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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002 07-09 Joint Planning & Zoning and Parks Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 With Planning & Zoning and Parks & Recreation Commissions The special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 7:15 P.M. on Tuesday, July 9, 2002 by City Council President Tammy De Weerd. Council Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Keith Bird, Bill Nary, Tammy de Weerd, and Cherie McCandless. Planning and Zoning Commission Members Present: Jerry Centers, David Zaremba and Keven Shreeve. Parks and Recreation Commission Members Present: Chairman Bruce MacCoy, Sheri Baker, Debbie Watkins, David Moe, Creg Steele and Paul Newcomb. Staff Present: Bill Nichols, Will Berg, Gary Smith, Shari Stiles, Brad Watson, Dennis Summers, Rick Heller, Brad Day, Elroy Huff, Diane Stewart and Spence Chivers. De Weerd: Attention. Keith Bird, we’re going to start. We’re going to go ahead and start. Okay. We’re going to go ahead and start the workshop of City thth Council, June 9. It is 7:15. Oh, July 9. Sorry. I had hoped I was moving in th June 9. I’d like to welcome you all here today. We are having a joint meeting with Parks Commission and Planning and Zoning Commission. I’ll go ahead and call roll call of City Council and the Mayor. Roll Call: __X___ Bill Nary __X___ Keith Bird __X___ Tammy De Weerd __X___ Cheri McCandless __X__Mayor Bob Corrie Roll Call: __O__ Leslie Mathes __X__ Jerry Centers __X__ David Zaremba __X__ Keven Shreeve __O__ Chairman Keith Borup Roll Call: __X__Sheri Baker __X__ David Moe __X__Debbie Watkins __X__ Creg Steele __O__Jim Keller __X__ Paul Newcomb __X__ Chairman Bruce MacCoy De Weerd: Am I missing anybody? Yes, we do. We have a veteran Kristen Madula. Oh, yes. What is it now? Lundgren. We’d like to welcome you all here today. The primary purpose of this is to do a Parks tour and to hear some of the issues of the Parks Commission and the Parks Department. Also, Gary Smith and Brad Watson will kind of give you an idea of the direction that growth will Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 3 of 10 take and (inaudible) sewer lines. I’ve asked them to talk about our White Drain, the South Slough and also what plans we have currently underway for the Ten Mile interchange area. I’ll go ahead and turn that over to them. Issue #1: Presentation of Future Sewer Trunk Line by Gary Smith and Brad Watson. Smith: Thank you, Tammy. For those of you that don’t know me, I’m Gary Smith and I’m Public Works Director. This is Brad Watson our City Engineer. Tammy asked, as she mentioned, for us to give you a short kind of overview of the plans that are underway in the Public Works Department for extension of sewer. We’ve also spotted a few new wells on this map for you to look at and I’ll turn the rest of the dissertation over to Brad. He’ll give you a short overview of our planning efforts at this point in time. Watson: All right. Thank you. This map that we have here, hopefully you can kind of see it. If you can’t, feel free to get closer. I didn’t envision everyone being this far away so some of the print might be a little small for you. This basically shows the entire area of impact in the City of Meridian. You’ll notice that our sewer planning actually extends south past the area of impact. The only reason that is, is we just ran the sewer out as far as we could take it when we were doing our master planning. As Tammy mentioned, our primary or most immediate expansion area is the White Trunk area right here. I don’t know if that shows up very well. Most of you are probably aware of this project. It extends from Ustick to McMillan Road from Ten Mile Road over to Locust Grove. It’s roughly three square miles. I think, as of today, construction is about, right there, that’s supposed to be complete this fall sometime. The next project that we’re working on is mostly designed is this South Slough area right here. It’ll take in the area at Ustick and Eagle Road, presumably mostly for commercial development. I don’t know that anyone has talked to us about residential too much in that area. Potentially, way over here on the east side. That is supposed to be beginning construction in November this fall. I show this down here. This is mostly complete. This wasn’t a City project. This was one of the priority areas identified by Council two or three years ago. This ended up being driven by Silverstone Development who extended the sewer into this area making that available. Sutherland Farms, a lot of you have seen that project come through. Just south of that. (inaudible) Watson: Silverstone is the 80 to 90 acre commercial development on the southeast corner of Eagle and Overland with the big huge entryways, guard towers and all of that. Just across from it will be the El Dorado Subdivision. It’s kind of a similar development. It’s about 80 acres. That sort of driving that in combination with the Tuscany Lakes Subdivision south of Victory that looks like it’s going to move forward, is really driving well development on this side of town. This well will be completed and pumping this fall. This is an existing well that we purchased or will purchase and put into production. That’s surrounded by the Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 4 of 10 Touchmark Development. Anyway, there’s a lot going on right through here that really driving our water construction projects. The next thing that sort of the preliminary stages is, we undertook over the last year a preliminary look at sewering the area around Ten Mile Road and I-84 at the request of the developer initially. The study ended up sort of snowballing into a bigger study that just what they were looking at. Initially, we were just looking at this and this but the farther we got into it and I think Council agreed, directed as we looked at providing sewer to kind of form the whole, the ultimate master plan for that whole area. Next, week Public Works and Wastewater will be proposing to City Council to provide money to begin design on that very major trunk line. The thing to point out is it doesn’t just stop right here. That’s as far as we’re proposing to design it but it can go under the Interstate and serve this entire area, ultimately. The other thing to point out on sewer, until this crosses the Interstate and picks up this area, is the sewer capacity south of Victory Road. Well, south of the Interstate, really, is pretty limited. Some of you were here when the Bear Creek Subdivision came through and we did a lot of sewer modeling but sewer capacity on that end of town is limited to really about 1,100 more homes right now. We’ve had since that time—since that time we’ve had obviously Bear Creek, Observation Point, Tuscany now probably. That chewed up a lot of that capacity. A few more can go in but there will come a day, especially for Planning and Zoning members, that an application is going to come in south of the Interstate and we’ll be crying for sewer capacity. That’s probably going to happen sooner rather than later. Most of the development people that come in and talk to us are talking about this area, some down here and actually even more over here. I had one gentleman come in just last week wanting to do something over here just off of McDermott. There’s some applications in for these two square miles. Shari probably knows more about those than I do. That’s about it unless there’s any questions. Zaremba: (inaudible) get to the point where your recommendation on the project is that it can’t be served south of the freeway. What is the lead-time? I guess part of the question is what do you recommend the Planning and Zoning Commissioners do about it. Probably have to deny it or delay it. What’s the lead-time for designing and adding more capacity? Watson: Just this project right here. Just getting it to the north side of the Interstate. We’re plugging in at least a year for design easement acquisition. The construction is estimated at $6 million. Very big project. I think the best st case is three years. We started October 1 on this. I think the best case is three years before it end— Zaremba: --to push under the freeway, you probably have to have Federal involvement and stuff? Don’t they own the freeway? Watson: Well, you have to get through the State ITD permits. As long as they’re not giving any money to (inaudible). It takes some time, pretty much. So, three years to get to here and (inaudible) fire in three years, I don’t know. Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 5 of 10 Unknown: What are you looking at? Sounds like people are talking to you. (inaudible) people looking at potential development? Quite a ways out or-- Watson: I’m looking at this upside down. Sort of in this general vicinity. There’s some interest there along the Interstate frontage, obviously. Anytime anyone comes in, we’re very upfront about what’s going on down here so if they come to the Commission and say we’ve never heard of this, everyone is warned about the limited sewer capacity down here. De Weerd: Are there any more questions? This—I know the Parks Commission is probably wondering why they’re hearing about sewer. This will dictate where growth goes and how you prioritize the little dots on the map and also your strategy of how to get them there as well. So, this will be important to you, you know, if growth is limited south of the freeway, you know, on looking north where growth is more likely to happen. So, keep those in mind as you’re prioritizing and planning for those areas. Thank you, guys. One other thing we are doing out to here is putting in a third fire station. City Council has talked about with the Rural Fire Commission, citing that third station on north Locust Grove, north of Ustick and that will basically serve their area of impact far above our area of impact because this will essentially serve this portion and this portion of Meridian. With that, the Rural Commission is paying for the station and we’re sharing the normal percentage of staffing and equipping it. They’re interested in serving and bettering their rural response time and that’s kind of their motivation. There is also a commitment to go south of the freeway (inaudible) station for within a certain period of time. So, that again, is going to serve growth up in this area and down here where they’re saying a lot of their building permits are going. Again, that’s just a piece of information for your decision making and recommendations to us so you’re kind of kept apprised as to the direction that we’re going. Watson: (inaudible) the idea that much of the growth may be north. We had recently (inaudible) Planning and Zoning had a preliminary look at a project. They volunteered to continue it themselves (inaudible) but a project that I think is between Linder and Ten Mile and McMillan and Ustick. They are also offering to give land for another fire station on Linder. But, it’s a huge project, taking up like three quarters of that square mile. De Weerd: Isn’t it like off of Chinden? Watson: Maybe it was a mile farther. It was somewhere in there. (inaudible) Watson: They’re setting it aside for a price. Anyhow, the thought is another fire station up there but a huge project for the road. (inaudible) Watson: Yes. Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 6 of 10 De Weerd: Okay. So, Planning and Zoning and the Parks Commission, as you can see, you need to work closely together and I know the Planning and Zoning Commission really looks for the comments from the Parks Department and the presentation of the Parks Commission. We do want to see that increased involvement as these projects come forward and seeing those Parks comments. I’ll go ahead and turn this over now to Tom. Tom, maybe you can introduce—I know, most of your Parks staff is here so that everyone has a chance to know who works with you. Issue #2: Presentation and Tour of Meridian City Parks by Tom Kuntz. Kuntz: We kind of started this last year as an annual event for the Parks Commission to have an opportunity to actually go around and see what we’re up to on a daily and monthly basis. Also, this year, we’ve added a little different twist, in that, we’ve invited the people who are out in our parks on a daily basis sweating and taking care of our facilities and helping us to add new facilities. These are the people that go unnoticed so much of the time. We’re really lucky to have a real good staff in our department. Our office manager, Diane Stewart, is here. Raise your hand or stand up. (inaudible) to the end if you could. We just hired a brand new Recreation’s Superintendent, Lisa Ariola, and Lisa opened and ran the Boy’s and Girl’s Club in Nampa for two years and then worked at Seattle Parks and Recreation seven years prior to that. We’re really fortunate to have some talent (inaudible). The Park Superintendent, Elroy Huff, who leads all of our Parks and Recreation on a daily basis. (inaudible) and Dennis Summers and Brad Day, with the cowboy hat. Brad changed his title this year. He’s maintenance and construction supervisor. He takes care of all of our equipment to make sure it stays running and then also helps us oversee different construction projects. Then we’ve got Rick Heller. Rick, you want to raise your hand. He’s one of our groundskeepers too, and Spence Chivers, right here. These are the guys who are in the trenches every day and I want them to know, publicly, how much I appreciate all the work that they do because with the size of staff we have, we take care of not only a lot of park land but we’ve actually done quite a bit of construction ourselves. We’re doubling our acreage this year, in one year so we’re really going to be stretched. We want to thank the Council tonight for all of the support they’ve given us over the last three or four years. When we became a full-fledged department, we brought some of the fruits of the budget process that have helped us be more efficient in our daily work. We have a brand new spray rig that’s only been used once. Elroy won’t let anybody drive it but himself. Okay, eight times. We have a brand new mower that we purchased this year, which cuts our mowing time in about much more than half. Is that accurate? Next to the mower is a couple of our new Chevy vehicles and attached to that, that trailer, at budget time this year, we were looking at balancing a few different items and didn’t think that the trailer was going to make it in so we had some money left in supplies and we hired a gentleman who is retired but is an ace welder along with Brad Day and we bought the materials and we built this trailer ourselves. Brad was really the one who spearheaded that but just another way that our staff is making the best of our resources and saving Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 7 of 10 the City money so you might want to take a look at that trailer because they really did an exceptional job. Next to it is our skid steer, which we purchased last year. It’s gotten many, many uses from drilling holes to plant trees. It brings the dirt out in a sifted manner so the plant the trees, put the ball in and the material goes back in in a nice even manner. I guess I won’t put a pitch in for our cab that we’ve got in our budget for this year but we’re hoping to add a cab on that so we can—Brad, do you want to say something on that? Then, the last item, the drinking fountain that you see over here on our left, we found that to purchase many of these items is very costly. A drinking fountain of that style is $2,200 plus shipping. So, Brad and our welder got together and came up with a design after going to some of our parks and looking at kids never being able to reach one of the fountains and having to be held up and designed that in such a way to where it’s low enough for kids—you know, that age can obviously drink themselves. We’re making all of those in-house. We sent them over to Middleton to have them powder coated and we’re making our own garbage can receptacle containers. We making our own ballards for the pathways that plop down. The trailer—we’re just doing a lot of in-house production that’s really cutting our costs and helping us stretch the dollar even more. Brad, do you and Elroy want to add any to that? Day: We’ve got about $800.00 in that, $650.00 in parts and the rest is carryover (inaudible) cut that (inaudible). Kuntz: Bruce, anyone from the Commission want to say anything or make any statements? I’ve got a little agenda here that I was going to run down. I’d like to have you all join us for the park tour. I’ve got a little agenda here. We’ve actually got three vehicles. I’m driving one and Sheri Baker and Paul Newcomb is driving one. I actually gave you seat assignments so there wouldn’t any fighting, everyone wanting to ride with me. Stand up please, so we can all hear you. Unknown: As we go through the park, I think it’s important to know it’s an exciting time for us at the Parks Commission because there have been years and years of struggling to become some sort of appointed group (inaudible) solid to the City. This has been (inaudible), especially for me. We’ve actually dedicated, through the process, one park a month. We still have to dedicate Bear Creek and dedicate (inaudible) when they become available to. The skate park, too, is going to be dedicated over at Tulley. We were able to dedicate this playground through various money maneuvers and, of course, the park—we’re dedicating the Meridian Settler’s Park. So, it’s been an exciting time. We’ve got it (inaudible) this past couple of months, we’ve had one park dedication a month and (inaudible). It’s great for the City to see all these new parks that are available. Kuntz: Okay. With that, our Parks (inaudible) you don’t have to go very far. A couple of things that we want to highlight—as soon as I’m done flapping here, Elroy’s going to take everyone over to the new restrooms, which were part of the Chamber addition. They’re (inaudible) accessible. They’re attached to the building but the water, sewer, electricity is all separated off so it’s pretty much a Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 8 of 10 stand-alone unit. It is officially owned by the City. (inaudible) It was part of what we call Phase One of renovation of Storey Park. Included in Phase One was taking out the road that used to extend over to Main Street. That was done for a couple of reasons. One of them is, when Franklin Road is widened, it will be so close to the intersection that it would probably be virtually impossible to get out of to Main Street. Two is, it was a little bit of a safety concern of people using the shelters and the park, using the restrooms and having to cross the road. So, we abandoned that road and added the new playground structure that we opened last month. That was purchased—the equipment was purchased primarily with commodities from our recycling program because the equipment is made primarily from recycled aluminum and tin cans and plastic jugs. There’s actually a sign just off to the right of the sidewalk there in the concrete that tells you how many recycled bottles and cans and that type of thing that went into the structure. So, we’re real proud of that. It is used, as you can tell, very, very heavily. We’ll be seeding this area, hopefully, this week. The parking lot, we’re having a little problem with some flooding that happened about a month ago and it hasn’t dried out completely. I know the Chamber plans on having their grand opening next th Thursday, the 17. I know that Planning and Zoning and the Parks Commission th are invited to that grand opening. Barbeque. Wednesday, the 17. Phase Two, hopefully, will be next year depending, of course, on the budget process and we have funds to do it. It will include taking out the equipment to the north of the pool. It’s outdated metal equipment and what we’ll do is realign that road to create a new parking area where the playground equipment is on that side as well as a new parking area (inaudible) with the American Legion baseball field. Then, we’re hoping to work with Western Ada Recreation District to actually produce a little bulb-out, which will be about where that red suburban is up there and will bulb-out and then run up underneath these trees over here to add some additional parking also. Those are kind of our plans for this Phase Two. The other thing that we’re real excited about, which happened last year, and we did a lot of it in-house to make it happen financially, is the entire park has been automated as far as sprinklers. This park we’re standing in now has been automated for a few years but the rest of the parks were all hand set and Rick, what time were you out here in the morning? 5:00 or 4:30? Heller: 4:30. Kuntz: 4:30 in a little golf cart, going around hand setting sprinklers and many years of doing that. We’re lucky enough to get it all automated last year. It really helped us in the park operations. I guess, with that, any questions about Storey Park or what we’re doing or what we’ve done or—Phase One, this year is $120,000. In Phase Two in the budget, I think it’s about $150,000. (inaudible) Heller: We have a system called Maxicom. It’s a computer program. All of our sprinkler system is read by our computer. It’s a very, very slow process but it will all be done by computer and we can go in and look it at each morning and we can tell if we’ve had a break somewhere and it’ll automatically shut down, go to Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 9 of 10 the next station and just does a great job. Eventually, we want to get, what, a satellite station for it. A weather station. It’s a pretty nice unit. It measures the solar range. It measures every thing. De Weerd: Just to know a few things. Storey Park is a great example of partnerships. You have SSC and the playground equipment. You have Western Ada and the pool. The American Legion and a nice baseball field and you have the bathrooms that the Chamber helped participate in. So, this is kind of a showcase of what partnerships are all about and how we can get parks and developed and the project done. Also, one of the—we all know what Generations Plaza is. The Mayor and Council, we were in a meeting a couple of weeks ago where Generations Plaza was recognized for the uniqueness of the park and what it adds to the community. That’s an accumulation of many years work. Like Bruce said, with all of the parks opening up, I think we originally (inaudible) start planning the fifty-six acres and (inaudible). I think when the Parks Commission first looked at that, we had (inaudible) and paper and (inaudible) maxed out so these projects don’t happen overnight. Our staff works hard at getting them to happen but, you know, it’s nice to see that all of that hard work starts to work and we’re actually getting recognition for it. Generations Plaza is going to become an important anchor for the renovation of the downtown area. That’s what parks are about. They’re about (inaudible) community. That’s what you’ll see, hopefully, today. Kuntz: Just to add real briefly to what Mr. Heller is talking about. This system all goes in to our office on Bower Street to the computer so that every morning we can sit down and see what happened in our park as far as water. That is (inaudible) really exciting to me because that cut down on our labor and this system has it—our Maxicom automatically locks these doors at night for a time that we determine. There’s a panic bar inside. Instead of having staff seven days a week to go around and lock up the bathrooms, we now have the ability to lock them from our computers. We can catch vandals at our sprinklers. What was it, two years ago, we had 75 sprinkler heads taken off? We have a (inaudible) in there now that will detect that, the flow of the water, (inaudible) Heller: Right. You can tell by time, what time the flow jumped. What time it was happening. (inaudible) Kuntz: Okay. We’ll (inaudible) of that. Sheri, where is your van at? Okay. What color is it? Baker: Champaign. Kuntz: Bruce MacCoy, raise your hand so we know who you are. Keith Borup, Mayor Corrie and Jerry Centers. Now, you can switch around and dicker— Unknown: Tom, I want to get my two cents in. I got my Nintendo hooked up so-- Meridian City Council Joint Meeting July 9, 2002 Page 10 of 10 Kuntz: Okay. Paul’s van is this right one here, pulled up to the curb with the red carpet rolling out of it. Champaign on ice. Tammy, Bill Nary, Keven and Elroy and then mine is the black Dodge van right over here. David Moe, Creg Steele, Cherie, Leslie and David. Okay? So, Elroy, do you want to do a quick map of— anybody who’s not in those vans that wants to ride, we’ve got extra space. (inaudible) ***End of Side One*** (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: / / ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE APPROVED WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK