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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2006 12-19 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meetina December 19. 2006 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, December 19, 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, Joe Silva, Bill Musser, Ron Anderson 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: I move we adopt the agenda as published. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It has been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as published. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Discussion of Detox Center by Mayor Dave Bieter of Boise City and Bob Banks of United Way: Wardle: I would like to welcome the Mayor of Boise, Dave Bieter to our meeting. Thanks for being with us. Bieter: Good evening. It is humbling, but I am thankful to have the opportunity to stand before you this evening on a very important issue and as was mentioned Bob Banks is also here with me. Bob is a board member of United Way and has been instrumental in working on this issue. I want to give you just a little bit of background on where we have been that has brought us to this point and then I will introduce Bob for a few more specifics. We will be happy to answer questions after that. This is really- Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 2 of 18 De Weerd: Excuse me, Mayor. Bieter: Yes. De Weerd: Does one of our staff members want to go and deactivate the alarm? Berg: Madame Mayor, I think it is being activated. Dave is here until 6:00 and so he probably just has to activate and then it goes off for a little bit and then it stops. Wardle: Sorry about the interruption. Bieter: It is all right. De Weerd: I apologize. That is the last time you will hear that. Bieter: Just like at our Council meeting. This effort began several months ago, like around 18 I think it is now. We have - there has been an effort to bring a community detox center to the city and to the Valley for years. Unfortunately, those efforts have been unsuccessful. There was a plan or a proposal that the city had when I came into office, unfortunately we found it just to be unworkable. I think the main reason why we haven't been successful is that while well intentioned and you can see why you would want to do this, the plans were I just think really too big to get done because they included several aspects of not only detox, but treatment, which we would certainly would concede are necessary and there are calls for those seNices, but unfortunately that made it, I think, cost prohibitive and there wasn't a way to sustain the effort and I think that that is a good reason or that is the main reason why these efforts haven't been successful. So, we called together members of the community, as many aspects as we can - law enforcement, the county, state representation, federal representation, the advocates for these issues, some of the groups or agencies that treat substance abuse problems. We began working to define the main gap and to define for our efforts what would be the scope and size of what we hope to accomplish and while that was quite an involved process, we did reach a broad consensus about both what the primary gap is and the magnitude of what we thought was reasonable and feasible to go forward and that is and Bob will go into the more specifics, but in general terms it is what is referred to as a medical model detox that is there will be medical staffing and that type of approach to it as opposed to what is referred to as a social model and not to go into those differences, but it is somewhat self explanatory and there would be certified personnel, medically certified personnel at the faCility. The other aspect of it that is real important is what is referred to as pure detox. Detox means a lot of things to a lot of different people we have found, especially in working with this group. What we mean in this effort is pure detox in that it is removing the toxins, whatever those are, drugs or alcohol from your system in a three to six day stay. Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 3 of 18 It is quite literal when we say that to get whatever chemical or substance that you are having a problem with or addicted to out of your system- because I don't know of any treatment facility or program that will accept you without that having been done already. In addition to being able to stabilize people so that they can make decisions on what their best alternative is and that the only facilities available at present are either the hospital emergency room or our law enforcement or whatever law enforcement agencies is applicable, which is a bad alternative we have found, both in terms of they are not equipped to address these issues and it is quite expensive and takes resources away where they are better applied. That really was our - in getting our Council on board with this it was when we looked at the Police time spent essentially babysitting intoxicated people. That is where we found it is not money that you can directly spend, it is much better to have your Police Officers doing other things than that So, that is how we went forward. The City of Boise is committed $1 million of community development block grant funding that we have earmarked for a detox facility. We also have a site on Allumbaugh Street, not far from Barrister that it suitable for a facility and we have committed - our request will be and what we are trying to build around the county is an operational commitment based roughly on population. The City of Boise has committed $240,000. We arrived at that. That was and I think you have a similar refund of sorts - the state when they, I don't want to say robbed, say they redirected liquor funds, they have over the next four years they are paying that back to all cities, I believe, but in the City of Boise's example that is $240,000 and so we have dedicated that amount for four years and we will anticipate continuing that into the future. I say that the City of Boise is quite committed to this. We thought it was important that we do that, both in terms of capital to be able to get the facility done and to try and build momentum among the entities. The county has, although not formally done, they assured us of a similar commitment for the City of Boise, so roughly in the $240,000 and $250,000 range. We made a request to the City of Eagle and they have also committed. For that I will turn it over to Bob for - Bob has more specifics about what the facility will look like and if that would be okay to turn it over to Bob for a minute. Banks: Good evening and thank you for allowing me to be here tonight to talk to you about this very important subject. I will talk a little bit about need first and I know I don't need to emphasize that too much with this group and our media has been highlighting that for our community fairly frequently in the last couple of months. You may have remembered a story about Charlotte Lenear in the paper, a recovering addict and the story about how she lost her 23 year old son two years ago to a drug overdose because under her circumstances and her adult son's circumstances they had no place to go. Another story was about a couple who had a meth lab fire in their house and they lost their kids, they went to jail and they now are back together as a family and her story was being told on the T.V. and the challenges that they were having and then most recently one of our Police Officers saved the life of a homeless man who was intoxicated and passed out in the cold weather. So, it is not hard to find these stories and they Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 4 of 18 tug at your hearts and they are frustrating. I will add one that wasn't in the public knowledge. Recently when I was speaking with a group a mother came up and told me her story about she had recently turned her son in for criminal activity and insisted that he be arrested. Having a son of my own, I know I looked a little aghast when I heard her part of the story because I wondered what drives a parent to do that? When she read my face she knew she needed to answer the question to help me to understand and she said I would rather visit my son in jail than in the morgue because we don't have any other alternatives. We have no place that we can get help. We can't afford it. We don't have insurance. He has no insurance and we can't afford to help him. That is why we are here and talking tonight. Those are the emotional strings and they tug at your hearts and they are very strong strings and they in and of themselves are enough reason to do this, but our community in 2002 through the center for public for help policy at Boise State University also studied the need for this and they did an elaborate study. It is a very thick document. I won't give you the whole document. I know you don't need any more paper, but I give you the executive summary tonight and it gives you the statistics behind that. It tells you where we stand as a state in dealing with this. We are third from the bottom in percentages of our budget that we allocate to this situation and out of that only three percent of that small percentage of our budget that we allocate to it, only three percent goes towards treatment and prevention. The rest goes towards the consequences that we feel because of these problems of evictions. So, may I give these to you Mayor? I think I have the right amount for everyone there. So, on September 22nd I sent a reader's opinion to the paper and they published it and in that they highlighted the reasons why we should do this and I will just review those for you very briefly and I will give you a copy of this reader's opinion. One it makes our community a safer place to live. It will make our community a safer place to live. Eighty-five percent of the criminals and the prisoners in our prison system and in our Ada County Jail are there on substance abuse related items. So, the more people that we can get help to so that they don't have to go to jail to get this kind of help - we will help keep those people out of criminal activities_ It will save lives - eight out of ten people that commit suicide have substance abuse as one of the factors involved in their suicide. The Mayor talked about how this interferes with the quality of our healthcare by jamming up our emergency rooms and our hospitals and jamming up how it interferes with the quality of our law enforcement by jamming up the back seats of our law enforcement cars with intoxicated people and having people that they have to deal with a set of dealing with other matters, so the sobering station will give them a place where they can take intoxicated people. It will save children. We had in 2005 in our state, 3,335 children in foster care. Eighty percent of those children in foster care were there on a substance abuse related reason that drove that family to have their children go into foster care. This is the one that I think is most compelling for all of us and it is away from the heart strings and it is just down to good old business sense and before I got into this community volunteer work and spending my full time on this, I wasn't exactly vice-president of store development Albertson's. So, I am familiar with business decisions. I ran an annual budget of over two and three Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 5 of 18 quarter billion dollars, so I made a lot of business decisions. This project when in operation will save more tax dollars than it costs. I could go into a lot of details, I have studied this like a business person would study this and I don't have time to explain it because it is sort of complicated to get through the numbers, but it is substantiated in another way besides the work that I have done here, analyzing our own situation. There is a California study referenced in that executive summary that I just handed you that says for every dollar that goes into one of these that has investments, our community gets back seven dollars and basically a good way of understanding that is if we can keep people out of our prison systems, we have got 600 people that are supposed to be in our prisons that are in other states' prisons; if we can keep them out of our prison systems, we save money. We are talking about building a new prison. If we have fewer prisoners we can spend less money on that. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman, can I ask a question? Do you have data that really brings it down to the impact on every citizen or each family and the cost of goods, the cost of insurance, you know just the cost of society and a lot of people will say well I don't want you to spend my tax dollars, but what it gives back and saves in your tax dollars - there needs to be a better way that we can calculate that and tell the story. Sanks: Yeah, I wished I had better data. The 2002 study does some of that and then some of the work I have done individually - the work I did individually showed that just evaluating our Ada County jail system and our prison system that it would be like a four to one payback on that, but that doesn't count the cost of going through the judicial process and the impact on individual lives. Some of our volunteers are trying to do some sUNey work to accumulate additional data, but we don't have really great data in that regard, but we do have some data that makes it really clear that the payback is large. De Weerd: Follow up. Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess also as a businessman that cost of goodS and the shoplifting, the associated crimes at what you have to mark up those goods in response to that to kind of share the cost over a broad sense, but is there anything out there on that that can speak more directly to even our business owners? Banks: That is one of the things that the community volunteers are trying to collect. We are trying to do a sUNey among substance abusers to collect data that wouldn't be normally available through say the law enforcement because law enforcement knows how many crimes that they catch people and convict people for - we are trying to get the information from people who haven't even been caught how many crimes they are doing. So, we are working on that survey. Dr. Richard Craig who's PhD is in substance abuse related areas is guiding our Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 6 of 18 volunteers through that effort and we are using some BSU students, but we don't have that data yet. So, we are trying to define that. I will give you a copy of these September 22nd reader's opinion. Now what we are trying to put together- what we are putting together and what we substantially have together and that is the good news tonight is that this project has huge momentum. It is closer to being done than it has ever been in this community and it is has been tried many, many times. One of the surprising times that I have run into in my activity on this is the number of people I have run into in the community that have worked on this in 1985, in 1995 and 1997 and it fell apart for whatever reason. It can't and should not fall apart this time. Basically through the action of the state government and Governor Risch put into his recommended budget that he has turned over to Governor Otter's staff and $865,000 for the construction budget. That $865,000 in addition to the monies that has already been committed publicly and the amounts that we are anticipating from Ada County will bring us to full funding on the construction. As the Mayor said the city has already provided the land, so this project from that point of view is very, very close to having a 100 percent go. Now on operational funding at the minimal level and when I say minimal level we are building a facility that is easily expandable within the walls that we build from a 12 bed detox center up to a 36 detox center and it would also include a sobering station. A sobering station is basically a drunk tank. So, if you are intoxicated, you would be taken to the sobering station and that would be somewhere between a six to twelve hours stay, while you become un- intoxicated. The detox center then is a facility that is in the same building and it is where people go as the Mayor said to have addictive substances removed from their bodies. That is typically a five to six day stay and the range depends upon the substances that you are addicted to and many times they are addicted to more than one substance. So, we have designed a building that we can start off with a smaller operation, controlling our operation costs and that we can easily expand into as we justify more money on operations that would come from wherever we can find it. We have plans in place to go and work towards getting additional funds to run the operations, but right now we are focused on getting to the minimal level of operation's funding, which is basically $1 million. So to run a 12 bed detox center and a 42 to 48 hour a week sobering station is $1,038,000. To run at full capacity 24 - 7 on the sobering station and 36 beds of detox is about a $2.5 million operating budget. So, why we are here tonight is to make a request towards that minimal level of operation. I have one fact sheet, one more piece of paper for you here which basically identifies that this is a 24 hour medically monitored detox center, 36 bed capacity with the idea of a 12 bed start, with a sobering station and so it covers this. By the way, Governor Risch also put into his proposed budget, his recommended budget $500,000 for operating money for this and that was exactly what we were looking to the state for in this formula. So, the combination of the cities within Ada County and Ada County are producing more than half of the minimal level of operating budget when everybody works together. Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 7 of 18 Wardle: Bob just before you pass that out, one of the questions I have is, is the need 12 beds or is the need today closer to 36? Banks: The need today is really 36 beds and the need for the sobering station is yet to be defined, but I highly suspect it is larger than a 42 to 48 hour operation. That would just be isolating on the really heavy times on the weekends. Basically, what is driving the size of the operation is how much operating budget we are able to put together at this time. Are there any questions that you would like to ask me before I give the podium back to the Mayor? Borton: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Borton. Borton: Mr. Banks I have got a short question and maybe a longer question. The short question is short of an individual that is over intoxicated or (inaudible) being brought there in a criminal context, is there anticipated any immunity for any individual who is brought to a detox center, perhaps I could see a parent bringing a child on meth trying to help them start recovery - is there any discussion how that would tie into criminal charges? Banks: First I should point out that we are anticipating that this will be an adult - a facility for adults, so we have not figured out how to mix adults and minors in this facility. Typically at the facilities that we studied with the steering committee they didn't mix. Borton: Adults, though? Banks: With adults, we have not discussed immunity. We have both the City of Boise's Police and the Ada County Sheriff's Department have been part of the steering committee. It is not their intention to use this as a hunting ground to find people, but if somebody comes in to a facility like this and there is a warrant for their arrest, this will not be a safe haven where they can avoid warrants. I visited the David Hooper Detox Center and Sobering Station in Portland, OR, which has been in operation for a number of years and although this would seem like a problem, it has not been a problem for them. There are some things that I think that we will need to ask our legislature to do to help us be more effective - some legislative changes that we will be asking them to take a look at to make this more effective. This will not be where people who have committed a crime will be brought. These are for people who have not been caught committing a crime_ People caught committing a crime will be taken to either the Ada County jail or some law enforcement facility and our Ada County Commissioners and the Ada County Sheriff have been doing a great job of building capacity to take care of people who are put into our facilities with criminal charges. What we don't have is if people want, like Charlotte Lenear's son who wanted to take corrective action and had no place to go. Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 8 of 18 Borton: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Borton. Borton: That does answer the question -- of some of my concern would be if you have an adult who is either on their own or with some support ready, willing and able to start a cleaning process that there is - if the program would be intended that no charges would come or whatever that you might be on that that is publicized to let people know because I would imagine that the perception would be, you know it is a Police Station I am addicted or on an illegal narcotic, I am afraid to go. I guess where that question was going. Banks: We are - first of all it is not going to be physically attached to the Police Station, it will be a distance away from it. It won't be visible - one won't be visible from the other, so in working with a substance abuse community, people in recovery and the people that I have worked with over the last 18 months and come to know, they have assured me that people will come and with our capacity issues, we are going to have a waiting list for the this. We are not going to have trouble filling the beds as I have been assured of that. Borton: Mr. President, the second question I had was this is part of a continuum of treatment and I am very familiar with the difficulties of trying to get within the facilities, the Port of Hope, Safe Harbor House and those challenges create devastating road blocks to recovery. Is there - and you probably have the information that I would love to see, which maybe looks like at the issue through the Treasure Valley that brought our contacts at that continuum of treatment and perhaps how this treatment center might have some whether it is priority reserve dates or some opportunity after those seven days to then transition them immediately into a different and longer treatment facility program? Banks: That is an excellent question and something that we have struggled with and that I have struggled with. As a retiree that invested their life into this project all of sudden, when I was in Portland and struggling to understand in dealing with questions like you just raised, I was in front of Ed Blackburn who was a founder of the Central City Concern, the David Hooper Detox Center in Portland I said you know I put my life on this thing and for a long time now it looks like it is going to take quite a bit more of it. I want to know I am working on the right thing. Here in Portland they have a big solid continuum of care. They really have an excellent program and he goes yes, this is the right first step_ This is the first and most important thing. I also and another affirming factor, I chair, sub-board a member on the United Way Board, I chair the Impact Council and part of our responsibilities are to assess the needs of our community so that we know that the investments that we make with the money that we are granted are made in the areas that have the highest need and so we have done studies and the study continually tells us that this is one of the highest needs that we have is a Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 9 of 18 community detox center and sobering station. So, with that in mind, I said okay. When we first started this process on the steering committee, everybody started talking about the continuum of care that we need this and we need that and we need that and I was like in spite of the fact that I was used to dealing with a very large construction agenda, being the person primarily in charge of Albertson's growth over the years that it went from seventh largest to the largest supermarket chain in the nation - this became overwhelming. I said wait a second what are we doing? We are talking about something that is going to kill the project. We have got to focus on what is most important and take care of that. What is the first step and what is most important? We went through the process and this is what came out, knowing that we are going to have to finish working on the continuum of care - this question has been asked many times and I struggle with it. One of the things that has happened besides the blessings that have happened to make this thing become a reality so close to the finish line is we ended up with extra land at the site the city has given us; more land than is needed for a detox center - quite a bit more land and so we started reviewing them. We haven't taken this to the City of Boise and haven't mentioned it to the Mayor yet - but, there are opportunities. We knew during the 17 months of design build that we are going to have to work on that up the next steps and the next steps of the continuum of care to put them in place so that when we made the connection at the end of detox or during detox to treatment that they would be ready with more capable treatment facilities than what we have today because we are going to have more people ready for treatment when we have a detox center. The excess land has a huge potential and we are working on a project that we have started exposing the city to where we would have the next couple of steps in the continuum of care right there and I don't think that we are going to have to be asking for a lot of money to make that happen. It is an operation that can sort of help pay for itself and it is an expansion of an existing treatment program that already exists in this community. There is a lot of potential there and we are aware of the concern; we are concerned with it and we are trying to find the right solutions and when we get this first step firmly planted in the ground and we are in design and we know we have these budgets aligned then we are going to rush to work on those next steps of the continuum of care. United Way has committed to me that they will support those efforts to help organize the community around that. Sorry for length of those responses. Wardle: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Thanks for the question, Joe. You framed it much better than I would and it was running through my mind how does this work in a continuum? As it relates to the details of the operation, folks would come to the detox center who have a need for its seNices, but how many strikes does an individual get? Or how many times do they get to go through this? It seems to me that we are dealing with addiction, we don't have a continuum treatment, so we just have taken that first step and what is the rate of return and how do you deal with that? Meridian City Pre-Council December 19. 2006 Page 10 of 18 Banks: Yes, sir and that is an excellent question. Another question that we continue to grapple with - I am not going to give you a specific answer because I think the answer needs to be developed, but let me tell you how we are going to develop the answer. In working with the David Hooper Oetox Center and Sobering Station in Portland, OR they have opened up their entire books, their budgets and their protocols and their policies to us so we can take all of those as learning expenses from an ongoing operation. The Veteran's Administration, the Veteran's Hospital here in our community has a detox center for veterans and they are very excited. They recognize the need for the community detox center and they are committing to help us to figure out the answer to those protocols. They have a procedure for dealing with that specific issue within their center - have been in both St. Luke's and St. AI's and they have also committed to help us in establishing what is appropriate for our center and for our facility and I think it probably changes over time - the specific answer is it probably changes over time depending upon how long the weight list - you probably do it sort of like a mash unit and you figure out who has the highest need and fits that. That is sort of where we are at with that, but it is a very important, very good question and something that we are focused on making sure we have the right answer. Rountree: Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I appreciate all of your time on this. I know it is a very time critical subject and appreciate the energy and commitment that you and your group have done. I really do. I do have a question in regards of what kind of oversight group will this have and how do you see the role of the different funding partners in that? Or is that a question for the Mayor? Bieter: Well, I think that maybe it is better that I address it. Our anticipation, while it has not been fully developed because we are still piecing together the project. It would be all of us in whatever representation would be that we could agree upon would have both oversight and operational control over the facility. Meaning that operations itself, we hope to enlist and we have already began discussions with the hospitals and hope to enlist one or the other of them to run it. But, as far as the governing board of it, it would be made up of all of us - all of us contributors. We haven't figured out what specifically that meant, but City of Meridian and Eagle and Boise and Ada County would make up that group. I hope that answers it. Like I said, we haven't begun a document until we get complete. but that is our anticipation. Any more questions for Bob and either of us? Wardle: Mayor Bieter anything further? Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 11 of 18 Sieter: Well, just a couple of final comments. I really appreciate your questions because your analysis is similar to where we have been in this effort. I think you can see from how hard Bob has worked on this and what has gone in to develop and the scenarios that we are bringing forward. I guess I would just add that there are a number of programs, whether they are residential programs or sort of out patient that are available that the state or other entities fund. We would at the very least coordinate with those programs so that an individual that came through the facility would have all of the access that we can build in the availability of those right away. So, that would be the minimum because there are a number of those, but again we have found that virtually none of them and not one of them that I am aware of that accepts you into the program without first having detox in the sense that we are using that here. We also will - both hospitals have been partners on the committee and we will, after making the rounds of the governmental entities make quite a specific request that they participate either in capital or in contributions to the facility. We hope that either one of the hospitals or another entity to operate the facility - we get the capital and operations together and we would go out to an RFP and enlist that assistance, but they have been quite good participants in, but we will make a financial or an in kind request to them as well of both of them. One final funding possibility at least as Bob mentioned, our hope is in addition to the capital request that we made of the state that Governor Risch put into his budget that will carry forward - on the operations end we think that the best connection and the most logical one is liquor revenues and our hope is to divert some portion of those. There are a handful of things mentioned in the statute and I don't have that in front of me, but it is when the liquor funds are collected there are a handful of things that are financed before the distribution begins to the counties and the cities and the rest of the distribution. We hope for an increased percentage of that, relatively small one given the whole of it that would be available for operations. It wouldn't require but just a minor change in the statute. But, that would be our hope so that the state is committed. As you all know that is one of the central problems here. This isn't our, you know, statutory duty to do and it isn't yours. It isn't the counties or at least specifically for these seNices, the state's and that is one of the real problems here. By getting into this we don't acknowledge that it is ours, but we have found the response for the state even so far - when we have got the commitment of the locals and we worked on it as we have has faired quite well at least in our first experience because they see the buy in at the local level. My final duty here is to make the specific request of you and that would be we are targeting it to the 2004 census and would be according to our figures anyway $52,290 and you could round up or round down and that is what it is keyed to is the 2004 census. That was our request and our approval from the City of Eagle. Ours is $240,000 based on that money that came back from the state. but. we also have found -- that was the request when the Sheriff's proposal came forward that is when he anticipated and that effort was helpful at least starting to figure out where we might go. It was also successful in the commitment from the jail - before what they had anticipated was not as big of commitment in this effort and that led to their incorporating in the new jail facility, Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 12 of 18 significantly more detox services. But this is for those that haven't committed a crime and you know don't need to be in the jail. That effort was quite helpful in that way. So, that is our request and we really appreciate all of your time and your interest in this. I'd just mention that while I am here how good the relationship has been between the City of Boise and the City of Meridian, through your Mayor and other Council members of the various regional boards and efforts that we serve on, but as I mentioned in the State of City, strong cities regardless of where they are is as we see a benefit to the whole rally in the state. We will enjoy a healthy competitiveness on certain things whether it is business or amenities, but we are big fans of the City of Meridian and all the other cities and that strength is going to serve us all well and we just appreciate your time and interest in this. Wardle: Thank you, Mayor and thank you very much for coming to Meridian. We welcome you anytime. All there any final comments for the Mayor before he leaves? Borton: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Borton. Borton: Just briefly there was a million reasons why projects like this can't go forward and you need more than one government entity involved and there are a million questions to ask and a way to slow things down and from what I have seen you and the City of Boise regardless of what takes place have stuck your neck out for it by taking the lead and making off with land and funding and not knowing where it is going to go and I appreciate it and I think that that is impressive leadership on this project. Bieter: Well, thank you. As your questions reflected, we would like to do an awful lot more, but I take it it is because we have tried to take even more on of the efforts that Bob referred to and they are numerous and longstanding didn't make it. I think, initially, a 12 bed facility is big enough to make a significant contribution scaled to a 36 bed at construction, but even the 12 at the beginning is a significant step forward and the sobering station part of it, which is what our Police end up doing - these people haven't committed a crime and they can't be where they are, so they are picked up and taken and sober in a place that is safe and medically monitored, we think that will be a big help to all of our public safety people. Rountree: Just an echo of what Joe said to the Mayor. I appreciate your efforts and for taking the risk on this and Bob, especially to you and your committee for the investment that you have made and they have done some excellent work and good information for us and I think this particular Councilman is in your favor, so we will see where we go from here. Thank you. Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 13of18 Wardle: Thank you very much and we will take this discussion up shortly and have been supportive in the past and certainly appreciate the presentation. Bob thanks for your work and I heard you mention that you are retired, but it sounds like you have been awfully busy, so thank you for your seNice. De Weerd: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I don't know if the Council feels it inappropriate at this time, but I am sure these two gentlemen would like to have an idea of where we are at. Mr. Nary since it is not a budgeted item and they are not asking for a specific amount right now for this budget year, is it appropriate that this - can we commit? I guess there is another question can you commit future Councils on this particular area? (Tape turned over) Nary: -- what you can do is if the Council wishes whether it is a formal resolution or whether it is by voice vote to support this project and to gather further information and then commit to scheduling that same discussion as part of the budget process for the spraying and into the summer, you could certainly do that and then if you budget that money for it then that is available to be used by this Council in the future in the discretionary manner. Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: Also, Mr. Nary we can commit to it with a fund-out clause as every city, entity has to so that we don't capture future Councils. I am like Councilman Rountree as I heard the presentation I think this is a real necessity and have absolutely no problem selling it to our taxpayers. I don't think we will have any problems with it. More power to you and let's go do it. Wardle: Council do I hear a motion of support? Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Wardle: It is been moved and seconded to support in concept the ideas presented today in regards to the sobering station and detox center partnership for Ada County and with that I will have a roll call vote, Mr. Berg. Roll Call Vote: Bird, aye; Rountree, aye; Borton, aye; Wardle, aye; Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 14 of 18 ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. De Weerd: Mr. President. Wardle: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Mr. Mayor and Mr. Banks I will guarantee you they will have it in their budget or it will be in the budget presented to them. Thank you so much for your efforts. Item 4. Discussion of Fireworks Ordinance by Deputy Chief Joe Silva: Wardle: I will turn this over to Mr. Silva. Silva: Madame Mayor and members of the Council prior to our 2006 fireworks sales season you had been approached about some conditional use permits to consider temporary sales stands, tents up to 2,800 square feet we were requested of staff to revisit the existing fireworks ordinance and to work with other Treasure Valley Fire Departments to standardize our requirements with respect to size of stand and things about the stand. With that, we have met with other Treasure Valley Fire Departments of Boise, Nampa, Caldwell, Eagle, Garden City just to name a few of the agencies that we have worked with and addition to meeting with the vendors twice. So, with that I would like to provide an oveNiew of our work up to this point - just kind of a refresher on the definition of the fireworks so you specifically know what we are speaking about this evening. What we are going to discuss is fireworks and specifically it excludes automotive safety flairs, toy guns, toy cannons, caps, party poppers these are novelty items that are typically sold at Fred Meyer or at Wal-Mart as an example. So, it excludes those items. The non-aerial common fireworks that we commonly have within our temporary fireworks stands are required not to travel outside of 15 foot diameter circle or mid-sparks outside of that 20 foot circle or shoot anything higher than 20 feet. So, those are considered non-aerial common fireworks, the ones that are commonly sold in the City of Meridian. The other definition that we will be referring to in our proposed ordinance is what we call dangerous fireworks and those are items that would have - would travel outside of a 15 foot diameter circle that would (inaudible) sparks outside that circle, where they would shoot above 20 feet and most commonly you would see bottle rockets, firecrackers, jumping jacks and other similar products in the definition for dangerous fireworks. So, the scope of the problem as you are probably well aware of, we have some flaws in our existing state law, which allows people to purchase fireworks, dangerous fireworks to possess them, but not to discharge it within our state and obviously every Fourth of July we see what occurs when they are not allowed to discharge dangerous fireworks at the City of Meridian and have them going up all over the place. It obviously generates a lot of complaints from our neighborhood. You know some of those complaints come to the Mayor's Office; they come to the Police Department, the Fire Department or to Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 15of18 the dispatch center on the night of the fourth. Dangerous fireworks are one of those things that careless acts of others and can put other people's property at risk. So, that is what generates a complaint because people have a sincere concern over their own personal property when bottle rockets are landing on their roof. We must not forget that fireworks are class "e" explosives and the most recent example of how deadly they can be is the issue or the new store where two casino workers in Worley, 10 were killed this past summer as they were in or around destruction of storing fireworks in Worley. So, our proposed solution is to try to attempt to limit the availability of dangerous aerial fireworks within our city. We want to ensure that non-aerial common fireworks are purchased in use under the supervision of a parent or guardian and I will elaborate on that in just a couple of minutes. So, the provisions of our ordinance, this draft ordinance that is in front of you this evening is that short term sales of non-aerial common fireworks cannot be sold from a permanent structure. The reason why this proviSion was included in our draft ordinance is we had one of the vendors approach us about selling fireworks in vacant warehouse space on Eagle Road and to which the Fire Department's response was that building was - that sprinkler system was not designed nor intended to protect stored fireworks. Also, we would prohibit the sales, storage and possession of dangerous fireworks within our city. You would have to be the age of 16 to purchase fireworks unless accompanied by a parent. A lot of times what we have is children that come up to the fireworks stands and they will take their allowance and they will purchase novelty items from the fireworks stand and it will take them to a field in an area where they are not supervised by a parent. So, we have raised that minimum age and also we have raised the age to work in a fireworks stand. We had a mother who was taking care of her very small children in a playpen while selling non-aerial common fireworks in the stand. So, one of the other things is we commonly have had in our former ordinance is we don't allow the public to touch the fireworks before the sale is consummated, until it is finalized and they have got it in a bag and in the process of leaving the fireworks stand. One of the bones of contention in our previous and our CUP's was how large should we allow our tent to be and just to refresh your memory the fire code requires that no tent be greater than 200 square feet, nor can it be greater than 400 square feet. What we have worked with the other Treasure Valley Fire Departments to standardized this at 600 square feet universally across or at least the proposal of across the Treasure Valley. We would prohibit the sale and storage of dangerous fireworks within the City of Meridian. We also include a provision for long-term storage of non-aerial common fireworks exceeding 60 days. So in other words this would be like a warehouse for (inaudible) if we had somebody approach us with the intent of wanting to run a warehouse, it would be a year around operation essentially. So, that would only be allowed to be conducted from a permanent building, it would require certificate of zoning compliance from a Planning Department, they would be required to obtain a change of use of the building occupancy if it was applicable, in other words if they didn't start with a building coming out of the ground, if it was an existing building they would be required to obtain or go through the change of use process through the Building Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 16 of 18 Department. They would be required to comply with the currently adopted version to the building codes and the fire codes, comply with all other local land use ordinances and codes as applicable and we would not allow any retail sales of non-aerial common fireworks from any of these long term facilities. We would require that the parents or guardians that have custody or control of minors be liable for any damage that may be caused by the use of the fireworks by a minor, so making the parents responsible for the actions of their children. We were working with the County, hopefully that we could get everything that we have spoken about this evening, included in the city ordinance, but we would also include that in an ordinance that we would propose to Ada County with the envision that - with the additional provision that all whole sale sales of dangerous fireworks be conducted only from a permanent structure meeting the land use requirements. having a CUP and complying with the currently adopted building and fire codes and what we are attempting to do here is to legitimize the wholesale transactions that have been conducted at different parts in the city in the isolated county pockets of land and commonly they sometimes occur at Linder or Franklin or at Locust Grove and FaiNiew and so we are going to try and legitimize those wholesale transactions. So, with that what we would like to do this evening is stand for any questions should you have any and just kind of get a feel for Council's and what they wish us to do in terms of direction to this proposed ordinance. Wardle: Thank you, Joe. Council? Bird: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would like to personally read through this a little more. I agree with the Fire Department on this aspect. But, just getting the hard copy tonight, I would kind of like to see it come back the first of January on the Pre-Council and give it about 15 or 20 minutes and then take on a vote because I would like to get some questions generated by reading through and submitting them back to Joe or Chief Anderson. Wardle: Thank you, Mr. Bird and the one thing I guess we didn't clarify or start with was the intent was not to bring this forward and pass it for the New Year season; it was more intended to further the discussion we had last spring and through the summer times. Nary: Mr. President. Wardle: Mr. Nary. Nary: I have been in discussion with Chief Silva about this ordinance and there are some things that we still need to work through and to making clarify and Meridian City Pre-Council December 19, 2006 Page 17 of 18 some definitions and making sure it is compatible with our UDC and trying to take some of the vendor comments that are applicable and try to see if that is something we can work through the ordinance with. So, it is - that was the intent to bring it back after we have had a little more opportunity to get some of that cleanup done and get some further comment out there and have another discussion in front of the Council before we brought it forward. That was what our plan was. I think we wanted to introduce it tonight to make sure the Council knew it was on the radar screen, what was proposed. What has been handed to you certainly is not a final form by any means. There will be quite a few revisions of some sorts, but we have - I think we have got a lot of the kinks out of it. I think Deputy Silva has really done a great job at putting together a very good ordinance that other than a few things we need to iron out that we will be able to bring forward for further discussion next month. Wardle: Thank you Mr. Nary. Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Mr. President. Given our most recent successful consultation and cooperative effort with the county, I would hope that the county is very much involved in this and it seems to me that without them and without the other cities in Ada County and Canyon County for that matter, we are just kind of (inaudible) on this deal. I appreciate the effort that you have put into it. I know we talked about it previously and in even more draft form and you have made some other refinements here. Keep up the good work and when we see it again and have an opportunity to discuss the questions we might present to you, I would like to hear a rundown on what the status is in the other communities as well as with the Ada County Commissioners. Silva: Thank you Mr. President and Councilman Rountree, we did make a similar presentation to the Treasure Valley Partnership at the last regular meeting and we will be constantly taking some of those refinements at the other Fire Marshalls and the other departments have provided us input on and we welcome any comment that you may have on this proposal. Again it is a rough draft. We are the first ones that are pushing this forward so it has not moved forward in any other agencies, but the other agencies are anxiously awaiting to move forward at somewhat of a final version through their respective City Councils. Wardle: Thank you very much, Council. Anything further? Thank you very much and we will bring that back forward. Council, with that it brings us to the end of our regularly scheduled and my final Pre-Council agenda. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Rountree: So moved. Bird: Second. Meridian City Pre.Council December 19. 2006 Page 18 of 18 Wardle: It has been moved and seconded to adjourn the meeting. All in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:03 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: TA~OR~ Pre1i'd~t- J'~ ~pr~ 2-/6/07 DATE APPROVED \' 1,\\ :,~ j n I; 1UIl;II ".<.,., ('''0::. ',~'~:: "/, 1,\\" __I ,) ,I ,;;:1: \:1' 1>'/;, ..y:\' .-- '1. ,.'. ;:> a /;(':j'lP~ . "~ ~':.::_ .::: "P f{r.-- ~;. ~ ~ 0:;:. - - - -