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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2025-06-03 Work Session Meridian City Council Work Session June 3, 2025. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4.30 p.m. Tuesday, June 3, 2025, by Mayor Robert Simison. Members Present: Robert Simison, Luke Cavener, Liz Strader, John Overton, Doug Taylor, Anne Little Roberts and Brian Whitlock. Other Present: Tina Lomeli, Bill Nary, Kurt Starman, Charlie Butterfield, Shawn Harper, Steve Taulbee and Dean Willis. ROLL-CALL ATTENDANCE _X_ Liz Strader _X_ Brian Whitlock _X_Anne Little Roberts _X_ John Overton _X_ Doug Taylor _X_Luke Cavener X Mayor Robert E. Simison Simison: Council, we will call the meeting to order. For the record it is June 3rd, 2025, at 4.30 p.m. We will begin this afternoon's work session with roll call attendance. ADOPTION OF AGENDA Simison: Next item up is adoption of the agenda. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Don't see any needed changes, so I move that we adopt the agenda as presented. Strader: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. Is there any discussion? If not all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the agenda is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: ALLAYES. CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 1. Approve Minutes of the May 13, 2025 City Council Regular Meeting 2. Approve Minutes of the May 20, 2025 City Council Work Session Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 2 of 26 3. Approve Minutes of the May 20, 2025 City Council Regular Meeting 4. Elevate Self Storage Full Release of Sanitary Sewer Easement (ESMT-2024-0029) 5. Millwood Subdivision Pedestrian Pathway Easement (ESMT-2025- 0040) 6. Life Church Partial Release of Water Main Easement (ESMT-2025- 0051) 7. Elevate Franklin Sanitary Sewer Easement (ESMT-2025-0052) 8. Prescott Ridge Subdivision No. 5 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement (ESMT-2025-0054) 9. Order of Denial for Chick-Fil-A (CR-2025-0001) by Barghausen Consulting Engineers, Inc., located at 2012 N Eagle. Rd. 10. Final Order for McKay Farm Subdivision, by Todd Tucker, Boise Hunter Homes, located at 5875 S. Eagle Rd. 11. Development Agreement (Summerlin West Subdivision H-2024-0023) Between City of Meridian and Lansing Farms LLC and Open Door Rentals LLC for Property Generally Located on the East Side of S. Locust Grove Rd. Between E. Lake Hazel Rd. and E. Columbia Rd. 12. Addendum to Development Agreement (Jump Time H-2025-0011) Between City of Meridian and Babcock LLC for Property Located at 2805 E. Franklin Rd. 13. School Resource Office (SRO) Agreement between City of Meridian and West Ada School District (WASD) for the 2025-2026 School Year 14. License Agreement between the City of Meridian and Northwest Pipeline, LLC for temporary use of working space 15. Request From Dara Tong for Connection to the City Water and Sewer Systems Outside City Limits at 485 E Overland Road 16. Resolution No. 25-2519: Accepting Student Artwork for Traffic Box Art Wraps 17. City of Meridian Financial Report -April 2025 Simison: Next up is the Consent Agenda. Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 3 of 26 Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda. For the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. Strader: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the Consent Agenda is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: ALLAYES. ITEMS MOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] Simison: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. DEPARTMENT / COMMISSION REPORTS [Action Item] 18. State Highway 69, Kuna to Meridian Corridor Traffic Study Simison: So, I will move on to the Department/Commission reports. First item up is Item 18, State Highway 69, Kuna to Meridian Corridor Traffic Study. Good evening. If you will state your name for the record. Wasdahl: Mark Wasdahl. Idaho Transportation Department, District Three. Kelsey: Leah Kelsey. DKS Associates. Simison: Good evening. Wasdahl: Mayor and Members of the Council, thank you for inviting us for a quick briefing on our Highway 69 Corridor Traffic Study. Background and purpose. State Highway 69 was widened from Amity north to Overland in the early 1990s from two to four lanes. Early 2000s from Kuna up to Amity. Current four lane facility. With the growth that the region has been experiencing we have done a traffic study to see what our next future iteration of Meridian Road will look like. We wanted to have a vision of keeping traffic moving, safe and efficient access on and off the corridor with all that additional traffic and safe facilities and crossings for bicyclists and pedestrians. We will skip through a lot of the process here, but we had started before this time we had an open house virtual and we covered a number of concepts that were considered nontraditional through U's -- example of that is at Veterans Memorial Parkway and State Street where you pass through the signal light, make a U-turn and go back. We looked at the continuous flow intersections. After COVID hit we took a quick little bit long break Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 4 of 26 and we had another ITD project on Karcher Road which is a two lane rural highway in Canyon county and was looking to widen it and they had a number of features that we had looked at early on. Our executive at headquarters entered into a discussion internally on whether we want to -- wanted to do nontraditional intersections with some increase in efficiency in handling traffic or whether we should keep driver expectancy and keep traditional intersections. In the end the decision was to keep driver expectancy and to retain traditional intersections only. With that we reset our project. We came up with three different scenarios for access, which we will cover later and we talked to our executive team, who gave us a recommended to go forward at full potential access at the half mile in align with IDAPA. So, we had an online open house April 7th through 21 st. We are finishing up the draft of the traffic study. We are meeting with the cities, county, Ada County Highway District and we hope to have the traffic study finalized in July. Kelsey: A little bit about the existing traffic out there and the future traffic, kind of breaking the corridor up into two sections, the north-south section, the Meridian Road section and the short little section in Kuna called the Avalon Road section. The north section towards the northern part of the corridor, which is the busiest part of the corridor, the traffic is expected to more than double between now and 2050. That's our kind of horizon design year. That's going to set us at levels that are higher than Eagle Road today, to kind of put it in perspective. The section -- east-west section along Avalon, that's actually expected to drop a little bit. That's due to the reconfiguration of the Kuna and Meridian intersection to extend that -- or I guess configure it to a four leg intersection and extend Meridian Road south. That's a project or study that we will -- we will touch on a little bit later in the presentation, too. So, with all that traffic what are the impacts. On the eight mile stretch of road currently today going northbound in the a.m., which is the dominant direction in p.m. -- or southbound in the p.m. It takes about 13 to 14 minutes during that rush time. If we do nothing by 2050 the -- the p.m. commute suffers a little bit. We are looking at about a three minute increase, but the a.m. dominant direction in the northbound is expected to exceed about 42 minutes. So, there is a real need to do some improvements, increase some capacity. If we do do our improvements with the proposed vision that we will get to here in a second, we are expected to bring those travel times back down to existing. A little bit about the crashes out there. The most recent five year period there was about 580 crashes on the segment. When you look at just intersection crashes only there is a little bit more than 500. Five fatal crashes, three kind of towards the northern end of the corridor, one near Columbia and Hubbard and one at the Kuna curve. Just incidentally three of those were drug and alcohol related. So, 47 percent of the crashes on this corridor are serious and injury crashes, which is a higher percentage than what you see on -- statewide. You see about 31 percent for all roadways in Idaho. So, there is a bit of a concern. This is flagged in ITD's safety corridor analysis as a segment of roadway that has higher than average crash -- crashes on similar facilities. So, with the traffic and safety in mind we came up with a proposed vision to accommodate the new traffic or the increased traffic to widen from five to seven lanes in that north-south section. Install a continuous raised median, which will help with safety and also improve mobility. So, therefore, the access onto the highway will only be allowed at the one mile Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 5 of 26 intersections, like Victory, Amity and Lake Hazel and, then, the half mile intersections. Outside of the right of way there would be a buffered ten foot multi-use pathway on both sides and, then, wherever there is an access point or an intersection we would have right turn lanes for safety. The cross-section would look similar to this where we would have a 30 to 50 foot buffer on either side of the roadway where the multi-use pathway would be included and not be outside of the -- ITD's right of way. Within the right of way there would be an eight foot buffer that includes the curb and gutter, eight foot shoulder, three 12 foot travel lanes, which is a standard travel lane width and, then, an 18 foot raised median and drainage would be accommodated with most likely roadside swales. That would be something that we would identify more closely during design. The east- west section between Kay and Orchard we would have more of an urban section. It's a -- oh, I'm sorry, I skipped a little too far ahead. The east-west section would be widened to five continuous lanes. Currently there is a little bit of four lane and two lane section. There would be seven foot attached sidewalks, which would transition into that ten foot multi-use pathway as you move east and, again, right turn lanes at all intersections and access points for safety. So, the cross-section in the Kuna to Kay Avenue section, which is the east section, would look really similar to the north-south Meridian Road section. The only differences is is the center lane, instead of being an 18 foot raised median, there would be a two way left turn lane to allow for access. Then on the short segment that's further west there would be more of an urban section with attached sidewalks. There wouldn't be a shoulder and, again, with that 14 foot two way left turn lane. Just a couple notes about the roadway features. So, that 18 foot raised median kind of looked at a different -- a bunch of different widths and modeled it with our turn analysis and landed on that, because that allows for U-turns at the half mile and mile signals for a large passenger vehicle. An F350. You could probably get a bit bigger vehicle in there, but our modeling is showing that we could accommodate like a three -- F350 truck. The ped -- ped and bike facilities, again, we are -- we have either seven foot attached sidewalks or those ten foot buffered detached multi-use pathways on both sides throughout the entire corridor and, then, to cross State Highway 69 there would be single stage pedestrian crossings at the mile intersections or the half mile intersections if -- if and when those are signalized. Couple of special considerations, more towards the northern part of the corridor in Meridian. We have some constrained right of way and some steep slopes and so it becomes a little bit of a challenge to add in multi-use pathways. Some preliminary concepts would be to maybe have some -- an elevated pathway, which would provide some protection with a barrier and along those steep slope sections instead of taking more right of way there might be some retaining walls. So, we would kind of have maybe a tiered roadway. Now I will hand it over to Mark. Wasdahl: City of Kuna has looked at extending Meridian Road. They had their own study. It ended up producing a one mile cross-section to cross the rail main line and the Indian Creek. As part of that we put back in road the Kuna curve, which went in in the 1980s and put in a standard four way intersection, which if you go back to 1931 our first plan set that's what was there in the first place. So, it's back to the future on that one. We also -- ITD, with the help of COMPASS, put in a grant -- a raise grant -- no build grant in January. They are supposed to announce in this month the winners and losers and we put in for a Pell study to look at alignments and what you can do with extending Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 6 of 26 Highway 69 and also what to do with Kuna-Mora, because on its current alignment I think that's five crossings of the New York Canal and something you don't want to do. So, we are looking forward to seeing if we do get that grant awarded. Originally we had studied the Overland Road intersection. We had determined that a high capacity intersection was necessary. The one that we looked at was a half continuous flow intersection, which would have been on the Overland Road side. ACHD at that time said that they were not in agreement to construct CFIs. Now, years later ITD is not going to construct CFIs. So, we took that out and decided that needed to be a separate project. We have done those before with ACHD. I was involved with one pre-COVID on Glenwood and State Street intersection and that's what we are recommending that it's standalone. If no one is doing at grade improvements that leaves you with vertical and vertical is a lot more expensive than horizontal improvements. So, you really have to get a full buy in from agencies when you are going to that price point. Kelsey: So, when we rescoped this project in '23, '24 we initially did extensive modeling with three other -- or two other alternatives, which varied the access at the half mile. So, the proposed vision again has full access. Potential signals at the half mile. We also looked at those intersections being restricted to right-in, right-out, left-in. Those lefts could potentially be signalized or just right-in, right-out. So, you would only have full access at the mile. Unlike our previous modeling efforts with -- like the median, U- turn and CFI corridors and even in an expressway, we didn't have a clear winner or loser. All options operated very similarly within a minute of each other when we look at the travel times and there was a bit of a benefit to signalizing the half mile and having full access, because that takes some of the demand off of the major streets, like Victory, Lake Hazel, Deer Flat that are running, yeah, pretty heavy traffic. So, yeah, they were all very similar, but there was a little bit of a benefit having half mile signals. Wasdahl: Finally, we had our public involvement April 7th through 21 st. It was an online meeting. Nineteen hundred people attended. One hundred thirty-five comment forms were submitted through the website. Additional 18 people gave comments via e- mail or call -- phone call. Reaction. Roughly 55 percent expressed support. Twenty- nine percent did not express support. Sixteen percent were neutral. We have some more details on comments on the next slide or two. Support likes for noncontroversy, all comments regarding converting the Kuna curve into a standard intersection were positive. Widening -- increasing capacity of Highway 69, that was about 86 to 14 percent positive. The negatives were either people who said put transit in instead of the additional lane. You can't build your way out of congestion or you are letting more congestion come down by increasing the lane count. Buffered multi-use pathway. That was like 20 out of -- 28 out of 34 were positive. The ones who weren't had an image of like a five year old on a bicycle -- this is almost a direct quote -- you know, on the edge of a 55 mile an hour roadway. Raised median. There was a general feel of the comments that they -- safety was very important. However, raised medians also cut off access that exists right now to parcels. Left-ins. Left-outs. And so you had this push- pull of opposition due to loss of access versus some people saying we need to have less access or we need more safety. We also had one emergency response comment about accessibility of crossing over a raised median. We had said right turn lanes and Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 7 of 26 that was universally approved. They liked the overall safety improvement. Concerns -- there was no argument that there was a dislike for not having an improvement of Overland Road and/or an additional lane onto the 1-84 interchange. So, that's a -- the push for that, that's a safe and universal request. I think we put a link to the 1-84 auxiliary lane project in, which we will put a second northbound lane onto eastbound I- 84, but, again, the Overland Road we need to work on that as a separate project. We added a -- the signals at half mile intersection were pretty heavily disliked, though not necessarily half mile intersections. We had a fairly good group who wanted an expressway to be considered. We had looked at it early on and in terms of cost and it had a low cost benefit ratio. Not that it wouldn't have got traffic quicker to Overland, but when you have a full -- a continuous flow facility terminating in volume with a non- continuous flow facility, like Overland Road, you really have to build a system interchange such as what we are doing at State Highway 16 extension onto 1-84 now. We had also comments on acceleration-deceleration lanes. The problem with those is that at the speed we have that those would blend and, essentially, be another lane. You can do deceleration, but you can't do both. They just don't fit. And, again, the raised median will limit access and we had negative comments there. Finally other comments. We did have a group that said for us to ignore the naysayers and reconsider CFIs, through U's and roundabouts. We were sort of surprised that that actually -- I don't think it was double digit, but it was a fairly substantial comment. Concern about increased noise and requesting for mitigation to be like sound walls. There is the access issue at Calderwood Drive, which I think would also be looked at as part of an Overland Road intersection study, because it should be within the traffic impact area of the intersection or the operating environment of it. There was a lament over the loss of a rural environment and a rural community through the development ongoing. And speed limit changes. Those end up -- some say slow them down. Others say better not slow us down. That's really 50-50, 55-45, regardless of where you are in projects. So, we intend, as I said, to complete the traffic study. Our current funding document, we have a new one going to our board in a few weeks. I haven't seen it, so I don't know whether IT board approved staff to pursue a STAR sales tax anticipate revenue agreement with Brighton Development, who has a large parcel on the southeast corner of Meridian and Lake Hazel. It was expected by June 2025 we would have a key number within our document for it. Because they are still -- Brighton is still doing design work they need to have more certainty on costing before they can fill a final agreement. So, we thought of first June that could go to July as they go through preliminary -- through final design and get more accurate costing. We stand ready for questions, Mayor and Members of the Council. Simison: Thank you. Council, questions? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Appreciate you both being here and maybe you can help at least Council with some action from us. Got a full agenda this afternoon. Came. Providing the Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 8 of 26 presentation. What is it you are looking for from the Council as a result of your presentation? Wasdahl: It's more of an information and feedback. We weren't requesting approval- disapproval, but we wanted to keep you informed. We have got other projects in the area and we wanted to -- since this one would be on closing out that we wanted you to have a chance to hear it before it went to close out. Cavener: Thank you. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I have a handful of questions. One of them -- I guess just maybe to take a step backward. Talk to me about your decision to exclude the 1-84 to Overland segment from this study. Like -- like why was that decision made? It's surprising to me, just because like I view that as one of the biggest problems that we have in seeing that excluded -- that segment excluded kind of leaves me feeling frustrated at least and I would love to explore that decision. How does that impact your study's relevance? And like what assumptions were made about fixing issues in that excluded segment and what kind of commitments do we have to fixing the problems in that segment is what I would like to talk about. Wasdahl: Yeah. Originally we had come up with a horizontal solution that was not in the -- I guess in the design book for ACHD and projects with mutual intersections. It's important that we are both on the same page, because nothing gets done otherwise. We knew going to a vertical solution was -- in terms of study a big increase in cost, which we were not internally looking to put onto this project. As I said also that we -- like in 2018 1 think we did a mutual study on State and Glenwood and really for us to get full buy-in by both agencies, both have to be at the table specifically on this -- a project like this. This was the only controversial part really in terms of trying to come to a design decision and so we passed it on to saying that it would work better as a mutual project. Typically we count lanes going into the intersections and we split the cost based upon that and it was just really too big of a project for what we were doing in our piece of it. It became -- and that's why we just said it needed to go to a different process than the one that we were running. Strader: So, I guess -- Mr. Mayor -- Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: -- if you don't mind I would love to hear, then, like what is the thinking or the plan around addressing that? Because you guys could improve this whole corridor -- sure, that would be fantastic, but if everyone gets to 1-84 and it's a giant disaster I'm having a hard time seeing how that's going to move the needle for people., So help me Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 9 of 26 understand what the plans are or the thinking. If there is any to date on how and when that excluded segment would be addressed. Wasdahl: Really that's a discussion. We -- ITD and ACHD meets twice a year and that's something that at that management level they need to come together. I'm sure they have -- they have heard from the city that that's very important to the city and it comes down to management -- Strader: Got it. Wasdahl: -- only the trigger on moving forward with something like that. Simison: I could just piggyback on it. You know, they have talked about the vertical in the past, but I think the question that I would have is to the point how relevant is this, because, you know, how much of this decision framework is based upon the mile between Frank -- or Victory onto the interstate as it compares to what the final treatment for that is? You know, how do you interlay that into the value benefit -- if you were to have a flyover coming off of I-84 over the ramp and lands on the other side of Overland, how does that play into the long term of this portion of the -- of the corridor study? Does it -- was that taken into consideration that you would have continuous track movement off of the interstate onto the segment, especially going southbound. Maybe not northbound, unless that -- I don't know how that one works, but I'm just kind of curious, because that's I think part of the question is the relevance to the work when you have a big segment that's going to be impacted. Kelsey: Yeah. The traffic modeling that we worked with COMPASS, the MPO, they -- they generated the traffic demand, what wants to be driving on the corridor in 2050 and the -- when we originally did our modeling we -- we had a solution at -- at Overland that allowed the traffic to get through down to Kuna and, then, up to the interstate. And, then, you know, when we had to pivot we -- we continued to assume that there was a high capacity solution there, so we could right size the remainder of the corridor, so the -- the demand would -- would still be the same if we had a flyover versus a CFI versus some other high volume intersection. So, we feel pretty confident that the proposed vision to the south will be adequate no matter what the solution is at 1-84 and Overland Road. Wasdahl: We also have a separate project, our 1-84 mobility study that kicked off in January and we are looking at adjacent intersections next to the interchanges, which includes Overland and we are anticipating coming out with guidance from that study. Simison: So, when I say you don't feel this is wasted work, because the end result -- whatever is done it won't impact the results of this section generally, because COMPASS says this is what it will be, irregardless of how quickly you get them from the interstate onto this -- south of Overland. Kelsey: Correct. Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 10 of 26 Simison: Okay. Sorry. If there were more questions I -- Strader: Mr. Mayor? Thank you. If you don't mind I just have a couple more. That was helpful. I guess -- I think you kind of touched on this in your presentation, but I had to step out for a minute. When you were doing your modeling did you model like Kuna's expansion of Meridian Road south and unplanned developments that are likely coming, you know from that build out of their impact area? How did you account for that? Kelsey: So, the COMPASS model did include in our roadway network that extension to the south. As far as the potential development in that area, we -- we didn't add any additional demographics than what is approved in the CIM. So, there may or may not be -- I guess some of the demographics included further to the south, but there is an additional study that is coming that will be looking at a couple of different land use models when that extension is added and Kuna-Mora is widened all the way to the interstate. Strader: I just have two more. One of them is just funding sources generally. It sounded like there is no funding for this so far. I would love to just hear more about what -- besides STAR funds, what funding sources have been identified and, then, you know, obviously, multi-use pathways are important to City of Meridian. I think we have said that over and over a hundred different ways. Just want to check. Are you all envisioning taking on the cost of the multi-use pathways along this segment. I mean there are some of these constrained segments that you talked about special treatment, whether it's retaining walls, whether it's some tiered approach. I mean is that all expected to be incorporated together? Because I think what we wouldn't want to see is like a kind of a halfway effort, you know, where it's like we end up with widening, but not the pedestrian facilities that are needed to support a healthy functioning community. Wasdahl: On the Chinden widening we have constructed pathways all on the south side only, because we intend to widen to the north and, then, put them in at that point., So we have been consistent recently of putting in pathways with widening projects. Strader: Okay. Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I will provide a compliment that I do live in north Meridian and I think you have done a very nice job with your multi-use pathways to the south on that segment. So, thank you for that. Okay. That was it for my questions. But if you could touch on -- I think funding sources and a little more on -- on the pathways, if there is anything we need to note. I think at some point we may come back to you with more formal feedback, you know, once we have a chance to digest all this, so -- Wasdahl: One part of the STAR project that's a maximum of 35 million, but I think that they are aiming at 30 million due to potential cost overruns and pricing variability, is we are looking to see what gets built out of STARS before we jump into our own design. Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 11 of 26 Next week I believe we are supposed to have a preliminary design meeting, so that will give us some better idea of what they think they can build. How far. And, then, our development services group is actually taking a lead on this. Just to note. We have not been told by Brighton who their tenant or tenants plural are going to be. So, just that they will meet the definition of the legislation to be eligible for STAR. But I think once we know what they are going to build, then, I think that puts us into a better position to know what we need to finish up to. Strader: That's it for me, Mayor. Simison: Council, additional questions? Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: So, I had the opportunity a month ago at COMPASS to speak with someone from ITD. I explained to him at that time that the description I got from someone from ACHD was when we are dealing with Overland and 1-84, the best word he ever used was it's broken and I sympathize with that, looking at the numbers, because they do exceed Eagle Road and we constantly are talking about State Highway 55 and sometimes I don't think we talk about Highway 69 enough. Today at our COMPASS meeting I met with a member of Kuna city council and when I asked him about all this work that was being done he kind of had the same frustration as me. We are hearing from you tonight, but we don't hear from you enough. We don't have enough input opportunities as a city to understand what it is you are looking at doing and I'm not trying to speak for the city of Kuna, but they are out there at the 54th fastest growing city in the country right now, while we are still growing to the south and I have seen Mayor Joe Stears' project of taking Highway 69 further south. I think the numbers we are going to have coming in from the south -- or coming in from the south coming north are going to be very high and I get real worried, much like what Council Woman Strader said, I think you can widen this road all day long, but if we don't fix Overland at 1-84 all we are going to do is create a much larger bottleneck and a longer wait and we need to come up with a plan, some sort of a phasing plan that includes all of it that you prioritize which part of the project is most important first and I hate to say it, but I think Overland- 1-84 is the most important part, because that's your pressure release valve for the traffic. Because if you build the road wider first we are just going to stack them up as they get into Overland and get into 1-84 and when I spoke to -- and I'm not going to call him out here, because he is not here. When I spoke to ITD at the COMPASS meeting he agreed. The problem is if -- if the reason we are not having this conversation is because this is too expensive, then, we are not doing our job. If this is ultimately a very expensive solution, then, we still need to have that conversation and we still need to see what our solutions are to move forward, even if they have a lot of zeros behind them and we are not sure where all that funding is coming from, because as far as I can tell in our entire community right now and the entire community of Kuna, this is the number one traffic spot that they have a problem with and when you sit there and you mention Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 12 of 26 COMPASS, the whole idea of COMPASS is to come up with a regional solution to traffic problems and I would really like to see both the city of Kuna and the City of Meridian much more involved as we go through this, so we understand what you are looking at and we don't just have these talks every once in a while where we get to ask a bunch of questions. I personally would like to be a lot more involved with this process as it goes forward and I'm sure several other members of our council would as well. Simison: Council, additional questions or comments? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Here here to Council Member Overton. I recognize you guys are working with the direction you have been given, but this is going to create a very large problem that is already in a challenging spot and, again, not the smartest guy in the room when it comes to traffic engineering and moving cars, but I know what I see over there as a resident in that area right now and as Kuna continues to grow it is a problem that will continue to get worse. So, it's hard to be excited about this when you see it as causing a major problem down the way. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor. Thank you so much for being here. I was going to comment, but I think that Councilman Overton covered that very well. I also am from that area and I love seeing the possibility of improvements on that road, but to move more cars into a major bottleneck seems to have the cart before the horse. But my main question, since he covered that so well, was I was wondering if I could get a little more information on the continuous raised median, because I live so close to that area I see when the road's blocked, especially it hasn't been that long since we had a fatal accident and our closest fire station to that area is on Overland slightly west of Meridian Road and so it seems like it's still efficient getting to those that are southbound, but those that are northbound if fire engines need to get over a raised median, how does that work? Kelsey: My understanding is that the -- and I'm not a geometric design engineer, but the -- you know, the curb would be a higher speed curb, which is a little bit more sloped and it's mountable, so it's not ideal to -- to drive over it I understand, but it is -- it is traversable. And, then, there will be, you know, U-turn opportunities at the half mile and mile. So, yeah, if it isn't too far out of the way to just kind of take a right and, then, take a U-turn. Wasdahl: For the Karcher Road project I was involved in the environmental, but not the final design of it. We had a meeting with the fire department. It was one of the volunteer fire department. I can't remember the name. And they brought up issues with Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 13 of 26 a raised median, but what they wanted to know is if they could drive on it, so that you would have mountable, dismountable curbs and the direction of it. So, one of their issues there, Karcher Road being two lanes at this time, is if there is a crash you just can't get to the site. So, theirs wasn't so much crossing over, it was operating on top of it and I can't say how that turned out, but -- in terms of design, but that's probably something I need to look into. Little Roberts: Thank you. Simison: Okay. Thank you very much. I know that you are balancing -- you are doing what you are asked to do and balancing multiple things and maybe even some things that haven't been said. I -- I know there is concern if we dump all the traffic too much on to 1-84 it's going to have a big problem as well. So, whether it's an Overland Road problem or onto the interstate problem, there will be a problem one way or the other right now with what the projected numbers are if we don't have a bigger conversation about a lot more things than this, but we understand your roles in this process. So, thank you very much. Wasdahl: You're welcome, Mayor and Council. Kelsey: Thank you. 19. Legal Department Discussion: Request from Ada County and the Ada County Emergency Medical Services District to Enter into Intergovernmental and Joint Powers Agreements Concerning Capital Improvements Plans Simison: Okay. With that we will move on to Item 19, which is a legal department discussion request regarding the Ada County Emergency EMS District to enter Intergovernment and Joint Powers agreements concerning CIPs. Mr. Starman. Starman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of Council. This is a follow-up item to discussion you had back in December of last year relative to a request from the county to consider, along with the other cities -- incorporated cities in Ada county a countywide impact fee program. I know you received a pretty thorough presentation about that back in December and I also recognize time is limited tonight, so I'm going to keep my comments very brief, but I'm happy to answer questions you have and also let me mention now that we have representatives from the county available on Zoom if you have questions of them. Leon Letson, as well as the consultant for the county. So, we have some resources here, although not physically present, available by Zoom. I will just start by saying as a recap from your discussion in December, the county is interested in doing countywide impact fees that requires the cooperation of all the incorporated cities in Ada county, including Meridian, and so we talked about that time if Meridian chooses to participate a potential implementation plan to accomplish that would be sort of a multi-phase, multi-part process with part one being a limited intergovernmental agreement between the city and Ada county that would essentially Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 14 of 26 say this: That the city would agree to consider the county's capital improvement plans that are related to the facilities in question, but the agreement -- we would make it clear that the city is not agreeing to adopt or to implement those CIPs, nor is the city agreeing to adopt an ordinance to implement the fees. We are simply agreeing that -- to provide a structure to consider the capital improvement plans. We would, then, come back as step two to look at the CIPs and, then, later, if the other cities come on board at the end of that process, we would actually talk about the possibility of adopting an ordinance to assist the county with its countywide program. Again, making it clear the city is not committing today to do any of those things, simply just to consider those items. So, that's really what's before you. In December you had a draft agreement as an attachment. The agreements before you this evening are essentially identical, you know a couple changes here and there, but they are substantially similar to what you saw before. So, the county has approved those. The question for the City Council this evening is that if those agreements are satisfactory to the City Council or you may need some additional questions answered tonight or maybe on a going forward basis, but we are not asking you take action tonight, we are simply just touching base one more time before we place this on a future agenda for action. So, we are looking for your feedback tonight. If the City Council is amenable to proceeding, the next action step would be to have something on your agenda likely in two weeks for formal approval. That, as I -- just to reiterate, that would just simply commit the city to consider the possibility of adopting the CIPs. It does not lock us into approving those CIPs. As I mentioned we have representatives from the county online. They can answer questions as well. I just want to touch on two topics from December and, then, I'm going to step back and answer questions in the interest of time. There was some discussion back in December about -- or an observation made that the county has the ability to implement at least impact fees for the sheriff's office without city participation and so I just wanted to report to you my understanding is -- and we could have the county representatives clarify, but my understanding is the county has adopted an ordinance to implement that fee for the sheriffs office. I'm not sure if they are collecting the fee yet or not, but my understanding is that they have adopted an ordinance and so as a sign of good faith. The other topic we talked about at that time was the issue of -- we had this -- thought Council Member Strader described this really well. I'm paraphrasing, but this is a clunky process. I like that quote. And -- and we talked about is there a way to make this -- streamline this with the legislature and so there was a discussion about is there a way that we can make this more like ACHD or at a minimum clarify, for example, the coroner's office being eligible for impact fees. My understanding is that -- I think -- or two thoughts there. One is that with respect to having an ACHD like model that would require a constitutional amendment. You heard that in December. We are in agreement with that. I think the county just decided that was -- could be too much of a heavy lift and they -- to my understanding they did not pursue that idea. In a similar manner with regard to clarifying the issue of the coroner's office, we talked last time that the statute allows for public facilities -- public safety facilities, which includes things like jails, but that language doesn't -- does not explicitly mention the coroner. As we talked about would it make sense for the county to get clarification from the legislature and I think for -- for their own reasons I don't want to -- I don't want to speak for the county. They just chose not to pursue that either at this time. It's possible they could do that in the future, Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 15 of 26 but that -- really that sort of stands where it was back in December. So, that's a lot of information, but I know you have seen this before and I also recognize we are short on time tonight, so I'm going to pause there. Happy to answer questions and, then, as I mentioned, we have representatives from the county here as well. Simison: Thank you, Kurt. Appreciate that. And just for the record, Council, if and when you ever do consider this I will make the request that you do not adopt a coroner impact fee, because of that issue not being clarified and even though they are -- they have chosen to try to indemnify us all they can, I still don't think the risk is worth the reward in this case based upon the building that currently exists in its current form. But with that, Council, any questions for Kurt? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Kurt, either if you know the answer now or if not maybe in a couple weeks come back. Have any cities signed such an agreement to date? And, if so, who? Starman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council and Council President Cavener. I'm -- to the best of my knowledge no -- no city has officially adopted the CIPs, nor have they entered into intergovernmental agreements. My understanding is the county has had substantive discussions with many of the cities. I think in some cases more than others, but I don't believe that the county has binding agreements or actions from any of the cities at this point. To the best my knowledge. And I would invite my colleagues from the county to -- to chime in that they know differently that. I just -- so, they know how that works. If they are -- I know they are online. But you just raise your hand function and the clerk will -- Simison: Leon is raising his hand to answer the question. I thought that there was some that have actually adopted. Mr. Letson. Letson: Can you hear me, Council Members? Sorry. Simison: Yes. Yes, we can. You are good. Letson: Oh. Okay. Great. Yeah. Just an update to what Kurt was sharing. So, the city of Eagle and the city of Star have adopted the CIPs into their comprehensive plans at this point. So, in essence, making it through phase one of the process that we have identified. Kuna and Garden City have requested a similar agreement to what Meridian has asked for. So, we have drafted similar agreements for those jurisdictions and they are reviewing those and considering similar to what you are doing tonight, entering into that agreement to, then, move on to that CIP step and ultimately, hopefully, the ordinance adoption and, then, city of Boise -- our COO Steve Rutherford's in conversation with their chief of staff and Mayor on progress there. So, I don't have much of an update with the city of Boise. But just want to let you know that we have Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 16 of 26 gained some ground on the effort. Also will confirm we have adopted a fee to collect impact fees -- or adopted ordinance to collect fees for the sheriff and we are actively collecting that now on every building permit issued in unincorporated Ada county and, yeah, that's -- that's the update I have for you right now. I'm happy to answer any questions. Simison: Thank you. Any additional questions for Leon? Appreciate it very much. Starman: Thank you. Simison: Okay. All right. So, next steps, Kurt. Starman: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, really, the thought was that if the Council was in general agreement with the agreements as they exist we place them on a future agenda, perhaps on the Consent Agenda for action. If we require some additional discussion relative to the coroner's office we can follow a similar plan, but perhaps have it on a work session item again for that particular item and, then, ask for, you know, adoption at that time. I guess I would take direction from the City Council and from the Mayor. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: I think I would appreciate at least a short discussion on the coroner's office and I think that would be helpful and be informative and I understand kind of the reasons behind it, but I think that would be helpful and, two, if I just might make a comment, too. I like the idea of agreeing to a structure, not agreeing to necessarily the CIP plans. I think that gives us some leeway and some moving ahead, but showing good faith to the county that we are working towards that, while still trying to understand where the rest of the municipalities in the county are with regards to that. Understand Star and Eagle have moved forward, but where Boise is right now and others that would be -- would be helpful. So, that would be my -- my feedback, Kurt. Thank you. Starman: Thank you, Council Member. 20. Fire Department Deployment Analysis Presentation Simison: Okay. All right. Thank you very much. Next item is Item 20, which is the Fire Department deployment analysis presentation. Turn this over to Chief Butterfield. Cavener: Mr. Mayor, let me real quick before Chief Butterfield begins. I just -- for Council's benefit, we have got significant members of our Fire Department that are here for what I think is a really important presentation and I don't want chief to feel pressed for time and so I guess I want to just give Council some -- some perspective. We have got this presentation. We can move a budget amendment to next week or add that to Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 17 of 26 our main meeting. We do have a public hearing scheduled tonight. I do think it is important for us to try and do those public hearings on time. I guess I'm looking for some direction from Council is do you want to take a brief recess, you could have a quick bite of dinner and, then, we would just go from the fire presentation, then, into our regular meeting or are you comfortable with us delaying our public hearing to give fire the opportunity to provide their presentation in full? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Yeah. Maybe just -- I'm open to all of that if it works for the Fire Department. If it works for their schedule to take a brief recess. I also think this is mainly informational at this point. I was actually going to volunteer to just give a quick overview of sort of how this came to be, this presentation. But I'm open to that if -- if it works for the Council and the Fire Department I think that's the question. Butterfield: Works for me. Simison: Can I ask how long you think your presentation is? Butterfield: Twenty minutes. Simison: How about we just go through the presentation and see where we are at that point in time and, then, we can either break or keep going. Cavener: Just -- Mr. Mayor, I appreciate that. We didn't want to interrupt the flow. This is important info and we didn't want to put them in a position where they had to press pause halfway through, so -- Simison: And I believe Mr. Miles is prepared to do the amendment on the 6.00 p.m. if we want to do it at 6.00 p.m. tonight, so -- Chief Butterfield. Butterfield: Mr. Mayor, Member of Council -- Members of Council, thank you for the opportunity. As Council Member Strader had mentioned, there was some input that she had to the fire department, request for some deployment modeling after we met and reviewed some of the analytical software that we use in the Fire Department and following up on that meeting she mentioned a request to come up with some different -- four different deployment models. So, I will -- Strader: Mr. Mayor? Butterfield: Go ahead. Simison: Council Woman Strader. Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 18 of 26 Strader: If you don't mind I'm just going to take one second to just maybe give a little lead in if you are -- we have Dark Horse Analytics, which I think everyone is familiar with at this point. Phenomenal tool. Sat down with Deputy Chief Butterfield and a team, was blown away by the amount of analytics and information that that tool can provide and that was the genesis of this presentation was, hey, you know, we have hired many firefighters through the SAFER grant. We have a good amount of them coming on board and we have a lot of resourcing. That doesn't necessarily mean that any one deployment model is the right answer for us at this point and I just sort of asked the question could you show us four different options, advantages and disadvantage of different deployment models, so that we could become educated going forward on what those look like in our new analytical tool Dark Horse and just to get a feel for starting to socialize some different approaches that we could take. Thank you. Simison: As well as -- part of this also played into the conversations around the station remodels that we are proposing, the how, the when, the where and the why. So, it -- it is not just, like I say, theoretical. Some of it is very -- how do we move forward in the immediate future with some decision points that are going to be put before us. So, with that Chief Butterfield. Butterfield: Thank you, sir. So, the first thing I do want to mention in this presentation is all of these options, as I kind of go through the four different options that have been created, none of these increased staffing beyond the current level, including the SAFER grant. So, as we move forward this is inclusive of all personnel that are currently hired by the Fire Department. None of this will incur any future hiring as described in the deployment model. So, as was -- was requested we broke it down to four different models moving forward. Four person staffed apparatus at eight stations is the first model and I will elaborate on each one of these as we move forward. The second model is a multi-company staffing at Station One. So, a three person engine and a four -- four person truck company. Currently right now at Station One we just have a four person truck company. So, we would be adding an additional apparatus at that particular station. The third model, a new fire station located at River Valley Road and Eagle Road with an engine company. The premise of this really came out of Dark Horse Analytics and when we look at the predictive analytic modeling that that software does it really points to that area of the city being the next location for a fire station at some point in the future based on road travel, based on call volume, based on the number of calls that we are projecting, the growth, number of residents that are going to be added, multi-family residents that are being added, so on and so forth. Recognize that at some point that's going to probably be the likely location of a new fire station. And, then, the fourth model was adding a two person squad at Station Four and at Station Five and I will talk a little bit more in that particular model what squads are and a little bit more in depth on that. Some of the key performance matrix criteria goals that we looked at that were established by the Fire Department as we went through the accreditation process and developed our standards of cover are what we want to achieve. Our goal on every emergency call and lights and sirens response to calls, we want to arrive at an EMS call in seven minutes and 50 seconds from the moment we get the alert at the fire station to arriving on scene. Eight minutes for fire calls. We get a Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 19 of 26 little bit of buffer time in there, because we know we got to put on more gear equipment before we actually go on some fire calls and, then, the arrival of an ERF response, what we refer to as an effective response force, and I will talk a little bit more about that -- about 11 minutes and the ERF is essentially getting enough people on scene to do critical tasks in a short amount of time. So, three fire engines, a ladder truck and a battalion chief in under 11 minutes. These are our goals as we have established them. And when I talk about an effective response force this -- a lot of work went into what we call a critical task analysis. So, this is indicative of the things that we need to do on an emergency scene in very quick time, in quick order with the personnel. So, we have a tiered response to our structure fire. Somebody calls 911 and says my house is on fire. Immediately out the door, we are sending three fire engines, a ladder truck and a battalion chief on just that request. A lot of the times actually more times than not it doesn't turn out to be a house on fire, it turns out to be a multitude of other things, a shorting outlet, furnace issues, burnt food on the stove, a cigarette butt in a planter box. But we initially send out that initial response. When we do get on scene or even in route and we realize, no, this house is on fire, we have flames coming from the house, we will add additional resources to that call, including another fire engine, another ladder truck, another battalion chief, an ambulance, an ambulance supervisor, because now we know we have got a major incident, it's going to need a lot of people and when we are on those particular ones, through the critical tasking we need a minimum of 23 people to get on scene to handle the events that are taking place on those types of emergency scenes and, then, we are not even getting into the next level of an apartment fire, a big box store fire, multi-level high rise fires, then, you are adding another 20 or 30 people, because now you have just complexed the incident by the different divisions that need all of these different critical tasking. The matrix and the quantitative data that we get out of Dark Horse is pretty profound in what we -- travel time. We know the travel time distance and we know ERF, but more people on scene, what doesn't get told in the story of the -- of the quantitative analytic piece is what happens when we get on scene and needing more people on scene sooner. The National Institute of Standards and Technologies has done some critical task evaluations and 25 percent faster with four person crews than three person crews on getting those critical tasks that have been identified and getting them completed in a timely order. More personnel on scene quicker allows for better rotation, rehab. You can imagine when it's a hundred degrees outside, like we get here, people are going in the work cycles of firefighters inside a burning house, in their gear, on air, get much more compressed when we are dealing in the summer months. So, we understand we can get people through that quicker. We get people on scene quicker. OSHA standard two in, two out rule. Anybody that goes into a burning building if we have two people going in we have to have by OSHA standards two people out and we -- it's hard to achieve when you only have -- send three people on a fire apparatus. They have to wait until somebody else gets there. Certainly reduced physical strain. As you can imagine more people are showing up. We are able to, you know, lift ladders more easily with more people. We are able to forcible entry. Breaking down doors is easier with more people, especially if you have to do multiple doors on the same building. Stretching hose lines is easier. So, we -- mental fatigue, mental strain. Injuries related to that is another area of -- the arrival of more people sooner, which is not necessarily in the quantified piece matrix of Dark Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 20 of 26 Horse and, then, improved outcomes from CPR. Resuscitation efforts is another one and I will elaborate a little bit more on that. So, I believe -- let's see if we have -- so, this is an example of a fire -- and you can imagine as we have a fire occurring -- and this is actually not uncommon for us to have two fires, especially with how close fire -- homes are being built in the city and, then, you get a shed in between there that catches on fire. We actually get these a couple times a year, but you can imagine with this fire happening, the multitude of things that I just went over need to happen quickly. We need to get a lot of people as quickly as we can to the incident to start handling all those critical tasks as quickly as possible. So, what is it we are looking for when we arrive on scene of a building that's on fire? And this -- I think this particular picture is actually becoming very common in Meridian. We are seeing a lot of garage fires due to lithium ion battery -- thermal runaway of lithium ion batteries. People leaving lithium ion batteries on chargers, whether that's for their leaf blowers, for their lawn mowers, for the cordless drills, we are seeing quite a rise and I will tell you our crews are really good at stopping these fires. If we get there quick we can get water and save the house from burning down and contain the fire to the garage. I would -- I would say our crews are very good. We get a lot of these a year and we stop it just like in this picture a lot of the times, because we can get there quick, we can get people on these quick and stop that from happening. So, our containment goal -- we want to contain the fire to the room of origin. The quicker we can get crews on scene and wherever that fire started if we can keep it from getting up into an attic and burning the house down or into multiple rooms, then, we have -- we have kind of met our goal. Our rescue goal. In short, all occupants are out of the building. We just had a fire yesterday afternoon -- and this includes pets. So, we saved a couple of pets yesterday afternoon. Had a fire in northwest Meridian. Overhaul. We want to ensure no elements of fire remain when we leave and salvage goal protect any owner -- owners of belongings, especially as we get through, you know, taking down the overall first fire attack, if we can get fire knocked down and, then, as we are looking for hot spots, we are pulling ceilings looking for any growth. You get people's belongings out. Very common to have a quick conversation with the homeowner. Is there anything that's valuable or very important to you that we can go ahead and get out of the house and give to you before we start spraying a whole lot of more water as we are looking for hot spots and things like that. So, that's another common goal that we look to achieve. Our first arriving -- so, from a data perspective our first arriving apparatus at building fires in Meridian, our response area, in under eight minutes we can right now do that 63 percent of the time and our ERF right now in Meridian, trying to get all three fire engines, a ladder truck and a battalion chief on scene in under 11 minutes -- about 30 percent of the time. Some of that I think is really relative to the fact we have one battalion chief covering the entire area. It takes a while for them to drive across town. So, we are not going to get that entire complement of apparatus there that quick. I just want to cover a few points of -- across the bottom of this particular slide you can see growth of fire. So, as we look at -- fire doubles in size about every minute and we recognize that as fire is progressing through burning of a house that survivability goes down rather quickly as that fire grows from a hundred percent survivability to 30 percent survivability, sometimes in just a matter of minutes. So, again, this really speaks to the fact of how quickly we can get firefighters on scene in the shortest amount of time. Another area I don't think we really talk about is the Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 21 of 26 impact of the citizens of our city. Is that what if we don't get there and stop that fire in our goal, contain it to the room of origin, the impact of months of displacement for those homeowners can be pretty extensive. If we can stop it quick, like we did in the example of the picture of the garage, I mean ten to 20 percent of damage we -- I mean they are out three months and they are back in their home. But if we start losing that structure and we start getting complete burn of the structure upwards in 18 months that now they are going to be displaced from their home, which is quite an economic impact and a major inconvenience for them. Another area, too, is just the cost of repair. If we can stop that fire quickly and looking at this is that fire progressive all the way up -- once we start losing that or we stop it in a half burned house, now they have to have an expense of tearing what remaining part of the houses down and, then, getting to a point of, then, rebuilding the house. So, two scenarios. One for four person staffed engines. This particular graph is from our Dark Horse Analytic model. This is, essentially, a heat graph that they use using hexagons. So, this is essentially where we are headed right now in July. We will be moving to a four person staffed engine apparatus at all -- all fire stations and from a statistical analysis, using -- using the analytics it doesn't really change our first to arrival time. We are not really going to be getting a time quicker just by adding another body to an apparatus. We will be able to get done things quicker on scene when it comes to critical task, but first two doesn't really change. So, our ERF we were at about 30 percent. By doing this we do increase that to about 35 percent by getting more people on scene quicker in that under 11 minute time frame. So, we will definitely see a rise in the percentage time of that. And, then, there is some other important aspects of the four person staffing, even some internal testing that we had done with the training division and our own personnel recognizing if we arrive on scene on a mock training scenario with a three person crew how quickly can we get water supply established? So, hooking the hose, dropping the hose off of the engine to a fire hydrant, connecting to the fire hydrant, charging water from the fire hydrant to the fire engine and stretching a line. We saw a 74 percent increase in time savings just by going to a four -- from a three person to a four person crew and with the times that are noted on this particular slide and, then, also a 27 percent increase in time savings for victim removal. Again, this was our own data, our own training officers, our own people, recognizing in seven minutes and 46 seconds for a three person crew versus five minutes and 38 seconds for a four person crew. And, then, the EMS outcomes -- improved EMS outcomes on calls certainly as you can imagine if we are arriving with four people or with just a greater people responding EMS providers, EMTs and paramedics, the division of labor is going to be better, lifting and moving patients. We actually sustain back injuries of our personnel every year from lifting heavy and so you can imagine if somebody is four, five, six hundred pounds on the ground and you -- you end up with an engine company of three people and an ambulance crew of -- of two people and you need to move this people -- this person onto a gurney and out to the ambulance, a lot of the times we do end up with some -- some injuries that I think are certainly more labor is going to help reduce those -- those potential injuries. Vehicle extrication is another one. More people on the scene quicker we can do extrication, patient care, stabilization -- stabilization of a vehicle, things of that nature. Sometimes we provide assistance to critical transports. The ambulances only show up with two personnel. Sometimes in our city we have some pretty significant -- either injuries or Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 22 of 26 medical conditions that require additional person in the back of the ambulance to assist. Certainly having more people is going to help with that. And, then, CPR performance. You can imagine somebody in cardiac arrest there is a lot to be done in a very short amount of time. We need somebody to do chest compression, set up the AED, manage the airway, breathe for the patient, medication administration, et cetera. It's kind of a complex series of events and more people make less work of that. The next scenario I'm going to move to is our new station with the three person staffing. So, this is a new fire station. Eagle corridor. Probably over in that the River Valley Road area. Looking at the matrix when we add a new station over there it does increase our first due and for fire and EMS and it increases our ERF a little bit, but not quite as much and so this bar graph really shows where our first due -- EMS first due, non EMS and ERF. So, if you think about it it makes sense where Station Three, Station Four and Station One are going to see a big increase of all three of those, because there is now a new apparatus in that particular area of the city. Very much on the east side of the city. So, all of those matrix are going to be quite much -- they are going to be a lot better. But Station Five, Station Six, Station Seven, and the rest of the city doesn't have that influx of those new personnel and that new apparatus. So, it does kind of shift really good over there, but not quite as much in the rest of the city. Scenario three, the multi-company staffing at Station One. This is one that as we ran the analytics I was actually quite surprised myself at what we saw. So, first do EMS and first do non-EMS doesn't change a lot, because, again, I haven't completely solved the time space continuum, but recognizing that where people -- how we move quickly is going to pretty much stay the same even, though we are adding two other apparatus. But I think what was really important in this is what it created in the ERF across the entire city was pretty profound. Across the entire city 9.4 percent as a collective and, then, you can see each individual station area pretty substantial increase, because now you have an apparatus with three people that it can get across the city pretty quickly within, you know, those emergency events for the critical need and to accomplish those critical tasks that we need accomplished on those particular incidents and recognizing that there is also some other -- now we have another apparatus, there is some -- outside of the quantitative data that we are looking at we have two apparatus at Station One. So, if Station Eight needed to send an apparatus in to downtown for some training, we now have an apparatus we can move out and provide coverage that particular area of the city where right now when Station Eight comes in for training we don't have coverage. So, there is some other benefits by this particular model that isn't even captured necessarily in the data. And scenario four, two squads, Station Four and Station Five and, again, if you are looking at the matrix a little bit of first due increase definitely some increase to the ERF as well, six percent, not quite nine percent that we got from Station One. When I talk about a squad, this is really the vehicle that we are talking about. We recognize in the city the majority of our calls are EMS calls, 70 to 80 percent, and I would even say 20 to 30 percent of our actual calls don't need a fire engine and they don't need three people on a fire engine. They could be handled with this type of vehicle, with a paramedic and an EMT very successfully. We run about a -- between our lift assist and fall patients we run about 1,100 calls a year. It can easily be handled with this particular type of -- it would still include these people on this apparatus, would go to fire calls, so they would be part of an ERF and be able to round out the -- in the fire call where we need those critical task Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 23 of 26 people and there is some other things. We can certainly contain small fires. This would have water on it. It would have vehicle extrication on it. It would still be able to I think handle duck rescues. As you all know as Council would do a lot of duck rescues. Certainly could mitigate those as well. We could phase these in and this particular vehicle as the purchase of the vehicle would be eligible for impact fees and, again, we wouldn't be adding personnel, this would just be a shift of people. So, as I'm kind of getting close to wrapping this up, scenario one will be in place in July. We will have four person staffing on our fire apparatus in a couple months and I would refer to this as really good. This is really good for the city and it's a really good deployment model. The next scenario. Building a fire station. It's going to definitely be the greatest expense. I think we don't even have necessarily land identified yet. If we were to start moving through a process identifying land, entitlements related to that and everything related, probably four to five year window out by the time we actually had a fully staffed functional fire station. I think even at best maybe four years. Scenario three. This is the dual engine ladder truck at Station One. Readily achievable. We have fire apparatus to do this and a greatest overall ERF performance increase. So, I would go this is much better. So, we went from really good to what I would describe as much better by moving into that particular model. We are going to be doing some remodels on Station One. I think that will be part of that conversation. And, then, scenario four I think is the best overall. The squad approach. A lot of other cities are starting to move to that. The Eagle Fire Department's moved to a squad approach. Nampa has moved to a squad approach. I know the city of Boise did a trial on a squad with really good results, so I know they are heading in that direction over there as well. So -- and that particular model the greatest impact on reduction of apparatus maintenance repair and replacement over time certainly is -- as we come before Council with the request for fire apparatus, which is getting more and more expensive, but we recognize here is a way we can solve some of that if we are not sending really expensive fire apparatus to a lot of calls we don't need to we should see a reduction in some of that. So, my final thoughts for you. Really the leader's intent from the fire service -- from the leadership of the fire department is to really go from what's really good, which we will be seeing here in a couple months, to what is much better as we remodel a station and -- and provide dual company response out of Station One to ultimately hopefully down the road a best overall squad. So, that's really kind of what -- what this phased approach as we move forward in. Upcoming fire stations are certainly going to be provided options to accommodate some of these deployment models and be part of that -- that conversation and I do want to reiterate as we did kind of move through all of these models we are not going to be coming and asking for more personnel to make any of these successful. We will be able to do these with the personnel we have. So, with that, Council, Mayor, I would stand for any questions. Simison: Thank you, chief. I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but I'm going to put words in your mouth for you. For the immediate time being there is no request for any additional employees to -- as we look at these four options, but I'm sure that the -- if the direction of the city is four person staffing generally it may be four person staffing and one or two of these other models in addition that would not be four persons staffing, but two person staffing on something as an aside. So, I don't want to hold you to that Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 24 of 26 forever in case some of you are here in ten years. We said we would never be asked from that standpoint. So, Council, questions? Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Whitlock: Appreciate the presentation and the overview. This is great data and fascinating. I'm impressed by the squad concept and had a chance to go on a ride along this weekend and there were two call outs for fire to come and assist and that squad would have been perfect at the speedway and, then, one in north Meridian. Could have handled this -- the situation easily. Can I just pivot and say what, then, happens if at the same time a squad of two is out, do you have coverage back at the station if -- if a fire breaks out somewhere else? Butterfield: Yeah. Councilman Whitlock, yeah. So, the idea of the squad concept would -- it would be co-located in a station with a fire apparatus. So, there would be a probably three -- three person or four person staff fire apparatus and a two person squad. So, the squad would primarily be covering EMS calls. Would still go on fire calls, but if they were out on an EMS call and a fire call came in or another EMS call, then, certainly the engine would respond. Overton: Mr. Mayor, just a quick comment. Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: I think I'm truly amazed that we are talking about a concept that I used to watch in 1972 on television called Emergency 51 that was all about a two person squad truck from a fire department responding and here we are back with it again. Taylor: Mr. Mayor. I watched the reruns not the original. Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: I was born seven years later. This is -- I'm going to piggyback on the squad concept. Really I like that concept, because it seems like a more efficient use of time and I really like the idea of not burdening or wearing out our really expensive apparatus for something that's obviously going to be a lot more cheaper to maintain and replace. My question, though, is when you get a call do you know if it's something that you could send a squad to or is that known before you deploy? Or are you on your way you are figuring out? Can you kind of talk to me about how you would understand what type of response you need and when and how quickly? Butterfield: Absolutely, Councilman Taylor. The -- so, from the 9-1-1 dispatch, you know, they pretty much send us to whatever -- whatever the type of emergency that they receive in dispatch, then, attaches a certain response to that emergency. So, we Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 25 of 26 could certainly tie it to whatever the response criteria is and I think we have like 3,400 different potential call -- call outs that attach certain apparatus to it, so -- Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Thank you so much. You are -- you and your team put a ton of work into this and we really appreciate it. I think it's just going to help us get better. I -- I also was very interested in the alternative response vehicles just based on the price tag of our new ladder that we are pursuing. So, any update on that I guess would be my only question, where we are at with our -- are we making progress in trying to get a new ladder truck. Sorry, that's a curve ball I didn't prepare you for, but -- Butterfield: I believe it is in the procurement department of the city right now. Strader: Excellent. Butterfield: Working through the contract. Strader: That's so great. Thank you. Simison: Thank you, Chief Butterfield, Chief Blume, team, for bringing this -- a lot of -- a lot of good information, a lot of questions still to be answered and a lot of practicality as we move forward, so thank you. 21. Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Amendment in the Amount of $80,020 for consulting services for new Department of Justice ADA Web Content Accessibility Rule Simison: Council, still want to move Item 21 to the next meeting? Okay. Then with that do I have a motion? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Move we adjourn the work session. Strader: Second. Simison: Motion and a second to adjoin the work session. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it, we are adjourned. MOTION CARRIED: ALLAYES. Meridian City Council Work Session June 3,2025 Page 26 of 26 MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:48 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) MAYOR ROBERT E. SIMISON 6-17-2025 ATTEST: CHRIS JOHNSON - CITY CLERK 6-17-2025