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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003 03-18 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 The Pre-Council Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, March 18, 2003, by Mayor Robert Corrie. Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Tammy de Weerd, Cherie McCandless, and Keith Bird. Members Absent: Bill Nary. Others Present: Bill Nichols, Kenny Bowers, Doug Strong, Brad Hawkins-Clark, and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: X Tammy de Weerd O Bill Nary X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird X Mayor Robert Corrie Corrie: We’ll open the Pre-Council Meeting Tuesday March 18, 2003 at 6:05 at the City Council Chambers. Mr. Clerk if you would give roll call attendance please. Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Corrie: Item Number 2 is the Adoption of the Agenda Council. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we approve the agenda as published. De Weerd: Second. Corrie: Okay motion made and second to approve the agenda as published any further discussion? Hearing none all those in favor say aye. All ayes motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES, ONE ABSENT Item 3. Presentation for Ice Arena by Charlotte Catlett: Corrie: Item Number 3 is the presentation for Ice Arena by Charlotte Catlett, Charlotte. Catlett: Thank you Mayor Corrie. Corrie: Thank you. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 2 of 14 Catlett: Is this hooked (inaudible)? Corrie: It’s on. Catlett: All right I have these for you all if you would like to pass them down. I’m just going to take a brief moment before I get to the drawings to tell you all – to give you all a concise statement of our mission statement as it has sort of developed over this past year. What our goals are and where we are headed. Basically, the Meridian Ice Skating Development Fund is a non-profit corporation organized for the purposes of establishing, maintaining, and operating a year around recreational (inaudible) facility to serve the residents of Meridian and the surrounding community. The principal motivation behind the founders was to meet the needs of the areas lower income residents, non-profit groups, youth groups and to implement programs serving at risk children and the handicapped, special Olympics programs, programs for the Boys and Girls Clubs the YMCA and our alternative schools. As you all may recognize it’s very difficult for a commercial facility to meet the needs of the at risk groups and the lower income community. In the ice industry, the operating costs are so high there’s usually no ice time left over for these special programs. The YMCA comes to mind, I look back, and I think well why can’t the YMCA do this. Because the types of programs we’re trying to put on are exactly what the Y does but on ice. It goes back to the fundamental issue that the ice industry is so different and unique and the associated costs are so high that the YMCA cannot expend their resources to do it. Then we go to the next step and as I look around, I consider the general public welfare corporation. Even with the 501C4, we believe that the target groups would be left behind. We’re taking our time to set up the 501C3 on a non-profit basis to try to meet the needs of our growing community. What we’ve done in this last year I think we were last before you in detail in April. If you recall ndrd at that time, I think it was April 22 or 23 of 2002 you all stated into the record that hey you wanted to work with us let’s go forward. Well some of us took the summer off. Bob and I have spent this last year learning more about the industry and getting the proper type of corporation set up. We believe a lot of the groundwork is now complete and that the community is ready for this and it’s time to start expending our time in resources on getting an actual letter of intent negotiated in moving forward. As part of our efforts in the last six months, we’ve been able to bring on some very helpful individuals. I would first like to say I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without their help. I want to turn to Stan Cole and thank him for the drawings that you’re going to be looking at of Cole and Associates. Then now that he’s completed his project, which you have before you the initial layouts of the arena, which we think, will meet everyone’s needs we’re going to turn the project over to the next step, which would be Michael Knye with Petra Construction. He’s going to analyze the drawings excuse me and come up with building costs and the equipment costs. He’s not going to do that alone however, there’s another gentlemen who’s been behind the scenes, John Larson who has quite a bit of experience in Park’s and Recs and the ice industry. He helped us get the drawings together, he’s helping me with the (inaudible) ground information on the capital financing of the campaign, operating strategy and analyzing the demographics of our community. He also knows quite Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 3 of 14 a bit about the operations and the type of work the Commercial Ice does so he’ll be helping Michael with that part of the strategy. In the meantime, let’s take a look at the drawings that are in front of you. By the way, these are your copies to keep, color, or do whatever you wish. Do I need a microphone? Corrie: Just grab that one right there you can take it off the – okay. Catlett: I’m shaky enough I would just drop it. Let’s see on the first page that you have is that on? Is that picking up? Berg: It’s picking up but it’s not (inaudible). Catlett: How about like this. You’ll adjust it for me okay. The first page is our proposed bottom floor, which of course has two side-by-side image L size rinks and 10 locker rooms in the middle. We’ve decided that the best layout and the best use of space would put the locker rooms assessable for both rinks, to give sufficient number of locker rooms to keep the guys and the gals separate during tournaments and things like that. Number 10 which is over here on your far right of the locker rooms there’s actually a label for the referees and stuff. That’s your basic ice arena. With the equipment room the ice rink surfacing space and the compressor room located in the back this is with the high hopes to make it accessible if there’s ever a need for expansion in the addition of subsequent rinks in the future. The front of the facility is where you have your office space, your rental, your concessions, a retail area for hockey equipment and stuff like that. A video game area and it looks like a set of stairs down there to take us up to the second floor. The actual amount of space allocated for this will depend on whether or not we’ve put on the second floor in the front if you would like to flip your page to the second floor. This part between the rinks will most likely definitely be built because you have to have it there. The part you see in front the proposed food court and / or restaurant and / or other additional programs base will be built depending upon the demand and the needs of the community and also our ability to raise sufficient funds to put that there. Then you’ll find right out in front a deck for the use either by the restaurant or by the food court depending on how things develop. That’s it. Any questions I have some experts here with me today. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: Not having a ruler here Mr. Coles or Mr. Larson could probably tell me what’s the size of the building. What’s the outside dimensions of it John? Larson: (Inaudible) 200 inside the (inaudible). De Weerd: Can we ask him to step up? Larson: It must be – Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 4 of 14 Bird: John do you want to step up to the mike one of you. I don’t have a ruler here or a tape measurer. Larson: (Inaudible) with the outside. (Inaudible) are 85 to 100 so the buildings about 250 by 250 roughly. Bird: 250 by 250? Larson: Yes. This is a take off of a project. You know we six years ago, I was part of a development team that put together a nice complex for Westside Sportsplex over here, which is about a mile away. I was actually part of that development team but I (inaudible) pay 25,000 dollars for VSC to do a study on that particular site for the ice (inaudible) and this is a take off of a facility that was designed – is a take off of somebody else’s design for that you know (inaudible) at that point in time. Bird: Thank you John. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: Charlotte do you know how this is going to lay out on the site map on the Borup Property what are we calling that part? Catlett: I’ll turn that question over to Stan. De Weerd: Okay. Cole: Mr. Mayor and Council we haven’t (inaudible) the plan and put it on the site yet but basically we could do that pretty quickly and it wouldn’t talk probably all the property that’s there. We anticipate there is some room for growth and we’ve also talked with that another group about somebody that would use some of the property intermittently as well. I don’t know how many acres it would take at this point. Corrie: How many acres is this – are you looking at? Catlett: I think that we’ve been saying that you are going to need about seven acres to build the building and accommodate the parking. Possibly up to 10 if you want to leave room for growth. The Parks and Recs have been – they put us together with the Lion’s Club for the Rodeo and if we lay out the facilities together we would be sharing the parking so that was cut down on some of the needed acreage and stuff like that. De Weerd: You have quite a team there with Stan and Michael Knye. They are very youth oriented I see them on these youth based projects. I appreciate your work on this. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 5 of 14 Corrie: Anything else? Did you want to tell us that you’re – Catlett: All I want to say William – Mr. Nichols. We have a lot of people working on this project and I think last April we talked about moving forward and start negotiating that letter of intent so that we could spell out a lot of what our actual responsibilities are going to be. We’ve been sort of talking generally on that with many different people here in front of me and with Parks and Rec about who has responsibilities for getting the site ready and stuff like that. What responsibilities will lie there once the lease is actually entered into and how it will all operate and the relationship between us. I see it mostly as a lessor, lessee situation where you lease the land to us and then we’re responsible for maintaining the facility, running it and everything else. That stuff needs to be spelled out so that when I’m talking to other groups, when I’m looking for letters of endorsement and everything I can be sure that we’re all on the same page. Bob was going to make a promise to me at one time. He was going to contact you to go forward with that stage once the Legislature closed. That was supposed to happen in th February on the 28. It looks like he may be tied up for quite some time so I’m no longer going to let him wait for that date. I’m making a public statement that I’m going to ask him to contact you soon, to have the two of you look at your calendars and try to find some time in the next few weeks to at least get the initial discussions going. Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: I guess key to some of those discussions are going to have some input from our Public Works Department as well as Park’s and this Council as far as getting services out there. They are in the – of the McDermott Trunk and I don’t even think – I think that’s further behind than the Black Cat Trunk. We probably need to have Gary touch base with this group and certainly with us to start talking about what our trunk line plans are out there and if we can split it off of the Black Cat you know I don’t know how any of those things are going to work. Certainly they’re going to need full services to run their operation so we need to start seeing how the timing issue – do you have a timeframe or a time line Charlotte that you’re going to work by? Catlett: I think once we get all of our cost estimates done and then we finish our business performance to present to the community we’re going to then basically open it up for public subscription. The bottoms falling out of the economy we’ve had 2,700 people laid off as of December in the area another 1,030 laid off from Micron we don’t know how the fundraising is actually going to go. It seems to us that the community’s actually even riper and ready for this than it was last year. It’s my personal goal is to be able to raise 50 percent of what our final ballpark figure is. That means that if I have to – the time it takes to raise 2.5 to three million dollars maybe one year, maybe six months it may be two. We’re going to set some time limits on them and see what kind of feedback we get from the public. Again, we’re setting this up we’re setting up a (inaudible) corporation, all of the drawings (inaudible) and ready to donate services and stuff. The general Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 6 of 14 public is going to have to step forward and say that they want this by letting us know who they are and then putting a little bit of their cash in so that we can actually build it. Thank you. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: Charlotte before you – after it’s built and everything and I’m sure you’re probably right you’re probably looking at a 3 and a half, 4 million dollar project what about maintenance? Is it going to derive enough income to take care of itself because ice rinks are very, very expensive – Catlett: Exactly. Bird: -- and we know the one that’s in Boise if it weren’t for the people that owned it, it probably wouldn’t be still opened. Catlett: And you know I don’t have the money to sink into it neither does this city and that’s why I think if we go back to the initial part of my presentation when I talked about how can this be done and how are other communities doing it? It seems that if you take away the cost of the land that’s a big part in letting people get started. John’s been looking at a lot of preliminary numbers we’ve been estimating the cost of (inaudible) high, the generation of income low to see where we hit. At one point, it looked really high but we found a mistake. It still looks like that even with some debt financing fees and stuff that we’re going to be able to maintain it ourselves without too much continued subscription once you get the initial endowment funds going. We’re not going to have final solid answers on that until we get our actual estimated fund cost. Other cities are making it work and so I think that we can it’s just a matter of learning how it’s done. It takes time, I’m an intellectual property attorney Bob does a lot of work in other areas as a General Practitioner. Neither one of us has ever built an ice rink before but we’re trying to answer all of those questions before we break ground. Corrie: Any further questions Council? Bird: I have none. Corrie: Charlotte it looks great for me. Like I told you in the office, I think you’re going to have the support of the whole town. I’m getting a lot of people asking about it. Catlett: You will see attached to those a business card that has a P.O. Box on it. P.O. Box 1147 Meridian, Idaho and a telephone number 208-866-5343 and the email address. Please feel free to share those three things with anyone that wants to get a hold of me. I may not always answer the phone but there is voice mail. Thank you. Bird: Just send the checks. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 7 of 14 (Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members) Corrie: All right anything else Charlotte? Anything else? Catlett: At this point I don’t think believe so. There are several issues that we will discuss when we get to the point of the actual negotiations of a letter of intent but we’ve discussed all of that with you before. Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor I guess one last question. As you bring forward the letter of intent and start looking at coming up with an agreement you will have a business plan and some performance. Catlett: I think it’s the (inaudible) what we’re working on. I would like to get them both going simultaneously so that we’re not looking at next year before we have either finished. I believe ironing out many of the issues in the letter of intent who actually gets the site ready, how much it’s going to cost us or the city will give us a better timeline as to whether things could be – when things can actually be done. Thank you. Corrie: Thank you. De Weerd: What can we say to Bob other than we know why you’ve been delayed so long. These are health vacations right for both of you? Corrie: Okay very good thank you. Nice presentation thank you guys. Item 4. Review of Master Pathway Agreement with Nampa Meridian Irrigation District and New Pathway Condition for Development Applications: Corrie: The next item is a review of the Master Pathway Agreement with the Nampa Meridian Irrigation District and New Pathway Conditions for Development Applications. Brad. Hawkins-Clark: Thank you Mayor Members of the Council. I guess maybe Bill and I haven’t touched base on this but maybe we could tag team on this item a little bit, if that’s okay with you. Essentially, what this item is as you know we’ve been seeing a lot of pathways come through over the last couple of years. The Nampa Meridian Irrigation District and the City of Meridian do have an informal agreement that we entered into a couple of years ago. There are – in terms of implementation, still some kind of wholes and uncertainties I think in that Pathway Agreement. Mr. Nichols has had several conversations with the Irrigation District particularly on – they would prefer to have one entity to work with so they don’t have all of these pathways either in subdivisions or business owners associations that they’re working with these associations to maintain. If there’s trash along there if they need to get in and clean out the ditch or whatever their preference is to work with one. In that regard the City of Meridian would potentially be the entity that they work with that I understand they prefer. It begs Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 8 of 14 the question of liability and other responsibilities. I basically just borrowed a lot of language that Mr. Nichols put together and you have there on that memo that I th submitted March 14 of some wording that could be placed in any staff report that has some kind of pathway whether it’s public or private if it’s adjacent to an Irrigation District facility. I don’t know if Settler’s Irrigation District – in the North Meridian Area we are working with Settler’s a little bit more. Nathan Draper is their representative he did have a meeting with our Public Works staff this morning and I think that would probably bear some more discussion. Certainly the assumption would be I think that they be included in this as well. Bill do you have anything? Nichols: Sure. Mr. Mayor Members of the Council just a little background of where we’ve been. It was about three years ago that – more than three years ago that the process of a Master Pathway Agreement began. Part of that was in conjunction with the Five Mile Pathway and the property that was received from the (inaudible) and those state funds that we’re going to use to improve that pathway and all those things. There was – so rather than to have a separate licenses or separate Pathway Agreement with each stretch of path Nampa Meridian wanted to have a Master Pathway Agreement that then could have a License Agreement which would tie each pathway into it. At the time, that we were doing those negotiations in working on it one of the issues was liability. Some of the language in the original drafts said that we couldn’t do anything that would create any risk of injury. We got them to agree that you know we could have an activity on the pathway as long as there wasn’t an unreasonable risk of injury. We tried to get some conditioning language into and were successful in that. The Pathway Agreement was entered into and then a License Agreement for the Five Mile Pathway at the same time. When we were doing, that negotiation that’s what I had in my mind was okay the City of Meridian owns the pathway and has a pathway along the Nampa Meridian Irrigation District facility to supply. As you know, we’ve had some pathways that we’ve required as a condition of approval or maybe the developer includes it as an amenity as one of their two amenities in their project. I was at a meeting with Nampa Meridian’s Manager, their attorney, Steve Arnold from Briggs Engineering and Steve Bradbury who was representing Steiner Corporation with regard to the infamous pathway along the Hunter Lateral at the Lakes of Cherry Lane No. 9. John Anderson says we’ve got I can’t remember the number seven or eight pathways that we should have License Agreements for and we don’t have License Agreements with the City of Meridian for these pathways and they’re building them or they’re already built. I asked him to tell me which ones they were and I wrote down the names of these. It occurred to me that they were all pathways on common lots in a subdivision as part of the subdivisions amenities true as part of the Pathway Plan if you will follow the Five Mile Drain or the Ten Mile Drain or different ones. I said well they’re not our pathways. He said yes but you require them, they put them in and we don’t want to have to know which Homeowners Association to call or who their president is or how to get a hold of them. The example that was given was they had to do some maintenance on Wilson Creek or Drain depending upon how you view it in Nampa just south of Greenhurst Road behind there’s a residential area there out towards Skyview High School. He said we needed to do the maintenance, we called up the city, we told them Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 9 of 14 when we were going to need to do the maintenance, when the pathway would have to be shut down you know for which days. The city went out, put up the barricades and put up the signs that said this pathway closed for maintenance from this date to this date. They had the pathway closed off, they had it barricaded, they had notices and they could go and do their maintenance and be done. That was the – it was that meeting which I think was last fall where we started to get into this well they’re going to require a License Agreement even on these private pathways. Then one of the big issues of the Irrigation District is always liability. If somebody falls into one of their facilities and drowns, they’re worried about liability even though there’s a State Statute that says if you use somebody’s property for free for recreational purposes, you don’t have liability. They still worry about it or they worry about the cost to the fence or whatever the issue might be. The more I thought about it, stewed about it some and we’ve had some more pathways proposed like the one on (inaudible) Farm and others that perhaps we need to have a standard condition that says if the Irrigation District requires a License Agreement which then entails us to do – take on some possibility. Then you have to also have an agreement -- agree to put in place an agreement that indemnifies the city and agrees to take over those maintenance responsibilities. That sort of thing so we didn’t get into a position where all of a sudden we’re maintaining all of these pathways because of a License Agreement or else we had pathways that couldn’t be used or those sorts of things. That’s how this came up. I had some discussions with Brad and one day sat down and tried to hammer out some language that we might put in as a standard staff condition. That’s the background. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: Mr. Nichols if we require a pathway in our conditions in our findings of fact and stuff we still have a liability regardless to (inaudible) if we require it. The liability issue to me is we’re going to get hit whether it’s in our name or it isn’t in our name if we require it as a condition of development. Nichols: Councilman Bird, Mayor and Members of the Council I’m not sure that we incur a liability just by requiring it any more than we incur liability by requiring streets or connective path – you know a micropath or some sort of thing like that. I don’t think that just by requiring it we incur some liability. I think it’s fairness to the Irrigation District the issue about being able to call one entity for things like maintenance or there’s a whole bunch of trash or there’s encroachments into the pathway or into the ditch or somebody’s gone under the pathway with a pipe and sucking water out of the ditch for who knows why. Those kinds of things make some sense that we might be in a better position as a city to be able to put up some barricades and put up some notices and to be able to track down somebody and say look this is what you’ve got to do. Certain subdivisions have – the one I live in has a pathway that’s maintained by the Homeowners Association but if it came down to maintenance along there it would be the city that would put up the barricades. That’s in Nampa for the minutes. I think that I just would hate to have a situation where we have to – you know Nampa Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 10 of 14 Meridian says we’re not going to let you do anything on this pathway unless you sign this License Agreement. We don’t have any fall back position with the Homeowners Association or Property Owners Association when it was clearly intended that they would maintain that pathway all along. Bird: I agree 100 percent with you Mr. Nichols. I think that we need to get something like that drawn up that we can barricade and do stuff like you said they do in Nampa. We need to get that license in place if that’s what it takes. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: Mr. Nichols what – do you know if they have a particular ordinance in Nampa that addresses this or is it all done through some kind of a – is it all done through the License Agreement or do they have multiple documents addressing these issues. Nichols: Councilwoman de Weerd, Mayor, and Members of the Council to my knowledge there is no Master Pathway or Pathway Agreement in Nampa. I think Nampa took the position they didn’t need one. I can check into that easily enough as you know and I certainly will but I’m not aware of an ordinance that sets out those things or a resolution or anything else other than they just kind of have an understanding that’s how they’ll handle those issues. De Weerd: I guess this does go back to the broader picture and I understand that through the Park’s Commission they have a Pathway Committee that’s pulling together some of the work that the sub-committee a number, a couple of years ago on pathways. We do increasingly see pathways being planned in these developments. We still have no strong firm standards, requirements, a plan to tie all of this together. I guess if we don’t get it real soon we’re going to be in dire straights. We’re going to have different standards of path surfaces we’re going to have different type of maintenance standards. They are going to be wide in some places and short and you know we just need to come up with some strict standards. I don’t know Brad, maybe if you can attend one of these and kind of see where they’re at. I know you and I have kind of talked about a consultant to pull some of this together. Even along the rail corridor it’s starting to come up more and more frequent as to what our plan is and what expectations are as far as the standards and if they’re supposed to have – how wide are they supposed to be, what kind of buffer on both sides and those kinds of issues. If you can kind of touch base with them, see where they’re at and see if it makes sense to have a consultant kind of pull some things together. I think now is the time to do it. Hawkins-Clark: Mr. Mayor if I could just respond to that. Yes, I think that allowing you know our new Parks and Rec Director Mr. Strong some time to come in. That’s definitely one of our department’s priorities to talk about with the Parks Department. I know that there are some standards that are in the Parks System Plan that – three different types of pathways but you’re right it’s a very Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 11 of 14 pressing need. Some – an applicant will come in and we say well there’s a pathway on this and they ask us well which side is the pathway going to go on and we can’t tell them. Then of course, the first one that comes in most of the time doesn’t want to do it. Until we get something in writing and I’m sure that you know it can go – there’s just a lot of missing pieces. I think our goal with this was in the meantime and maybe well even permanent that we have for those developers that do agree and where the Irrigation District says you must enter into a License Agreement this is a heads up to the developer at the very front end that your Homeowners Association is going to be in on this. The last paragraph in the middle does mention that well what if after 10 years I mean a lot of these Homeowners Association disband and that’s a big question mark for me. Nichols: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Nichols. Nichols: Just to reiterate you know I wouldn’t say I lost any sleep over it but it was bothering me that all of a sudden Nampa Meridian expected License Agreements on these paths that we didn’t own or maintain. To go back to any of those Property Owner Associations and say oh, by the way we need to have an agreement now when there wasn’t anything in the staff report, recommendations, or findings pertaining to an Indemnity Agreement it makes it difficult to ask for one. That’s why we wanted to come up with something that staff could throw into their standard comments so that then the developer had a chance to address it through the process if there was some kind of a problem with it. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: So can they come back to us since it wasn’t in any of their comments they knew a pathway was being proposed? Does the same apply with them can they go back and make that a requirement that we have this kind of agreement? Nichols: Madam President, Mayor, and Members of the Council that’s a great point. At this point, they’ve allowed those pathways to be constructed. I think a lot of them are being used and they haven’t blocked anybody off from them. It’s just that it’s a loose end that they would like to see tied up and maybe if we just simply take them one at a time and see how we can work on it. I don’t know I was caught flat footed in that meeting when they said okay here’s all of these that we want licenses for and I’m thinking gee we don’t own them and we don’t maintain them. The agreement talks about Meridian pathways not so much as City of Meridian owned. I clearly though it only intended to cover things like the Five Mile where we own it. We’ve got the easement it’s ours we have to take care of it. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 12 of 14 De Weerd: Just one final question on the Five Mile path. I know I’m putting Doug on the spot because he probably can’t answer it. I was curious as to have we had any issues on that pathway that we should be considering as we look at creating more and more pathways. Corrie: That’s probably going to have to be a question that he has to think about. De Weerd: We’ll see how good he is (inaudible). (Inaudible) the Risk Manager doesn’t know of any so that’s a good thing. Strong: Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman de Weerd you have put me on the spot. I’m not aware of any issues on the trail at this point. De Weerd: We’ll have to break you in Doug. Strong: It’s one of the issues that we are looking into that’s not directly related to th this is crossing from 8 Street Park to the trail. Bird: That’s right. Strong: Putting a bridge across to provide better access to the trail of the neighborhood. It’s a little different issue than I think – but it does connect pathways that way for different – of pathways to neighborhoods which will improve that pathway. Bird: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mr. Bird. Bird: Why don’t – I think Mr. Nichols, Brad and Doug can get together. I’m like Mr. Nichols I would like to see something that could be put -- whether it’s by Planning and Zoning or Parks Department in the staff comments something that would take care of each one of these pathways that would allow us to have access too or however you want to do it. I think Mr. Nichols can probably get you some good wording to do that. I believe it’s a very important that the Parks and Planning and Zoning are together on this. The Park’s Department and Planning and Zoning are very much together on this. I’m sure they will be but that’s what I would suggest and let something so that in staff reports when these pathways come through they’re automatically in the Findings of Facts and all that stuff. Hawkins-Clark: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Yes. Hawkins-Clark: If I could just ask one clarification of Mr. Nichols on – Bill did I hear you write that that’s State Statute that says that cities are not liable for recreational purposes. That even though that’s out there you don’t feel that that’s enough we still would need to enter into these License Agreements. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 13 of 14 Nichols: Mayor and Members of the Council the issue is not the immunity from liability. That applies to property owners. The issue is really having a way of funding the defense. A lot of times the cost is not the indemnity or what you have to pay in damages. A lot of times the cost is defending from a claim and so insurance and I’m not an insurance salesman but insurance part of the reason for having it is to be able to pay those costs of defense whether the claim is warranted or unwarranted. One of the reasons for the proposed language is to have somebody else back up the cities insurance carrier that we could lay the responsibility off onto somebody else that has an insurance that will take over the defense as well as potential indemnity so that the city doesn’t have that cost. The Immunity Statute is a good one because it’s designed to encourage property owners to allow somebody to use their property for recreation. Allow a bird hunter onto a farmers field or through somebody’s land down to the river to fish kind of thing so that – as long as they don’t lay a trap for the person they’re not going to be liable. Corrie: Any other discussion? Okay. Why don’t the three of you get together and see what kind of language you can get into these. Bill you can help come up with that. Very good, all right. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd. De Weerd: I would like to move we go into Executive Council per Idaho State Code 67-2345(b). Bird: Second. Corrie: Motion been made and second to go into Executive Session roll call please Mr. Berg. Roll Call: Bird, aye; Nary, absent; de Weerd, aye; McCandless, aye. (Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members) Corrie: I will open the – I’ll entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session. Bird: So moved. McCandless: Second. Corrie: Okay motion made and second to come out of Executive Session all those in favor say aye. Opposed no. All ayes motion carried let the record show no decisions were made in the Executive Session. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES, ONE ABSENT Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting March 18, 2003 Page 14 of 14 Corrie: At this time I will entertain a motion to close the Pre-Council Meeting Agenda. McCandless: So moved. Bird: Second. Corrie: Okay moved and second all those in favor say aye. All ayes motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES, ONE ABSENT MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:04 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: / / ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE ATTESTED: WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK