, and let us know what you think. Corrie: Thank you Tammy. It may seem a lot to do for us but I think once you get into it its going to be a little easier to understand. Will is going to be here. He can help you with any like Tammy said its an open meeting you need to be under that open meeting law, you have to take the minutes and so you have to notice when you are going to have your meetings and Will will take care of all that for you and make sure you don’t get in trouble with the laws and again is there anyone from Council that has anything they’d like to say? Nary: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Nary. Nary: I really appreciate it Mr. Keller in noting that Revenue Evaluation, I think one of the objectives that we really tried to stress in all of our discussions about this committee is we were really wanting to leave it all in your hands as to what you think we can do to assist the city in looking at our revenue sources and looking at alternatives. I mean we intentionally did not want this to be called the Mill Levy Group because that is not our objective. Our objective is to find out what we can do. If that’s one alternative that you decide is reasonable then that’s fine but we really truly appreciate both the time and the effort that it’s going to take to do that and want to make sure that we can answer whatever objective types of questions you have about what you need to do. I mean the basic stuff is getting started I think the Mayor has said, picking a chairman, getting a recorder, getting a secretary someone to make sure we get all those things to keep the momentum going but really as to whatever types of evaluation that you come up with we really really want that to be whatever you folks come up with. Corrie: If you come up with an answer that don’t raise taxes that’s what we are looking for. Its what the people out there are saying and what they are saying to you. Whatever your answer is that’s what we wanted to hear. Now do you have any question before we adjourn our meeting and you can start yours and like I said you can have any type of help you want. You can call myself any member of the council or Will and we will get the answer for you as soon as we can and hopefully within the next day to you and you can set up your times when you want to meet and what you want to do and you are on your own. It sounds like we are just abandoning the kids here but we are not you are very capable people that can do this for us and we appreciate that so any of you have any questions? McRoberts: Just a couple of questions. The two objectives that you gave us is that the entire scope of our task or can we step outside that? Bird: Step outside. Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 11 of 15 Corrie: You certainly can step outside that box if you’d like, those are some guidelines that we were looking for that can help us. If you want to step out of the box then you (inaudible). McRoberts: My second question. Only living here three and a half years is there a (inaudible) in other words you guys have looked at any structuring, cost cutting all of that stuff or do you want us to go on to that. In other words we may need to look operation and see your flow chart and organization and all of that kind of stuff. How far do you want us to go over? Corrie: Council any ideas? Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: If he has any ideas to cut costs we’ll take it. You bet. I think you will find out that we are pretty cost efficient, as it is we just don’t have that much to play with. Corrie: 41,000 people in Meridian and we got 180 employees that is really close to the (inaudible). Mr. Nary. Nary: Yeah I was going to say I was going to say the same thing Mr. Bird was saying is that whatever types of alternatives recognizing – if your number one suggestion is eliminate the Police Department say one million dollars we may not do that. De Weerd: We will say no. Nary: But recognizing that any types of suggestions, we are game. We are game for the discussion. Corrie: And our records are all open to you like it is to anybody else and if you want to see. I would ask that you don’t bombard our Finance Director with a whole lot of things cause she’s in the middle of getting ready for budget hearings for us. If you have questions don’t hesitate and like I say you can call anyone of us and we will get the answers for you if we don’t have them right there and we will give you the answer that we can and honest answers. We won’t blow smoke or anything like that because you are the ones who are going to tell us what we can and can’t do probably and that’s what we want to hear. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 12 of 15 De Weerd: I appreciate those questions. One thing we have been working on doing over the last year is updating our fee schedules. Most of those have been in the enterprise fund and in our planning and zoning which is part of the general fund but it’s pretty much self-supporting with the building fees. We are right now in the process of updating and increasing our park impact fees. The Fire Department has a draft of some fees that are being proposed, right now its out in the billing community for comment. We are trying to do what we can with what we have and trying to allow the impact of growth to really help pay its way. Those are the kind of things that we have been working on bringing up to speed and bringing it to the level that is consistent with the surrounding communities. We are just looking at what haven’t we thought of you know I invite you to definitely take a look at some of our budget practices and see if there is a way we can fine tune them. Again like councilman Nary said we wanted to leave it open ended so that you were allowed to do what you felt comfortable doing and just have at it. We actually Jim we had three different names for it I think the second name was a Revenue Analysis Task Force so its kind of similar. We just had all kinds of names for you guys. You can rename it to whatever you want. Corrie: Also I’m going to have Will. This is about the open meeting laws and what you have to do. We’ll have Will copy this and see that you get it this week might have to mail it to you or get it to you do you can have that as well. Any other questions? McRoberts: The only other thing, I can’t write that fast. I didn’t get two of your objectives. Do you have a handout or something? De Weerd: Yes and actually we can mail it out with the open meeting laws for you if that sounds okay. I think those of you that I had emails for I did send the objectives out. Corrie: It should be just one page like this and I’ll see that you have it tomorrow. A question back here. Gilmore: Yes is it a safe assumption that all actual figures shown here can be backed up 100 percent. Corrie: I’ll let the Finance Director answer it – Bird: It better be. Corrie: It better be and the answer is yes. They have all been audited and those are actual figures from on auditor. Kilchenmann: Now the projections I can’t guarantee. (Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members) Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 13 of 15 Corrie: And there are no slush funds, the mayors office doesn’t have any funds he can work with. De Weerd: You know that does raise a point and the mayor is correct. We do take our fiscal responsibilities very serious. Once a month our finance director gives us financial reports on a monthly basis. Every council member has a department that we are a liaison to. We are responsible for looking at out departments budget on a monthly basis. We look at every expenditure and sign off on that so we do take our fiscal responsibilities very serious and we do look at it on a monthly basis and so and we are very fortunate that we have a finance department that really scrutinizes are budget and expenditures very closely as well. (Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members) De Weerd: You bet. Not my personnel ones. Corrie: I think we have five cards out and they are all accounted for audited everyday. Lori. Jones: With the revenue sharing issue before the legislature will we be kept in (inaudible) of how that is coming? Corrie: Yes it probably will happen with the legislature I have talked to that they are looking at freezing the one that we have now so in other words the City of Meridian will maybe get 1.5 million. If it comes out to be 1.7 million well we are going to loose 200,000 dollars but that looks like what the legislature is looking at right now. If they go in and rate it you’ll now it that day believe me because you have to have the right figures to work with so Greg. G. Corrie: Just so people here know what sometimes you are up against. There is a perceptual problem in the community versus reality. I think we were up against that and I even talked to a couple of the firemen the other day. There is the perception that this town has big growth and big bucks. When I step back and look at the figures that Stacy had provided me this last time around. This city runs extremely tight and I think the issue here is that you got to get it out to the community members I think there is some better people in here this time to keep it very simple because when you start talking a lot of mill levy math you start talking about a lot of charts and graphs. The average guy on the street looked at me and said I’m lost already and I think there is that perception that Meridian has gone up 231 percent the last decade in growth according to the department of Labor statistics that was just released but you can see that and I don’t see the budget cut. I mean the fees (inaudible) there is a lot of smart people in the room. Many biggest things was to get half that perception (inaudible) that can be very, very costly so I mean we can all share some of those thoughts. Tammy and I think have been to many meetings and I think Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 14 of 15 Cherie was at one of the meetings and sometimes people stare at you like you are in the headlights cause they are (inaudible). Just curious did you guys have after the last two elections the levy increases. Did you have any kind of focus group discussions or come to some kind of a consensus of reasons why they (inaudible). Corrie: I think I’ll let the Councilwoman answer it on that. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: I think what Greg had already vocalized was a lot of it, is there still a perception out there because of our growth rate and all the improvements that are being made and the property values and that sort of thing that we are doing very well and that we should be rolling in it basically. That is a perception out in the community. Frankly I just don’t think we were able to simplify the message and really communicate what it really all means and so having better statistics behind you and you know figuring out how to fight the perceptions out there or not really to fight the perceptions but to help educate how the state law really ties our hands. Even if for example if we were to frozen our mill levy kept it the same rate instead of having it lower because of the formulas. One year where we really looked at the difference it meant one and a half million dollars lost in our budget that we would have had if it would of just stayed at that same level and so that’s what that formula really does in actuality. In many parts of the state it serves a really valuable reason you know because peoples perceptions are the government is going to come and just raise the value of my property so they get more in taxes and so it has its purpose but in the rapid growing community it almost works against that. It was mainly a message thing it never failed by very many votes so I just think if it is attempted if that’s the recommendation this committee comes back to we’ll have an education process in front of us and we maybe surprised at what you come back with and that we won’t have to do that. And that would be great too. We just want the citizens to really take a critical look at this and give us what they think, because it comes better off from the citizens. I mean I’m a taxpayer too I care but I see it a little bit different as well. Nary: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Nary. Nary: One of the reasons why we asked the school district to participate and Christine Donnell wasn’t able to be here tonight but what we observed just again as tax payers is they are very good at educating the public over what it is it costs to educate the children and what it costs to do that and therefore they have been very successful in getting those bonds passed (inaudible). We felt that that expertise would be valuable to this group because that education is really key. I Meridian City Council Special Meeting February 19, 2003 Page 15 of 15 mean most of the general public it was just like Greg said don’t perceive that the general fund pays primarily for police, fire and parks. That to have parks costs money, to buy a fire engine costs a lot of money and 100 home subdivision by itself probably doesn’t pay for the cost to have fire service provided and police service provided for it and a public park available for the people that live there to use. ***End of Side One*** Nary: - don’t realize those things and that’s again an education process that people need to know and that’s why I said I think the school district as they participate in this will probably will be very helpful in educating folks as to how do we get those kind of messages out. Corrie: Any other questions? Okay we will leave you in good hands and whomever you have, as your chairman and that let me know and we will follow up routinely with you people and see how (inaudible) or anything you need. With that, if I don’t have any more questions I will entertain a motion then for the Council to adjourn our special meeting. McCandless: So moved. De Weerd: Second. Corrie: Any further discussion. Hearing none. All those in favor say aye. Motion approved MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:53 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: / / ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE ATTESTED: WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK