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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-01-13 Regular Meridian City Council January 13, 2026. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:04 p.m., Tuesday, January 13, 2026, by Mayor Robert Simison. Members Present: Robert Simison, Liz Strader, John Overton, Doug Taylor, Anne Little Roberts and Brian Whitlock. Members Absent: Luke Cavener. Other Present: Chris Johnson, Bill Nary, Sonya Allen, Nick Napoli, Tracy Basterrechea, Steve Taulbee and Dean Willis. ROLL-CALL ATTENDANCE X Liz Strader X Brian Whitlock Anne Little Roberts X John Overton _X_ Doug Taylor Luke Cavener X Mayor Robert E. Simison Simison: Council, we will call this meeting to order. For the record it is January 13th, 2026, at 6:04 p.m. We will begin tonight's regular City Council meeting with roll call attendance. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE Simison: Next item is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you would all, please, rise and join us in the pledge. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) COMMUNITY INVOCATION Simison: Next up is the community invocation, which tonight will be delivered by Mick Armstrong. If you would all, please, join us in the community invocation or take this as a moment of silence and reflection. Mick. Armstrong: Father, thank you so much for how you have blessed our community and -- and for the leadership that we have and we pray for their continued wisdom. Often as citizens we have conflicting interests and requires somebody to mediate and make a decision and we thank you for those decisions and we thank you for our city services, the protection of our police and fire and -- and our --just the variety of services that care for our -- our needs and keep us safe when we sleep at night without worrying about whether we are going to be safe and I just thank you for your goodness and that you would continue to be a light to this valley and encouragement to people and that we would seek the best for our community, in Jesus' name, amen. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 2 of 46 ADOPTION OF AGENDA Simison: Thank you, Mick. Appreciate you. Okay. Up next is adoption of the agenda. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: There is one note on the agenda. If you are here for Item 12, Latitude 43, they are going to request a continuance to February 24th. We will address that when we get down to Item 12, but other than that there is no changes to the adoption and I move we approve as printed. Little Roberts: 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 item is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. PROCLAMATIONS 1. Community Risk Reduction Week Proclamation Simison: Okay. Next item up is the Community Risk Reduction Week Proclamation. If I could ask Carly and Brooke if -- if you are going to join as well, let you decide on that -- and join me down at the thing and, Brad, you know, you are all welcome to come, but figured that's like a good time to introduce a new member of the team. So, Carly, why don't you come down here and would you like to introduce the newest member of the team to Council. Shears: In the microphone? Simison: Yes, please. Shears: Yeah. So, this is Brooke Cortez. She is my newest CRR-1 specialist in Meridian. So, she's going to work to continue to bridge that gap that we have had over the last few years with public education community outreach and risk reduction efforts in our community. So, we will highlight some of that in my little speech that I have prepared after the proclamation, so -- Simison: And not only that, she does her homework. That's what I'm going to say to all new employees. She's awesome. So -- with that I'm going to read the proclamation and give it right back to you. So, whereas every 23 seconds a fire department in the United States responds to a fire somewhere in the nation and responds to a growing Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 3 of 46 number of medical calls for service surpassing 80 percent of the total call volume in some jurisdictions and whereas community risk reduction is a data-informed process to identify and prioritize local risks followed by integrated and strategic investment of resources to reduce their current impact and whereas the value of community support from local, state and national partners to address community risk is recognized to meet the demands on paid, combination of volunteer members of the fire service and whereas the goal of community risk reduction is to reduce the occurrence and impact of emergency events for both community members and emergency responders through deliberate action in the areas of the five E's of education, engineering, enforcement, emergency response and economic incentive and whereas the City of Meridian supports the community risk reduction efforts to help keep our community safe and thriving. Therefore, I, Mayor Robert E. Simison, do hereby proclaim January 19th through 25th, 2026, as Community Risk Reduction Week in the City of Meridian and call upon the citizens to join this grassroots initiative of fire service professionals across the nation to raise awareness of the importance of community risk reduction in the fire service community and an opportunity to make the community safer, dated this 13th day of January 2026. So, I'm going to present this to you, Carly, and turn the microphone over to you. Shears: Okay. Well, thank you, Mayor and Council Members and members of our community for the opportunity to be here today and for recognizing Community Risk Reduction Week. So, CRR Week is a national effort led by fire service professionals across the nation to highlight full scope of community risk reduction and its role in the modern fire service delivery. With the continued support of our city leadership and the dedicated work of the men and women of the Meridian Fire Department our community has made tremendous progress in reducing risk and improving safety over the past year. Progress that reflects a thoughtful data informed approach to both prevention and emergency response. Community risk reduction, as the Mayor said, is often described through the five E's. Education, engineering, enforcement, economic incentives and emergency response. Supporting these principles is intentional, behind the scenes work in this division, using data to identify the risks in our community, partnerships to implement solutions and measuring outcomes to ensure our efforts are making a difference. CRR is not a standalone function of the fire department, it directly supports and enhances our emergency services capabilities. Through the strategic use of technology, IT systems and GIS, we analyze emergency response data, identify trends and focus on reducing overall response times through targeted evidence based methods. This allows us to deploy resources more effectively and strengthen community safety before, during and after an emergency. Fire prevention has been a primary focus in this division over the past year and in the third quarter of 2024 falls and lift assist in Meridian accounted for 24.5 percent of all calls for service. Nearly one in every four calls and higher than the national average. Through partnerships, home safety assessments and targeted education that number dropped to 18.4 percent by the third quarter of 2025 in a one year span. That reduction represents fewer injuries, fewer 9-1-1 calls and a more resilient emergency response system and it underscores the importance of tracking outcomes, not just activities. Beyond fall prevention risk division continues to support our most vulnerable residents through smoke and carbon Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 4 of 46 monoxide alarm services. A recent partnership with the Idaho Health Corps has expended -- expanded our capacity to meet community demands while reducing non- emergent 9-1-1 calls, ensuring emergency responses remain available when seconds truly matter. Our prevention efforts also include CPR, AED and stop-the-bleed training, car seat checks and installations, home safety assessments, fire and life safety education in Meridian schools and much more. Each program strengthens preparedness, resilience and response readiness across all ages and neighborhoods. None of this work happens in isolation. This past year has been defined by collaboration, healthcare partners, schools, volunteers, regional fire agencies and community organizations all working and coming together. That collaboration has grown into the launch of the Treasure Valley Community Risk Reduction Cooperative, creating a shared regional approach to reducing risk. Most notably our fall prevention program is now being presented at the national level as a model for how data informed, partnership focused, community risk reduction can produce measurable, sustainable impact. As this proclamation recognizes, prevention saves lives, strengthens emergency response and reduces strain on public safety systems. The impact of community risk reduction in Meridian is measurable, the approach is intentional and the results are helping shape -- shape a safer, more resilient future for our community. Thank you for your leadership, your continued support and your recognizing of community risk reduction week. Thank you. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Thank you. I just want to make a quick comment. I'm so incredibly proud of Carly's team and all that she's accomplished and I just have to say that every time I have sat down with her and her team, the data driven approach to actually preventing emergencies has been so eye opening to me and I know it was so hard to wait to fill that position and, you know, I mean that is really hard and we were in a tough spot and you had to wait and I just wanted to compliment you for doing that with grace and integrity and continuing to push things forward as much as you could. You have made a huge impact -- your team has made a huge impact and now it really is fulfilling to see that our public overall in Meridian is so strongly supportive of emergency services and now that we are actually able to responsibly fill that needed position it just makes me so happy. But I just wanted to compliment you and your whole team for that. CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 2. Approve Minutes of the January 6, 2026 City Council Regular Meeting 3. District at Ten Mile Subdivision Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0001) Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 5 of 46 4. District at Ten Mile Subdivision Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 2 (ESMT-2026-0002) 5. District at Ten Mile Subdivision Pedestrian Pathway Easement (ESMT-2026-0003) 6. Horsemeadows Subdivision No. 3 Water Main Easement (ESMT-2025- 0175) 7. Final Plat for Adero Park Subdivision No. 1 (FP-2025-0029) by Laren Bailey, Conger Group, located at 5435 N. Ten Mile Rd. 8. Final Plat for Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 (FP-2025-0030), by Laren Bailey, Conger Group, located at 5435 N. Ten Mile Rd. 9. Resolution 26-2561: Approving a Farm Lease Agreement between the City Of Meridian and Louie Asumendi, concerning approximately Forty (40) acres of real property located on N. Ten Mile Rd., North of W. Ustick Rd., in Ada County, Idaho; Authorizing the Mayor and City Clerk to execute and attest said Farm Lease Agreement on behalf of The City of Meridian; and Providing an Effective Date 10. Farm Lease Between the City of Meridian and Louie Asumendi for farming of 40 acres of City-owned land adjacent to the Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility for Calendar Year 2026 Simison: And hopefully we are happy with what we got by waiting. Something's come long -- seriously she brought me iced tea. No one's ever -- yeah. It's like ice cream or iced tea and, then, she came with ice tea, so it was great. Great. Anyways with that we will move on to our Consent Agenda. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: No changes to the Consent Agenda, I move that we approve the Consent Agenda as published, for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: I 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: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 6 of 46 ITEMS MOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] Simison: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. PUBLIC FORUM Simison: So, move on to public forum. Mr. Clerk, anything -- anyone under public forum? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, there is nobody. DEPARTMENT REPORTS [Action Item] 11. Drone First Responder Presentation Simison: Okay. Perfect. Well, with that we will move on to Department Reports and now that we have cleared most of the fire department out of the room, Chief, I think it's safe for you to come forward for our Drone First Responder presentation. Turn this over to Chief Basterrechea. Basterrechea: Thank you. And this will benefit them as well, so -- first off thank you for giving us the opportunity to present to you tonight, but before we start into our presentation I would like to highlight the work that the men and women of Meridian Police Department completed in 2025. Many of you may have seen in our monthly chiefs communication or on social media, but I think it's important that we highlight it here as well. A little wider reach maybe. First we had a total of 59,143 calls for service in 2025. Now this number that I just gave you is a little bit different than what I put in my initial communication by about 1,527 more calls for service and that only highlights why you don't have the chief work with your stats. That's why we have analysts. That's why they get paid and they do their job well. We had over 12,025 traffic stops, almost 13 percent more than we had in '24 and now the numbers that we are most proud of -- our crimes against person -- persons are down 15 percent. Our crimes against property are down over 22 percent and our crimes against society are down over 21 percent and I know this is a good topic to get into while you were meeting with ACHD, our emergency response time actually dropped by five seconds over -- from 2025 and 2024 to three minutes and 49 seconds. This means that when you call 9-1-1, once our officers are dispatched, you should have an officer on scene in under four minutes. With the growth and the traffic and the congestion that's actually amazing. These numbers are just because of the collaborative efforts of our sworn officers and our professional staff. So, thank you to them. I do want to be clear on one important point though. While these numbers reflect a positive year they do not mean that our work is done, nor do they suggest that we can stand still. These outcomes are the result of deliberate effort, hard work, adaptability by our staff in a city that continues to grow and evolve. Sustaining these results into the future requires us to constantly evaluate what is coming next, not just what already occurred. As our population increases and calls for service continue to rise we must ensure that we have the right balance of staffing, technology and Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 7 of 46 support systems in place to prevent officer burnout, maintain proactive community policing and continue building public trust. Planning ahead is how we protect the progress we have made and ensure we are prepared for what lies ahead. As you know hiring in law enforcement has been challenging for many years now. Year after year we have openings with taxpayer money budgeted, but not utilized. So, over the years I have tasked my command staff to come up with a plan to free up our officers, so they can do what police want to do, go out and be proactive. Several years ago we implemented a community service officer program where we utilize non-sworn professional staff to answer certain types of calls and to supplement sworn officers on various calls. Because of its success we have expanded that program and we now have six community service officers working in our patrol division, as well as two community service officers working in investigations. One of those community service officers working in our investigations division has become one of the more successful fraud investigators, especially when it comes to cryptocurrency in the valley, which is extremely promising I believe to us considering that the cost of a CSO is substantially less than a sworn officer and those investigators don't need to be going putting handcuffs on people, we have patrol officers and sworn officers to do that. So, that may change the dynamics of our Criminal Investigations Division as well. Now, let's talk about technology. Next the command staff went out and looked at ways we could utilize better technology to make our operations more efficient, effective and safer for our community and our officers. They were tasked with coming back with a one-for-one comparison of officer cost to technology cost. We are pretty close. As well as how do these efficiencies from this technology and from the use of our community service officers affect our PAM model? And Captain Leslie will discuss that in the presentation. The Mayor was very clear on that expectation though. He wanted to make sure that the efficiencies were equivalent to the use of our officers. Because they did the heavy lifting command will be presenting to you tonight. The main presenter is going to be Captain Jamie Leslie, but we also have Lieutenant Brandon Frazier here, as well as Captain Berle Stokes and Captain Sean Sopowaga. Lieutenant Ludwig is not here yet, but he will be here. Each one of them had a part in this and they had their hands in different parts of the technology and, quite frankly, they are just going to be more articulate than I could be explaining each portion of our technology asked tonight. So, with that I will stand for any questions or I can turn it over to Captain Leslie now. Leslie: Mayor, City Council, appreciate the opportunity to come speak to you tonight. I spoke with many of you about this project as we have worked our way through it. It's a pretty complex project from start to finish and there is a lot of moving parts. We are trying to highlight the ones that are most important to the efficiencies that we clearly identified, although there are parts of the technology that we will see also tremendous value in our officer response effectiveness and officer safety and interaction with the community. I'm going to go briefly over our staffing currently where we have people currently assigned in our sworn staff personnel and talk about our PAM number as it sits today. All right, Chris. Is that the first slide, Chris? Okay. A little bit of a delay. Where do you go? Okay. So, just a quick overview of the Patrol Allocation Model. So, we use a -- it's a pretty complex metrics. We have been in front of you before and explained it and it goes over our service expectations with our officers, the miles of roads that we Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 8 of 46 have to patrol, how often -- frequently we want them in our neighborhoods, how often -- or how much time of their patrol shift should be allotted to self-initiated activity. So, as we go through that model our current recommendation for our patrol staffing, which includes all first responders, traffic as a supervisor of sergeant down and all patrol officers is 85. Currently in that model we have 67 personnel assigned to that. So, our current authorized number is 151 officers. We currently have 17 open positions. If you break down all of our sworn personnel we have six assigned to administration. We have 17 currently in our SRO division that full capacity that -- that, you know, would be 20 CIDs at 24 with four opens. Traffic's at nine. We have one opening, but that's soon to be filled and, then, at patrol we have 58 actual patrol staff -- that's sergeants and officers assigned to work the six shifts that we cover for the 24/7 coverage. In our OPS division that's the academy and our onboarding staff, there is six and, then, currently in the pipeline we have six in the academy and I believe there is two currently in FTO. So, those ones are -- the ones in FTO currently are certified officers, so we will see their presence in our patrol teams here shortly. So, our Axon. Let's talk about Axon -- was our first person or company or option to look at for technology. They currently provide a service bundle to us, which is mostly centered around evidence collection. The new bundle that we are looking at is more about harnessing our technology advancements for streamlining workflows, force multiplication, providing faster service to the community and, then, reduction to risk. So, we started off back in the day with just the taser. It was just the -- just the weapon. We moved quickly into body worn cameras. We have fleet cameras now. Our Axon Air is the software that monitors and tracks our current drone flights and, then, evidence.com manages all of our video evidence. Our PRR requests are processed through there. So, it does a pretty heavy lift on the technology side once the evidence is collected via our cameras. We are also currently testing their LPR program, which we are going to talk about a little bit later as well. A quick video to kind of give you a quick overview of what the Axon ecosystem is and it's basically the system that we are looking at in that Al bundle package, which is the next package we are looking to purchase through Axon and it kind of gives you a complete view of their products from start to finish and how they are incorporated into day to day law enforcement. Can you fire that up, Chris? Johnson: Captain, you can use the right and left arrows on the keypad keyboard as well. Leslie: Yeah. It didn't -- my mouse has disappeared. I don't have a mouse. That could be a good problem I guess. Maybe I wasn't the right guy to talk about technology. Yes, there should be audio on it. Oh, it doesn't? So, YouTube video should play audio. If it doesn't work, Chris -- no audio? Let's skip it. So, I will try to walk you through what -- what was in that video. So, as a Drone First Responder -- in the Axon ecosystem when the call starts the technology starts. They dispatch a drone to the location of the call. It gets that first eyes onto that location providing critical feedback to the responding units, whether fire, EMS, police, what's going on there? There is vehicles that are leaving, what's -- how many? Versus just having a 9-1-1 call where somebody calls in and says, hey, this is what I got going on, within a minute or two we have a drone over site that can, then, we have an operator on the other side of that that can provide real Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 9 of 46 information realtime to our responding units to help them be better prepared to respond to that call for service. As it works through the technology there is a portion -- they will show in that video where body worn camera has realtime translation for languages, up to 50 languages realtime. So, as the officer arrives on scene and the individual they are trying to help speaks a foreign language, it identifies the language that they are speaking and, then, it allows them to start in realtime communicating back and forth with the individuals understanding what their need is and what's going on. Draft One is something we have used for quite some time. Draft One is a component. It's an Al component that's approved by our IT through our -- our Al policy. Basically what it does is it takes a body worn camera recording. After a transcription is completed it, then, puts it into a draft police report. It then opens up a screen that allows the officer to read the draft report, read the transcription and watch or listen to the audio or video recording at the same time and, then, they go back through and make the necessary changes to the report to make it read the way they want it to read. It just gives them a jump start to that report and, then, they go in, do all the verification of what they want it to say and they output that into their police report. We have seen a tremendous amount of savings and time on that product alone so far. Policy Chat is an Al component that we load up all of our policies, procedures and instruction manuals into and an officer can ask our Al how do I handle this situation? What do I need to do in this situation? That goes through our policies and procedures and provides them the necessary guidelines so they can be better prepared to handle that call short notice. Brief One is a -- another component similar to Policy Chat, but it takes large police reports and goes through them and provides you with basically a white page to say this is the high points of that case. Here is the people involved. Here is the evidence associated with it. Here is kind of the gist of what happened, saving countless hours of our detectives or officers having to go through page by page and reviewing all of the data in there. ALPR expansion. We currently have the record camera system. It's our license plate reader cameras. We worked with ACHD here a while back to partner with being able to relocate those infrastructure to their power poles, traffic light controls. We had ours mid-block in some locations. This will be actually in traffic locations, traffic intersections and in traffic equipment. By doing that we have better out -- outcomes from the pictures. They are better lit. They are on traffic control devices already, so they are pretty obvious that they are there and we will roll that program into this -- into this product as well. Fusus is a -- something we are using kind of already. It's -- it's -- we have a Fusus Light. It's a dashboard that allows a supervisor to open up and see where all of the officers are at, where their body cameras are at, where their car is parked, where they are walking. We can jump into their videos and watch if there is something on a hot call or something like that, so we can be able to see how that call is going. Fusus also will have our drone platform move to it as well, so it will all be one -- one pane of glass for all of those things is what Fusus kind of brings all of these products under the singular pane of glass. Peregrine Technology is another technology that we have looked at. We spend countless hours -- our analyst -- the chief talked a little bit about statistical and data information. We have Power BI dashboards that we built with help of IT. Peregrine is a software that basically mines all that data for us. So, instead of an analyst having to go through and build charts or research information, it will query all of our current systems at once. We looked at this product about a year ago and held off on it. At the time we -- Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 10 of 46 there was no other agencies in Ada county that were utilizing that product. Since then Boise Police Department, the Ada County Sheriff's Office, I think Garden City has had it done. Those two actually already implemented it. We have went over to some site visits to see how it's helped their operations and they are -- they are telling us that it is a tremendous asset to be able to get that information in realtime and get it out to the people who need it, whether it be a detective, whether it be an intel analyst or even their patrol officers. Nampa and Canyon county are also in the process of onboarding that software and the best part about it is through an MOU we can share information that we don't normally share now. So, how the information sharing happens currently is a phone call to them to try to figure out, hey, do you have any information on this? Their analyst does the work on that. Through a mutual agreement we can agree on what we will or won't share with each other and when we will share it and, then, we can have that at our fingertips realtime. The Draft One -- and we have been testing it for quite some time. It's been a huge asset for us. To be honest with you, when we first launched it I thought we would see the most benefit in -- in patrol. We have actually seen more benefit with it in CID and detectives. Their interviews are lengthier and so there is a lot -- they are a lot more complex, take a lot more time to sort through. So, the value in -- in personnel savings and hours worked has been maximized in detectives. Although we use it quite frequently in patrol, but those reports are relatively small. We have seen an average of about 27.86 minutes saved per report. That number is important to us, because in the PAM model how long it takes to do the administrative part of our job also drives how many officers we need on the street and so the more efficient we can be at the administrative work the quicker we can get our guys and gals back out on the street and so that number plugged into PAM -- I will show you at the end how -- what it done for us, but so far we have saved roughly 7,000 hours just in that single component of the technology that we are looking at implementing is the Draft One. At the bottom, the Axon draft audio transcription analyst, was used to assist in the preparation of this report. That is on all and any documents that we use Draft One to start. So, if our officers initiate a Al draft of their report that verbiage is on the bottom of that report to be transparent with whoever reads it that the initial draft of that came from Al. It -- we require human verification. The software requires human verification. That's one thing that's really nice about Axon. That is a very critical part of -- of how they do business. They could use Al to extend human capability, while preserving human decision making; right? We want to make sure that the human decision maker is still making the decisions, but this is just giving you a head start, if you will, to get that -- that document completed. It's been a huge -- huge benefit for us so far. Drone First Responder was kind of the title of this conversation and we are going to talk about drones as first responders. We have been using drones for quite some time. We have 12 certified pilots currently. We have two patrol vehicles that are equipped to be able to fly those drones out of. They respond to a call for service and deploy their drone. When we fly a drone currently -- this is an important takeaway -- is we are currently required to have a pilot and an observer. An observer who has eyes onto the drone when it's flying. So, we take two officers out of the field to fly a drone currently. There are times when -- depending on where they are located, where they launch the drone, may not be a complete secure scene. So, sometimes we will have a third officer there to ensure that while these guys are occupied with their screens and watching the drone that somebody Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 11 of 46 doesn't walk up on them or something like that. Last year we had 505 law enforcement flights, which was pretty impressive. There is kind of an overall view. So, the drone -- Axon allows us to track all of our drone flights, where they are at. We know why -- why we fly them. We know it's a training mission. We know whether it's on a certain type of call for service. So, if anybody ever asks, hey, why was this drone here, I can give you the why. I can tell you this is why it was there. This won't change with Drone First Responder. Drone First Responder really is -- we are going to put a pilot in a building and we are going to send the drone first, not last, not second, not third. So, when the drone goes first it can provide a lot of information back to those responding officers in regards to how many we should send, who we should send. We have had conversations with Fire. We think that Fire is a great opportunity for us to utilize this technology. A good example would be a structure fire. I get a drone there within two minutes, providing realtime video feed to the battalion chief or the captains on the apparatus and they can start making some real world decisions in regards to what they are responding to. It's no different for us. We are responding to an in-progress call, over watch on that call within a couple of minutes beating our response time provides us valuable information in regards to do we need to slow this down, what resources do we need to do? We will have better preparation and respond to that call and the outcome will be better almost every time by us having eyes on ahead of us getting there, if that makes sense. So, I kind of knew this was coming, but I didn't think it was going to come when I did. So, on December 22nd the FCC prohibited the purchase of drones and drone critical components from any country other than the United States. A lot of that has to do with the Soccer Tournament that's coming here this next year. That was kind of what led into the push to get that done a little bit faster. All of our drones and all of the critical components are not made in the United States currently. So, we can still fly them as they are today, but if they break or we need to buy another one, we cannot do that. Part of this program. Skydio and -- and who is the actual US manufacturer of the drones, has been offering some buyback credits to buy our drones that aren't made in the United States, so that we can deploy their drones. In this proposal that we are putting together our drones currently are handled like any other piece of equipment. They end up on the CFP, the replacement from the capital budget. What we are proposing is moving that into our Axon contract where then Axon covers the warranty and the replacement of that equipment and the replacement of it all from the contract, just like our cameras currently are, just like the ones in our cars, just like our tasers. When the newer, better technology comes out we get the newer better stuff and so it's kind of a win-win for us and it gets us into the US manufactured drones. The other thing that Lieutenant Ludwig is working on and -- is getting a waiver, so the technology that we are implementing through the FAA will allow us to fly those drones completely anonymous -- autonomous. So, we can fly them without seeing them. We can fly them from this room. We can fly them from the police department. All their collision avoidance equipment is top notch. They have parachutes on them in case they crash. They had two parachute deployments in the history of the company, so we are not looking to have that occur here, but -- fixed DFR drone coverage. First locations we looked at that made the most sense to us was fire departments and police departments. They are usually strategically located within our city. So, the first locations that we identified as -- one's our police department and the other two are both fire departments, Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 12 of 46 Fire Station 2 and Fire Station 3. Goal of trying to cover as much of our city as we can to get within a two minute response. So, our goal being I want to have a drone on scene within two minutes most places and so there is a little bit of overlap for us. That overlap really is centered around most of our calls for service. So, a high percentage of our calls for service are kind of in the center of those three rings if you will, but we had originally looked at is there ways to do two off one location, but after we went and did some site visits, went to Redmond, Washington; Lakewood, Colorado, and also Caldwell police has recently launched a Drone First Responder program just in the last few weeks. So, our takeaway from that was the more locations you have the better overlap you have and the more space you can get to the better the program would be. This is a lot of the stuff that we already talked about. This overwatch oftentimes can free up officers to complete additional tasks. We believe public safety and officer safety is enhanced with drones during foot pursuits and vehicle pursuits. Here is a way we can get overwatch on either two of those operations. We can slow things down, get people in the right places, not have officers end up in ambush situations. If we are not chasing a car we can follow it with a drone and not have to chase it with our vehicles. That's a win-win for both the community and us as well. Average response to low priority calls is 12 minutes. The chief talked about our four minute response as a priority three calls. A priority one call is a low priority call. We believe a DFR can be on scene of -- about 12,000 of our calls annually within 90 seconds and nearly all of our calls within two minutes or less. What calls are we going to send drones on? Anything that makes sense; right? All of the calls are on the table, whether it be an abandoned vehicle, whether it be a traffic hazard. A traffic hazard we send an officer, has to drive time, commute time through our community to get to it. If I can send a drone there in 90 seconds, realize that vehicle is parked in the parking lot, I don't have to send the officer. I can cancel him immediately. So, we think there is a huge percentage of those calls that we can clear without having officers actually arrive on scene. We believe that DFR drones can either handle or have primary impact on 15 to 20 percent of our calls. As we examine data from the other agencies, some of those agencies are reporting 30 and 40 percent calls. We are pretty conservative. We don't think it's that high for us. At the end of the day fast response time, reduce risk to officers. We also use it for search and rescue operations. It's got thermal capabilities. Lost -- our drones respond a lot during the day for lost kids and things like that and utilize their thermal capability during the day. A lot of people think thermal is for night. It's very very effective during the day, especially when you are searching large areas, open spaces, fields, that type of area. So, again, we will utilize it the same way we are currently using it today. So, PAM models. Let's talk about -- let's get into the weeds a little bit about that. So, the 30 minute reduction report writing time, Draft One, the single component of this package, we believe will drop our PAM number by two by itself, just -- just the report writing element of that. I actually think we are being incredibly conservative on that. Just yesterday we had guys in our hiring office of professional standards using that tool to make their job better in the hiring process and, then, IA is something we hadn't really thought about utilizing before and saves them hours of time at their computer typing. The response in the calls, the total -- reduction in total hours spent on calls per year. We think we can bring that PAM number down to 81.1. That's the DFR. Those are the two products that we are talking about primarily that I believe will put our -- our PAM Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 13 of 46 number to 81 by itself, just those two functions. And go through the whole list of the Al components that are going to make our jobs more efficient, more effective and safer. But the one-to-one comparison with bodies is -- is -- really lies in Draft One and the Drone First Responder. Not cheap; right? Nothing's cheap in this world anymore. So, that the Axon Al bundle, which would include drone as first responder, that's three fixed drones, two mobile drones. We would still have two mobile drones that we can deploy like we deployed today. They will still be in those vehicles. We can also hand off our drone flight from one person to the other. If there is an officer on scene that's a pilot and wants to take over the flight of the drone they can. They can, then, land the drone there and recharge the batteries and send it back up just like they normally would, but they just have the advantage of it beating them to the call. Draft One, a body worn camera translation, which is the language Brief One. I didn't include it there also Brief One. There was also the policy one as well. ALPR cameras. This would bring our ALPR infrastructure into Axon. Again, it's under their program. It's warrantied by them. All of the data is maintained within their Fusus platform, our evidence.com. We are not paying somewhere else for any type of storage of information. It's a single pane of glass that the officers can go to to get their information. So, we feel it's valuable to bring that tool all into one product. We have also had some performance issues with record that we think we are overcoming based off their equipment and the tests so far have turned out that that product is far superior to what we have currently been using. Peregrine is a 44,000 dollars initial cost. These costs are ongoing subscriptions; right? It's a bundle package for Axon. That's how they bundle everything in there and as we continue to use that product, as their product improves, as they add new things in the Al world we still get that product as well. So, once we are in we are -- we have that product. As they make changes and improvements to it we get the benefit of that as well. So, to fund this our ask is going to be to take four of our patrol officer positions, four of the 17 that we have had open for I don't know how long. We have had -- I don't remember the last time we were fully staffed since I have been here. I don't think we ever have maybe more than six months. Utilize that funding. In addition to our medical services manager that position has been open two years and we have done some stuff inside the department to kind of move those personnel around a little bit, change the way they do business, the way they think about how they are doing business. The Peregrine product is really a supplement to the work that they do. Our analytical manager before spent a lot of time on the phone with our IT Department to try to build a lot of the reports and query the data that she needed to do her job. Peregrine will eliminate that need, so it will take some load off of IT as well. So, this is the thought process we have in regards to -- we think it's going to be incredibly beneficial to our personnel, make us way more efficient and effective at what we do and utilize technology instead of people to do that. So, I know it's a lot of information. Sorry about the video not working. I can send that to you guys, too, so you can watch it. It's a pretty good video to show over their product from start to finish. I didn't do it justice for sure. Lieutenant Kyle Ludwig's here and Lieutenant Brandon Frazier. Brandon Frazier handles most of our Axon contract work and all of our equipment with Axon and Kyle manages all of our drone type stuff, so that information is hopefully a short period of time. Any questions that I can answer for you guys or have one of my fellow teammates help you out? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 14 of 46 Simison: Thank you, Captain. Council, questions, comments, thoughts? Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Comment and a question if I may. First of all just great presentation. I have had the privilege of being involved a little bit as we have gone along, but to have it all put in one place was great. So, thank you. And when we saw the demonstrations we also saw the little drones. Are they still part of the package or are we going to just the big ones? What's -- Leslie: Mayor and Council Woman Little Roberts, currently in this package there is -- we still have our little drones that we fly internal, which Skydio has those as well. This package only has the -- the current package has three drones that we will put on locations and, then, two drones that are for our vehicles. They are not the inside drones yet. We haven't went down that road yet. Great tool. We see great value in them. We have some smaller drones right now that are still operational that we can utilize for that function. Obviously, we aren't going to able to use lose them forever, because they are not made here, but Skydio does have a product that does work for us as well. Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Whitlock: Just an observation. First off, thanks. You helped set up an opportunity for me to go out with one of the officers a couple weeks ago and as you were talking I was thinking about just one of the calls we were on. It was a suicidal subject. We were sent there, along with four other officers. All we had was a description of the subject and that she was headed east from the location and we were there within four minutes, less, and we had five officers searching in a grid for 20 minutes and we couldn't find her and I just think a drone being there in less than 90 seconds would have had eyes on her and they would have found her a lot sooner. So, I just see the value in this from saving officers time, from saving lives, and I think that's the mission of this company is to save officers, to save the public and not lose any lives and improve the work that you are able to do. So, thanks for walking us through this individually and for the presentation tonight and for me being out in the field to be able to see how it really can be more effective and helpful to our officers out on the street. So, thanks, Captain. Leslie: Thank you. That was a great example of the use of the drones. That nine -- that two or three minutes it takes to get the officer there, the person can go great distances and so the quicker we can be on site to identify where they are at and keep track of them is invaluable for sure. Thank you. Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 15 of 46 Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: A quick question. Talked a little bit about it before and you kind of talked about it some tonight, but when it comes to the -- kind of the ownership of the drones, this is a subscription model, so we are not buying the drones themselves as much as it's part of the subscription and also kind of wondering when repair is needed or a drone is broken that's just going to be quickly replaced, automatically replaced? I'm trying to get a sense of like owning the capital infrastructure versus renting the capital. Leslie: Yeah. Great -- great question. On behalf of -- I can speak on the price we have had with Axon prior. It's been a very seamless process to get our equipment replaced very quickly and get us back up and running. So, Kyle can probably give you a little more insight into the drones. He knows more about that than I do. Ludwig: Council, Mayor, pleasure to be here. Councilman Taylor. In response to that -- so, there is a built-in warranty and care package that comes with the Skydio program that includes basic replacements, like for props and things of that nature. Their factory is located in San Mateo -- well, actually there -- it's in -- headquarters is San Mateo. Their factory is located in Richmond I believe. In the bay area there. And they will take back anything that they do to replace that and send that back immediately. Additionally, in this package there is a replacement guarantee. So, as upgraded technology comes available -- I want to say it's year four and we get all new equipment as part of that, as well as the care package. So, if we do have a crash, we do have something major, something is not right they will fix it. It's all part of that care package. Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Thank you. First of all, I have been a real fan of this idea -- of just the concept. It seems inevitable that with pressure around our operating costs and the recruiting challenges that we have to leverage technology, but, you know, a question I had was will these drones be able to interact with the public? So, like is -- you know, if there is like a microphone, if they are going to be interacting? And the second part to my question, before you go there -- you will answer that one, but what is -- have you started thinking about -- if this were to be approved what is the communication plan with the public and to start sort of educating the public about -- you may see drones. Please don't shoot them. You know. I mean there is a big issue you will recall on the east coast where they had drones everywhere and people were trying to shoot the drones. Like God forbid we don't want that happening. So, just generally what kind of interaction will the drone itself be able to have and, then, have you started thinking about communication? Basterrechea: Council Woman Strader, Mayor, yeah, we have a plan to put out social media things. Put out some news releases as well. I think the thing you will find with these drones is the first responder -- most people aren't even going to know they are there. They are going to respond, assess the situation, especially when we look at like these priority one calls, which we -- Captain Leslie talked about that we think we can Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 16 of 46 clear without even making contact with a lot of people. They are going to go assess it and say you don't need to send an officer to the scene, because what that was reported isn't actually there and the people that we have talked to and other agencies that are already using this they just haven't had those issues. When we have a call that's a larger call, certainly we try to put out messaging through dispatch that we are on the scene, these are the things that are occurring, but our big push is going to be how do we put that out through local media. Strader: Okay. Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: That's helpful. And I don't think we have to have all the answers to everything at this point. I think that's something that we could -- we could flush that out. If you don't mind going back to the first part of my question, which is just like how can the drone itself interact with the public? I'm kind of curious about that. Ludwig: Yes. Council Woman Strader, so there is a gimbal device that controls the camera, which, obviously, is for video, as well as thermal imaging. There is additional attachments you would make and that -- that's basically our choice of how we want to set that up. They have spotlight attachments. They have speaker attachments that you can communicate through the drone to the public. The FAA requirements when you get your beyond visual line of sight waiver requires you to have a rescue system. So, there will be a parachute attachment that will take up one of those gimbal positions. So, there will be a balance to figure out what we feel is the best necessity for the drone, whether that's the speaker or the spotlight or another attachment. But those decisions have not yet been made. But the capability is there for communication purposes. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I just have one more. Besides that the drones are great, like they are super cool, like the collision avoidance stuff is amazing. I mean it's all incredible. What are the key like performance metrics or success metrics you are going to measure after you implement your drone program that's going to tell you if it's accomplishing what you wanted? Like what are the things you are going to be looking at to kind of evaluate? Is this working the way we thought? Is this the direction we want to keep going? I'm just curious about that. Leslie: Great question, Council Woman Strader. So, all of our -- all the work we do is statistic based; right? We keep track of how many calls we respond to. How fast we get there. I can break down every officer calls for service throughout the year -- like we did in the CSO program, we have started to see that workload through our dashboards and our statistics. This work is shifting from here to here and so this will be very easy for us to see. So, the drone has got to have its own call sign. So, when it goes out it's Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 17 of 46 just like an officer call sign. So, I will have a call history for that -- for that piece of that responding unit if you will I guess. It's a drone. But I will know how many calls for service that drone has responded to and I will be able to very easily correlate -- we have removed this 10, 15, 20 percent of our priority one patrol calls to this asset and so I think that number is going to be really easy for us to extract in the way we already obtain data and monitor officers' performance, because we will have its own performance metrics if that makes sense. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: I think the chief may have also want to weigh in on that. Basterrechea: Yeah. I just wanted to weigh in. One of the metrics we use, right, is how long we have officers on scene. So, this is a easy way to measure when did the drone get on scene and when -- when were they cleared or how many officers responded to this call. So, we know -- we have an idea when we go through our CAD data about how many officers respond to each type of call type and on average how long they spend on those calls. For instance, domestic violence for officers throughout this valley I believe the time spent on a domestic violence call on scene, not writing reports, is over three hours and the average is four officers on scene at a time. So, we can measure that on our drones as well on those types of -- whatever type of call they go to. I dispatched myself to a call the other day for a traffic hazard and one of our sergeants canceled me and they had to drive, right, the same distance across town to see this traffic hazard. All it was was a flat box in the road. It wasn't a hazard. We can dispatch a drone to something like that, rather than tying up officers and immediately see there is no traffic hazard, clear the drone and go back. So, I think the metrics will be fairly easy to measure. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I think it's great. I would love to hear what the next steps are and just would ask I guess maybe one request is just that you would report back how it's going -- Leslie: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Strader: -- once we get it -- once we get it rolling, assuming everyone's in support. But it just feels like a really logical thing for us to do. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: I'm going to take a little different take on this. Captain Leslie and Lieutenant Ludwig and command staff have done a great job. But I can't help but go back and Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 18 of 46 think how nice this would have been to have 15, 20 years ago and how many different calls we dealt with -- for example, real world examples at a school where if we had had a drone in a couple of minutes there and found out that the threat was sitting in a car in a parking lot, instead of us putting 45 to 50 officers from across the valley in that parking lot, building teams and searching every classroom one at a time, because that's how we clear the building, this drone would have been there ahead of time, would have give realtime data back and saved all of that and that's just one example. We have had so many calls over the years where we have had to set up perimeters -- inner perimeters, outer perimeters, only to find out because of how long it took us to get there we didn't have the person inside that perimeter like we thought we did. If we are having drones on scene that quickly will let us know exactly what we are dealing with. I just -- it boggles my mind. I think you are way conservative on the amount of time this is going to save our officers responding, especially for those calls on Eagle Road at rush hour where we have a possible accident and we send one or two units because it's Eagle Road and we get there and there is nothing there and we have spent all that time tying up units for something that's not even in traffic because they exchanged information and drove away. But our calling party to dispatch only can give us so much information. There -- there is 150 scenarios every single day that this drone would make more efficient. But probably my -- my most impressive part of this is Draft One. You tell me we can get almost 30 minutes off a report savings. That means we can get those guys back in the car and back on the street that much quicker. That's phenomenal. That's -- that's a tremendous savings to our officers on the street and how much time we can have still out in the cars and protecting and doing more and more work and less time sitting in an office working on reports. I would love to pick this apart and tell you some negatives, but I haven't seen one. I have been to every demonstration they have had. have watched them intentionally try to crash a drone and they couldn't. Its accident avoidance was mind boggling. The history of Axon and our department has been spectacular. We have body cameras now that are way better than the first body worn cameras we had. The tasers we have now are much better than the first ones we had. The company has stood behind their goal of making police departments across this country better and I'm a huge -- I wanted to speak last, because I'm a huge fan of this. I think this is where technology is driving law enforcement, so we can get in a position where we don't have to just put officers at risk in situations, because we don't know what they are walking into, but we actually have a drone with eyes in the sky watching. So, I appreciate this presentation. I'm obviously very much for this and I look forward to seeing this come through as a budget amendment for this next year. Simison: Unfortunately you don't get to be last, but I appreciate your sentiments nonetheless and I will add my two cents. First I want to compliment the team and I want to compliment the chief for living within the parameters which we kind of set out, but the very first thing I'm going to say is I'm going to challenge those parameters. I live in south Meridian and we have all these brand new roundabouts, which are causing all these accidents. Yeah, we only went with three drones and not a fourth one to even get to the further south part of our -- the first question what would be the cost increase to go to a fourth deployable drone? Do -- Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 19 of 46 Ludwig: I would have to get back to you on the specific numbers. The numbers that we were given were for the three and, then, the three separate -- there is additional cost for setting it up at the three individual sites versus all three drones being deployed at one location as well. So, I would have to parse out those numbers for you, Mayor, but would -- I would guess it's probably somewhere -- I believe the number that sticks in my mind is about 70,000 dollars for the dock setup, as well as the drone. Simison: Okay. Ludwig: But don't quote me on that. Simison: I won't quote you on it, but -- and maybe that's something you guys can follow up and, then, provide a little bit more detail and maybe it's a separate consideration in the next budget year, since it is not, you know, part of that -- my goals of trying to keep it essentially budget neutral from where we currently are to implement this program in this year. Secondarily, I also think that the report writing software and -- but over the next three to five years it's just going to get better. Now, do we think it's -- it's the best it's -- you know, I imagine everything's going to get better. It's going to be more cost -- more time savings. I don't want to say cost savings, more time savings over time. I think that's what we are going to see with all these technologies along the way that it's going to help and the -- you know, I'm not going to say it's going to reduce the officers that we need, but it could, because we just don't know how good the software is going to get over the next several years. So, I'm a big fan, I'm a big supporter of this. The last question I want to ask is really when it comes down to flying the drones in the context of, you know, what is allowed, but does it need to be a uniformed officer in the drones or is this something that will eventually be -- a civilian would be able to do? Basterrechea: I can answer that. Yeah. Eventually it could be a civilian. Yeah. Absolutely. Simison: Tell you again if we decide we need to have more, it's a lower cost training, the whole gamut to have someone do this. Maybe retired law enforcement is what you want, but it could be something -- okay. Basterrechea: If I remember right the person that set up all of Walnut Grove's drone as a first responder program was a civilian employee actually that developed that whole program, so -- and I do just want to give a plug. This is the nerdy chief thing in me. The part that I like that really excites me is the translation portion of this, because having been a road cop and having to go and translate for various people, because you are the only one that speaks that language, can get a little onerous and now you are tying up two officers instead of just one and I think the other thing that it does is it helps our officers be able to build better community relations with a lot of our diverse population in the -- in the city that otherwise we wouldn't -- I mean officers would avoid, because they can't communicate with them and I think it could be a game changer for us for sure. Simison: We have been through my comments, questions, so next steps. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 20 of 46 Leslie: We are ready to start moving forward. For us we are going to need a budget amendment obviously to fund the project. We have already done a preliminary siting of the locations and sites. We are currently using Draft One. We have some of the infrastructure in house that we can utilize to put this up and running. So, for us we are ready to start that process and move forward and I might even go to the Fire Department and get enough money for Station 7 to have a drone. You never know. And they might be able to buy one up there. Be a great location for one. That's what we need from you is -- I mean we have to come back, obviously, with a budget amendment to move these funds to this project and we are ready to get going on this. We think it's a very exciting moment for us in law enforcement and it's -- I mean it's a game changer for us honestly. I have been doing this 30 years and there is nothing that's come along that has taken us this way. Simison: Is Finance requiring an amendment compared to just a GL transfer? Basterrechea: I don't know the answer to that. We will have to ask them this week, but one thing there is a bit of a time crunch, because the -- the Skydio buy back program --. they have extended it for us to the end of January. It was supposed to be done in December. So, we would need it by the end of January. Simison: I guess, Council, do you want them to come back with the budget amendment even if it's not necessary to have further official sign off or Finance allows a GL transfer with the liaison and myself, are you okay with that approach? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I think it's a good hygiene thing personally. Like I just -- I just think -- it shouldn't be too horrible to put a budget amendment together. We could be seeing it by like next -- you know, next week hopefully. That's just my opinion. It's big enough that I wouldn't want to see GL transfers like that happen without a formal budget amendment. That's just me. Simison: Okay. Then we will bring it back next week with the budget amendment. Leslie: Thanks. PUBLIC HEARINGS [Action Item] 12. Public Hearing (continued from October 10, 2025) for Latitude Forty Three Subdivision (H-2024-0059), by Rodney Evans + Partners, LLC., located at 675, 715 and 955 S. Wells St. A. Request: Annexation of 17.27 acres of land with R-8 (13.78 acres), R-15 (2.42 acres) and C-N (1.07 acres) zoning districts. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 21 of 46 B. Request: Preliminary Plat to re-subdivide lots 7, 21 and 22, Magic View Subdivision, Amended into 79 residential lots, 1 commercial lot and 11 common/other lots on 15.97 acres of land in the R-8, R- 15 and C-N zoning districts. Simison: Thank you very much. I hope that the community enjoyed that presentation. I know it was a little later than we normally get to our -- our public hearings, but appreciate you being here and sitting through that. So, with that we will move on to Item 12. This is a public hearing that was continued as being -- requested a continuance. Is there any further comments or do I have a motion to continue? Allen: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, the applicant is requesting continuance to February 24th in order to allow additional time for the Stratford to Touchmark transportation study to be completed. We do expect to receive the final draft next Tuesday. We do have a draft of the study and I have shared that with the applicant and staff is presenting the findings from that study to City Council on January 27th. Does the Mayor and Council have any additional questions? Simison: Okay. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: If there is no further comments I would like to move that we continue Latitude 43, H-2024-0059, to February 24th, 2026. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to continue Item 12. Is there any further discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the item is continued. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. 13. Public Hearing for 3780 Overland (H-2025-0038) by Jesus Madrigal, located at 3780 E. Overland Rd. A. Request: Annexation of 0.91 acres of land with the R-2 zoning district for the purpose of complying with the terms outlined in the consent to annex agreement for the existing home that is already connected to City utilities. Simison: Next up is Item 13, which is public hearing for 3780 Overland, which is H- 2024-0038. We will open this public hearing with staff comments. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 22 of 46 Napoli: Mayor, Members -- Members of the Council, good evening. Happy New Year. Good to see you all. Next item on the agenda is the annexation for 3780 East Overland Road. So, the applicant is requesting annexation of .91 acres of land with the R-2 zoning district. So, the existing zoning is R-1 in Ada county and they are request -- and the FLUM designation is mixed use regional. R-2 would typically not be a designation we would allow for in the mixed use regional, however, the applicant did enter into an agreement for extension of domestic water and sewer services outside of Meridian city limits due to their failing well. This agreement allowed the property to hook up to city water and sewer services with the disconnection of their private well and septic system An approved vision of this agreement was to require the property owner to annex into the City of Meridian. So, that is why they are requesting annexation. We did have a property just two doors down actually do this last -- two years ago -- about a year and a half ago, so it's because their well is failing and they are actually hooked up to city services. They did apply for that permit and it is already hooked up. So, they do have water and sewer to that property, so they are just finalizing the agreement by annexing into the city. Another thing to note is that they do currently run an alteration business out of this property and to continue this business once annexed the applicant is required to comply with the home occupations and accessory use standards, which they will apply for that permit once the DA is recorded and the ordinance is recorded for that annexation. So, at a further date this DA will be amended and the property once redevelopment does happen in that area it will require a new zoning and the development agreement to be amended and I will stand for any questions you guys have. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for staff? Is the applicant here? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, the applicant is online. Simison: Okay. Johnson: Mr. Madrigal, you are able to talk. Madrigal: There we go. I think -- can you hear me now? Simison: Yes, we can. Madrigal: Okay. Yeah. As Mr. Napoli -- forgive me if I mispronounced that -- summarized -- I was able to read the last meeting's minutes. He summarized the situation really well as he did again today. We understand that right now it is a residence with the -- with the home business. Going into the future -- at this point there is no intent or no plans to develop or redevelop, but should that happen into the future we know that we need to go through this zoning process again. Right now the biggest concern was just we -- the property had a failing well that needed to get addressed. Simison: Okay. Thank you. Council, any questions for the applicant? Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Clerk, anyone signed up to provide testimony on this item? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 23 of 46 Johnson: Mr. Mayor, nobody signed up. Simison: Okay. If there is anybody that would like to provide testimony on this item you can either come forward now or use the raise your hand feature on Zoom. Seeing no one coming forward, would the applicant like to make any final comments or do you waive any final comments? Madrigal: Not at the moment. Thank you though. Simison: Okay. Applicant waives. Council, what's your desire? Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Seeing no other comments, I would move we close the public hearing. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the public hearing is closed. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: After considering all staff, applicant and public testimony, I would move to approve File No. H-2025-0038 as presented in a staff report for the hearing date of January 13th, 2026. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve Item H-2025-0038. Is there discussion on the motion? If not, Clerk call the roll. Roll Call: Cavener, absent; Strader, yea; Overton, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Taylor, yea; Whitlock, yea. Simison: All ayes. Motion carries and the item is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 24 of 46 14. Public Hearing (continued from December 9, 2025) for Cherry Blossom East Subdivision (H-2025-0030) by Breckon Land Design, located at 523 W. Cedarbug Dr. and the 0.67-acre property to the east, located in the NE 1/4 of Section 12, UN., RAW. A. Request: Combined Preliminary and Final Plat consisting of three (3) building lots and one (1) common lot on 0.79 acres of land in the R-8 zoning district. Simison: With that we will move on to Item 14, which is a public hearing continuing from December 9th, 2025, for Cherry Blossom East Subdivision, H-2025-0030. We will continue this public hearing with staff comments. Allen: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. This project was continued from the December 9th hearing in order for the applicant and the two neighbors to the south to work on a cross-access easement agreement that would provide access for emergency vehicles and trash service to the properties to the south and allow cost sharing for the driveway maintenance. Since the last hearing three letters of testimony have been received. One from Margie and Justin Williams and Todd and Kristi Hansen requesting continuance of the project to a later hearing date of at least 30 days out in order to allow additional time to finalize the easement agreement and, then, two subsequent letters from Margie Williams. You should have those in your -- in your packet -- or in the public record. The applicant is here to present tonight. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for staff? Okay. Would the applicant like to come forward? Breckon: Jon Breckon, Breckon Land Design, 6661 North Glenwood Street. Mr. Mayor, Council, I'm not sure if I should -- I have got the same presentation I did last time. I can go through that again or we can just pick up where we left off. The thing we were tasked to address was a cross-access agreement with the shared driveway and we have made some progress with that. All parties are acceptable to a cross-access agreement and potentially a maintenance agreement. It's clearly in draft form or being worked on by the -- by the attorney and, then, we anticipate having some back and forth on that to get everybody content with the verbiage. That's really where we are at. Stand for questions. Simison: Council, questions for the applicant? Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Jon, so you made progress, but you were -- there is not really an agreement yet. You have just agreed on it and things are moving along, but you haven't hit the end of the road in terms of finding a resolution; is that correct? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 25 of 46 Breckon: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, yes, that's correct. So, it's -- I have talked to everybody. There has been a verbal confirmation that they would be willing to work together to come up with an acceptable cross-access agreement and -- and so nothing is complete at this time. So, we are working on a draft that can, then, be reviewed by all the neighbors and expect -- based on the conversations it was very positive and so I expect that that will -- we can at least -- you know, the way I explained it to everybody was that there is -- there is a couple different pieces to this. There is the cross-access agreement just to allow everybody to cross the property line and not have an issue with trespass. Looking further down the road into the future, really, the second piece would be to come up with a -- some kind of a maintenance agreement at some point. It will need to be maintained, fixed, asphalt replaced or concrete replaced or something and so it would be good if we could go ahead and have something in place for that and then -- and, then, I did get some correspondence from -- from the neighbors. They would like to see if they could maybe work together to have, you know, their -- their driveway replaced or upgraded as part of this and so that piece -- I'm not sure if we are really -- if that's going to work out exactly, but I have really kind of presented that to everybody in that fashion, so we have kind of got these -- this tiered approach I would say, with the cross-access being number one. Simison: So, are you wanting to continue this for 30 days to -- Breckon: Mr. Mayor, I don't really want to continue it again, but I can -- I can understand if that would be Council's preference to go ahead and get this finalized. That's understandable. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Maybe this question is better addressed to Bill. Do we as the Council need this agreement between neighbors to approve this? Nary: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Little Roberts, no. I mean you don't need it. I mean it definitely was a contentious -- a point of contention last time and concern just because of the difficulty of -- of the way this property lays out and these -- these -- these adjacent easements. It is not required. But certainly that was the Council's desire was to get this ironed out, you know, from a -- obviously from -- from our standpoint from legal it would be nice to have that finalized, so that way that isn't an issue going forward and, then, we would have to come back again if it isn't. But it certainly was in your prerogative either way. Little Roberts: Thank you. Follow up comment, Mayor? Mr. Mayor. I think I for one was under the impression that we allowed more than enough time to get this done. So, I was really surprised to hear that it wasn't completed and so I don't know that another 30 days -- I mean I thought we had a deadline of today, so I don't know what adding 30 days -- it doesn't seem like a bigger stick to get it done. So, I would be in favor of going Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 26 of 46 ahead, but if the rest of the Council would prefer to say 30 days and at that point we make a decision if it's not done, I would be good with that, too. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Question. Are we -- we have not closed the public hearing on this. Simison: No, we have not. Taylor: I would be curious -- I know we have some neighbors here. I would be curious to hear some of their thoughts if they are here to share that, which I'm assuming they are. Simison: All right. Thank you. Chris, anyone signed up on this item? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, no one -- no one signed up in advance. Simison: Okay. Well, if you would like to come forward and provide comments on this we would love to hear you. State your name and address to the record, please. Be recognized for three minutes. Williams: Justin Williams. 1251 Northwest 4th Street. So, I live right across the street from where they are putting these houses. The biggest contingency or the problem is that they have never even tried to work with us on making the road wider. Everything is take versus give or help. So, the neighborhood -- basically there is going to be two separate driveways unless we work together. So, we asked like, hey, could you replace our driveway? Hey, can you, you know, help with us, because we are giving up a bunch of our property. So, now we are going to have three houses adjacent to our two houses. There is no parking. There is nowhere for the people to turn -- like there is a turnaround. One of the houses there is not even a place to back up. So, they are going to be backing up onto our property constantly. So, we sent some drawings out to them, which, of course, they waited until the last minute to get them. I think we got them to them Thursday or Friday and, then, we are here now on Tuesday. So, it's basically like pushing back and pushing back and pushing back. They don't call and come in and talk to us or say, hey, can we -- what about this or this, it's more like what can we take from you? They are basically taking the neighbor's driveway. He won't have anywhere to park. And beyond that the road isn't even technically wide enough without them moving the telephone poles. So, if anybody's driving back and forth they are going to be driving on our property. That's why we wanted like the cross-access easement and the concrete to be replaced. So, if you guys would -- if you had time to drive to our neighborhood and see where they are putting it in and kind of visualize our road or our driveway versus the other driveway I think you would go it doesn't really make sense to put three houses in there. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 27 of 46 Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Thank you. Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Yeah. Just another quick question. You said the -- taking your property. You are talking about just a property that you have had -- Williams: No. No. Like they want to -- they want to take up part of our driveway. They want to use part of our driveway is like a cross-access so they can back out and turn around. So, that property has never been ours and we have used it and trash trucks have backed in there to get our trash, but they have -- they come in and say, hey, can we get eight feet or ten feet from you, but they don't say, hey, we will do anything for you, like fixing the road or paying any money or anything. Taylor: Mr. Mayor, quick follow up. Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: My memory could be inaccurate. My -- I'm recalling, though, in the discussion that without a cross-access agreement in place your current driveway is not wide enough for trash, for Fire and so that was one of the reasons why we strongly wanted a cross-access agreement to be put in place, so that services like that could get back to your home -- Williams: Correct. Taylor: -- emergency responders could get back to your home. I'm curious as to -- you still said they are taking some of your property. Williams: They want to use part of our property as the road. So, they want to use that instead of going into the neighbor's yard. So, there is a telephone pole and a telephone pole and it's only 18 feet wide. So, technically, they need part of our property to make it wide enough to be legal. Simison: So, maybe going back to the same question. Are you asking for them to continue for 30 days to work out -- Williams: I would -- I was hoping to have a drawing from them and an idea of what they would help us out with before this meeting and we did not receive anything. Taylor: Mr. Mayor, can I ask a -- Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Are you saying -- sorry. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Are you talking about their willingness to help redo your part of the driveway, because yours is concrete -- Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 28 of 46 Williams: Correct. Taylor: -- and they are going to be asphalt? Williams: Correct. Taylor: Because I don't recall this from the last hearing, any discussion about redoing the driveway, because there was no agreement to have a cross-access agreement. Williams: Correct. Taylor: So, now you are asking -- hold on. You are asking for clarification from them to rebuild your driveway, but you -- and that sounds like what's part of the third sort of tiered approach that Jon had just mentioned, that was never my recollection of any discussion last time about that they would do that, because you haven't agreed to work or talk together. Williams: Correct. So -- so, in between the time we talked I sent a drawing in, Todd sent a drawing in, and we kind of said, hey, what about doing this to where the road funnels in, it looks better. The problem is is our concrete is going to get cracked because it's old. So, anybody that backs on our driveway, any trash truck, delivery truck, whatever, it's going to crack it. So, in the future we are going to have to replace it. So, at -- being proactive and saying if we bend on this side and help you will you redo this road for us and put in kind of a berm to where it -- like it matches again if you would drive by the driveway when you see it's not going to make a lot of sense if we don't work together. Simison: Council, any additional questions? Okay. Thank you. Williams: Thank you. Simison: Is there anybody else that would like to provide testimony on this item? Come on up. Good evening. Hansen: Mr. Mayor, my name is Kristi Hansen. I live at 1247 West 4th Street. We are across from this new subdivision. I have a couple drawings. Can I bring them to you, because I didn't -- Mr. Mayor, these are the drawings that we provided to Jon Breckon and he reached out to us, but he didn't -- we had no way of reaching out to him and I guess we weren't -- we didn't know how to reach out to him. When he did reach out to us, then, we sent him those drawings, but that -- he didn't reach out to us until last Friday. So, I don't know what was going on when we were supposed to be working together. We kept waiting for a phone call or an e-mail or something to work that out and we never heard from him. So, we are -- we are kind of at a -- that's one of the reasons we want the continuance is because like he said you guys will agree to it, they can just keep going forward and it's in his hands with his attorney. If we could get a continuance, then, we would have time to be able to look at it and have our chance to Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 29 of 46 maybe have our attorney look at it, too. But he didn't even respond when he got it. Like, thank you, I got it. So, I think that's where we are kind of stuck in. And when you talk about the -- Councilman, when you talk about the -- sharing the road that is what that drawing is about is trying to -- they are going to pave that I'm assuming with asphalt, because that can support heavy trucks and concrete can't. So, our give was we would give five feet of our driveway if they would have to tear it out anyway and put in asphalt to match, then, it would be cohesive with six houses there and help that. So, that was kind of our -- let's see what he is showing you here. Simison: So, is -- Hansen: I don't even see -- oh. Okay. So, there is Hansen. So -- so, the concrete is our -- is our private driveway and our drawing that we had actually submitted we wanted to have them see if they would berm like five feet or landscape it to make our -- look better and, then, we would give them five feet. We would give them five feet to widen their road and, then, just make that all be asphalt up to Justin's -- Justin's property. He is right. When that house right there -- if the garage is facing that way. I'm not sure. They would be having to back out right onto his -- onto his private drive right there, too. So, I think that's where he is saying he is not getting any allowance or any -- and maybe he will agree to this, but he didn't respond. So, we are kind of in a thing going, well, we are trying to work it out, but we don't know where to go from here. Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Mr. Mayor. What is the justification for you requiring a landscaping berm out of the applicant? I'm not understanding functionally why that specific item is needed. Hansen: Well, because we are giving them -- in our opinion we are giving the -- or the easement to five feet of our property to make that wider so he doesn't have to cut so much into his own land and to make it more legal for -- and I'm not sure I'm the right person to talk about that -- to make it more legal for emergency vehicles and utility vehicles. But in doing that that would leave this -- this five feet of concrete. I guess that could be a sidewalk, but I was thinking it would be more to keep it -- to just tear it all out and if you put some sort of a landscape right there it would segregate our home from the asphalt that's being done, where right now we are right on the concrete, because that's our property and I'm not saying that's -- that would be part of the agreement. They might say, no, we don't want to do the berm. Give and take here. We will do the asphalt so -- Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Sonya, do you mind doing a street view on the display? I think it gives us a better sense of what the driveway looks like. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 30 of 46 Hansen: Oh. That's cool. So, you can see the hard line there is our concrete and, then, that's dirt. And back in the years we would have to bring in gravel to try to keep that level, so that we didn't have our concrete break off, so we were graveling that other person's -- or the developer's lot. We haven't done it for a while, but -- we are just asking to come in five feet on our concrete and make that be asphalt to match the whole asphalt they are going to have to do up to that fence line I believe. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: So, again, if I'm recalling correctly from last time, there was a lot of discussion about how it was like 11 or 12 feet yours were in -- I remember some of that discussion. What you are suggesting, instead of looking at the width of both driveways combined you want to give five feet of your driveway for one driveway and, then, have them put a berm on sort of the south side of where the driveway is currently, but you want that torn out and a berm put in. That's what your drawing is reflecting. Hansen: Yeah. So, we are somewhat segregated from that road or whatever. We don't want that -- half the concrete to stay there, because people are still going to -- then that's more work for us to have to clean up. If we do it this other way, then, we can work on also coming up with that and I'm not -- I'm only speaking for myself, not for my neighbors, but that way we could come up with a shared agreement -- like you said signed agreement of who is going to take -- maintain that asphalt for the six homes. To me that would be more fair. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Just to ask, what's your feedback so far on the cross-access agreement? It seems like you don't have any concerns with that. It's more going to -- I shouldn't -- me not put words in your mouth, but you are open to having the cross-access agreement probably subject to these physical modifications you are requesting. Let me ask you, then, absent him agreeing to these changes would you be open to a cross-access agreement? Hansen: So, you are saying we just -- we just agree to let them use our road and there is cross-access coming up and down for -- and we get nothing in return. Taylor: Well, then, you get cross-access with trash trucks using his roadway or his driveway. So, you get something. You -- because you can still -- because currently you are using that gravel road, which is not your property, for access. Hansen: Uh-huh. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 31 of 46 Taylor: Fire -- or garbage trucks drive down there. They back it up. They turn around on their property. It requires a cross-access agreement in order for trash trucks to go down that road. So, I would suggest you are getting a benefit by having that agreement. So, what I want to drill down on and what I want to know -- you are -- it sounds like you are willing to agree to some kind of a -- to a cross-access agreement if they make these physical changes to the driveway you have put in the paper. If he says, no, I'm just going to -- I'm just going to put my -- my driveway in, you are not willing to do a cross-access agreement. Again maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but that's what I'm understanding from what I'm hearing so far. Hansen: Mr. Mayor. So, actually, what I'm trying to say here is that -- let's say he just does that. He just asphalts that, right, and we now have access, same as we always have. It's asphalt. But now we have three more homes back there and they are going to be using our driveway. How do we come to an agreement? For one I don't know that anybody that buys -- who is signing the agreement. Is it Jayo? Is it -- is it going to be the three people that buy the home? And when they do they are going to look at our concrete and go I'm not going to sign an agreement to help maintain that concrete, because I can tell you right now it's going to break down as soon as they start building in there. The concrete is not going to hold and no way I can guarantee that there -- I mean I just -- it's just a wild card I guess is what I'm trying to say. That's where we are stuck is now if we grant the cross-access we are saying we agree with these six people that they are all going to share in paying for -- the first thing that's going to break down is that 22 year old concrete. That's our take. So, it's not that we are against it, I just see that we are -- it's going to be a bad deal. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: You know, I think in our last meeting I felt like we gave a lot of time to iron this out, but it was also over the holidays and that's another factor. Like do you think that was a piece of this as well? On -- on the neighbor side at least? I'm just trying to -- I hear you that you feel like it took him a long time to respond. What I'm worried about with a continuance is I feel like where this is going to end up going is this is going to end up being approved at some point and if you guys can't work it out what's going to happen is I think worse for everybody, you are going to have two totally separate driveways. They are not going to function well together. I just think it's setting up, you know, kind of a contentious relationship instead of a relationship where you are unified and you have a plan. What is your request for -- I mean on your side what kind of a continuance would you be asking for? How much time -- and now that the holidays are over if everyone is working in good faith earnestly together -- I mean I personally was thinking like at the most two weeks. I would like to hear your feedback, though, like what kind of continuance do you feel is necessary from your standpoint as a neighbor. Hansen: Mr. Mayor, if -- if Jon Breckon that has our drawings and he has got it into the attorney's hands, if he can comment that they could have that back within two weeks -- Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 32 of 46 because I don't know that it's -- this is where this is all new to me. I mean I have lived here for 22 years. I don't know what -- what I'm doing here as far as this goes when it comes to planning and zoning and all of that. Never had an attorney in my life. But if we need to get our own attorney that's fine, but that feels like that's more of a battleground, where if he already has an attorney already looking at it I feel like we put it in his hands. We came up with the idea. We drew it up. We handed it to him. So, if he can say they can have an answer back to talk to us and work with us directly, which has yet to happen -- a text or whatever. Hey, I will give you a call or give me a call and that kind of thing with -- between my husband and the Williams. So, that's -- that's my take is it -- yeah, if they -- two weeks is fine with me. I would love to see this get moving and get it taken care of. But we want to see something in writing as far as how we are going to -- how this is going to look now. Simison: Additional questions from Council? Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Whitlock: Thank you for -- for being here and we would all like to see this resolved in a way that everybody wins and last hearing one of the conversations was you have got the concrete there on the south side, they will come in and asphalt the north side of this road. It won't match up. It won't look good. I'm wondering first about the expense of tearing out the concrete. I'm not a construction guy. I don't know if they can overlay asphalt on the concrete and just have a 18 -- 18 foot wide road that all looks great. You know, at that point I think everybody wins. I don't know about a berm being added and those kinds of things, but I would just encourage you to have those kinds of conversations and say how -- how can we get to a win-win where it looks good, it services the homes that are there, services the homes that probably will be there in the future and we get something that -- that everybody didn't get everything they wanted, but pretty close. Hansen: Mr. Mayor. I agree. It's a give and take. So, yeah, if we can come to that agreement in the next couple of weeks with him I would love it. Simison: Okay. Thank you. Hansen: Thank you. Simison: It looks like we have Margie online. Johnson: Margie, should be able to unmute. M.Williams: Yeah. Can you hear me? Simison: Yes, we can. State your name and address for the record, please. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 33 of 46 M.Williams: Thank you. Marjorie Williams. 1251 Northwest 4th Street. So, I guess my statement is why I'm requesting a continuance. I guess because I did submit, you know, my documents, but in addition the Council is being asked to decide this application based on statements made at hearings, rather than a complete consistent written documentation. So, there are multiple unresolved assumptions, including the access geometry, maneuverability, fire compliance being addressed outside the application or through future actions or agreements and, then, the cross-access is only one example. The broader problem is that required standards are being treated as satisfied without complete documented analysis of the full access route and those gaps cannot be cured by characterizing them as a benefit to the neighbors. So, approval must stand on the application as submitted, not on future arrangements or negotiations. So, there is significant safety defects to the application that are being -- I guess not being addressed that I'm very concerned about and this is bigger than the cross-access, which, you know, I am open to an agreement if we are given any paperwork or any -- any -- you know, any drawings from the developer to -- you know, to work with. We -- you know, I don't think it's fair or legally right to have the -- have us, the neighbors, submitting documents to the developer. I mean they should be coming to us with -- you know, with drawings and ideas as to how to work together as they are the professional designers and I'm concerned, but the City Council, too, I guess is passing this through and, you know, even in the last meeting the fire marshal misspoke about the regulations of six houses on one driveway. That isn't to Idaho law. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions? Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Hi, Marjorie. So, we examined the application, the testimony from the fire marshal quite a bit. There was nothing from the last hearing that suggested that any of the geometry of the application was outside of the bounds of what could be approved and everything seemed to be in order based on the testimony at least that I heard that staff provided, that the Fire Department provided. I thought that was kind of where I was at. So, my -- my question -- M.Williams: Can I say anything? Taylor: When I'm done. M.Williams: Okay. Taylor: My question for you is are you -- I would just like to know are you willing to enter into a cross-access agreement assuming you can get these finer points agreed upon, because I know there -- it sounds like there is some discussions happening, but are you willing to enter into a cross-access agreement? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 34 of 46 M.Williams: Yes. Absolutely. And I would like, you know, professional legal counsel on this cross-access agreement, because the city has legal counsel, the developer has legal counsel and so I think it's only fair and we are in the process of trying to secure somebody so that would be adding another piece to getting closer to a cross-access agreement. And, then, as far as the application it's outside the application the turning radius from 4th Street onto the driveway is the -- is the turning deficit that's not specifically on the application. That's left out. There is not enough -- 20 feet isn't enough to make a 90 degree turn. Simison: Council, any additional questions? Okay. Thank you, Marjorie. Is there anybody else that would like to provide testimony? Come on up. T.Hansen: I'm Todd Hansen. 1247 Northwest 4th Street. I just have a silly question. What if we are not -- want to have cross-access agreement? Is this project still good to go with the room that -- that is there or am I still able to fight for a fence or a berm between the two properties legally in -- in the common driveway codes to this project? One other thing is is my concrete is not my property line. There is about 16 to 20 inches into the gravel area right there on the corner that visually looks like there is room, but technically there is probably maybe 16, maybe 17 feet. I mean we just need to paint that pin that's there. So, those are my questions. I'm -- we could do without the trash. Are we able to still get fire and emergency vehicles in there? I think my -- my -- my thought from the last meeting that our -- our driveway is compliant to -- to Fire and emergency vehicles without having a cross-access agreement. So, that's another thing we are -- we have been approached by Breckon on maybe having this cross-access agreement, but at the end of the day we don't have to do it. So, I'm just asking if is -- is -- can -- can it -- can -- can it be done if it's brought with -- with the asphalt and concrete not touching? That -- those are my questions. And, again, if -- I'm done. Simison: Okay. I will see if staff or legal would like to answer that question first. Allen: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. The staff has deemed the application as in compliance with city standards and ordinances as is. An access easement is not required with the adjacent properties to the south. The benefit of that is solely for the property owners to the south for emergency and trash service access. Nary: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Mr. Nary. Nary: Yeah, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, I would -- I would agree with Sonya and add -- I mean the value of the cross-access is for both the future property owners of the adjacent property to the north, the application in front of you, as well as the future property owners to the south; right? There will be no question about crossing the -- whether the -- which -- whose side of the road is it on, cars that cross, cars that park, cars that turn around, there is no issue of that. Is that required? No, it is not required. They can approve this project without a cross-access easement. The concern that the Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 35 of 46 Council is trying to avoid with the neighbors is a future concern or a problem between these properties. That's -- that's the value that we are trying to get to. But if that doesn't happen that's fine, as Sonya said. This is compliant with code. This can be approved without it. It's just -- I think the Council is trying to make a good faith effort to avoid any future issues both for your future property development, as well as your neighbors, as well as the future of the people that are going to be living to the north of you that there isn't a dispute over whose side of the road is this or who parked where or who crossed what. That's really the value here. But is it required, no. T.Hansen: I got another question. So, how does traffic flow go through this? If I'm ingress and egressing on my concrete drive, which I do every day, the neighbors come in onto their side, so now we got six more neighbors or three more houses there that come out on the right side or they come right down the middle, how do you -- how do you control that with -- without any kind of barrier or fencing? And, then, again, I'm just throwing out what ifs. I mean there is -- there is that. I mean -- to think about, too. I mean I'm -- I'm driving in and out on the right side every day. My neighbors drive in and out on the left side every day. The trash truck drives up there on a Wednesday, backs in and backs and drives out straight. That's how the trash gets done. You know, really at the -- you know, that's really the only thing we lose is losing the trash. So, again, I'm - - I'm just throwing another monkey in the -- in the box. So, I appreciate it. Food for thought. Simison: And to me I think you answered your own question. You want to remain being used the way it's currently being used. That's what I heard you say. You want this -- T.Hansen: And I don't have a problem with that. You guys have already -- from day -- the get go from Jon saying the city has already approved a 20 foot driveway through here. You are going to lose your trash. You are going to lose your sewer -- or your emergency vehicle. What if -- what if we can make an agreement with -- a cross-access agreement? Sonya. Jon. Anyway, you guys have all tried to do this, but, again, I don't know why we are -- I mean I know why we are -- we don't want this, one or two driveways quit -- or quilted together here and -- and -- and there is nobody going to pay for my end of the driveway if we don't get an easement from Doug -- or from the applicant. So, it's kind of like -- but we do know there is issues. The two power poles. It's going to be two subpar driveways connected together to make a 30 foot driveway, which allows wider vehicles to get in and out between the power poles. I can -- I mean, again, I'm just -- I'm tired -- I'm getting -- I want it resolved and whether it gets resolved in a -- in a cross-access easement or just okay it and we will deal with the consequences that the lawyers or whatever that it takes to keep those people off my -- my property and Doug or -- Jayo and his contractors. I mean I see that being a real big problem here is that the only place those contractors are going to park is on my driveway and -- or in my -- physically in my driveway down the lane. So, there are a lot of things that, you know, other than three houses crammed in there that -- anyway, I have got to walk away. But it needs to be thought out properly. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 36 of 46 Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Just maybe to -- you know, an observation being, you know, the gravel driveway right now is -- is not your property. So, you are using it, it's not your property, and in -- you know, the ingress-egress like those are all, you know, great thoughts; right? Are you going to only use your concrete and if you are halfway down and someone's coming out, are you going to back out? Like these are all kind of silly hypotheticals, but yet we are in a situation where is that where we are going to find ourselves where we are getting trespassing calls because someone driving -- drove on another driveway. That's what we are trying to avoid a circumstance like that and in five years or ten years or 20 years, you know, if there is new people living there -- whatever the situation is -- these are really odd circumstances that we agree with you, we would love for there to be a resolution where you are happy and the properties being developed are also happy because it is their property. They have a right to develop it as long as they are following city code and all the ordinances that we have laid out they have the right to develop it and that's what we are being asked to look at. So, again, yes, these are all hypotheticals that seem strange and silly, but they seem very real if they are not resolved, which is what we are trying to avoid. Simison: And I think when we talk about this application -- I don't think I shared this story, but I'm going to share a story. It's -- it's 8:00 o'clock. It's story time. Yeah. I grew up in the country. My grandparents built a house right next to my parents' home that I grew up in. We were actually connected. We had two -- two Sears manufactured homes with a 30 foot -- well, with a basketball court in between our homes. We were actually connected by a cement slab. Everything went great up until some point in time in my life I won't go into and next I knew there was a fence separating our properties and separating our shared driveway. That fence actually just recently came down after 20 years of neighbors not being able to get along, with sheriff's being called because someone was -- you know, it was -- the neighbors would generally respect the situation and not come through the property until that fence would come up. But, then, someone would come over who didn't know the rules and would drive or go up through our property and a member of my family didn't like that or when we would get a four foot snowstorm and we had the long runway out up our road compared to them, they had no runway and they had to try to back up through heavy snow onto us. You know, a county -- county highway. These issues matter and sometimes, you know, the resources and whatnot. What I'm hearing is you want -- people want this to be functioning the same way it's functioning today. People can drive in. People can drive out. That's what this is about and I'm just going to say from personal experience the last thing you want to see is a fence down the middle of this road. That's what's going to happen if these things can't be simply addressed to understand you want this to function. Whether you want it to function as a 30 foot space, a 20 foot space, all those are great conversations. I would argue make it as small as you can, because no one that's in this room is going to be the one that's going to pay for the maintenance of this once it's done. It's going to be the next property owners or 30 years from now where someone's going to be the one that's got to maintain it. Make it as little as you need, because the more you put in the more it costs. Working together is the best way to keep that cost low from my -- my Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 37 of 46 perspective. So, there is my little story time. I hope we can get this resolved, because I don't want to see what happened to these neighbors to what happened to me and my neighbors at the house I grew up in through my life. So -- sorry. Is there anybody else that would like provide testimony on this item? Would the applicant like to come up for any final requests or comments. Breckon: Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council, here is the graphic that shows the dimensional -- dimensions of the drive and the proposed drive and the access hammerhead turnaround for reference and not sure where to go with this, been through so many times, but I don't know that this is ever going to get resolved. I would like to get it approved and I intend to follow through with the cross-access agreement draft, see if we can get some resolution on that, but I would stand for any other questions and leave it up to Council if you would prefer to have it continued one more time. Simison: Council, any questions? Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: Jon, when did you -- it sounds like the neighbors didn't reach out, didn't have your number. When did you reach out to them? Breckon: I did -- I did not reach out to them right away, Councilman Taylor. I -- yeah. It was December there, busy time of the year, I really don't -- you know, I can -- there were other commitments that I had to address and, then, of course, the holiday, there were -- a lot of staff was out and just didn't quite get around to it. So, it was -- it was after New Year's that I -- that I followed up with them and kind of got the ball rolling. I wanted -- I did -- intentionally wanted to give them a little bit of time right after last hearing, give him a chance to discuss among themselves, if they wanted to get an attorney and that sort of thing. Obviously it was a very heated discussion and so I thought it might be wise to give it a little space and, then, come back and -- and -- and see if they would be willing to talk about the cross-access. It seems like there is some interest in that, you know, and, then, I did get -- I did get this sketch -- one of these in a -- in a photo on a text and I -- I know that the developer is not particularly interested in rebuilding their driveway. Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: I know you won't -- I know you have -- this has been a long process with the HOA from the other side for a few houses. I know this is a lot of work. Given that I kind of turned it off for a little bit during the holidays, too, as a lot of people do to kind of be with family, to stop worrying about things, so I understand that. I would ask you two weeks, would you be willing for two weeks for one last shot at getting this in place? And I will tell you I think you have done everything you need that this application can be Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 38 of 46 approved. I'm going to be advocating that this project be approved with or without a cross-access agreement, because I think that you have done it, but I don't want to do that, because I want the neighbors and you to have a good relationship. I want everyone to get something. Would you be willing to do two more weeks and work out the cross-access agreement? I will also say I don't think you have any expectation for you to pay for the driveway, unless they are willing to pay for it, too. That feels like a different discussion. To me it's cross-access that's the big issue. Are you willing to do two more weeks or do you want us to vote on it tonight? Breckon: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Taylor, yes, I will go for two more weeks, try to get the cross-access -- cross-access agreement solidified. Taylor: Mr. Mayor, if I may? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: That's the end of the line for me in terms of taking action. I won't -- I won't -- we will take -- I appreciate that. I also know that I think we are doing a favor to the neighbors, because these are foreign concepts. Like this isn't their first language in terms of how this works. So, I think we can give them some grace to work through this. If they are getting attorneys there is a financial cost that they have to kind of work through. I don't just go hire attorneys for fun. They are expensive. So, I think that's fair to give them some time to like, hey, how do they want to engage in this? But I think the issue needs to be resolved. We have to make a decision. So, I think that's a fair number. It's not asking too much from you. It's not another month. It gives the neighbors still some time I think where we are given many -- you know, lots of discussion. If we can't reach a consensus in two weeks. I don't think you are ever going to. So, I would strongly advocate and I hope that the neighbors -- we really want to be respectful to your livelihoods and your lives and we don't want it to be disruptive. And the Mayor made a good point, what we want is for it to feel and operate the same way as it has for years for you with the ability to come in and out. You will have some new neighbors assuming -- if it does -- is approved and this is just me speaking. I'm not going to speak for the rest of my -- my colleagues, but I think that's a fair -- in my opinion a fair way to go and so I would be making a motion if that's -- the rest of the Council is okay to say we are going to continue this for two more weeks. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I agree. I think it's worth it to take two more weeks to give it one more shot. I would just -- I guess my advice to the neighbors -- like I heard a lot of points come up from our last hearing that I think staff has addressed in terms of, you know, the application meets our code and I think that the right things to focus on are cross-access. I think some of these other requests, like berms and stuff, you can certainly request whatever you want as part of a negotiation, but I would just urge you to kind of focus on Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 39 of 46 the -- the one critical piece which is a cross -- cross-access. The more complicated it becomes I think the greater the chances of it falling apart and I couldn't agree more with the Mayor, I just think like -- don't want to set up a situation for the next 20 years it's going to be a nightmare. So, I hope you all can work together. And for the applicant I mean -- and yourself admitted, you know, with the holidays and everything, you were delayed and I appreciate you being honest about that and I think it sounds like you are committed to engaging earnestly with the neighbors. That's my request of you as well. I want to make sure that you guys start talking soon -- like tomorrow, because you only have two weeks. Thanks. Simison: Okay. With that do I have a motion? Taylor: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Taylor. Taylor: I move that we continue Item No. 14, application H-2025-0030 for two weeks. I want to get the date. For January 27th, 2026. Strader: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve this item to January 27th. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the item is continued. Thank you. See you back then. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. 15. Public Hearing for Vanguard Village East (SHP-2025-0008) by Kimley- Horn, generally located at the southeast corner of W. Grand Mogul Dr. and S. Umbria Hills Way A. Request: Short Plat consisting of four (4) building lots on 9.26 acres of land in the C-G zoning district. Simison: Up next is Item 15, public hearing for Vanguard Village East, SHP-2025-0008. Are you opening both of these at the same time? Allen: Probably separately. Simison: Okay. Then we will open this public hearing with staff comments. Allen: Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Members of the Council. The next application before you tonight is a request for a short plat. This site consists of 9.26 acres of land. It's zoned C-G and is located at the southeast corner of West Grand Mobile Drive and South Umbria Hills Way. This is a resubdivision of Lot 1, Block 2, Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1. The short plat is consisting of four building lots on 9.26 acres of land Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 40 of 46 in the C-G district. No new access is proposed. Access was previously approved via South Umbria Hills Way and -- and West Navigator Drive, both collector streets. An internal cross-access easement is required between the proposed lots and the property to the east. Street buffer landscaping was reviewed and approved with the previous subdivision, which was Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1. No changes are proposed. Written testimony has been received from Mark Hawk, Ahlquist, the applicant, in agreement with the staff report. Staff is recommending approval with conditions. The applicant is here tonight. Thank you. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for staff? Would the applicant like to come forward? Good evening. Fredin: Good evening, Mr. Mayor, esteemed Council. My name is Justin Fredin. I am general counsel for Ahlquist here representing the applicant. My address is 1144 South Silverstone Way, Suite 500, in Meridian. I won't belabor this and take any more of your time than is necessary. Certainly appreciate staff's efforts to summarize this project. We do feel it is fairly straightforward. So, yeah, you are able to pull up the materials. I have just a few slides. Allen: I'm sorry, I pulled it up and I did not share it. Just a moment. Fredin: No worries. Allen: I'm having a bit of technical difficulties here. Fredin: Okay. Thank you very much. So, again, we don't need to belabor this, but just briefly to run through the timeline. As you may recall the original plat for Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1 was approved in 2024. It was, then, signed and recorded last year. Shortly thereafter, then, this application was filed, as well as the next that we will get to in just a bit. Here for reference is, again, another view of the area. You can see Vanguard Village Subdivision there to the south and currently for the application we are discussing now is -- is highlighted in red there for the Vanguard Village East short plat. Here again is a closer look at what we are looking at, turning that one lot into four. Again we appreciate all of staff's work on this. We concur with their analysis, as well as the recommendations. We have no objections to any of the conditions and, therefore, we would respectfully request approval at this time. That said I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for the applicant? Okay. Thank you very much. Mr. Clerk, anyone signed up to provide testimony on this item? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, no. Simison: Is there anybody present who would like to provide testimony on this item? Seeing no one coming forward, does the applicant waive any -- waive their final comments? Applicant waives final comments. Council? Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 41 of 46 Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Quick question for Sonya. Sonya, are there additional conditions that we need to add to this approval tonight? Allen: No, Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton, there are not. Overton: Thank you. Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: No other comments, I move to close the public hearing. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to close the public hearing. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the public hearing is closed. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: After considering all staff, applicant and public testimony, I move to approve File No. SHP-2025-0008 as presented in the staff report for the hearing date of January 13th, 2026. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve Item 15, SHP-2025-0008. Is there discussion on the motion? If not, Clerk call the roll. Roll Call: Cavener, absent; Strader, yea; Overton, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Taylor, yea; Whitlock, yea. Simison: All ayes. Motion carries and the item is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. 16. Public Hearing for Vanguard Village West (SHP-2025-0009) by Kimley-Horn, generally located on the south side of W. Grand Mogul Dr., midway between S. Ten Mile Rd. and S. Black Cat Rd. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 42 of 46 A. Request: Short Plat consisting of four (4) buildable lots on 21.78 acres of land in the C-G zoning district. Simison: Next item up is Item 16, public hearing for Vanguard Village West, SHP-2025- 0009. Open this public hearing with staff comments. Allen: Alrighty here. All right. Flipping back and forth between all these. The next application before you is a request for a short plat as well. This site consists of 21.78 acres of land. It's zoned C-G and is located on the south side of West Grand Mobile Drive, midway between South Ten Mile Road and South Black Cat Road. This is a resubdivision of Lot 3, Block 1, Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1. The short plat consists of four buildable lots, again, on 21 .78 acres of land in the C-G zoning district. No new access is proposed. Access was previously approved via South La Vista Lane and West Navigator Lane, both private streets. An internal cross-access easement is required between the proposed lots and to Lot 4, Block 1, Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1. Street buffer landscaping was reviewed and approved with the previous subdivision Vanguard Village Subdivision No. 1. No changes are proposed. Written testimony has been received from Mark Hawk from Ahlquist in agreement with the staff report. Staff is recommending approval with conditions, with no added conditions for Council tonight. Thank you. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for staff? Okay. Would applicant like to come forward? Hello again. Fredin: Hello again. Again Justin Fredin with Ahlquist. 1144 South Silverstone Way, Suite 500, in Meridian. This will sound very familiar to the prior public hearing, but for the sake of the record we will briefly run through this. Again the original plat was approved in 2024, signed and recorded last year. This application followed shortly thereafter. This one we have creatively named Vanguard Village West short plat. And here, again, just by way of orientation you see the vicinity. We are talking about the area in the center of Vanguard Village there. Once again just moving from one lot to four and here is a closer view of what we are proposing and, again, as in the prior instance we are in full support of both staff's analysis, as well as the recommendation, including the requested conditions and, therefore, would respectfully request your approval as presented by staff. Thank you. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions for the applicant? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Just curious. You don't have to answer -- Fredin: Sure. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 43 of 46 Strader: -- but do you have a sneak preview as to who we could look forward to seeing here in this development sense of what type of tenant or user would be here? Fredin: Yeah. I think we are giving away a little bit here. If you look closely the arrow at the bottom indicates we do have a large furniture user slotted to come in in the south. Otherwise, no users identified yet for the northern portion of the property, but the southern portion is under contract with that furniture user. Strader: Thanks. Fredin: You bet. Simison: Any additional questions for the applicant? Okay. Thank you. Fredin: Thank you. Simison: Mr. Clerk, anyone signed up under this item? Johnson: Mr. Mayor, nobody signed up. Simison: Is there anybody that would like to provide testimony either in the room or online? If you are online use the raise your hand feature. Seeing no one coming forward, no one raised their hand, does the applicant waive final comments? Applicant waives final comments. Council, what's your pleasure? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: I move that we close the public hearing. Whitlock: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to close the public hearing. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the public hearing is closed. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Simison: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: It's pretty straightforward. Short plats. Really the execution of a plan we have already approved. After considering all staff, applicant and public testimony, I move to Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 44 of 46 approve File No. SHP-2025-0009 as presented in the staff report for today's hearing date. Whitlock: Second. Simison: Have a motion and second to approve Item 16, SHP-2025-0009. Is there discussion on the motion? If not, Clerk call the roll. Roll Call: Cavener, absent; Strader, yea; Overton, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Taylor, yea; Whitlock, yea. Simison: All ayes. Motion carries and the item is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. DISCUSSION TOPICS [Action Item] 17. Discussion of City Council Liaison Assignments Simison: Okay. Last -- Item 17 is discussion of City Council liaison assignments. Turn this over to Council President Overton. Overton: Mayor, Members of Council, I have had the opportunity to speak with everyone on the Council for upcoming 2026 Council liaison assignments and for the record I would like to list off where those will be. Council Member Liz Strader will take over Parks and Recreation for 2026. Council Member Brian Whitlock will assume liaison for Public Works. Council Member Doug Taylor will take on Meridian Fire Department. Council Member Luke Cavener, who is not here tonight, will take on Community Development Department and Council Vice-President Anne Little Roberts will retain her position at the Police Department for this upcoming year. I decided to go with past practice that previous Council President had, Luke Cavener, and I will assume the smaller departments of the City Clerk's Office, Human Resources Department, IT, Legal, Mayor's Office and Finance Department. And with that that wraps up the liaison assignments for 2026. Simison: Okay. Thank you for sharing that and that will come back next week; is that correct, Mr. Nary? So, it's all back next week? Any comments, questions, for the Council President? All right. We will see you then. EXECUTIVE SESSION [Action Item] 18. Executive Session per Idaho Code 74-206 (1)(b): To consider the evaluation, dismissal or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against, a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent, or public-school student. Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 45 of 46 Simison: Let's move on to Item 18. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Move that we go into Executive Session per Idaho Code 74-206, Subsection (1)(b). Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to ago in Executive Session. Mr. Nary, wasn't there supposed to be another item? Nary: I thought we added on (f). Johnson: I do recall that was supposed to be added. I don't remember why it didn't take, but, yeah, you did -- Nary: Okay. We could add (f) as well, so -- Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: I would like to amend my motion to include Subsection (f). Little Roberts: Second. Simison: I have a motion and a second to go into Executive Session pursuant to Idaho Code 74-206(1)(b) and (f). Is there discussion? If not, Clerk call the roll. Roll Call: Cavener, absent; Strader, yea; Overton, yea; Little Roberts, yea; Taylor, yea; Whitlock, yea. Simison: All ayes. Motion carries and we will go into Executive Session. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. EXECUTIVE SESSION: (8:24 p.m. to 9:02 p.m.) (Motion-Second out of Executive Session: Overton/Little Roberts) (Motion to adjourn and second: Overton/Little Roberts) MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:02 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) Meridian City Council January 13,2026 Page 46 of 46 MAYOR ROBERT E. SIMISON 1-27-2026 ATTEST: CHRIS JOHNSON - CITY CLERK 1-27-2026