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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007 06-19 Pre Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19. 2007 The Meridian City Pre-Council meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, June 19, 2007 by President Councilman Joe Borton. Members Present Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, David Zaremba, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. Staff Present John Overton, Len Grady, Anna Canning, Stacy Kilchenmann, Reta Cunningham, Todd Lavoie, Caleb Hood, Bill Nary and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X 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. Bird: 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. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Meridian Fiscal Impact Model Update with SSC Research: Borton: We have each been provided a packet of materials for tonight's presentation and I'll turn it over to Tom Pippin. Let's begin. Pippin: Mayor, Members of Council, my name is Tom Pippin. I have presented to you before on impact fees. I am joined here this evening by my colleague, Ann Wescott. Ann is going to be our presentation driver so that is why she is sitting there. But we will certainly tag team on questions as they come up. Let Meridian City Pre.Council Meeting June 19,2007 Page 2 of 20 me first thank you for the opportunity to do this study and secondly, let you know that we had a great working relationship with your staff, Anna Canning in Planning, Reta Cunningham in Finance, and then Stacy Kilchenmann was our project director, and we very much appreciated working with them. Stacy has asked me to take about fifteen or twenty minutes tonight and review for you the work we have done for the city and then open it up to questions. As you know, from past presentations, Ann and I are very flexible so feel free to put your hand up or blurt out a question any time. De Weerd: We will. Borton: We're not bashful. Pippin: Ann, let's advance to the next page. De Weerd: The machine is saying set pages among support. Bird: (inaudible). She got my computer. I couldn't get on it tonight. Pippin: We'll skip over the introductions. Let's go back to page three. What we'd like to do tonight is to first of all give you some background on fiscal analysis. Then we'll describe our methodology briefly. Next, we'll show you results. And then, as I mentioned, Q and A. The reason we're here tonight is because you are interested as elected officials and the question, "Does growth pay its own way?" And that's really a two part question. Does growth pay its own way for capital infrastructure and that's what impact fees are about. So now that you have updated impact fees, you can be assured that growth is paying its own way for infrastructure-buildings, land, major equipment. But the second half of the question does growth pay its own way? is does growth pay it's own way for operations and maintenance -- hiring new staff, keeping fuel in the vehicles, buying minor equipment, buying new supplies -- and that's what fiscal analysis is about. This is essentially just like financial analysis for the private sector except rather than determining if you're looking at a profit or a loss, we're trying to determine if you're going to have a surplus or a deficit. Are your revenues from taxes and other sources enough to pay for new staffing? And this definition outlines that. Let me point out two things. First is, that you can do fiscal analysis for the entire Comp Plan, which is what we have shown you tonight. In other words, how Meridian would look under different build out scenarios or you can do it for a set development project. If you were considering a large.scale annexation, you could do this type of analysis on the annexation. Or if someone wanted to do a large-scale rezoning, you could do this type of analysis. This may sound funny coming from an economist, but I always want to make sure that people know that fiscal impact is a model. It requires assumptions and reasonable people can disagree about the assumptions. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19,2007 Page 3 of 20 Which is why when we show you results in a little bit, we are going to show you what we call a tic tac toe board. We're not going to give you one answer. We're going to fill out a grid of nine and say, here's the range of answers depending on how we vary the assumptions in the model because certainly reasonable people can disagree about assumptions. As Ann and I do this work all over Idaho and throughout the West, if you look at the second check mark, we do see cases when elected officials say, this project may be a deficit but we still want to do it anyway and we're certainly comfortable with that. There are a lot of reasons why you might choose to ignore, disregard, deprioritize a negative fiscal result. You know, for example, the third check point, list some things that you may prioritize. So, even though we do this work, we don't view fiscal analysis as destiny. We just view it as one piece of information with which you can make a land use decision. Ann and I were in Coeur d'Alene last week, presenting at the Association of Idaho Cities Conference, and we used this slide and we wanted to show it to you today because a lot of these challenges facing Idaho cities, including Meridian, can be addressed by fiscal analysis and especially the first several -- growth, restricted revenues, revenues not keeping pace with expenditures -- that's really what fiscal analysis is all about. What can you answer? What types of questions can you answer with fiscal analysis? We're going to give you some numbers in a minute. But the primary one is how much does it cost to serve each rooftop? When you build a new house in Meridian, what is the operating impact of that? If you add up all of the fractional employees and the vehicles and the gas and the paper and the copy toner, what's the cost per new house? We'll also show you a cost per square foot. Once you know the cost, you can compare it to revenue and then say, does growth pay its own way? Does revenue exceed the cost? The next several bullets are really more policy questions. It's going to become increasingly common in Idaho where developers are going to approach you for incentives. They are going to want you to spend public dollars on improvements that will benefit their project or maybe even share back some of your revenue. Well, in order to help evaluate that decision, you can use a fiscal model because if a certain project is only break even, then clearly there is not a lot of excess revenue for you to share back with the developer. So that's a common way that these models are used to help you as elected officials to value whether or not to do certain deals. And then finally, we got some impact from Stacy through the Mayor, I believe, that you wanted us to also take a look at ACHD and the School District and we have incorporated that in our model. So we show you in the model not only how Meridian will be affected but also ACHD and the schools. Remember when we talked to you about impact fees and we told you impact fees are just division? You're dividing growth-related projects by who's coming. And it really was that simple. Well, fiscal impact is about multiplication. And it really is that simple. We're simply multiplying the first box, the projected amount of growth -- new residential units, new retail, new office, new industrial -- we're just multiplying whatever you choose to analyze, the whole Comp Plan, a small project, times the middle box, Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 4 of 20 which are these ratios we'll show you in a moment, of Police, and Fire, and Parks cost per house. Police, Fire, Parks cost per square foot. And then we do the same on revenue. How much sales tax, how much property tax, how many traffic tickets? We don't quite get to that level but we do look at fines and forfeitures, okay? So when we multiply growth times those ratios, we get the last box, revenue and cost and then we simply compare them to say, do you have a surplus or a deficit? De Weerd: Mr. Chair? Now I'm sorry to interrupt you, but there are a couple of other things that as we're starting to go through our budget cycle, that are maybe some of those things that are not captured in this and, things like street lighting, storm water retention, and sidewalks. Since, did those come out of ACHD's concerns or at least the storm water retention and the sidewalks? Pippin: I would have to look at our detailed spread sheet to see where exactly storm water is. De Weerd: Okay, but it could be broke down? Pippin: Yes, it could be. Yeah, it could be. De Weerd: Okay. Pippin: One of the things we'll emphasize about this model is it's very flexible. There are a lot of cells and we've already had one training session with your staff and we owe them another training session before we're done. It's very easy in this model. It's just a series of Excel spread sheets to put in different assumptions and even to update. I'm getting ready to show you a Fire Department example. It's based on the 07 Budget so when the 08 Budget comes in, your staff would simple type in the new budget numbers. So I don't know exactly where storm drainage is but if that was an area of specific concern, It'd be as easy as adding a new line to the model and calling that out separately. De Weerd: Thank you. Pippin: So in order to begin this study, we had interviews with each of your department heads and I'm going to show you the Fire Department as an example. If you look in the upper left hand corner, you'll see a budget of $5.4 million. So we sat down with the Fire Chief and the first question we asked is how much of your budget is fixed and variable? The concept there is that as growth occurs, the budget won't necessarily increase in lock step. You know, you're not going to need another Chief. Governments, just like businesses, have some fixed costs. So we had interviews with all of the departments to try to assign the variability. And then when we got to variable costs, we asked your Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 5 of 20 department heads, why do those costs vary? Is it more due to residential growth or is it more due to commercial growth -- retail, office, industrial? And in the Fire Department, we based, based on the Chief's recommendations, we looked at your actual call history and what and how busy they'd been. But for each department, there were different answers. Parks and Rec, for example, I mean that's 100% related to residential growth. So we had these individual interviews with departments and we came up with the numbers you see on the very last row. So for the Fire Department, we're estimating that your marginal cost for the next house is $57.51 a year for a house and 29 cents a square foot for a commercial structure. And again, this is just for operations and maintenance. This isn't infrastructure because that's what the impact fees pay for. Ann, if we go to the next slide you'll see the accumulation of all of this for all of the departments where we looked at Police, Fire, Administration. We also looked at Parks, General Government. If you look in the lower right-hand corner, you will see a figure of $476.63 a residential unit and $1.19 a square foot in commercial. That is our best estimate, based on interviews with your staff, of the marginal cost of growth in Meridian. Well, that now begs the question, what is the marginal revenue? You'll notice that here we do everything but property tax and I'll explain that in a minute. So here rather than meeting with the Police and Fire Chief, we met with your Finance Department to try to understand why you get revenue. Is it variable fixed? Is it residential commercial? So we went through everything -- sales tax, franchise fees, interest, donations -- and if you look on the bottom line, you'll see we have a per unit revenue of $259.00 per unit and 22 cents per commercial square foot. Ann, can we go backwards? All right. So if our marginal cost is four, let's just focus on residential for a moment. If our marginal cost is $477.00 per unit per year and our marginal revenue, without property tax, is $259.00 per unit per year, that shows you that without property tax, as you would expect, you've got this built in deficit. So then the model calculates property tax very specifically because as you see, property tax is over half of your budget. This is really where Idaho cities make their living. So in the model, you type in the number of units, how much you expect them to be priced at, the amount of retail, office, and industrial square feet. How much you expect them to be valued at. And then depending on how much property tax comes up, you either fill the gap between -- go back Ann, one if you will -- $476.00 and $259.00, or if there's not enough property tax, you don't fill the gap. Then you have a deficit. What are the implications of a deficit? Well, there are several. One is that in the short-term, you can try to draw down fund balances and balance your budget for a little while but over the long-term, if you have a deficit, then you have the choice of either reducing your levels of service -- fewer police, fewer park hours, that type of thing -- or trying to increase revenue. And in Idaho, as you know, it's relatively difficult for communities to increase tax revenue but those are really the three options if you have a deficit -- draw down fund balance, reduce service level, or try to increase revenue. So knowing what our methodology was, trying to come up with these per unit costs and per unit Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 6 of 20 revenues, we then talked to Anna and we said, "What would you like us to test run the model?" We got this model ready to go and she suggested that we look at two different scenarios. One is your Comprehensive Plan at build out, just baseline, and the second is the Comprehensive Plan with transit supported densities. Meaning what happens if you built out in a denser, larger fashion that may support transit. We're going to show you those results in a moment but before I do, remember how I said the tic tac toe board? And we're going to show you the results in a nine-box matrix and give you a range. How did we vary our assumptions? Well, we called this-- Borton: Tom, one second. Councilman Zaremba has a question. Zaremba: Before we move on, just, I know you do this kind of consulting all over. Would you be able, off the top of your head, to compare our costs per rooftop in square foot? Where do we fall in the range of cities? Pippin: I could do that. I couldn't do it off the top of my head. If I got back to the office in Denver, I have a data base -- Zaremba: Is your instinct high or low or? Pippin: Cost? My instinct is slightly below average. Zaremba: Okay. Pippin: Okay, which could mean two things. Either that Meridian is very efficient or that Meridian' providing a slightly below average level of service. Borton: It's the first one. Pippin: Okay. Ah, I'll give you an example. De Weerd: Yeah, how dare you suggest? Pippin: Well, again, I can't answer off the top of my head. We just did a study like this in Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. It's got about 300,000 population and they were off the charts in every single category per household, per square foot, cost per square mile, and so there are, it's a good question because when you look at cities together sometimes you see things that are way outlying. I don't think Meridian is an outlyer. I think you're pretty close to average. But I'd be happy, when I get back to the office to send Stacy an e-mail that arrays you with some other cities. Zaremba: Okay, thanks. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 7 of 20 Pippin: So when we run this model we don't want to give you one number and say that your Comp Plan is a surplus or your Comp Plan is a deficit because there are a lot of assumptions that go into this model; for example, how much new development and then its phasing schedule. Does all the housing happen right away and the commercial comes later? Does it happen in lock step? The present value. We show you twenty years of results and then we use a discount rate to take everything back to today so you can compare apples to apples. Well, depending on the discount rate that you use, the results will differ. Market values for all land uses. Right now, or in the first quarter of 06, the average new home sold in Meridian was $322,000. If that continues, that yields some pretty healthy property tax. If that average goes down, and the new home construction are valued at a lower level, that's going to be a pretty significant impact on the model. And then, finally, those ratios I was talking to you about, fixed and variable costs, residential and commercial splits, all of those can be adjusted as well. So, when we run the model based on the information Anna gave us about your Camp Plan and then the Comp Plan at transit densities, we jiggled all of these assumptions, if you will, and when we jiggled them that's how we filled out this tic tac toe board. So we're going to show you a baseline result, a high and a low. One of the reasons we gave you handouts is because we knew the print would be pretty small but the first scenario we analyzed was your Comp Plan baseline and Anna instructed us to look maybe at about 50% build out over 20 years. You know, it's unclear exactly when Meridian's going to build out. So for the purpose of this analysis, we'd assume you get half way to your Comp Plan build out in 20 years. Now there is no magic to that. If you wanted to assume a different build out ratio it will be straightforward for Stacy or Reta or whoever you designate to run the model to adjust these assumptions and we've done one training session. We do owe you another training session. But it is simply a matter of typing in different assumptions and then the model will just click over automatically. Ann, let's go to the next slide. And this, unfortunately, is a bad news slide. Remember how I told you about the tic tac toe board with nine cells? Here it is. When we run your half of your Comp Plan through the model and look at it over 20 years, we believe that that is deficit causing. In other words, we believe that if you keep building towards your Comp Plan you are going to have too many expenditures and not enough revenues. The baseline, and remember this is over 20 years, so this isn't, you know, one horrible year. This is 20 years worth of results. The baseline is a present value loss of $63 million over 20 years. The worst case based on our sensitivity analysis, toggling those variables, is a loss of $100 million. The best case, in the lower right-hand corner, is a loss of $31 million. But in my opinion this type of information is good for policy makers because it allows you to hold up your Comp Plan and say this isn't necessarily in our budget's best interest. In other words, if we have these deficits, we would have to reduce service levels, expend our fund balance, and Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 8 of 20 Stacy, I'm guess the fund balance probably isn't big enough to soak up those types of deficits. Kilchenmann: (Inaudible question.) Pippin: No, this is simply the City of Meridian. I wanted to focus on Meridian tonight. However, there is better news. Let's go to the next slide. The next scenario that Anna asked us to look at was a variant of the Comp Plan and this was the variant of the Comp Plan that had transit supported densities, meaning relatively more houses, higher density houses, and more commercial development. Well, if you look at this scenario, it's not positive across the board, all nine cells in the Comp Plan, but it's better. You'll notice that in the top row, three of the nine scenarios are negative over 20 years but the baseline result of the gray box is positive -- $16.5 million over 20 years. And then the best case is a positive $58 million over 20 years in the lower right-hand corner. This type of result is not surprising. We see a lot of communities that look better fiscally with higher density developments simply because the cost of service is relatively lower per unit and potentially you can get higher revenue yields. So there is no magic to the two scenarios we've shown you tonight because I can guaranty you that you're not going to build out exactly like your Comp Plan. You're not going to build out exactly like the Transit Density Comp Plan. But this is what the model can do. You can instruct your staff to analyze different scenarios or if it's an annexation -- we're about to do this for the City of Donnelly -- look at a large stand-alone annexation, if you're considering a large annexation you could run those land uses through the model and see how it turns out. So you can use this on a macro basis to assess your Comp Plan or you can use it on a micro basis to look at individual projects. What happens if you do have a deficit? We've talked a little bit about the options being fund balance, increasing revenue, trying to diminish services if you have to. Really the best answer from our perspective is the bottom one, which is zoning, and that Simply is to conduct your planning and zoning in such a way that you can feel confident that your budget is going to be sustainable and test your land use proposals. Because if you've got the appropriate land use mix that you're planning for, then you can test it to make sure that you're not going to get into budget difficulty. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman? Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess my disconnect -- and I could go back to your previous slides, but it's easier to just ask. Pippin: Okay. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 9 of 20 De Weerd: In the revenues, are you considering our capital improvement plan -- Pippin: No. De Weerd: And our impact fees - Pippin: No. This is simply operations and maintenance. This is simply the operating part of your general fund. The good news is that because you have impact fees the growth related part of your CIP is taken care of. Mathematically the impact fees are designed to pay for the growth-related part of the CIP. So -- De Weerd: So this is only operational. Pippin: This is only O&M. De Weerd: Oh. Zaremba: Mr. Chairman? Have you confirmed that they do cover it? I know that's the intent it of it but -- Pippin: Do the impact fees cover it? Well, as of last year when we did the study they did, and speaking recently with Reta and Stacy, it's your staff's intention, now that's it's been about a year, to update the fees using infrastructure inflation rates, which is excellent practice. Where some communities get behind is they adopt fees and they forget about them and then five years later they do a big increase. Not only does that antagonize the development community but it's also lost revenue for you. So I'm very happy to hear that your staff is keeping up with this and they're going to inflate it every year. And of course Ann and I are always available if there are questions on it. De Weerd: That's only if the Council imposes the full impact fee. Pippin: Yes, that is true. De Weerd: Which you didn't. Zaremba: No, I wasn't here yet. I would have. De Weerd: It was just my reminder. Pippin: Ann, let's go to the final slide. So what are the next steps? Well, I think the first one is to have some discussion amongst yourselves as elected officials whether or not you think this kind of information is useful and if so, would you like Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19,2007 Page 10 of 20 staff which could be either Planning or Finance, to periodically show you this type of information either at councilor perhaps you want P&Z to be the main audience of it. But I think that's the threshold question. Do you want to incorporate this type of analysis in the staff reports that you see? If so, then continue staff training on the fiscal model so that they're comfortable doing that themselves. It's not Ann and my intent that you bring us back every time and run this model. We want to leave you and your staff with something that you can do yourself and we think we've done that but we want to make sure we leave you self-sufficient. If you do decide to move forward, every year as the new budget would come out, you would type in the new budget figures in the Excel spread sheet and periodically you'd go back to the Fire Chief, you'd go back to the Police Chief, and say, "Do these assumptions look okay that we've made about your budget?" And then finally, something that we haven't shown you here tonight, mainly because I didn't want to overwhelm everybody with numbers but there is a section of the model that also shows the impact on ACHD and the school district. In other western states where we work, it's more common for the school district and highway districts to come to City Council and say don't do that annexation. Don't approve that development because you're going to hurt us. We can't build schools fast enough. We can't build roads fast enough. That doesn't appear to be the culture as much in the Treasure Valley so I think the question before you as elected officials is do you want to try to reach out to the school district and ACHD and say, "We have some information about growth that you may find interesting and how would you like to be involved in this?" So, those I believe are the next steps. At this point Ann and I would love to answer any of your questions. Borton: Thank you, Tom. Pippin: Thank you. Borton: Council, any questions? I've got one for you on the revenue screen. You mentioned that I missed it. How did you forecast future revenue increases over the 20 years? Pippin: Excellent. We did not. Our model is inflation neutral. Because right now I know that revenue is going to increase over time with -- well, most likely -- appreciation over the long term and I know that sales tax will increase over time as consumer prices increase. But I also know that expenditures are going to increase. Your staff is going to be getting cost-of-living adjustments; benefits are going to cost more. So rather than assume how much revenue would increase and how much cost would increase, we made the model neutral and said we believe that revenue and cost will increase at the same rate. And because of that, we don't, I feel like we don't get caught making a potentially incorrect assumption. If you believe that your revenue is going to increase faster than cost Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 11 of 20 because appreciation of property is going to be faster than your operating costs, you can adjust that in the model. But we usually recommend just setting them neutral. Borton: And are you able to go back 10 years or some period of time using this model and to see what that gap was? Pippin: Between revenue and expenditures? Borton: Sure. Pippin: Yeah, you could use -- Borton: Using the real data? Pippin: Yeah, you could do that with real data. Again, I would caution you though. You ever see the stock market mutual fund commercials -- past performances, no guaranty of future results. Even if you saw revenue and costs inflating at a variable rate I'm still not sure I would recommend forecasting that 20 years into the future. I just don't have a solid enough feeling about the way the cost structure shifts. But if you wanted to be very, very conservative and say over the last 10 years, our costs for staff and benefits have been growing at a higher rate than our revenues due to property values and I want to be conservative and assume that that gap is going to persist in the future. Borton: Sure. Pippin: You could do that in the model. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman? Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess, Stacy, my question is for you and the revenue. Because some of our revenue lines don't adjust per inflation it's more population, is that a fair assessment? Kilchenmann: Could you say that again? I was fooling with the microphone. De Weerd: I guess on things like the sales tax, and, which are figured by population, Kilchenmann: Yes. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 12 of 20 De Weerd: It's not adjusted per inflationary cost. Is that an appropriate way to increase those? Kilchenmann: Well, the sales tax is a combination. Part of it's fixed at a base, I think it was in 1984, I can't remember exactly how they split the sales tax. And so it has for the whole state been increasing pretty consistently every year. But I think it's probably increased consistently with our costs. De Weerd: So it's increased.. . inflationary. Kilchenmann: Because it's not just on our population. It's a combination. Part of it's fixed -- a fixed base, the way they split it, and then part of it's on -- Pippin: And to Stacy's point, our model reflects that. In other words, if you look at sales tax in the model we've assumed part of it is fixed and then part is variable and the variable part as Meridian grows, we're forecasting more sales tax. Property tax is 100% variable because depending on whatever you type in there, number of houses at a value, number of square feet of warehouse, we calculate the property tax independently and feed that into the model. And we do have the homeowner exemption built in so if there is legislation that changes that again, you can certainly adjust the amount of that as well. De Weerd: Okay. Pippin: Anna, I want to make sure you have a chance to say something if you'd like because I know from a planning perspective this question of density and cost of service also comes up and I just wanted to make sure that you had a chance to speak if you'd like to. Canning: Sure, the one thing I would like to say about the two scenarios. One was basically the general densities we've been getting in particularly the medium density residential, at somewhere between three and four units the acre, the transit supportive -- it's not inconsistent with the Comp Plan. It's just at the higher end of that density range that medium density residential allows up to eight units per acre. So both of them are still consistent with our Comprehensive Plan. They were just at the two ends of the scale, or not quite two ends of the scale. Kind of what we're doing now and going to the other end of the scale. Zaremba: Mr. Chairman. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: And I guess this is an additional question for Anna. I appreciate the information that this whole report provides. I particularly like the suggestion of Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 13 of 20 the next steps and I'm very attracted to the first check mark there. I guess my question to you is, if we picked a point -- we don't need to do it on, you know, half acre applications and probably even five acre applications -- but if we picked a point and said any application bigger than twenty acres we wanted to see a fiscal analysis. Is that something that could be done without great expense and time? Canning: Nope. As staff, we've been anticipating that we'll do it with Stacy's help. Really it's a -- Kilchenmann: (Inaudible) Zaremba: Because I think that would be a beautiful thing to see every time there's an application. You know, what is the impact? Canning: And that's why Mr. Hood's in the audience today. De Weerd: Mr. Chair? Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess then though it needs to be more cumulative than just, you know, because you might have a real dense one and then another application on the lower end that would balance each other out so --. You also want to look at those cumulative effects. Pippin: Point well taken. The smaller chunk of land use that you look at, there's a chance that you might see something that's a deficit but it goes back to my second slide. You may still want to approve it. Because let's say it's a large apartment complex and it doesn't look very good from a fiscal prospective but that's going to be supporting. Those folks are going to be shopping at a convenience center that may be in the next land use application. So I certainly think you should use this if you're interested, on the Comp Plan, and I think you should use it for large mixed use developments -- annexations or mixed use projects. But for sole land use applications I think you could go astray. Canning: President Borton, Madame Mayor. What we could do is keep a running total either by fiscal year or annual year, whichever Council would prefer, so we can keep a running total for that kind of more comprehensive look and then we can do it by project. The benefit of doing it by project may be that Stacy is able to get a little better budget numbers because she gets frustrated at the end of the year when we can't tell her exactly how many houses got approved. So that might be a good number to keep for budgeting purposes anyway. So we can keep kind of a total fiscal year and then also by project. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19,2007 Page 14 of 20 Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Question related to the model as it generates information on ACHD's impact and the school district impact. Have either of those entities or both been involved or seen the model and what's their feeling if they have? Pippin: We gathered data from them but we have not briefed them. And we've sent them copies of the report but we have not briefed ACHD or the school district. Canning: President Borton, Council Member Rountree, I specifically pleaded for Mr. Pippin to go out and talk to those folks because the results make houses look more fiscally responsible than commercial properties and I knew that in a comprehensive look when you're looking at roads and at schools, that houses tend to be more of a drain. I mean I think it was discounting commercial properties because we were only looking at what was good for the general fund of Meridian. So that's why I asked them to go and get that additional information. It was an add-on to their scope of work. They did go out and complete that and I really appreciate it but we haven't had an opportunity to talk to the school district yet about that. Pippin: In following up on Anna's point, if you keep building houses at $322,000 on average, those houses pay for themselves in terms of City of Meridian. But they also generate children for the school district and if they are in a traditional single family configuration they generate a lot more road maintenance and road construction needs for ACHD. So there may be a little bit of a tension between the type of development that's good for the city's general fund versus good for ACHD and the school district. Rountree: Tom, does the model account for the lag between the year in which the expenses are incurred and the -- year subsequently (inaudible). Pippin: Yes, we've built in a lag. Borton: Any other questions? De Weerd: I guess Mr. President, Anna, I would ask that we explore doing this same presentation to the Blueprint Steering Committee and see if it's something that can help with the dialog we're having in looking at adequate public facilities, planning and development of tools. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19,2007 Page 15 of20 Canning: Yeah, that's a great idea. De Weerd: Between you and Stacy if you'd feeling comfortable giving this, but I think it would be helpful. Canning: Ann, I'm sure, wants to become a presenter for Blueprint for Good Growth. Wescott: It's hard to avoid me. Borton: Well, Tom and Ann, we appreciate you being here and giving us this information. Pippin: Thank you and we will continue to be on call for your staff. So thanks for the opportunity. De Weerd: Thank you. Item 4. Discussion of City of Meridian Logo: Borton: Council, that brings us to item number four, the discussion of the City of Meridian logo. And I think Josh Grant is going to come forward again and give us a quick synopsis of where we are with this. Grant: Does everybody have a copy of what I handed out before? If not, I've got another one. Borton: I don't know if Councilman Rountree.... Rountree: I don't have it, Josh. Borton: Have a chance to take a look and -- De Weerd: I have mine. Borton: Josh, if you'd give just a brief overview of the impetus for the change and what this is trying to accomplish. Grant: Absolutely. We really are just looking at streamlining the current logo with not making any major changes to it. I did bring an old mock-up of the new marketing folder. It kind of shows how it will be incorporated in that piece. I know, Mr. Zaremba, I think you brought that up last time. I'm just going to see how that's going to work. This is a little different version but it kind of shows you kind of how it will be tied in. (inaudible) that'll be stitched in, where it will be. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 16 of 20 And as you see, the new Star of the West. ThaUheme and the marketing tiers. Of course, that's easily tied in to overall city materials, memos, business cards, letterhead, and whatnot. But easily phased in and transitioned with what's currently there. It's not like a major drastic change where everything has to be dropped now and then everything has to move to the new logo but can be, as we run out of business cards, new ones can be ordered. The same with letterhead. So the cost is not going to be significant. De Weerd: Mr. President. Borton: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess just for Councilman Rountree's perspective, we did talk about this a year ago and it's kind of one of the last steps of the contract that we had. In looking at the marketing materials for economic development and a logo that is easier to replicate. Right now, every time we order anything we have issues with our current logo and the detail and the colors and the typeface and so you almost have six different styles of it on doors, on letterhead, on shirts, and so the branding aspect has been inconsistent across the board because of the availability of the specific color and the font type and all of that. So this was an attempt to really clean it up, make it consistent, make it something that is easy, that is simple. And that's kind of what we as a senior management team really focused on is something that was simple, easily replicated, and move on from there. Anything I missed? Grant: I think you hit it. It (inaudible) and allows for that consistency to be used throughout the city. I know that discussion has taken place too when we talk about presentations and letterhead and everything the Mayor just mentioned. When you put it on a shirt, you know, you don't get this logo. You get that, which is almost exactly what you're looking at. De Weerd: And you get different colors. Grant: And you get different colors and this will be delivered by the graphics designer. (Inaudible). A little bit. That's actually different than what's on here, a little bit. So there's been lack of consistency in the use of that. That logo, the current logo. Zaremba: Mr. Chairman. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I guess not having been in this position a year ago when this was started, it took me by surprise a week or two ago when we were -- or two weeks Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 17 of20 ago I guess when we were first presented with it. I certainly can understand the reason behind simplifying the old logo, which I found very attractive and kind of homey. It does have a lot of fine detail and I'm sure the specifications for it are probably several pages long so I'm not surprised you get variations. I guess I can support the idea of needing to really modernize it is what we're doing and eliminate some of the fine detail although I'm sad to see it go. One of my thoughts would be is there any way to incorporate into it either by converting one of the "I"s in Meridian or the "A" or something, to have it look like one of the surveyor's tools. I mean, Meridian is on the main surveyor's meridian for all of the northwest and that's a unique thing that generated our name and you know, not to go a whole different direction, but is there some way to throw in a surveyor's tool in place of one of the letters. Has anything like that been considered? Grant: It hasn't been brought up. Zaremba: Are we going in the wrong direction? Are we going back to fine detail? Grant: I guess I'd have to have a better understanding of what some of the surveyor tools look like that we could incorporate into it, I guess, to know what kind of detail. . . Zaremba: Maybe just a plumb bob or something, I don't know. I don't know what surveyor's tools are but, I'd recognize the mason tools but that's not what we're talk about. Am I the only one that has that thought? De Weerd: It is original. Zaremba: I'm not hearing a great leap of support for it. Borton: When it comes down to matters of artistic design, I probably should be at the back of the bus. That's why I'm not jumping forward with an idea. I love the old logo. I understand that the problems that it creates in being consistent so I have no problem with the new one. If there is a discussion of Council and we need formal direction to approve a new logo, I take it that's what you're seeking. So it's open for discussion whether we're going to make a change or not. Rountree: Mr. President, my comments are if it makes it easier, it makes it simple, and is more cost effective than the current logo, then let's move forward and get done with it. De Weerd: Let's have a motion. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19. 2007 Page 18 of 20 Borton: So moved. Rountree: I'll second. It's been moved and seconded to approve the new logo as it's been presented to us. Any discussion? If not I guess Mr. Berg -- Zaremba: I don't want to hold the process up but I like my idea of having a surveyor's tool in there somewhere. De Weerd: Whatever it looks like. Zaremba: But apparently I'm not getting any support for that so I won't hold it up. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Mr. Bird: I've been sitting for two years to get this other one designed that certain people didn't give a hoot about it then. I think it's very nice (inaudible) for two years work and for what we paid for this I guess we better accept that. I just abstain from voting. Borton: Okay, any other discussion? Mr. Berg. Berg: Ah, just roll call. Borton: Well, apparently, we're going to have some differing votes, so.... Berg: Okay. I'll take roll call, Mr. President. Members of Council roll call vote. Roll Call Vote: Rountree, aye; Borton, aye; Zaremba, aye; Bird, abstain. Borton; Thank you. De Weerd: Thanks, Josh. Borton: That brings us to the end of the Pre-Council Meeting. Rountree: Mr. President, before we end, it seems we have a little bit of time. We didn't really talk about the next steps on the economic model and there is one slide that talks about those. I don't know if we want to take an action this evening but I'm of the mind that we should incorporate that, we should develop some kind of guidelines when and how we use it and when and how we utilize the information on the school district and ACHD after they've had an opportunity to look at this model and the kind of results it might generate but I think it would be Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 19 of 20 good information to have with most any application. And a running total, or a running score, throughout the year of what's going on. Borton: I think it would be helpful, and as Anna and Stacy commented, it would be helpful for Finance for sure, I don't know where she ran off to, to keep that running total. For my perspective, my concern is really how useful is it. It's an important piece of the information. There's so many assumptions and they're massive assumptions and it was readily acknowledged that any true accuracy which can come from the model is marginal. There is value to it but I have some concern if we see a particular project that has, you know, a deficit. You can jiggle these assumptions and make any particular project not a deficit or flip it either way. So I think it's helpful but I'm just cautious to drive forward and have this particular model dictate decisions. And I don't think that was the intent. Rountree: No. Zaremba: Mr. Chairman. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: One of the points that they made when they made a similar presentation to one of the break out groups at the Association of Idaho Cities last week was that the model can be used as a reality check. Often the developers bring in their, when they make their application and they make their presentation with their application, they do sometimes throw in figures of, you know, here is this huge thing that this is going to be for Meridian and they often are not including the cost of providing services, they are just saying here is what your income is going to be. And the reality check of the way this does take similar income figures even though there are assumptions to be made, but it reduces the expenses as well which often applicants don't include. So you see this big figure of what we're going to make off of this development and it's missing the piece that we need to provide not so fast. You know, there are expenses, and I agree with you. There are many assumptions that are made and I agree with the Mayor's point that not necessarily looking at it as a single case does it provide you with information but as a trend over time, the cumulative piece. I would find it valuable to know for each project what our assumptions are about whether it's going to hurt us or help us but I also agree that even though there are assumptions the trend over time would be a useful planning tool. De Weerd: Mr. President. Borton: Madame Mayor. Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting June 19, 2007 Page 20 of 20 De Weerd: I guess maybe what we can ask staff to do is take a look at this, play around with it, and bring back ideas of how we can use it as an effective tool. Also as a tool for development as they come in, that they can run that same model and know what those outcomes are. Because it would be something that we would be looking at. So I can bring this back to staff and ask them to work with it, see how we an best use it, bring that back to Council for discussion, and we can proceed from there. Borton: Set up a procedure report? Rountree: That sounds satisfactory, yeah. De Weerd: Okay. Borton: Let's move forward. De Weerd: Very good. Thank you for bringing that up. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I move we adjourn the Pre-Council meeting. Bird: Second. Borton: Moved and seconded to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. De Weerd: Well, we'll start tonight at 7:00. Or pretty close to it. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:56 PM. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: -:Z ~ TAMM~, MAYOR / 17 / tJ 7 II" DATE APPR9~ ~~,If/.'I", ..........":<{ __-"'~ -'ot,~ ".~;.. " ~"""l("',.r""~.\ """' .~ 1'1;'" .:::- . ~C'fi~' vr"i )" ~_ ~ ~- '<0 ...~ ::; ~ S