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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2026-06-16 Work Session Meridian City Council Work Session June 16, 2026. A Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, 2026, by Mayor Robert Simison. Members Present: Robert Simison, Luke Cavener, John Overton, Anne Little Roberts and Brian Whitlock. Members Absent: Liz Strader and Doug Taylor. Other Present: Chris Johnson, Bill Nary, Laurelei McVey, Dave Miles, Tracy Basterrechea and Dean Willis. ROLL-CALL ATTENDANCE Liz Strader X Brian Whitlock X Anne Little Roberts X John Overton Doug Taylor _X_Luke Cavener X Mayor Robert E. Simison Simison: Council, we will call this meeting to order. For the record it is June 16th, 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 tonight's workshop agenda. I move that we approve the agenda as published. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. Is there any discussion? If not, all in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it and the agenda is agreed to. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. TWO ABSENT. CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] 1. Approve Minutes of the June 2, 2026 City Council Work Session Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 2 of 13 2. Approve Minutes of the June 2, 2026 City Council Regular Meeting 3. Mogul Industrial Park Phase 1 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0114) 4. Mogul Industrial Park Phase 1 Sanitary Sewer And Water Main Easement No. 2 (ESMT-2026-0115) 5. Mogul Industrial Park Water Main Easement Phase 1 No. 1 (ESMT- 2026-0116) 6. Aviation Subdivision Sanitary Sewer And Water Main Easement No. 3 (ESMT-2026-0117) 7. TM Creek Subdivision No. 4 Water Main Easement No.1 (ESMT-2026- 0130) 8. Apex Northwest Subdivision No. 7 Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0131) 9. Apex Northwest Subdivision No. 7 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 1 (ESMT-2026-0132) 10. Apex Northwest Subdivision No. 7 Sanitary Sewer and Water Main Easement No. 2 (ESMT-2026-0133) 11. Final Order for Dayspring Subdivision No. 1 (FP-2026-0002) by Toll Brothers, generally located at the southeast corner of the N. McDermott Rd. bypass and W. Ustick Rd. 12. Final Plat for Dayspring Subdivision No. 2 (FP-2026-0004) by Toll Brothers, generally located off the southeast corner of the N. McDermott Rd. bypass and W. Ustick Rd. 13. Final Plat for Tanner Creek Subdivision No. 2 (FP-2026-0011) by Engineering Solutions, generally located on the north side of 1-84, 1/4 mile W. of South Meridian Rd. 14. Modified Final Plat for Avani Subdivision No. 1 by Laren Bailey, located southeast of Franklin Rd. and Black Cat Rd and North of 1-84 15. Final Decision and Order of Approval of Permit CZCU-2026-0002 16. Agreement for Use of Kleiner Park for Meridian Fine Art Festival Simison: Next up is the Consent Agenda. Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 3 of 13 Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: There are no changes to tonight's Consent Agenda. I move 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: FOUR AYES. TWO ABSENT. ITEMS MOVED FROM THE CONSENT AGENDA [Action Item] Simison: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. DEPARTMENT REPORTS [Action Item] 17. City Wide Energy Study and Plan Update Simison: So, we will move on to Department Reports. First item up is the city wide energy study and plan update. Turn this over to Director Bakken. McVey: All right. Thank you. Public Works. We have a presentation that goes along with the -- with the speech. So, we completed our city energy study and I wanted to provide you with high level updates about that and overview of the results and, essentially, recommendations for our next steps. So, I think before we jump in it's really important -- the report highlighted this as well, but this isn't starting -- we are not -- Meridian isn't starting from scratch. We prioritize energy efficiency. Over the past, you know, decade we have built it into our city operations and the way we do business. So, since 2008 when we completed -- or started our first energy efficiency study we have actually reduced our per capita energy use. In spite of rapid system growth that means we are making decisions that support energy levelizing rather than energy expansion and we actually perform at or above average compared to peer or benchmark cities and utilities. However, I still think it's important to talk about energy, as it accounts for a large ongoing cost for the city, so citywide energy utilization costs us nearly three million dollars a year, so it's good to look for ways that we can get even better at our -- our energy utilization. So, a little bit of background. Like I mentioned we started our first energy study in 2008 and completed it in 2010. We have done other various plans and resolutions over the past few decades that continue to affirm the city's desire to be energy conscious. Just as a reminder we received a federal grant to complete this study and for the last year and a half'ish I have been working through that. We have been working with our energy consultant Straven Strategy Group, which is a local Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 4 of 13 energy consultant, and I also want to give a lot of credit to Jason Korn, he is our environmental programs coordinator. He really shepherded this through -- the study, through the process and so as we developed this process -- or this study it was important for us to have a plan that met our objectives for City of Meridian and really for us that was to be data driven and to give us a clear roadmap for planning current and future projects. So, in the energy field there is a lot of ideas, there is a lot of concepts. Some of them are not quite -- are not quite ready for prime time and we wanted a roadmap that said give us projects, give us data that shows that this has a good ROI and return on our investment. So, one of the first things we want to do is establish a baseline for our current and future energy tracking. And, like I mentioned, we wanted projects that had clear cost effective outcomes and, then, looking for future projects that had ROls that make sense to implement later on. So, maybe when equipment reaches end of life things like lighting and HVAC it makes sense to change those out then. So, what we ended up with was the report that you saw. It captures where we are at today, establishes a clear list of projects that have both near term and long terms ROls. So, one of our first goals was to establish our baseline energy use. So, this was not something that we had or had been tracking. So, some kind of interesting information. So, we tracked both energy use -- or created a baseline for both energy use and greenhouse gas metrics so we can track our project -- our progress moving forward, as well as identify areas where we can make the most likely impact. So, as I mentioned earlier our per capita energy use is down and while this doesn't mean that our total energy use has decreased -- in fact, as you can see in this graph our energy use has risen, but it's not risen as quickly as our -- quickly in proportion as the population numbers that we have added. So, when you look at energy use it's tracked in three areas. So, fuels -- and that includes both gas and diesel, natural gas and electricity and so when we -- one of the great things this report does is that it breaks down the energy use by major utility or major work group, so you will see the majority of the city's energy use resides within the water and wastewater utilities as we expected. There is a high electricity demand required for pumping and treatment. However, what's interesting with this report is the ability to break down use even further showing us areas and facilities separately. So, these are just a couple of examples pulled out of the report. On the -- the top graph are -- is the energy -- electricity and natural gas -- greenhouse gas emissions for all of the parks and what you will see is the pool and Home Court have the highest energy users, which would be expected as they have facilities versus just open parks. On the bottom there you will see us -- it allows us to compare across buildings. So, those are all of the fire stations and it allows us to see that some stations are consuming more energy than others. So, switching over to fuel. Most of our fuel use is located within the public safety sector as expected from police and fire. You will see a slow increase in utilization and this is indicative of a growing fleet, but also a growing service area, meaning that more miles have to be driven to reach all areas of Meridian. One of the things that's important about this is that the fuel sector is much more volatile to costs than natural gas and electricity. All of those have gone up over the years, but fuel as you -- as we all know fluctuates more frequently impacting our costs here and so one of our goals with this energy study and one of the recommendations you will see at the end is we want to create an internal energy tracking dashboard that will let us track our monthly costs and can more quickly make Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 5 of 13 comparisons on vehicle replacements, fleet replacements and especially with this where prices change pretty frequently. We can have more real time data to make better decisions. So, in addition to energy use -- so, that's electricity, gas and natural gas, we also looked at greenhouse gas emissions and so if you have ever worked with greenhouse gas emissions there is different scopes that you look at. So, scope one is what they call direct emissions. So, it's the direct emissions coming out of your building, your pipe, your factory, whatever it is it's -- it's directly attributed to you. Sort of end of pipe. Scope two emissions are emissions that are generated from your purchase of electricity or energy and scope three is all other emissions and that really takes into things like the emissions that are created by your employees driving to work or the energy that's used to make the paper towels and ship them to your facility that you then use. For this study we just looked at scope one and scope two. Getting into scope three, as you can imagine, is a really in depth process. From this, though, you can see that our greenhouse gas emissions are also decreasing. This is great news and -- but is in large part -- not necessarily because of anything that we are directly doing, but we can thank our partners at Idaho Power. So, they have an initiative -- a clean energy initiative to have one hundred percent clean energy by 2045. So, as they achieve that goal our scope two energy emissions also improve, which is great. So, similarly to our energy use, the highest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions is our utilities. However, also noted about 30 percent of our emissions come from our fleet and our building heating. So, the next thing that we did in the report is we took a deeper dive into some of our larger facilities to really help us understand operations and opportunities in these buildings. So, we looked at 17 facilities across the city and we looked at energy use and intensity which, essentially, lets you compare energy use by square footage, so you are comparing like to like. We created heat maps and, then, we also did physical walkthroughs and looked at equipment and conditions. So, I'm not going to go over all 17 facilities, but I kind of want to show you an example of what kind of information came out of the report. So, the first one is called heat mapping and this is pretty interesting I think. It looks at hourly energy use over a whole year. So, the brighter color indicates higher energy use and it quickly allows you to see trends and compare facilities. So, the image on the top left is City Hall and the image on the bottom is the police headquarters. So, if you just do a quick look you can see that a couple of things stand out. So, police headquarters uses a lot more energy, which makes sense, they are a building that operates 24 hours a day compared to City Hall, which generally operates 8.00 to 5.00. It also helps us look at interesting anomalies though. For example, you wouldn't expect a whole lot of energy use at City Hall in the evening. However, on this heat map we are seeing something turn on at midnight and some power use extending well past our normal operating hours in the evening. So, what that shows us is maybe we could do some fine tuning with our lighting and HVAC controls. What heat mapping can also do is help you compare buildings over time and against each other. So, this top row here is an example of Fire Station One in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and so what you will see is the power use has increased, indicating -- indicating a higher usage for more hours of the day. The bottom row is Fire Station 6 in 2022, 2023 and 2024. So, not only will you notice a higher energy use, but you will also notice a different pattern of use from Fire Station No. 1 . So, what this report doesn't do is tell you why that's happening, but what it does is it gives us these triggers where we Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 6 of 13 can go out and look into this further and see if this is something -- and it could be totally normal, explainable things, but it also could be things that we could change, like lighting and HVAC and maybe our -- you know, our operational behaviors. So, our site visits were also interesting. So, a few examples on the screen here, but when we did our site visit our City Hall server room was set to be cooled to 57 degrees and in checking with IT server rooms can actually operate without issue up to 75 degrees. So, this is something that just over time the thermostat had been set lower, lower, lower, lower and we are cooling it probably more than we need to. Below that you will see an example of a building that was heating and cooling at the same time. That can indicate a poorly balanced HVAC or controls issues. On the top right up there you will see a coat rack that was installed over the HVAC controls, so a simple no cost relocation there could help us keep that station temperatures maybe in a better range and, then, finally, down there on the bottom left you will see the heat impact of east facing windows and doors with an opportunity for door sealing and window tinting. So, kind of some interesting things in the report there. So, our next step was evaluating potential energy savings -- energy saving projects. So, one of our key metrics on the projects was it needed to have a positive ROI and be data driven. So, the group -- we grouped the projects into different tiers and, essentially, we looked at tier one projects are projects that have potentially a lower capital cost. They result in a quick payback of just a couple of years and we are calling those kind of no brainers. They have a quick ROL They seem to make sense to do. Tier two are projects that have a slightly longer payback, but we should continue to evaluate them and plan as we have funding or as technology maybe comes down in price. And, then, tier three projects are ones that have longer -- ten year ROls that fall into two categories. One is replace as you go. So, if it's an old HVAC or an old water heater as it goes out we should put in an energy efficient new one. We are generally doing that today, but we could probably tighten up and put some procedures around that and, then, the other one is perhaps the capital costs aren't quite there yet. So, maybe it's a technology that hasn't quite come down in cost enough to do a quicker than ten year ROI, but could be something that as those technologies, which we are seeing really good advancements, maybe those prices come down and it makes more sense to complete that project. So, I'm not going to go over all the projects that were identified in the report, but just some examples of the tiers of projects. So, the first one actually is not one of the tiers, but I'm calling ongoing base level things that we should work on implementing. So, these are things like optimizing building control settings, training staff on energy use and developing a dashboard and database to ensure we continue to track and monitor progress. Most of these have little to no cost besides staff time and can be implemented, you know, as soon as we want and worked on over time. We also recommend incorporating energy efficient procurement policies and looking at regional fuel and gas procurement contracts. That's some places we could save. And, then, it's also recommended to build energy efficiency into our design standards so that any new buildings that come on are built with these energy efficient HVACs and appliances from the start. Also recommending building commissioning and recommissioning, which does have upfront cost, but it can help ensure that your HVAC is balanced and continued to be balanced, so that -- like I mentioned the building isn't heating and cooling itself at the same time. So, if we jump to tier one projects these are some that have some initial cost, but have the quick ROL Some of them -- examples of, Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 7 of 13 you know, adjusting the server room temperatures, adding window tinting, looking at weather stripping, consolidating. So, Home Court has seven electric meters, consolidating that down to one could save us the ongoing base cost that's at that facility and potentially evaluating the pros and cons of covering the pool at night. So, there is a big list of projects. Some, you know, with relatively small cost that could result in good energy savings. Examples of tier two projects include installing irrigation controllers at facilities. So, we have these at a lot of the parks today, but just making sure that all of our facilities -- these are the sprinklers that sense if it's rain and turn on or off. Installing smart power strips. These essentially will turn off your computer monitors and your computer if there is no use on your computer. Potentially heating the pool with solar and continuing to work on our SCADA system refinement and control and, then, some of our tier three projects -- remember these are the ones that are kind of the replace as you go or keep on the list and evaluate as technologies get more affordable, but some of them are upgrading to ground source heat pumps, continuing to look at hybrid and electric vehicles. Evaluating rooftop solar and adding more water storage tanks to reduce pumping demand during peak energy times. So, what all of these end up in is -- essentially what these charts show is the potential energy reduction of -- if we did every single tier one and tier two initiative, as well as tier three initiatives in the next couple years. So, if we did all tier one and tier two initiatives we would have 1 .6 million dollars in savings and a seven percent energy avoidance over the next 20 years. If we did all tier three initiatives that would jump up to 3.5 million and a 31 percent energy avoidance over the next 20 years. So, we have some potential. We have potential to do energy savings and to make some -- some impact. With that, though, I did want to say there is -- we have to weigh implementation with a couple of caveats. So, we are not proposing to add any additional staff to complete these extra projects. So, I have to balance the requests with the staff time that's available. So, how do we strategically plan and budget for these upgrades over time? And one of the first ones which we will talk about is we are going to propose -- which you will see in the budget presentation -- a 55,000 dollar budget request for FY-27, which we believe would cover all of the tier one recommendations and our recommendation is that we do that to start and see how that goes and see how we get through that. You will notice that there is a initial -- if we did all the tier one projects the initial cost is -- is close to that 55,000. The first year we would save close to -- oh -- and there is an extra zero in there. We would save close to 39,000. So, the first year this -- these projects don't necessarily pay themselves back, but in year two they do and that cumulative savings over 20 years equates to almost 800,000 dollars. So, definitely worth the investment in our opinion. So, our recommendations and recommendation of the study was to -- essentially, like I mentioned, proceed with the tier one initiatives through the budget process with that balance of staff time with the ability and existing workloads and capacity to implement. So, specifically our recommendation for FY-27 is to create an energy tracking dashboard, conduct citywide staff training about energy efficiency and the behavioral things we can do to try to save energy. Request 55,000 dollars to address all tier one objectives in the budget process and, then, create a plan for future funding in the CFP for tier two and tier three projects. So, with that I will stand for any questions, comments. I may -- I'm definitely not the energy expert, so some of them may need additional follow up, but we can definitely get that for you. Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 8 of 13 Simison: Thank you, Laurelei. Council, any questions? Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Laurelei, team, thanks for the memo and the presentation. Can you go back to your slide that kind of showed the initial capital investment with this -- perfect. So, when you look at the tier one projects -- and I forget, I don't have my paperwork in front of me. Does a tier one project include the street lights that were flagged as a slide? Because I'm just curious if this is additional as to what's already planned or incorporating kind of what we are already doing? McVey: Great question. So, street lights we left out. One of the recommendations was to continue with the street light program as is. It is not in that 53,000. So, the budget does also include its 260,000 as our normal LED upgrade request and with that if we stay on track with our LED plan we should have all street lights upgraded to LED within five years. Little Roberts: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: What's the -- for the 250,000 investment in the street light upgrade, what is our annualized savings for doing those? So, because we did -- if -- let's say we got our budget that's coming up on Monday, our budget hearing. Council agrees to continue to fund that at that same level. You build those lights, what is the city's future anticipated savings on an annual basis as a result of that; do you know? McVey: I do not have that in front of me, but we can have it by Monday. Cavener: Monday? Perfect. That's fine. That will be helpful. Simison: Yeah. If I recall those were three year cost savings back when those were originally done. So, take that for a grain of salt on the cost of those ones, but -- yeah. Cavener: And, Mr. Mayor, I think you are kind of at least tracking kind of where my line of thought is, is that has the technology continued to evolve that that ROI comes sooner or is it still kind of what has been when we first started making these changes a number of years ago? McVey: And great -- great question. We also are capacity limited on that, so my team can't put in more than that in a year, so -- Cavener: Thanks. Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 9 of 13 Whitlock: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Whitlock. Whitlock: On your last slide with those four steps, conduct city wide staff training, give me some sense of the psychology behind how do we engage all of our employees in wanting to be a part of this and seeing the benefit of doing it? McVey: Yeah. Great question. So, what I'm kind of envisioning for that is that I would give maybe something similar to this, little boiled down, but more facility specific. So, going to each of the different department's areas and specifically sharing with them the highlights that came out of the report for -- let's say the police station and say, hey, here is what the heat maps look like, here is some of the suggestions, because, twofold, we want them to be on board with the changes that we are recommending; right? So, we want them to see here is why we are doing these things and here is some of the things that we can maybe change by changing the thermostat or changing out the light settings and some of the -- the small behavioral changes that could maybe help with that. Cavener: Thanks. Simison: Any additional questions at this time? Cavener: Yeah. Maybe -- Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: So, Laurelei, this is a study that the staff completed. There are recommendations. Is this more of a place of -- we are informing you that these are the things that you as the department are going to continue to pursue that would have future budget impacts? Is there an action for the Council to adopt this plan? Help me understand kind of what you are looking for from us coming out of this. McVey: Great question. So, not looking for any specific approval tonight or adoption of the plan. This is more just a -- I would say a roadmap for us of -- if we have budget, which I guess the question would come on Monday, is if we have budget for even some of the tier one energy initiatives it gives us direction to move forward with implementing those. We can certainly implement the no cost ones over time with just staff time, too, which is a totally okay approach. I think creating that energy dashboard is one of the most important things that we -- that we could do and that would be internally in-house and, then, it just kind of depends on what the funding levels look like. Kind of our thought was that we would want to focus on the ones that had quick ROI, with the longer term ones they need more evaluation, they maybe need some technology to catch up and we hold on those and bring them to you when -- when they may be more ready. Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 10 of 13 Simison: And I think, Councilman Cavener, maybe from my perspective is, you know, we talked about replacing things as they go bad. If Council says, no, we think we should replace them before they go bad to have a higher -- to -- a quicker ROI in some regards, I think that would be a question that I would say -- if that's your desire after digesting this information, well, make sure you tell us that so we can adopt that into the plan differently than the current attitude, which would be, no, we are not going to do those until they need to be replaced. Cavener: Mr. Mayor, I think you -- again, that's a piece that I certainly weighed in on the -- on the report is certainly it's contemplated that there is some things that we should be replacing outside of its life cycle and I'm -- I'm a little reluctant on some of those, but if there are really -- and trusting the department, if there are some things that the department really believes that we are going to see a strong benefit -- there are some things in tier two and certainly in tier three that I'm somewhat suspect on the real ROI, so I would like to learn more about those kind of on a case by case basis, but certainly would want the department to feel empowered that if there are things that you felt we needed to move sooner on, I'm open to that conversation, just recognizing that we are all well aware of the real budgetary challenges that we have and for myself, looking at things that I have been a big cheerleader for in the past, like LED street lights, maybe saying I don't know if we have got the revenue to be able to do that at that same level right now, so -- I appreciate the presentation. Simison: Okay. Thank you very much. So, you will see some of this come back next week and some in that capacity for the price you see up here. 18. 2026 City of Meridian Survey Simison: And next we will move on to Item 18, which is the 2026 City of Meridian survey, which is being -- Laurelei you may want to stick around just in case. As was mentioned Kendall is out, so Mr. Miles has agreed to pinch hit, but treat him like a pinch hitter who has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of this project recently, but does have familiarity with the history and I'm, obviously, here for that, but I'm going to turn this over to Mr. Miles to help us at least lead through the conversation. Miles: Thank you, Mayor. Good afternoon, Council, Mayor. As the Mayor said 2026 survey. We are in the process of rolling that out. I think today the intent really is to understand from you all if you have any questions about the questions that are drafted currently, if you have additional questions, comments that you think are relevant for the survey, try and understand your feedback as we begin to roll this out. As I understand we are sort of in the process of -- we have got the consultant on board, format's drafted up ready to go pending your input. We would proceed through the summer with our normal schedule of sort of a June, July out to the public, get the feedback. July, August have the consultant compiling the data and the results and, then, no later than September, maybe even earlier do the report out as we have done in past years. So, really, that's sort of our standard process that we have done for the last, I don't know, I feel like since 2014. 1 have been involved since at least 2020. So, it's the third one I Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 11 of 13 have been involved in. Pretty straightforward. But want to hear from you if you have got questions, if you have got additional things that you want us to consider in this document that -- I hope is the current one I'm looking at. Anyway, I will stop there and I will leave it to you all to see if there is any additional feedback. Simison: And I will just add in a few things, just, you know, maybe what's different than the last survey. You know, the public safety levy, obviously, the questions that were in that have come out and they have essentially been replaced on some stuff regarding re- -- not recycling -- composting program. We -- Laurelei's got some additional information from Republic and others to know a little bit more detail, so we thought we would actually take that information and have a little bit more directed information that's in this one to get that feedback to come back, so Council -- so the SWAC and the Council can consider that information moving forward. We have updated the transportation projects from the last time. Other than that I think it's pretty much the same that we have traditionally seen. I can't remember, chief, if we made any changes in any of the police- related questions. I think that you left in all the code enforcement related issues that were in there. So, I'm not -- I'm -- just off the top of my head I can't remember if we made any other changes to any of the public safety related items. Basterrechea: We only removed just one of the code enforcement questions. Simison: Yeah. Miles: Mayor, you will find in some of the communication questions, same resulting choices, different way of framing the question kind of, but similar intent. So, a couple of upgrades there. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: Just maybe a couple of suggestions. We -- we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that the more our friends in the state legislature continue to weigh in on local matters the more we feel that, the more citizens feel it, the more citizens may have a different -- you know, a growing opinion on those issues. I know we have never specifically kind of gauged our residents' feedback on the legislature. I think that that is a question worth asking. We certainly are measuring how we do as a city, how we do -- I know we -- I think we call it out versus other agencies. I don't know if our residents necessarily think of the legislature as an agency, so there may be some convoluted feedback in that level of questioning. So, I would encourage a specific question about our citizens feedback on the legislature and, then, Mr. Mayor, the second question that I would like to see included is, you know, our public's perception around property tax increases forgone. I know that we asked the question if our residents feel satisfied with how we spend their tax dollars. As one who has been very vocally opposed to -- to foregone and has really pushed back like many of us have about property tax increases, I would like to know if that voice is represented by our community or if my perspective is Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 12 of 13 an outlier. I think that we all take our job representing our neighbors serious and if my perspective is out of line with my constituents that's feedback that I would be very interested in learning. Miles: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Cavener, I think those are all options that we can certainly wrap into the mix, consider and evaluate. You know, if they are to be asked how do you ask that and what's the -- what are you trying to pull out of that and figure out the best way to ask it based on that. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: And, Dave, I think something that you and your -- you know, in the past when you ran the survey and I know our consultant helps with -- is not trying to solicit a specific answer, but to really ask the question the way that our citizens feel compelled to give a very authentic response and I know -- I have great confidence you will be able to do that. Overton: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Overton. Overton: I appreciate the fact that we are not just asking the same questions year after year, that we are mixing it up, adding ones that are more relevant for today, then, taking out the ones that we needed to gauge where we were at in the past. I agree with the concerns that Councilman Cavener -- the concern I would have is how we craft that question correctly to elicit a response that's helpful. But that's probably my biggest concern in a question like that. I really want to know. I just don't know how to craft that one at this time. But I appreciate the work that's being done and hopefully we can come up with a few of those questions that will elicit the information in a way that's useful for us moving forward as a city. Miles: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Overton, I would be happy to pass that information along to the new project manager. Simison: And if I could add to that request. If -- I would ask Council to take a look at the current questions and if you -- if we have to trade out questions, which questions -- to get those questions answered what would you say we drop out, because I know that we are going to get pushback from the consultants that -- they were already pushing against us for what we put in there for the composting conversation. So, for example, if -- which transportation projects are -- are -- are they not as -- if that question is not as relevant or important in terms of which ones because of those I would -- would ask each -- send Kendall a note saying you would be okay dropping these questions in exchange for those, because that's really the main thing that I'm looking at. Yes, we want to ask Meridian City Council Work Session June 16,2026 Page 13 of 13 the right question, but we also want to have the survey answered and have the survey takers be able to -- to do that appropriately. Cavener: Mr. Mayor? Simison: Councilman Cavener. Cavener: When do you -- are you guys looking for that feedback by? Yesterday? Simison: If you could -- end of the week, since you would like -- if -- if -- if -- and this is just if we need to. Yeah. I just want to know -- be -- be prepared so we can know which ones Council is okay dropping from the survey. It doesn't mean we can't try to still do them and add them in, but by the end of the week anything that you would be okay removing would be helpful. And my guess is we will probably just work with the Council President if we ask -- if we add any in or remove any to inform him through that before -- but we will notify the Council overall of the final product and when it would start going out to the community so you are aware of that. Cavener: Great. Simison: Okay. Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it. Miles: You are welcome. Simison: Thanks for pinch hitting. Okay. With that, Council, we are at the end of the Items on the agenda. Is there a motion to adjourn? Overton: Mr. Mayor, I move we adjourn. Little Roberts: Second. Simison: Motion to adjourn. All in favor signify by saying aye. Opposed nay? The ayes have it. We are adjourned. MOTION CARRIED: FOUR AYES. TWO ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5.04 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) MAYOR ROBERT SIMISON 7-7-2026 ATTEST: CHRIS JOHNSON - CITY CLERK 7-7-2026