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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-03-10 Work Session Meridian City Council Work Session March 10, 2026. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4:31 p.m., Tuesday, March 10, 2026, by Mayor Robert Simison. Members Present: Robert Simison, Luke Cavener, Liz Strader, John Overton, Anne Little Roberts and Brian Whitlock. Members Absent: Doug Taylor. ROLL-CALL ATTENDANCE X Liz Strader X Brian Whitlock X Anne Little Roberts _X_ John Overton Doug Taylor _X_Luke Cavener X Mayor Robert E. Simison Simison: Council, the meeting will come to order. For the record it is March 10th, 2026, at 4:30 p.m. We will begin this afternoon's work session with roll call attendance. ADOPTION OF AGENDA Simison: Next item up is adoption of the agenda. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: There are no changes to the agenda. I move we approve the agenda as published. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the agenda is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 1. Approve Minutes of the February 24, 2026 City Council Work Session 2. Approve Minutes of the February 24, 2026 City Council Regular Meeting Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 2 of 15 3. TM Crossing Subdivision No. 5 Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT- 2026-0033) 4. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Sanitary Sewer Easement No.1 (ESMT- 2026-0035) 5. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Sanitary Sewer Easement No. 4 (ESMT- 2026-0038) 6. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT- 2026-0040) 7. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0041) 8. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 2 (ESMT-2026-0042) 9. Adero Park Subdivision No. 2 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 3 (ESMT-2026-0043) 10. Mondt Meadows Subdivision Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0045) 11. Mondt Meadows Subdivision Water Main Easement (ESMT-2026- 0046) 12. Mondt Meadows Subdivision Water Main Easement No. 4 (ESMT- 2026-0047) 13. 1600 N. Main St. Sanitary Sewer Easement (ESMT-2026-0051) 14. 1600 N. Main St. Water Main Easement (ESMT-2026-0052) 15. Baratza Subdivision Phase 2 Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT- 2026-0054) 16. Baratza Subdivision Phase 2 Pedestrian Pathway Easement (ESMT- 2026-0055) 17. Fiscal Year 2026 Net-Zero Budget Amendment in the amount of $5,501.00 for Alcohol Prevention and Enforcement Initiatives 18. Lease Agreement Between Joy's Boys LLC and the City of Meridian for Concessions Operations at Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 3 of 15 19. Resolution No. 26-2574: Authorizing Lease Agreement with Joy's Boys LLC for Concessions Operations at Kleiner Park Simison: Next up is the Consent Agenda. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Seeing no changes to the Consent Agenda, I move that we approve the Consent Agenda, for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the Consent Agenda is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. ITEMS MOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] Simison: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. DEPARTMENT REPORTS [Action Item] 20. Solid Waste Advisory Commission Annual Report Simison: So, we will move on to Department Reports. First item up is Item 20, which is Solid Waste Advisory Commission annual report. Turn this over to Chairman Cory. Cory: Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, I'm Steve Cory. I am the Chairman of the Solid Waste Advisory Commission. I'm here representing SWAC and I bring you their greetings and their thanks. The Commission is currently fully staffed and we do appreciate your support. Oh, there we go. Make sure I didn't -- now, let's see. One of our primary responsibilities is the Community Recycling Fund program. The CFRP currently has a balance of about 109,000 dollars. Another one of our responsibilities is monitoring the supplemental services some of our ratepayers support by subscription to determine if they have reached a point where they need to be incorporated into basic services. We have had a slight increase in both glass and grass subscriptions, but not enough to go ahead and reach a tipping point. So, we have no recommendations for changes for either of these -- these two programs this year. SWAC participated in all of our legacy activities this last year. Johnson: Sorry, Steve. I'm controlling it from over here, because the mouse is not working, so -- Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 4 of 15 Cory: At the Public Works Expo we received about 85 visitors and as normal there were questions about what was okay to recycle and how to get rid of other materials. At the Recycle A Bicycle activity we had great interest. SWAC received about 76 requests for bikes, of which 52 were Meridian citizens. We arranged for all the Meridian residents to go ahead and receive their bicycles prior to the event and had 25 bikes that we could take to the Get Outside and Get Unplugged event and actually had seven bicycles donated to us during the event. So, we went with 25 and actually distributed 29. Over the summer we were able to go ahead and get bicycles available for the other 24 people who had made requests and during the event we had about a hundred bicycles serviced. Putting in slime or tightening chains, various other things. I want to express deep sincere thanks to Republic Services and to Timber Creek for their help in making those events occur. In other activities SWAC attended the county Solid Waste Advisory Committee meetings. I am vice-chair of that committee and the conversations up there drift to life of the landfill, how to extend it, and the cost of operating the landfill and that's likely to be the same in this coming year. We would also attend the household hazardous waste meetings to be informed on potential changes to that program. The rate review this year was mostly just the contractual CPI adjustment and a continuation of the -- helping out on the cost of processing recycled materials. In addition, household hazardous waste was broken out as a separate line item for citizens' utility bills due to a change in how that was being charged to us and disposal costs up at the landfill, which is a pass-through cost raised about three percent last year and that's the estimated amount they are going to be requesting to increase it this year for FY-27. SWAC received numerous presentations, which boil down to monitoring waste and recycling. The CFR -- CRFP management outreach and monitoring flow rates of waste and recyclable materials and -- and, then, Chris go ahead and expand -- okay. While the annual report details how SWAC plans to proceed, our plans boil down to improving and protecting the city's waste and recycling practices and systems, while being mindful of the ratepayers. And with that I would stand for questions. Simison: Thank you, Steve. Council, any questions? Strader: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Just curious like the recycling fund continues to grow. What are the thoughts around that long term, what you guys want to use that for? Cory: What the -- the commission's view at this point is that we expect over the next year we hope to be able to go ahead and have some discussion about looking at the composting program and we expect at that point to have a high need associated with communication about the program. So, we have kind of set it aside reserve to find out what may happen with that program as it comes together. Strader: Mr. Mayor? Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 5 of 15 Simison: Council Woman Strader. Strader: Yeah. I think that makes sense. Thank you. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Chairman Cory, appreciate you being here. Looking forward to your report. Important note. Thanks to your report last year the Cavener family donated a bunch of bicycles -- Recycle A Bicycle. My wife is very pleased for your report to get those bikes out of our garage. So, thank you for that. My question for you is, you know, I know about a year ago there was a lot of conversation with our partner in Republic Services procuring another landfill facility out I guess east of Boise. Have there been any conversations with SWAC? Have they provided any presentations about any plans or use for that impacting our service? To your point about kind of the longevity of the Ada County Landfill, I know that's always a question about what that lifeline really looks like and just curious if they have briefed SWAC on any of these potential changes. Has there been any feedback from SWAC that you could pass along to us? Cory: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Cavener, thank you for the questions. Definitely, again, thank you for the donation last year. We were happy to go ahead and receive those. The landfill with Republic Services has commenced, they -- they have been working on that and have -- are in the process of opening it. There is discussions about what is going on up there, but certainly the landfill wants to make sure that they don't have any perturbations to their staffing. So, I think everybody's working as a team. Certainly every county needs to have some kind of an idea of where they are going to be taking care of their materials and Elmore county is no exception and so that works out very well for this -- for what Republic's putting together. But I would be overstepping my knowledge to go any deeper on that than this, but we think everybody's working kind of in a team-like fashion. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Chairman Cory, you -- your knowledge is greater than mine, so I -- appreciate it's tough to help to keep us in the loop. Mr. Mayor, just additional -- Simison: Maybe I can help put -- I don't think there has been any formal conversation with SWAC specifically about the future of Meridian's trash and where or how or if it should go anywhere else. Is that a fair statement? Cory: Mr. Mayor, I think you did a really good job on that -- Simison: Okay. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 6 of 15 Cory: -- and I go ahead and say, yeah, as far as we kind of look at it, once the material is picked up from the curb, then, it's kind of under the direction of Republic and we expect them to do what's best for our ratepayers, but we do appreciate the fact that they are a team player. Simison: I will go back to my previous comment that no official conversations with SWAC have occurred at this time. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Mr. Mayor, one additional question if I may. Simison: Yes, Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Chairman Cory, the -- the increase in the grass -- the grass -- not glass -- grass recycling really was an eyebrow raiser for me. I'm -- I'm pleased to see that it's continuing to kind of grow. SWAC have any idea what they are attributing that to? I mean it's exceeding population growth. I don't see a lot of promotion for it. I'm just curious if there is any explanation as to why that program continues to grow at a -- at a pretty rapid pace. Cory: I think it's probably -- Mr. Mayor, Councilman, I think it's going along on a process for the inherent desire to have materials processed and the best use for those items and these are the citizens that are so desirous of that that they are going through this process where they get billed separately from Republic to go ahead and get these materials collected. So, there is more interest out there than that indicates, but -- and certainly one would expect an economy of scale once it was expanded to a larger number of citizens through maybe general collection that the cost per ton would hopefully drop, hope -- but staff is working with Republic to go ahead and figure out exactly what the costs would be to make that change and when they have had that kind of information they will get back to us and tell us what's going on on that. But I would tend to say to get back to that that it's a good indication of our motivated citizens that really want to go ahead and make sure that the material gets recycled -- composted and -- and they are more than willing to go out that extra yard, so to speak, use another can and have it collected. Cavener: Thank you, Chairman. Appreciate you being here. Simison: Council, any additional questions? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Cory: Thank you. 21. Meridian Arts Commission Annual Report Simison: Up next is Item 21, which is the Meridian Arts Commission Annual Report. Oh, so we do get both Cassandra and Chairwoman King for this presentation. Good late afternoon. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 7 of 15 King: Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. Thank you so much for having us here and allowing us to present to you our review of the 2025 MAC Annual Report. Here listed are our current commissioners. Included in this we have two newer commissioners. Jay Smith is our newest one. He was appointed last February and Aaron Turner has joined us as of just a week or two ago. We just wanted to let you guys know for the first time we have had more applicants for our open position this year than ever before. So, it was great to see that so many people in the community are interested In this Council. One of my favorite parts of my job is getting to work on the MAPS program, Meridian Art in Public Spaces and doing public art projects with the Arts Commission. So, as most of you know we have an ordinance that allocates 50 cents per Meridian resident to the MAPS fund for public art projects. Other funds might come in from partnerships or other things -- other sources, which we -- which we love, but the majority is from our MAPS program. In 2025 this last year we completed three sculpture installations at Chateau Park, six traffic boxes by West Ada School District students, a mural at Homecourt and paintings for the City Hall collection. I will show some images of these in a moment. And we are working on the public art master plan. That's ongoing. And there is a project in the works for Linder Road overpass and the medians. That's on track for 2027. And we are also in the process of selecting work for the Community Center. We have two mural opportunities and the lobby art installation and a history wall in the works. Here are the pieces at Chateau Park. There were three sculpture pieces. We had a stakeholder group of parks and rec commissioners, arts commissioners, some HOA members and neighborhood citizens and a lot of our park projects have been identity and theming projects and they have been like Heroes Park and so heroes is the theme or Seasons Park -- you know, seasons is the theme, but Chateau is a little harder, because I don't know that we want to make like a front chateau as an art project. So, the committee sort of came up with wanting to go in the direction of native plants and flora, fauna, and pollinators. So, we have the entry sign that features Syringa, Blue Camas and Black Eyed Susan and a bumble fee, a pollinator and, then, we have a flower bench that -- that's a yellow sunflower and there is a hummingbird attached to that one and this is a flower bench. This is probably my favorite of the three pieces. It has the formal name for sunflower is in a butterfly and, then, there is also a signage piece, not that you can read what's on the sign there, but it's on the restroom. It talks about the pieces and the pollinators. So, that was a great and really successful project. One of our big projects we do every year is we partner with the West Ada School District and we love partnering with them to feature student artwork on all of the traffic boxes around the city. This year we had six new ones that were put up. We get a lot of comments from community members on how much they appreciate that we wrap these and showcase local art. If any of you ever notice any blank ones or ones that look like they could use some art, please, feel free to let us know. We are always looking for more places to showcase student art. This is a mural project at Homecourt. Homecourt Bay 6 was -- had kind of like a lobby waiting area, but it was pretty generic looking and so we added this piece. Evening in the Foothills by Lorelle Rau. Those are on panels that -- that piece can actually be moved in the future at some point. It takes a little bit of work to reinstall it, because they are big panels, but we could reinstall it somewhere else if we would like to in the future. But this is a really beautiful piece and adds a lot of vibrancy to that space. And, then, all of you, every City Council meeting, probably get to Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 8 of 15 see these pieces, because they are right across from -- from Chambers. This was actually a -- started out as a traffic box project with a call to artists -- professional artists for Meridian history as the theme. But this piece turned out so well and really addressed Meridian history -- you can see in the first one you have got the Zamzow's mill in the background. There is animal husbandry and some different sort of modern inventions, orchards and she did a lot of research for this. The second one in there actually refers to indigenous populations that would have been here and she looked at the state archives and those are wickiups not teepees, which would have been indigenous and what you would have actually seen in the area. There is also references to irrigation waterway canals in that one and, then, in the bottom one you have got some -- the Eggers' silo is in there and the -- we have the train that goes through and when she was researching history she saw a lot of train derailment photos in the archive, so she had a train derailment and what's not pictured in this image, because it was a later edition, but you can see in the actual pieces she learned that the Black Cat farm was named after the household pet, so she added a black cat in that piece. But we are really excited to have these pieces in the City Hall collection. We haven't been adding to the City Hall collection for a while, so it's nice to see a few more pieces. So, our public art master plan has been in the works for quite a while. We have done a lot of public outreach. We did an online survey and we have done some in- person events to get feedback from the community on -- on different things that we are looking at. This slide is a timeline of our year of working on the master plan. We should have a final plan in a few months and Council can expect a presentation this year with a draft of that full plan. This picture is just one -- at one of the workshops that we had where we were planning with a variety of members and looking at maps of the city to try and figure out what areas need attention. The results from our survey were interesting. This one shows the top locations. We asked people where they thought the top locations needed to be for more art. Overwhelmingly the top spot that people picked was parks, second was downtown and tied for third was bicycle and pedestrian pathways and libraries. The good news is we already have a lot of art in parks and we already have a lot of plans to add more to parks, so that aligned really nicely with what the community wanted and as well as what we are already working on. And those percentages don't add up to a hundred percent. Obviously, people were asked to pick their top three. We also asked what types of preferred artwork they would like to see. The top three were functional elements in the streetscape. So, things like benches, like the one that she just showcased at the park. It's functional, but it's also artsy. Interactive and playful artworks came in at number two and murals were number three. The public made it very clear they were not very interested in video projection and media based artworks. So, it's good to know. We had another great season of Concerts on Broadway with Soul Patch, Rock Buddy and the Billy Blues Band. However, I have some big shift for Concerts on Broadway moving forward. In 2026 we are shifting to Meridian's Main Street Mix. So, a new music series. More frequent. We are going to double the number of concerts and bring it to Generations Plaza. There is a few reasons for this. We want to -- what -- something I was hearing from downtown businesses is that they didn't actually see any of the Concerts on Broadway people coming into their businesses and we think, you know, City Hall is downtown, but even just being a few blocks away it does -- it doesn't feel as connected to the downtown. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 9 of 15 So, we have a lot of support from the Chamber and downtown businesses and another thing about the City Hall Plaza is there -- it's -- it's hard to fill. If you have 200 people it still feels completely empty. Whereas in Generations Plaza it will feel completely like a full house atmosphere with 200 people and we just weren't seeing quite the numbers to fill the plaza, especially with Kleiner Park Live is seeing about three times the attendance as Concerts on Broadway. So, trying to reinvent, do something better and better serve the community, so -- and we are also going to shift from tribute bands to original music, which is a way we can double the frequency. So, if you want to put the dates on your concert it's going to be every Wednesday, July 8th through August 12th. And moving to a happy hour time frame. So, it's on Wednesdays. Some people might know about Alive After 5:00 that Boise does. It's kind of like a midweek after work to try and really like help the downtown businesses and bring some foot traffic into downtown in the middle of the week. This is a band that played there during art week a few -- few years ago. Okay. We had a really successful 2025 Meridian Art Week. It included an entire week of art classes. We did an art drop. At the event we had between eight and nine hundred people attend, which was great. We worked with the Parks Department on this. We couldn't do it without Renee. She is a wonderful person to partner with on this. We had youth performances. We had a chalk art competition, music, food and drink options, mural painting, things like that. Next year what we are going to do is we are actually going to rename it and we are going to call it Art Spark at Kleiner Park. We have also changed the date. We are actually going to have it in August. It will be August 29th and we are extending the hours from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Please add that to your calendar. We would love to see you all there. This next year for 2026 we are going to have all the same things, but it's just going to be bigger and better and last longer. So, we are hoping to see even more people at that event. In case you haven't heard there is a gallery on the third floor of City Hall. Initial Point Gallery. We hosted nine exhibits last year, showed 164 artists, which sounds like a lot, but some of the shows we have -- like the West Ada School District there is I think 55 students that were in that show and some of the group exhibits we show a lot of artists. We had around 500 attendees at the -- just the opening -- opening receptions, the artist talks, we did some demos and panel discussions. So, that's just the events. We also have more people attending just throughout the week. This is the current show that's up there. It's really beautiful and we don't focus on sales. We are not a commercial gallery. But this exhibit had more red dots, which in the art world people know a red dot means that they are sold. Then we have in most shows we like to see artists also selling some of their own work. We also had the annual ornament draft. We partnered with Christmas in Meridian to do this and we -- the -- the little one on the -- on the left-hand side was a specialty made ornament that we commissioned and, then, the rest of them are made by people and it's sort of a hide and -- hide and seek, finders-keepers for ornaments. And I came down during the parade and was dropping some off at the parade and I even -- as I dropped one some -- I heard there is one. So, they were coming out to look for them, which was nice. I think that was -- this last year has been more -- we have seen -- we saw more ornaments out and about than we have in past years. So, that was great. And the Arts Commission also had a booth at the Children's Winterland Festival. I think we saw around 450 ornaments made at that. So, great outreach. If you want to follow us I have also the history page on here, but follow us on social Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 10 of 15 media. That's one of the best free ways that we have to get the word out about various arts and culture things. And with that thank you so much for everything and we will stand for questions. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions, comments? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Appreciate it. Always a good report. Lots happening. Some things I knew about, some I didn't. A couple of my questions are about the Main Street Mix. Obviously, a big shift, not -- both in terms of location and date. I know there are people in our community that they look very forward to Concerts on Broadway here at City Hall. Did we do engagement with kind of our stakeholders, those that have been kind of regular attendees, to gauge their level of interest in transitioning -- not just from three or four events at City Hall to kind of a weekly approach at a smaller venue? What's -- what's those that have patronized these events, what has kind of their feedback been about this shift? King: Haven't talked to a lot of the individual citizens, more just the arts commissioners, the Chamber, MDC and the downtown businesses who are all strongly in support. I had several people have been saying like it's about time, like wanted to shift. There will probably be a few people disappointed that the same thing that they have been going to for a long time isn't happening, but I do hope that having twice the number of concerts and with the Kleiner Park Live that we have been doing the last few years, we are offering quite a few music events. Cavener: Mr. Mayor, quick follow-up? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Talk to me about the strategic benefit that we are gaining by -- by moving it to a Wednesday. You -- you touched on the Live After 5:00, again, that is a -- a long time kind of valley supported event. I know Meridian's dabbled with trying to do something on Wednesday nights in the past and it hasn't met kind of our expectations. What's changed that we think this is going to be a successful shift for us? King: I think that Saturdays also conflict with so many other events. Every time I have an event on Saturdays there is tons of other things happening in the valley. There are quite a few other Wednesday music events, but there is not as many. So, hopefully, people -- and, again, driving to the downtown, you know, there are people here on Fridays and Saturdays in particular, but not as many people mid week. So, trying to help the downtown. Cavener: Thanks. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 11 of 15 Simison: Any additional questions? Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor. Cassandra and -- I'm sorry we have not actually met. Bridget? King: Yes. Little Roberts: Thank you so much for your report. So, just a comment saying what a great job you have done. It's just so much fun to see everything being bigger and better and, then, new events added on. So, definitely -- definitely a great change. So, thank you. King: Thank you. Simison: Right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it. And, Bridget, we hopefully we won't see you in more meetings for a while. We got to spend a lot of time together over the last -- King: We did. Thank you. 22. Meridian Historic Preservation Commission Annual Report Simison: -- a couple months. With that we will move on to Item 22, which is our Meridian Historic Preservation Commission annual report. Looks like we are just going to hear directly from Blaine. Come on, Mr. Chairman. B.Johnson: Mr. Mayor, Member of the City Council. I'm Blaine Johnson. I'm chair of Historic Preservation Commission. Like the Arts Commission we had -- we lost two members last year, but we had 12 applicants that one joined the commission. We have two new outstanding commission members. They were -- they were really enthusiastic about joining us for our work this year. Ongoing projects. Our virtual tours. We continue to our projects with Whole Films to document areas and buildings associated with the City of Meridian. Our virtual tours include Meridian City Hall, Creamery, City Hall Views, History Center, Main and Broadway Street, Pine Street schools, exterior and interior. Black Cat Farm. Meridian Speedway. Downtown areas along Idaho Street near Centennial Park. Community Center along Idaho Street between 4th and 5th Streets and the Eggers Farmstead. In 2025 we added a new virtual tour along North Main Street. May is always Preservation -- Preservation Month. We celebrated the month with downtown signage and walking tours and we would like to thank the Pine Street School and Hidden Gems events for their help with the tours of historic sites. Our ongoing projects. Our self-guided walking tours. A self-guided Meridian Historic Walking Tour is available year round. Free booklets with maps and interpretive Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 12 of 15 information are available at Meridian City Hall. For an enhanced historic downtown tour experience download the Historic Walking Tour app for mobile devices, iPhones and Androids, and enjoy additional photos, videos and narratives about each property while you walk. Along with the guided tours we had six scheduled for last year. One was rained out. We had great participation. I think we averaged over a dozen people for those walks. Everybody that went enjoyed it. If you remember we have the little commemorative coins made-up a few years ago. Each person that went on the walking tour received the coin. They are very appreciative of that. Go back one. Again, social media. We are on Facebook and Instagram. We encourage everybody to like and follow us. Comment on us. The more you guys comment on us the more followers we get and that's what we are after. Preservation projects. Every ten years to be listed as a certified local government State Historic Preservation Office asked us to do a new preservation plan. We started this back in 2023. We applied and got a grant from SHPO for this project. In February we had a workshop through over our strength weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for preservation here in Meridian. In March we launched the Historic Preservation Plan project website and asked for surveys from the public. In April that survey concluded. We had 114 responses to that survey. That's almost as many as the State Historic Preservation Office had for their survey for the entire state when they did their plan. So, we had a great number of responses. In April and June we had public outreach events, along with our walking tours. In September we presented a preliminary plan to City Council and we are expecting to have more information. In December we adopted that preservation plan. Next step is for City Council for final adoption of that historic preservation plan. National Register highlights. We -- finalizing the survey for two potential downtown historic districts to prioritize -- prioritize those sites. Along with that the Meridian Water Tower is also eligible for listing on the national registry. Old Town Vision, partnering with MDC and planning to align our preservation goals with Destination Downtown plan and Planix design standards. Strategic partnerships. Continue with state -- State Historic Preservation Office, Preservation Idaho, Ada County Historic Preservation Council, and the library's history center once the library is remodeled. We are promoting Preservation Month in May. Developing new workshops, walking tours, brochures, social medias and the website. New standard operating procedure. With this I'm going to ask Ms. Schiffler to step forward and talk about this. Schiffler: So, some early outcomes of the historic preservation plan. We had all those highest priority strategies in the last slide. But something that I worked on, which was one of the goals, was to explore development of a formal process through the planning division for development application review of potential historic sites where development may negatively impact historic features. So, I worked on an SOP, which is a little bit out of my normal wheelhouse, I don't have a lot of standard operating procedures for things, but I worked with planning to formalize a process for review of sites that have historic features. So, what happens is on the GIS map there is a tag that says history check and so sites that have been identified as having some sort of historic resource are sort of flagged for planning to send to me, so that we can review and check them. Unfortunately, this process is only as good as the data that we have, which does need to be updated, because there are lots of historic features that are non-extent, non- Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 13 of 15 existent anymore. But it could help the development process with regards to historic preservation and also allow developers to know well ahead of time that there is something of interest on their site and we had -- just recently there was one development that came through that there were some sites and we had a planner was able to come to our meeting and were interested in just like documenting and photographing some of them, although it turned out that the one that was more interesting the development application was -- they didn't actually own that property yet. It was kind of for the future, so it was nice to have the planner there to -- to coordinate. So, that is something that I see as an improvement on this process and an early outcome of the historic preservation plan. B.Johnson: What's next in historic preservation? We are asking City Council to formally adopt our new preservation plan. Continue to work on the National Registry nomination for the Water Tower. Revising a National Retro for short places survey of downtown Meridian and work toward the National Register nomination of two small residential districts. Continue our 2026 walking tour series. Celebrate National Preservation Month in May with the speaker from the Idaho Oregon Trails Association and other Commission led activities. And we also -- we are going to review SHPO'S ICRIS and it has all the historic registered information within the state and on one website. Our Commission was the first one that SHPO came to to demonstrate it. Do we have access for that? So, that was quite a compliment for us. With that I thank you for your time and open for questions. Simison: Thank you. Council, any questions or comments? Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Blaine, Cassandra, thank you both very much. You know, we have had MDC stand up here and give their presentation for Destination Downtown as we are working through that process and one of the things that's listed in there is to be respectful of our history as they work through. But when we ask what that means it doesn't really have a lot of concrete behind it and I'm glad to hear that we are working on it and getting an SOP that not just in our downtown area, citywide will now have something to send up those alarm bells that we know we are trying to preserve something before we find out six months down the road that we have lost it. So, I appreciate all the hard work you have done working with planning to make sure that happens. B.Johnson: Thank you. Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 14 of 15 Whitlock: Blaine, thank you and, Cassandra, thank you for the report and I'm -- I'm just curious, because you laid out a couple of tasks for us that are coming our -- our way. First, thrilled to hear that water tower is finally eligible, but what is the criteria that you have to meet in order to be eligible? B.Johnson: Minimum qualification is it has to be at least 50 years old. It's 50 years old this year. It's a unique water tower. It's the only one of its kind the western US. They are quite -- I want to say popular, but there is quite a few of them in the midwest and back east, but it's the only one that -- that our consultants and SHPO knows about here. So, it's unique to this area and it did supply water for quite a while for here. I think the capacity was 500,000 gallons, which was quite a bit of water. But now I think the city uses ten million gallons a day, so not quite where we need it to be, so -- but, yeah, investment and qualification. Whitlock: Mayor, follow up? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Whitlock: Thank you and look forward to working with you on that task. The second one you mentioned was the historic preservation plan and just from your sense can you give me a preview of what excites you about that and what should we be looking for? B.Johnson: It excites us because it's our road map for the next ten years. We did one ten years ago when I was first on the Commission. This is the first one in ten years and so it -- it really just gives us our basic -- what do we want to try to accomplish. Not just document what was here. Can we save stuff in the future? What are the steps we have to do to preserve that -- that history, that information for our future residents? So, it is a good road map for the commission to follow for the next ten years. Whitlock: Great. Thank you. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Council Woman Little Roberts. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor. And thank you so much -- and, Cassandra, appreciate all the work that you have done on this and just a quick question. Is there any update on the twins silos? Are they still sitting somewhere or -- B.Johnson: Mr. Mayor, Council Woman Little Roberts. The silos have been dismantled. I was on site when the contractor took them down piece by piece, if possible. We lost some of the blocks, but they have been dismantled. They are sitting on the property -- Victory Greens property for future rebuild on that property. So, that's where they are now. They have been disassembled. Everything we could save we saved. Simison: All right. Thank you very much, Blaine. Meridian City Council Work Session March 10,2026 Page 15 of 15 B.Johnson: Thank you very much. Simison: Council, we are at the end of our agenda. Do I have a motion? Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: Move that we adjourn. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Motion and second to adjourn. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it. We are adjourned. MOTION CARRIED: FIVE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:10 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) MAYOR ROBERT E. SIMISON 3-24-2026 ATTEST: CHRIS JOHNSON - CITY CLERK 3-24-2026