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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007 06-05 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meetina June 5. 2007 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 by President Councilman Joe Borton. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, David Zaremba and Joe Borton. Members Absent: Charlie Rountree. Staff Present: Bill Nary, John Overton, Shaun Wardle, Josh Grant and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba o Charlie Rountree X X Joe Borton X Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Borton: I move we adopt the agenda as published. Zaremba: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as published. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Update of the Assessment for the City of Meridian by Robert McQuade, Ada County Assessor: Borton: Ada County Assessor Robert McQuade is here and we appreciate you coming and sharing your information and news with us. McQuade: I hope it is as exciting to you as it is to me. I was talking to someone the other day on some very esoteric property tax question and we just figured there only got to be about three or four people in the whole state that would be interested in what we were talking about. It really kind of just amounts to how Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 2 of 11 many parcels can fit on the head of a pin or how many tax laws you can fit on the head of a pin. It was just kind of crazy, but we really love it and I think there is really important information that is to be had. De Weerd: I don't know we all received our tax bills, so we are all grumpy. Bird: I haven't received mine yet. McQuade: Well, that is all I have got to say and I would be happy to leave right now. We sent out 185,000 assessment notices and they went out the middle part of last week. It was actually a few days late; our mail handling company, for some reason there was a problem with our vendor on getting the envelopes. We particularly try to get them out by the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend, but there was a slight delay and naturally weren't going out in the mail until Wednesday of last week. To me it seems like most of the people that I have talked to at least have received theirs on Saturday. At least wherever I went Saturday, I was told that they had received them. We had 32, 000 assessment notices that were sent out to owners of property in Meridian. Before I get started, I just want to talk about just briefly land values. It is important for two reasons with the assessment this year. Number one, we have really seen what is a driving increase in values in residential properties being increased in the land values - in 2005 we saw increases as much as a 600 percent annualized increase; this last year it slowed down to just about 50 percent; that is not all land, but we have seen sales. Just a side note, our assessment is as of January 1 st and the market for last year was still a good market. A lot of people reading the paper in the first half of 2007 have a tendency to play with the market as flattened out and some even believe it has gone down, which I don't want to argue that, but our values as of January 1 st - our increases, average increase on residential property throughout the county is about 17 % percent, but that is supported by MLS Members, where they have the average increase on residential property last year at about 21 percent, so we are a little bit lower than that. But, the second reason I want to talk about with the land values before we get started is a lot of the people are calling because we have increased the land value by maybe 50 percent and then have taken some off of the residential property. The reason we have done that is because our land values really have been low. I think we have seen that. I think that most people who are really familiar with real estate market would agree that our land values have been low. It was made up by the higher values of the improvements. Overall I think our values have been good and that is all supported by the ratio analysis or the analysis that the Tax Commission does in residential property were about 96 to 97 percent. So when it comes down to that split between land and improvement, I think that is where we have been off in the past and I am just so pleased this year. It is difficult for us, but I am very pleased that we really are getting that right for the first time since I have been there in the Assessor's Office. It really was in a way important in years' past because the homeowner's exemption was 50 percent of the improvement value and we didn't do this, but it just somehow Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 3 of 11 happened that way that when I took office, most of the value was on the improvement and not a lot of value on the land. But you got the homeowner's exemption on the improvement only. Well, last year the homeowner's exemption brought in the land too, so it really is a moot point. In fact, we are going to be talking this year whether we want to have a break out on the assessment of land and commercial property. We think that is just causing a lot more problems. But, that is the two important things about the land value. Number one, land values have raised driving total values of residential property and then also we have adjusted the proportion of land to building; I think it is much better. A little market value in Meridian and I am just going to give these to you here - a little market value in Meridian is 7.5 billion and that is up 29 percent over the last year. But just way of comparison from 2006 to 2005, you are up 45 percent; so you don't have that 50 percent growth rate that you had in 2005, 2006, but still 30 percent rate is still very high. In the county, the total market value went up 23 percent. So, you are considerably more than the county average. The taxable value is 5.8 billion and that taxable value that is total market value less exemptions. That would be particularly in your area; it would be homeowner's exemption and add exemption - that is up 29 percent, just about the same of the taxable value and the total market value. Taxable value is 77 percent the total value and last year it was 78 percent so it has just gone down slightly. Total residential parcel count in Meridian is 28,100 and that is 19 percent of the total parcel count of the county. It is up about 11 percent again. Last year you had coming out of 2005 it was really an explosive year - it was a 16 percent increase last year, so it is about 5 percent less. It doesn't mean it declined it is just that the slope has changed slightly - total market value of residential parties is 5.5 billion. It is up 30 percent and again, comparing to last year it was 47 percent growth rate and market value. The median increase for existing and this would be just an existing residential property here in Meridian went up 12.5 percent. Last year it was 22 percent. County wide we had a 16.5 percent, so it was a little bit less than the county average. Homeowner's exemption this year has gone up to 89,300 and you probably noticed that for those who received your assessment notices that it went up from 75,000 and that goes back to the legislation that was passed last year that indexed the homeowner's exemption to the housing price index and at this point I just kind of wanted to just get onto something slightly different here and that is on the assessment notice it showed an estimate of tax - what we did is we just used last year's levy as a proxy for this year's levy and we think that that probably overstated it somewhat. We really do think that if there is a 15 to 20 percent increase in the assessment value of this year that you probably will see no change or a tax decrease and the median here is 12.7 percent, so many of the people living in Meridian should see a tax decrease this year. I think that is really good news. Commercial property the count is 3,918 parcels. That is an 11 percent increase over last year's 3,500 commercial properties. Market value for commercial is 1.8 billion. That is up 25 percent. That is one of the highest increases in commercial property in the county. Median increase on commercial is 8 percent and it was just about a 9 percent increase last year. New construction that is an important - it was an important piece - well it is still an Meridian City Pre.Council Meeting June 5. 2007 Page 4 of 11 important piece of the budget, but something is different is happening and I will explain that in a minute. New construction is important because the new construction rule is that we can increase our budgets by 3 percent plus the amount of the new construction. But the legislature did something new this year and that is the new construction in urban renewal area cannot be included in the new construction value - when that comes online though, when the urban renewal area is dissolved it will take on the value at the time it is included or that the area is dissolved so let's just say for example if you had a building in urban renewal area that was put into service last year when a new construction rolled at a million dollars. Well, it is not going to be included this year, but let's say at the time that it is dissolved it is a 10 million dollar building that would be the assessed value, that is the value that would go into the new construction roll. It would go in 10 million at that time. But the new construction is 764 million, it just about the same as what it was the previous year. Residential is 2,049 residential new homes constructed. That is over 5 houses a day coming online of residential properties. It is one of the highest numbers through residential new construction in the county. Last year you had 2,858, so you are actually down a little bit - the growth rate again. But 330 million dollars in residential construction; commercial is you had 158 new parcels compared to 128. Last year you saw a slight decrease, but total value is 95 million and that is a 14 percent increase over the last year's commercial new construction. As we are seeing a lot of the value in the new construction role is land that has had a change of status or has become a platted sub. A good example of change in status would be someone who is receiving a farm exemption last year and they have lost that exemption this year - this now would be assessed as commercial or residential or something. Some parts of the county that was really a staggering number, but it is 338 million dollars and that is at a 33 percent increase over last year's 225 million dollars and that is bare ground that has had a change of status. Your urban renewal is 125 million compared to last year's 84 million or a 48 percent increase. The number that to me that I think has been most surprising has been the tax burden added. Who is paying the property tax bill? Residential or commercial? With the increase in the homeowner's exemption from 75 up to almost 90,000 dollars this year, I would have expected to see residential paying a smaller part of the burden, but it is 68 percent; 32 percent commercial; 68 residential; 32 commercial. Last year your residential was 65 percent and the commercial was 35. That actually is what it is in the whole countywide - it is a 68, 32 split and my only explanation for that is just that the market for the residential property was still very strong (inaudible) with a 21 percent overall increase that that has actually got that burden to creep up. When the legislature was considering increasing the homeowner's exemption last year one of the questions was that there would be a shift over to the commercial property payers and they didn't like that and they were using that as a reason to dissuade the legislation from passing that, but that really did not materialize. The residential property owners are still paying the biggest share of the property taxes. With that I would be happy to answer any questions that one might have. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 5 of 11 . Borton: Thank you, Bob. Council? Bird: I have none. It was very thorough. Zaremba: I had a couple of questions and you answered them. McQuade: All right. That is good. Borton: When you made reference to the legislation and the MDC or the urban renewal impact on property taxes, am I correct in understanding using some round numbers if you have got a property in an urban renewal area that starts out in a $200,000 value level - when over the years when that urban renewal agency dissolves, its worth a million dollars, let's say a parcel is it a million dollars that is then counted as new construction or is only the $800,000? McQuade: It is the million dollars. It is the value of the new improvement. Borton: Okay. It doesn't exclude the value --? McQuade: No, in fact this was a real sticking point. Kind of where I dropped out of the involvement on the legislation on that. They were looking at if it was a $200,000 building, it would be indexed each year to somehow be able to bring that value up to what it should be because it would have been a loss in value at some and time. But, putting it on at market value at that time, I think, would help recover the loss. Borton: Okay. The other question was is there a different procedure as more and more residential sales move from the MLS type transaction that are done by owner or through other means of transaction and is there a different way to capture that type of data? McQuade: Well, it's what we do. Probably the largest source of our data would be our sales letters that we send out at the time we are made aware of a transaction, we will send out a sales letter and with an application for a homeowner's exemption and we will ask them at that time what was the sales price and that is pretty good information. But MLS of course is important to us, but we are getting seven to eight thousand residential sales a year that we can use to calibrate our own models. Borton: Okay. Any other questions or comments Council? De Weerd: Just a comment. You still look like you enjoy this and I just can't understand it. McQuade: Well, I tell you I was telling my wife this morning, I don't know why I keep doing this job. It is a lot of fun. I love my job up until we send out Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 6 of 11 assessment notices and then it gets to be very brutal for about six weeks and it gets to be a real grind, but I think we are doing a good job for the public. I know a lot of people don't think we are doing a good job. They question our values, but personally I think we are doing a very good job and I am really proud of the work that our appraisal staff does. They are very, very professional. So, thank you for saying that and I am glad to hear that at least there is the appearance that I enjoy it because I do love my job very much. Well, it was good to see you all again. This was my tenth year of coming out here and so next year it will be the eleventh when I will be back. Borton: Thank you very much. Item 4. Discussion of City of Meridian Logo: Borton: I don't know if Shaun or Josh is actually going to begin the discussion. Grant: You bet. With the help from the Mayor, I hope. We are going through the process of making a few other minor revisions to the already revised logo that I think most of you have seen that was presented at the State of the City. It was on the Economic Development display, which we got great feedback on. But, as we move forward to produce the marketing materials for the Economic Development and hopefully integrate into the rest of the city, we have made some other minor adjustments with some feedback from city leadership and wanted to present that to all of you to get your feedback and see if this fits with what you want. Borton: Josh is there a slogan so to speak to go with this? Grant: It is not attached to all - I mean the logo itself is what you see, but the built for business, designed for living would be the slogan that has been used on the Economic Development pieces. Borton: Okay. Grant: -- which fits very well with the materials that we are putting out. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I feel like I missed something somewhere. Why are we changing the logo? Grant: I don't know if the Mayor wants to address this, but as we were going through the process of putting together new marketing materials for the city, for economic development we received a lot of feedback on - the image, the Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 7 of 11 message, the vision that we were putting out there that the city has been telling the story on, the logo didn't really fit that story and while we didn't want to make a major change or when we discussed it there wasn't a major change needed; some slight modifications to speak to that forward direction that that ford focus city that - built for the future going forward just kind of seem to capture that a little bit better without completely reinventing the wheel. The slight change seemed to work. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman. Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Just also to tell you the long on what Josh has already said is that Meridian and Idaho were getting lost in the design and you can see that on your screen in front of you it really was kind of lost when we did pins or if we would do embroidering on shirts, most of the staff was just doing the text part and leaving the rest of it off. If we are going to continually do that why are we making it more complicated? So, it was to simplify it to not lose some of the interest and so we wanted to tie Idaho in and it was also stressed that probably Meridian, 10 (inaudible) important everyone would know that we are the city of. So that was not needed in this either. The little waves are symbolic of the star and the stripes. The star also represents that the tag line that we are the star of the new West, you know, the West is being discovered and being the center and we show that we are the newfound star. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: Josh, how many dollars have we got in this thing already? Grant: Actually the recent changes are being done at no cost. Bird: Is that right? I will be truthful with you, I like the old one better and I don't see what this does to be truthful with you. I mean, I can read Idaho here as good as I can here, except one is colored and one isn't and we spent three years getting this thing designed and boo coos of money that was going to last forever and now all of sudden - it says the center of the Treasure Valley? Are we the center of Treasure Valley? I am not getting on you, just - this is shocking to me. I guess I didn't know we were even looking at changing the logo. De Weerd: Mr. President. Borton: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 8 of 11 De Weerd: It was in the scope that Council approved last summer. So, just to remind you that you approved it almost a year ago. Bird: Well, that is the reason. We should do it within - Borton: Josh, at this point are you seeking feedbacks in color and font kind of things? Are you looking for official adoption, approval --? Grant: One or both. I think - I would obviously welcome any feedback that you have and anything that you would like to see integrated into it. If it works, of course approval would be fantastic. Borton: Along those same lines is there a deadline, printing, producing, etc., that is to occur within the next few weeks and the reason I ask is that I understand Councilman Bird's comments and concerns and it is a relatively big decision and I think Councilman Rountree would want to have some input on it as well. So if it is a matter that we can sort of mull over and - Grant: We are waiting for your approval to move forward on the printing. Obviously marketing materials and everything, we don't want to do anything on that until we have - because this is a key piece of that material as it will be on nearly every page so that would be the only thing that would be really held up is proceeding with producing those materials and then of course actually utilizing those materials to go and promote the city. So that is really the hold up. I am not saying, yes, I need it now, but you know I would like to get your feedback or as soon as you feel comfortable proceeding forward, absolutely, so we can go forward on the other side. Borton: Okay. De Weerd: Mr. President. Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: Just another comment on the order of things. The order of the contract that was lent last summer was that the marketing material would be done first. Unfortunately during that process in developing the marketing material we lost our marketer or the person that was doing the design and had to then go out and find something new, get new prices and that sort of thing. What this entity has done is they haven't charged us for any of the tweaks of the logo, but it took our legal staff some time just to get the artwork for the logo so we could do anything with it. So there has been kind of a number of things that has gone along with this and we still are sitting on a marketing folder that we would like to get going on. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 9 of 11 Grant: I am definitely excited to get it completed and utilize it, but at the same time we want to make sure that we have got all of our ducks in a row and this is as everybody's blessing because it is a big push on the marketing materials. But unfortunately it has taken longer than we would have liked. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: If our thought is to defer consensus until Councilman Rountree has a chance to look at it, I would ask that if we are going to get a second look at it that we see a version that includes - you said that it may sometimes have additional text with it. I would like to see a version and if I understood Councilman Bird I would like to chime in that I very much would like the center of the Treasure Valley - that has a feel to it that I use to represent Meridian every place I go. Grant: Sure and I know that BVEP has been actually changed - or to Boise Valley and that I know they have moved away from calling it the Treasure Valley. I don't know if any of you have feedback on that, but I know that that has been or that Valley has been marketed outside of this area. It has been referred to the Boise Valley, not the Treasure Valley anymore. I know the Mayor has been involved with that. That has been a change that has taken place. De Weerd: Mr. President. Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: This particular logo would not have any additional text. Again, I go back to reproducing it in a legible form is very difficult to even bring in the Center of the Treasure Valley as was in our old logo and it was even difficult on our letterhead. So, we are looking to simplify it. The tagline on this is on more in the marketing piece on the folder and bringing some context to why we even have a folder in the first place. So it is a tagline and it is generally for any marketing type of materials as in (inaudible) branding. So you would not see on our letterhead or on our any clothing that staff would wear - I know that Parks has held up their new directional park signs so we have a logo and again this detail that was in the old logo would get lost in any of that. So we are only using the Meridian, 10 piece of it anyway. Borton: Josh, what I think we will do is - we have seen it and we can get Councilman Rountree's comments and once we hear from him, I guess get it on the agenda for formal adoption, Mr. Nary? The 19th of June? Bird: I think Charlie will be back then. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5. 2007 Page 10 of 11 Borton: We will all be here. (Inaudible--). I think it looks great and I understand the need for it to be clean. I like both logos equally. I think the design is the least of my skills sense. Grant: There is nothing wrong with it; there have just been some challenges with it because it is so detailed. De Weerd: It is not only that. We have had problems finding the same color, finding the same font. When we got this logo, we did not get all of the artwork with it. So, it has almost - every time we have a different printer, we get different colors. It has been a huge challenge and that is the advantage to getting this done right once and for all and moving forward. Borton: Thank you Josh. Grant: You bet. Borton: That brings us to item five on the agenda. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67- 2345(1 )(c) and (1 )(f). Zaremba: I second that. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Mr. Berg will you please call roll. Roll Call Vote: Bird, aye; Zaremba, aye; Borton, aye; and Rountree is absent. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Item 5. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c) - (to conduct deliberations concerning labor negotiations or to acquire an interest in real property, which is not owned by a public agency) & (f) - (to consider and advise its legal representatives in pending litigation ): Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we come out of Executive Session. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 5, 2007 Page 11 of 11 Zaremba: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES, ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. Borton: I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Zaremba: So moved. Bird: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adjourn the Pre-Council meeting. All those in favor say aye. THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:10 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: if b ,21,07 DATE APPROVED EERD, MAYOR \\\\\\111111/11111 \\\\ cJr ~II \,:'.'\~.J. ~:-:......~I/I/"" j'\ c) :p>~~o ~ '\.;. /_ ~ ~ SEAt.TT T~:d~~~' , -_ -.l(".. f f WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., ITY LERK % "7/, \<"t,~ r 181: . "\ .f /::; /'-I~' .......~ /,> ~ --~ -0' ,..:::' <, OCt'l ..J ". \' //11 "tJi1.jT'\' ,\\' / /, ,\ \. \ 'IUII111; \\jp1,.