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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007 10-09 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 The Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, October 9, 2007 by President Councilman Joe Borton. Members Present: Keith Bird, David Zaremba, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. Members Absent: Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Staff Present: Bill Nary, Matt Ellsworth, Joe Silva, John Overton, Bruce Freckleton, Anna Canning, Len Grady and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Charlie Rountree O X Joe Borton X Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: We have been asked to add Item Number 12, Benefits for FY08 and move 12 to 13. With that I move we approve the revised Agenda and also to add on the Executive Session "a" along with "f'. Rountree: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda as amended. All those in favor say aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Item 3. Update of East 3`d Street Study: Borton: We are going to kind of feel out this format as we go. Item Number 3, the update on East 3~d Street. Matt it looks like you are up. We all have been presented some written materials before us and we will turn it over to you. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 2 of 41 Ellsworth: Thank you Mr. President and Members of the Council. Several weeks ago, we came before you with a 3~d Street update and this is the update on the study that will identify a route to extend 3`d Street north to Fairview to provide some relief for the Main, Meridian corridor. At Council's direction city staff has been working with MDC staff and the consultant to finalize the scope, develop cost estimates and bring those back to you. In the packet that I distributed before the meeting there is a brief rundown of the scope, some of the primary components as well as the entire scope and a little bit of background on this study to date. Last fiscal year Council budgeted $20,000 for this study for use in FY07. In the meantime, having transferred into FY 2008 now the funds that were previously budgeted for this study were carried over into the general fund reserve. So in order to move forward with this study, the primary request that staff was interested in bringing to you this evening was Council's approval of staff initiating the budget amendment process to transfer those funds from the general fund reserve back into the Planning Department budget for FY 2008. Turning over briefly to the final draft scope, the three alignments that have been identified for further study are 2 '/2, 3~d Street and also 4~' Street. The process will entail stakeholder and public involvement component, one on one stakeholder interviews as well as broader public open house to factor into the identification of a preferred alignment. Also considered in that criteria will be cost, existing conditions and so forth. As far as the schedule is concerned, the consultant anticipates five and one half months for those to proceed to conclude the study. So, with that I would entertain any questions that the Council has about the scope or the other request that is before you. Borton: Matt can you give us an outline of ACHD - I know you made reference earlier that they are going to be involved in the entire process. Is there any concern that this could all be completed or not be approved or accepted? Ellsworth: I have to have another discussion with ACRD staff to gage that. It is anticipated that ACHD would participate in the stakeholder interviews, as well as the public involvement meetings, but until we had the finalized scope and had the preliminary nod from Council we didn't want to bring that back over to shop it around all that much. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: On that subject I would comment that when Meridian and ACHD were jointly doing the study that eventually led to the split corridor subject, Terry Little and other ACHD people were very interested in discussing this exact subject and the consultant who we retained kept reminding us that that was outside of his scope, so we didn't pursue it; but I do know that ACRD looks on this as an important decision to be made and I think they are ready to help us which ever way we go. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 3 of 41 Borton: Council it looks like the request and the similar request is going to go before MDC to split the $40,000 expense evenly goes before their Board on October 10th. Any questions for Matt or concern over given direction to drive forward with this? Rountree: I think the Council had previously given that direction and I think we need to continue on. Borton: I agree. Zaremba: Consensus. Ellsworth: Thank you. Borton: Matt do you have an idea of how soon that budget amendment would come back? Ellsworth: Finance Department anticipates anywhere from three weeks to a month to have the amendment work through the process. It would be subject to a hearing back before Council in the meantime. Borton: Thanks Matt. Item 4. Discussion of Gated Communities: Borton: We have received the email and then again today some materials on the gated community discussion. I am not sure exactly who or where this topic originated with, but I know Ms. Canning is going to start tonight's talk and presentation. Canning: President Borton and Members of the Council I know that there is actually a representative from Oaas Laney here that has some specific proposals. I briefly saw his presentation as I was loading it up. So that may be an appropriate place to start because I think this discussion tonight was initiated tonight by Oaas Laney in their desire to do some gated communities within the study. So, if I could punt I would like to at this point. Borton: Consider it punted. If you could go ahead and state your name and address for the record; I appreciate you coming aut. Bivens: My name is Steven Bivens and t live at 1001 Sleepy Hollow in Garden City, Idaho and I represent Oaas Laney, so thank you for having me Mr. President and Council. We put together a brief presentation on gated Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 4 of 41 communities and what we think it might add to Meridian and kind of addressing some of the concerns that maybe the city might have and not allowing currently and (inaudible). This is just a general description of what a gated community is. Gated community is a residential neighborhood characterized by a perimeter wall and fences containing controlled entrances for pedestrian bicycles and automobiles. Moving forward this is the current standard as we found it in the city code that gates or other obstacles should not be allowed. So it is pretty clear. So why do people want to live in gated communities? This has come from a book produced by (inaudible). She did an eight year study and these are the main points of why people like to live in gated communities through her years of study - a sense of community, safe havens for children, investment protection, well maintained communities, fear of crime or unfamiliar people and the needs and wants of retirees are the main reasons why people have chosen to move into gated communities. What we did is we chose a few gated communities that are currently within the city limits of Meridian. These are the four that we have chosen and kind of posed a couple of questions to them -why have you chosen to live there? Do you feel safer there? These are some of the comments that we have gotten from people that actually live in those communities within the City of Meridian. Most people feel that they are safer there and that they do have a good sense of community within the gated community. I would like to point out that through all of our research, I haven't found out at least that the gated communities are any safer than any other community because Police Departments are very quick to respond to everywhere, but it is a perception thing. It is not necessarily a reality thing, but people do like to feel safer. In the study published by the Urban Land Institute, they polled people that lived in gated communities and they asked them what was the importance of security in choosing that gated community and it was almost 70 percent of the people polled, so that was very important. Going a little bit further, they were asked do you believe that you have less crime in your community and about 70 percent again said yes and of those that said yes, 80 percent of those believed in this because of the gates. I had gone through some of the other city codes and talked to some city planners in and around the Treasure Valley and it appears that Meridian is the only one that strictly does not allow gated communities; it appears that they all allow (inaudible) PUD and that the city planners can choose to deny or accept that plan. These are what we feel are the advantages to having a gated community might be for the City of Meridian; increased property values. We have found in common studies having a gated community might increase single family residences by upwards of $50,000 a unit. Based on the 2005 Census Bureau, over 6 percent of the nation's population lives within gated communities and that has been rising. There is a large group of people that like to live in gated communities. Borton: Steve can I ask you one quick question? Do you have a resource you used -that first item you mentioned $50,000, I don't see a cite. Where do you come up with that figure? Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 5 of 41 Bivens: You know actually in some of my research, I stole that off of the Palm Desert Police Department's website. So it is not a high level -that is where I found it from. Borton: Fair enough. Bivens: But there has been in some U.S. Today articles, we did see that they retain their value a little bit better if the surrounding area's value decreased, it wouldn't decrease as much, and it would retain its value stronger than surrounding areas. So, I can get you those if you would like that. Borton: sure. Bivens: The last point there is typically within a gated community you have private roads and things that lead to a less dependency on city resources. Some disadvantages that we could come up with is exclusion from surrounding citizens that they might feel that putting up gates because they are scared of the surrounding citizens or they want to be isolated and the other is access to the community for emergency personnel. Some of our solutions for that are commonly used are knock box rapid entry system or there are some communities that are starting to use an "e" key system, which their responders would have a communicator, like a garage door opener in the car that would work throughout the city. So, we are proposing that we modify Meridian's current ordinances to allow gates. (Inaudible) will primarily address a growing population and a large population and the desire to live in a gated community and feed that need and from our research Meridian is the only city in the Treasure Valley that does not allow the gated communities. So, we kind of think that it would serve Meridian well to have their people go elsewhere to live. Proposed action - Oaas Laney would like to lead the effort to draft an amendment to the current city code, which will do research on current ordinances in other communities and prepare the amendment. I would like to get the City Attorney's consent on the language and then present it at a later date to the Council. Are there any questions? Borton: Thank you Steve. Council any questions? Rountree: I have none. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would just comment that on further actions that since the current ordinance was also reviewed by the Planning and Zoning Commission before recommendation to this Council that they should be made a part of any process that would end up here. Bivens: Okay. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 6 of 41 Canning: President Borton. Borton: Anna. Canning: I think what Oaas Laney is hoping for tonight is a nod as to whether Council will consider an amendment. You can't promise them anything tonight because they really need to come to you with a text amendment that would go to the Planning and Zoning Commission and before public hearings. But, I think they are hoping to gain some insight as to whether Council would entertain this idea or not. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would agree to that wholeheartedly because Iwas - I think gated communities are very nice. I would be the first to state that if my wife and I were to sell and move it would definitely be into a gated community. As you get older and want to travel more and leave your place and I know it is just aperception - I think there are ways now that the Fire and the Police are going to yell and scream and everything, but I can tell you that they have got opticom systems and they got this and they got that that will open those gates up. So this one Councilman would go ahead and draw a text amendment up and bring it back. Canning: President Borton we do have comments from the Planning staff and all the other staffs. Borton: Iwas just going to make reference to that and from what I have heard and I will let Deputy Chief Silva start and Lt. Overton and we have gotten good comments; particularly the comments concerning the Middle Ages. Iwas going to ask you to give us a historical perspective over the years when I read that. (Inaudible) all persuasive to me as far as the concerns that Planning and Fire and Police have cited, so I guess Deputy Chief Silva t will turn it over to you first to outline some of your concerns. I think, Steve, you need to hear them and at least for me they are huge hurdles while we can give a nod for the process to go forward, they might be insurmountable in my eyes in light of the public safety concerns as I see it. So, Deputy Chief Silva if you want to give a synopsis of the fire issues and then Police and Planning as well? Silva: President Borton and Members of the Council have you received some correspondence from the Fire Chief with respect to this issue? Borton: Yes, we did. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 7 of 41 Silva: Okay. I am not going to belabor those points. However, I have been in council settings where we have talked extensively about the issues of connectivity and it seems like those things are the things that we try to promote as a city -connectivity and pedestrian friendly environments, as well as providing for essential service like Police, Fire and EMS and anything that we have that delays our response into our community or requires that we go around a given subdivision to gain entry to a place where we could have driven through a subdivision to access an adjacent street within an adjacent subdivision. That connectivity becomes extremely important and something we strive to work towards in all of our plans review for subdivision approvals. But, anything that we do that delays that -because there is no real universal way of making entry -the Fire Department in Meridian does have a standard way as he alluded to in his presentation about the knocks box key presentation; however, with that being said not all emergency responders universally have the same capability. As an example, the Police do not have the opticom system. A lot of departments use the opticom as a censor and they don't have our knocks box capability. So those limitations do hamper emergency response, not to mention other services that (inaudible) provided by other agencies within the city as an example, the garbage company making their pick up and delivery. You know there has to be provisions for all of those services that have to come in and provide services to those residents within those communities. I was going to let the Police comment on that, but you have read the Fire Chief's comments and those are some of the concerns that I would have to kind of just add to that. Borton: Lieutenant Overton. Overton: President Borton, Members of the Council I am really not going to harp on the middle ages. I thought that was interesting to find out where the history of them came from and we really aren't that far from the same belief as we are trying to build something to protect people on the inside. My hat is off to the applicant because I don't think he tried to sugar coat it. They use the word perception a lot and in many cases these gated communities are marketed that way and one of the reasons for the $50,000 more per lot figure that you threw out because I have the exact same number, so I probably read the same study you did was marketing. You could get $50,000 more because of the perception that people would have moving into that feeling safer. Unfortunately, when we started looking at a lot of the different studies on the crime effects inside a gated community they were very temporary. They were temporary in about a three to five year period the rate of crime inside the gated communities would rise to the same levels as those outside. Your traffic would be down. Your vehicle vandalisms would be sky high because on general random patrol, police don't go into gated communities. It is a hassle. They are doing random patrol and they are not getting inside those gated communities to do access and it is very easy in cases of vehicle vandalism cases, which we do suffer from in this city that all they have to do is watch a gate and know whether someone is coming in. So it doesn't allow us the element of surprise. Some crimes are obviously going to be Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 8 of 41 lower and then some crimes unfortunately are obviously going to be higher inside a gated community because although it protects the citizens, it can also protect a criminal once he is on the inside and we are on the outside. One of the real problems with having security inside a gated community and this has been seen in various parts of the country in doing it because we are since 1992 seeing a boom in gated communities in the south and other parts of the United States is in the perception of security, you have construction workers that have codes to get in. You also have, once people have moved in, you end up with pizza delivery drivers and the other fast food drivers getting codes to get into those. Now the type of gates and I know when I wrote and sent it to Council there are three different types of gated communities and the one that we are basically outlining here is called a lifestyle gated community. You are probably not going to be putting a security officer or security force in place. So you are really depending on the structure itself to keep people out and keep the good people safe. So there really is nobody watching and so you don't know 24 hours a day who is coming in and who is going out because it is basically only recording a number. The third major area that causes us concern of course is access because as Chief Silva pointed out, we don't have some of the tips and tricks in our cars that you do in some of the fire trucks. So, we would be waiting outside to get in. In most cases, most calls that we deal with, 80 percent or better are low priority calls, but it is that emergency call that those people on the inside that need immediate response we are not going to be able to get to them immediately because we are going to have a barricade in our way until we can get through that. With that I would stand for any questions. Borton: Thank you. Council any questions? Ms. Canning? I know Planning provided some comments as well. Canning: Yes, sir and I will try and summarize them that the first set of comments that I provided were in relationship to the Comprehensive Plan and to call out a number of specific action policies that were in conflict with the idea of a gated community. Three of those were pretty much in relationship to interconnected pathway systems and greenbelts. Most gated communities are trying to restrict foot traffic through the development as well as vehicular traffic. So, our ability to get the interconnected greenbelts and pathway system that we have been looking for kind of falls apart if there is a gated community in the center of that section. The second set of policies, which I think there is four of them were more addressed to vehicular and it talks about street connections between subdivisions at regular intervals to enhance connectivity and renewed development for appropriate opportunities to connect to local roads and collectors in adjacent developments. Develop methods such as cross access agreements to reduce a number of existing access points; restrict curb cuts and access points. So these are all about trying to minimize the traffic we put on the collectors in arterial roads through interconnected, be it driveways or streets in this case. So we are always looking for those street connections and that is one of the greatest concerns that I have with this is that we fight for every single Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 9 of 41 street connection we can get. Every street stub that goes into commercial development, I am here fighting to get that extended you know. I mean we fight for every street and interconnectivity that we can get and to just say oh if you want to do gates then you don't have to do the interconnectivity, just the really doesn't ring true for me. It seems to impose a real different set of standards on these folks and I don't know how we deal with that in a code way. So those are the comp plan issues. With regard to the zoning ordinance the applicant has shown you the one restriction regarding gates, but there really is a lot more to deal with. It is the whole set up that we have for private streets are really called into question. Right now we allow private streets in really three different locations. One is when the Fire Chief needs it for addressing purposes on a commercial project; we ask for a private street so that we can get it named and get addresses in there. The second one is for multi-family developments, which is basically the same issue. We want to be able to get a street and the addresses in there. The third is we cut an allowance in the code for a reduced street section for what we call the (inaudible) developments -kind of half an alley and half a street and we came up with a new standard because ACHD didn't have anything to accommodate it, but ACHD has been working long and hard on revised street standards and they have something that will replace basically that third private street for the (inaudible). So once ACHD has that in place I was hoping to do a text amendment to actually not allow that as a private street anymore because we see the best interest of the city as having public streets that we know will be maintained. You can talk to other communities where they have got private streets -the maintenance issues of those are huge and over the long term they tend not to get very well maintained and become blight areas. We can all hope that we are not talking about that and maybe the value stays up on these, but the responsibilities for maintenance on those roads is huge and we would prefer to see them as public roads. So, we have got two issues. We have got this private street issue because they need that and most of the time they want single family lots and our code specifically says if you want single family lots on a private street, we don't allow for it. So it is not just the gate issue, it is the private street issue. The state code says you can't have an interconnected system of private streets. If there is a Highway District established for that county, you can't have an interconnected system of private streets. That is another reason why we have really tried to minimize the private street connections because the state code says they should be public streets. We would do it again in multi-family because that is a little unusual area. The way that developers are kind of getting around this is they essentially do amulti-family development condo off the individual houses and then sell it that way as basically a single family condo unit. It doesn't ring true to the intent of the ordinance. The other communities that do it allow it by a planned unit development. Our planned unit development ordinances do allow you to ask for exceptions to standards. That is the whole idea behind a PUD is you can ask for exceptions to standards. They would have to meet the PUD requirements, which say that you have to be doing something new and innovative or trying to get a more dense project in there, so you need some allowances for beyond what our code calls for. So that Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 10 of 41 PUD option is out there. We did amend that recently to open it up for a little higher density. You would have to be doing a unique, kind of innovative project. The gate probably in and of itself probably wouldn't qualify as innovations, but that option does exist in our PUD ordinance. The other one with regard to the gates or other obstacles shall not be allowed. That is a rather easy fix. The hard fix is the whole private and the inner-connected system of private streets. If there are two gates on this community, can you go from a public street to a private street to a public street again? What problems or challenges does that provide to ACRD, to garbage, to Fire, to Police and all of those folks? I did ask Lori Denhartag or someone from ACHD to talk about the implications for the private streets and the gated streets with regards to ACRD. Borton: Okay thank you Anna. Lori we appreciate you coming tonight. Denhartag: For the record, Lori Denhartag and I will give you my business address, 3775 Adams Street in Garden City with Ada County Highway District. Anna and I have talked about this issue a little bit. It has come up in some of the other jurisdictions that we serve. Some of the primary concerns for the Highway District would be the same as your Police and Fire Departments has stated as well as your Planning staff has stated. Connectivity would be one of the main concerns of the Highway District - if we have required an adjacent development to stub a public street, we have a project that comes in, proposes a gated community and we are not looking at extending that, then essentially we have placed conditions on an adjacent property owner that no longer serve that project. So you know a developer has put time, effort and money into constructing a public stub street and now all of sudden everybody says, sorry we don't need it anymore, thanks for your investment. So I think that is one of the concerns that we have certainly when we are requiring public stub streets, we are anticipating that we will require the extension or connection to those in the future. That is certainly why we require them as a beginning point. One of the other concerns and maybe just as a point of interest as Anna mentioned, if the streets are to be gated the Highway District would not allow them to be public. Probably in any given year we get anywhere between five and ten requests from property owners living on private streets asking us to take over their private roadways. They no longer can pay for the maintenance or upkeep of their roads. Their roads have perhaps got along fine and well and they have done some limited maintenance for any number of years and they get to a certain point and they just say we don't have the funds as a homeowner's association to maintain these roads or to a reconstruction on the roads and then they come to the Highway District and say can you please take our road as a public road. So we received those requests probably on a monthly basis and all over the county on existing private roads. I think the long term maintenance costs are certainly a concern and whether or not a homeowner's association, some of them are certainly large enough and are set up well enough to be able to handle that long term maintenance cost, but I think it is important to consider the viability of those homeowner's associations maintaining the streets for the long term because that Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 11 of 41 certainly is a concern and certainly is a question that we face and often times we have seen a number of private streets when they come to us they make a lot of sense that they do become public, but then you are talking often about reconstructing whole roadways so that they can meet current public standards. Most often it is in drainage systems that they face the most cost that they are looking at reconstructing because perhaps they weren't constructed to public standards initially. If something like this were to come forward and it would come to the Highway District for comment, I think you would see comments particularly from our staff related to -you know if there was some really important connections that we have been looking at recommendations to require public streets and not allow the gates. In some limited circumstances, you know the Highway District may see that maybe we are back in a corner, there are no other existing stub streets where perhaps it could work and maybe that is a situation Anna is talking about where that type of application could be made through your planned unit development process. But I think that is some of the things certainly like Anna said, you know, every stub street seems Pike we battle for it, we fight for it because we think they are important. We think interconnectivity between the neighborhoods is important and that seems what many of our communities are striving for. I know some of the communities in Boise, some of the H qua{ified communities that we have seen, I know that they have done some private streets, not necessarily gated, but there has been some newer projects in Boise. I think some of the residential ones are just being sold. There is a project on Cloverdale and Ustick that is just underway. They provided limited connection points to the public street system, but they did connect in some ways; they don't have gates, but they wanted controlled entry points. So they just reduced their number of access points, which of course we are supportive of particularly on Cloverdale. So I think there might be some ways to achieve some of the things they are looking at, perhaps without doing gated communities. Certainly if this moved forward we would work with your staff and commenting on that and more than likely it would have to be a case by case basis in terms of the Highway District's review for the need for connectivity and things of that nature. Then what Anna was saying related to your current private street ordinance we are looking at bringing forward some policy changes to allow some reduced street sections; been working with your Fire Department and other Fire Department's in the Valley and in the county to come up with that in response to a lot of the projects we have been seeing where these homes were facing on the green or facing on the mew that you have seen here in Meridian. So, we are striving to find creative solutions to provide public access to these properties. I think Meridian had found - in your new code, I think you had found a creative solution to allow it where perhaps the Highway District was lagging behind. I think we are there now and so we are hoping we can move forward with that and allow public street access for these people. I would be happy to stand for questions. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 12 of 41 Rountree: Lori you indicated that on a monthly basis, ACHD receives a request to take over private roads. What is the percentage of those requests that are honored? Denhartag: It would probably be less than 10 percent. Most often the costs - the roads were not constructed to our standards. There are some tests that they can do; you know to verify the construction of the road. We will review the previous plans or some testing that they have to do. Most often it is in the drainage systems that they faced the most costs because then we say if you want to convert that to a public street, you have to bring it up to public street standards which may ultimately end up costing the neighborhood more money than the money that they would have to put into it for the maintenance. That has been a concern. There are a limited number of circumstances where we have a development come through. They are perhaps not prepared to tum it over as a public street at the time of development. They construct it to our standards. We review the plans. We inspect the construction and at a time when they are ready and they make that request, we can accept those. So there are some limited times where developers, for whatever reasons have gone through that process, but then they have gone through upfront testing and inspection and plan review to insure that it has been constructed to public standards. Rountree: So is that a requirement that is viewed when on those few instances when the requests are accepted that they meet a standard, not necessarily a current standard? Denhartag: Currently it is that they meet the current standard. We do try to in circumstances perhaps where they are close, we do try to work with them. We do have an instance, an example in Garden City is actually the street that serves their Post Office and City Hall is currently a private street. So we are working with Garden City. They have some major drainage issues over there to handle that existing street drainage, but we see the benefit of a public street serving the City Hall and the Post Office over there. Rountree: Thank you. Borton: Any other questions Council? Rountree: I have none. Grady: Mr. President, Members of the Council as far as Public Work's issues as long as we have reasonable access to our water and sewer easements, we don't have too many concerns. In the case of an upset condition, we don't have to be there in minutes, but we would have to be able to get in in tens of minutes otherwise things could get ugly. Provided we have guaranteed access 24 /7 we are fine. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 13 of 41 Borton: Eric Oaas, I see you have raised your hand. Oaas: President Borton, City Council Members, Eric Oaas, 519 W. Front, Boise. I just wanted, if I could just take a few minutes and maybe we could respond to some of the concerns that have been expressed and maybe a little bit of perspective from our standpoint. First of all, I think that I {ived in a gated community and not really because I was seeking a gated community when I moved into it, but I particularly liked the lot and ended up building there. I have found, however, that my experience in living there I have encountered all of the issues that have really been brought forth here. Specifically the security issue with the (inaudible) Police Department. It is in Garden City by the way. What we have done in our community is we have a camera system that is mounted. ft looks like a birdhouse mounted at the entrance gate and so -the camera system records everybody coming in and out of the development everyday, every minute of the day and it is well lighted. So it actually gives whether we like it or not, it does give us the opportunity to go back when there is specific vandalism to go back and look at that specific period of time and find exactly or at least narrow done the potential for who might be coming in and creating a vandalism. It is certainly not fail safe, but it does actually provide an ability to sort of give us better information. The patrols that Garden City does in our subdivision are normal. Any time I see the Garden City patrol officers going through the outer subdivision, they make their way into our subdivision as well. So it doesn't seem to be impeding - again, I am just giving you my personal experience, so I can't generalize, but it doesn't seem to be impeding their ability to patrol in our gated community. The interconnectivity issue I really believe from a walking path perspective, again relating to what we have done is we have a gate, but it is not locked and so visitors and people walking dogs and pets and children, come in and out all of the time. I walk my dog all of the time in the development and I see all kinds of interesting people and actually I have very pleasant conversations. But, it isn't a situation where nobody is allowed to come in and go out on the residence. It is just a nice place to walk. By the way, the walking paths through the development go out and connect right up to the greenbelt through a gate that isn't locked either. So we see an awful lot of people walking through the development. So the interconnectivity from a walking path perspective is just not there. The interconnectivity issue is not there. With regard to the private streets issue, yes, we do bare the cost in our homeowner's association of maintaining our roads and we completely recognize that and by the way we have set aside funds over a long period of time and just last year we actually repaved all the private roads and development. So from our perspective we are willing to bare the costs and by the way we have put our money where our mouth is and it works. The stub street issue, the interconnectivity with stub streets and adjoining property is an interesting, I guess and I guess my concern there is if you preclude the Council's ability to take a look at the specific merits of a particular proposed development. In our case, the development that ultimately that we would like to bring forth to the Council is on the corner of Victory and Locust Grove and the Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 14 of 41 nature of that piece of property, from an interconnectivity standpoint is just extremely difficult because of the natural barriers through the property. We have got Cana{; we have got Ten Mile Creek and so these are sort of natural barriers that don't really promote a lot of interconnectivity to the Tuscany Subdivision. So, to me it doesn't make a lot of sense to say that gosh, we are sort of creating this situation where the stub street or the interconnectivity to an adjoining subdivision just doesn't work - it sort of hampers that ability. Where in this case, there is some natural characteristics through the property that create barriers in and of themselves. So, if you sort of preclude a developer from bringing something to you and saying here is what we proposed, we would like to do a gated community and we sort of fit it in with the natural barriers of this specific piece of property. That is sort of taking that decision-making out of your hands, where we think it should be. I guess I would close with the concept of a PUD is as Ms. Canning has proposed as being the only way to really look at the Council or a developer bringing to the Council a proposal for private streets. In our case we had what we thought was avery -was it innovative? I wouldn't say it was innovative, but we had a very wonderful development that we had planned initially on that piece of property and because of our inability to really get that to work within the current ordinances, we basically weren't able to find a way to bring it -and all due respect to Ms. Canning, she tried to work with us to find a way to make it happen, but it just wouldn't work. We couldn't make it pencil based on the density. However, we believe that we have done with that piece of property is we think we found a way to make it work - we acquired some adjoining property, but at the end of the day we would like to bring back to the Council - (Tape turned over) Oaas: -- a particular concept, which we think had an awful lot of merit. So in summary, we would just as a developer, we just like to have that specific language removed from the ordinance to give you, as a Council, the opportunity to look at a specific project and determine whether it makes sense or not. Why close the door and take that decision out of your hands? Thank you very much. Borton: Thank you, Eric. The purpose of the discussion is just that a discussion and I applaud you for coming forward, Eric and Steve with the information you presented. It is clearly not the time we are actually making a decision on whether or not gated communities are to be allowed and an ordinance should be amended, it is whether or not the Council wants to give the head nod to encourage you to go forward and spend the time, knowing good and well that you can spend a lot of time and effort, investigation and try and resolve lots of the concerns that we have heard today and come before the Council and that amendment might not be approved and I know you understand that and appreciate the early jump you are trying to get on it. The overriding - I will give you my two bits. The overriding concern that I would have understanding that we are not making any obligation going forward - is that any removal of the no Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 15 of 41 fence, or excuse me, no gate restriction would need to preserve the cities, all city services unfettered access to the property as though it were a public street? It is immediate 24 /7 for Public Works, Fire, and Police as best as possible and that may not be achievable. That might be asking too much, so when I talk about my initial hesitancy, again it might be something insurmountable for me, but I don't know if would sit here today and say I don't want to encourage you to try and investigate some way to solve the problem, but it seems like that is your request. That is where I stand on it and it would be fine going forward if there is some way to try and do the near impossible, maybe. At least in my eyes. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Along those same lines, the one statement that there shall be no gates or obstructions across public roadways or whatever the exact quote is doesn't really give the sense of how much staff time has already been spent on what it resulted in being in that one sentence. I was on the Mayor's Process Improvement Group that helped write the new Unified Development Code. I have said that plenty of times. We struggled for a long time on that subject and the struggle was trying to come up with the requirements that could be met that would meet the needs. We discussed the false sense of security and whether we even wanted to offer a false sense of security to the citizens. We discussed the connectivity measures and all the others and we actually even kept that longer than we might have and I don't know if the Mayor has changed her perspective, but at the time, she wanted us to keep at it. Her statement essentially was there are people who want gated communities and why should they have to go to Eagle to get them. We want to be inclusive in Meridian and we did struggle for a long time to come up with criteria that worked. So on the one hand, I would applaud and welcome your effort to come up with better criteria than we could that will satisfy the needs, not to speak for the Mayor but l think that she would too unless she has changed her mind in the few years since then. The one thing that I would ask though is since you have offered to take this on that it not involve a lot of our staff time. Our staff has made their issues clear and our Planning and Zoning staff has spent a lot of time when they are writing the UDC, as I say much more than that one sentence would indicate. So certainly consult with them when you feel you need to, but please don't lean on them for much of the work because I don't think that is fair to them as well. They certainly will put time into commenting on it and you need to work with them to get the best comments that you can, but I think my statement would be go forward if you can come up with something better than what has already been discussed, I would do my best to be open minded. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. President. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 16 of 41 Rountree: It is always nice to have a black and white ordinance because it makes it really easy for us and I really appreciate that at times. But, many years ago, I got through the tough pronunciation of that little two letter word "no". l don't have a problem saying no if I don't think the project is right. We are on a regular occasion look at variances to our ordinances and variances to situations that are cut and dried. I think there might be cases where gated communities will work in Meridian. We have got some that work in Meridian. I don't know that we have ahistory -well we live in a neighborhood where there are four of them. I don't know that they are a burden at this point and time. I guess if we had 400 of them they might be. I don't see that happening, but I think if Eric and company are interested in trying to come up with a solution that we might consider, I am open to that. I am not saying I am going to agree with it, but if you want to expend your energies more power to you. 1 would say let's take a look at it and let's take a look at it with our eyes wide open and we have got a great staff that has told us the kinds of issues that they have helped us avoid with a black and white ordinance, so we might not necessarily want to fall into that vague category, but let's take a look at it and see what we come up with. Borton: Councilman Bird. Bird: Well, I think I have pretty well stated mine. I have no problem with it. I would and I would be truthful with you, (wouldn't - if I was to move from my place, I would buy in a gated community, but that is not going to happen. I would be real interested in the Fire and the Police telling me what problems they have with (inaudible) and them going in there because I have road with Police Officers and we have drove through gated communities, not like a public. Driving through them - in fact I just went out there the other day and drove through two of them. I hate to say this with an ACRD lady here, but I would sooner drive on their roads than I would on our public roads. Anyway, I encourage Eric to go forward. I think they are an asset to the community. I am like Charlie, I don't think I would want 400 of them, but I think they are a real asset to the community. Canning: Councilman Borton. Can I make a suggestion for Mr. Oaas? Borton: Anna. Canning: I haven't looked at our PUD standards since we adopted them because no one has ever used them. We did go back and open up the purpose statement recently for some because no one is using them so obviously there is no benefit to it right now. I would go and look at the PUD stuff because I think that that project was close to a PUD and I was just looking at it. Even the existing PUD's do allow for private streets. So we have already kind of contemplated some private streets in a PUD, so I think that that would be the best way to go, if we go down this route. It is more onerous, but that means we get four instead of 400 and it does require a higher level of design and detail, but Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 17 of 41 I think that those are the kind of insurances that the Council will need ultimately in order to approve that kind of community as well. So, I would encourage you to look at text modifications in that area. Borton: Thanks Anna. Eric it looks like you have got the nod to go forth and begin the process. I appreciate the efforts and keep us and staff posted with timing and when you expect to have something back. Oaas: President Borton and Council we appreciate it. We will go back and we will be very sensitive to taking an undue amount of time with the staff. We understand how busy they are. We will be in touch. Item 5. Review of Personal Services Contracts for Inspection Services in the Building Department: Borton: We have got these emailed to us in advance by Bruce. I didn't even see you come in. We appreciate you sending those out in advance and I will turn it over to you. Freckleton: Well good evening. When we were before you with the fees a few weeks next back, Mayor brought up that it was about time for contracts, which I had been working on and as Councilman Borton said I emailed these out to you guys I think about two weeks ago trying to get some feedback if you wanted to see any changes and that sort of thing. I did get a couple of comments. At Councilman Borton's request we put it on the agenda tonight for any open discussion that you might want to have. So, with that I will stand for any questions you might have or suggestions. Borton: Bruce the only thing that I saw that jumped out and maybe it is not a concern and Mr. Nary is not here is the liability policy is at least a million. I don't know if that is enough for some of the work that they are doing -maybe should be higher? The increased cost might be negligible - or maybe that is not a concern. Bird: Mr. President I think that that has been a standard policy that we had. I am with you. I would like to see a million with adouble -most of them do have double indemnity on -you know it automatically goes to two million and stuff like that, but I question the million dollars, but I think that is basically what our requirements (inaudible--). Borton: Mr. Nary the question that I had asked - just a question of concern and maybe not a real big one is whether or not the million dollar minimum liability was sufficient? Whether it should be a little higher? That doesn't get you very higher today in courtrooms. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 18 of 41 Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council certainly that is a negotiable point. Maybe what we could do is have that discussion with our insurance agent to see if he has a recommendation or if it should be higher, maybe five or ten million. Obviously the cost for that goes up I would guess substantially for the higher ones. Hasn't it been, if I am correct Bruce, we have had these million dollar standards in there for as long as I remember? Bird: We had it to five hundred when you come on. Nary: I think there probably was the belief that because of the tort claim statute that might buy you some additional, I guess, liability exposure, but I don't know. I certainly think we can explore it. I don't know what is an appropriate amount and they obviously are going to want some of that cost to be recouped somehow, but we certainly could explore where five or ten million would be more appropriate. Maybe it is not the same all the way across the board. I mean, some of the trade types of inspectors' liability risk may be significantly less than the building inspectors for example. Some of the larger building inspector ones probably have a higher risk to them than the plumbing contractor might. Borton: I don't ask it to make an impediment to approval of these particular contracts, but it is just something that jumped out and I don't know if - Nary: Maybe if Bruce has an opportunity or Mr. Berg or myself, but between now and when we bring them we can at least have that contact with our insurance agent to see if he has at least a recommendation for us. Freckleton: Is the tort claim limit $500,000? Nary: Yes. Berg: General liability is a million I think for the city and that is probably where we came up with that million dollars. If I remember I think that is what Bill Nichols recommended to just make it the million. But the question is where does it quit from the city's liability to their personal liability and that is where they need to be more concemed with. Nary: Right. They may be indemnifying us for a million dollars. They may be wanting to have their own ten million dollar policy or five million or whatever and that may be in their best interest, but what they indemnify us for is really all we are concerned with. Borton: Okay, it is on for the 16th on coming back, so again I don't have any concern if you have an answer before the 16th or not. Something to be aware of. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 19 of 41 Freckleton: It is something I could certainly coordinate through Will and we can get an answer to that. Berg: We can send those agreements to ICRMP and just ask that specific question of what would you recommend those limits be and they probably would come back to us well the city's exposure is this much, but maybe a recommendation to each of those individual, I guess they are limited liability corporations or some kind of a company where their limits may need to be not just a million dollars. Nary: So we could probably send them both to our insurer, All American as well as ICRMP both and just get their feedback. We could do that. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: Just a question on that and maybe Len might have -what kind of insurance liability do we get from the engineers and stuff that we hire that draw our sewer plants and stuff --? Or our plants out at the Wastewater Treatment - that is where your biggest neck stuck out. Grady: Mr. President, Members of the Council generally we are a million dollars. It used to be five hundred like you said and we have gone up to a million and some of those are pretty (inaudible) projects and we are happy with that. Borton: Council any other questions? Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Mr. President and it is not a question it is a statement for Bruce and Len and Bill. As long as the contracts or agreements are written in such a ways that you are comfortable that those folks are accountable to the City of Meridian and that they will work to whatever performance standard they are given then I am okay with it. But if they start wiggling around on that like they have done in the past in terms of who they are accountable to, I want to explore another avenue. I don't want any more phone calls about some of these guys and their own way of doing things because it is their empire because it isn't. It is the City of Meridian. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would like to echo those sentiments because - and I think Bruce has taken care of this and I don't want one subcontractor being the only one that can issue building permits. When he is out of town, we wait weeks for our building permits. I had it happened to two personal people; one a son and one a church Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 20 of 41 because of him being out of town and I think Bruce has taken care of that and I think that is what Mr. Rountree was alluding to and I don't want it either ever again. Grady: Mr. President, Members of the Council regarding that statement Bruce and I have discussed some options recently that we feel by next year we will put some teeth into how we can serve the public better. We are confident that we have a solution. Bird: As a follow up I think the last couple of years ago when we redid the contracts I think we got ourselves in a lot better position, put the city on top instead of on the bottom and now we just have got to make sure that one person doesn't run the whole department. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: It is possible that Councilman Bird just answered my question, but I am going to ask it anyhow. I read one of them fairly thoroughly and scanned the rest of them and they seemed reasonable to me and the points that have been brought up have been good, but my question was going to be the people that were asking to sign these is this the same contract that they have been signing for the last two or three years and we are just renewing it or are there some surprises in there for them? Freckleton: That is a good question. Mr. President and Councilman Zaremba last year we made some pretty good changes to this contract. We beefed up the accountability; we added some language in there about them doing work in their field of business within the city limits that that is prohibited. We also added a lot of language in there about co-employment issues; you know blurring that line between employee contractor relationship and that sort of thing. These are basically the same contracts as last year. I have changed dates and I wanted to get your input on anything that you might see that you wanted to add this year, but as they stand right now it is identical to last year; just some dates are changed. We have made, 1 feel, some significant improvements in the Building Department in the last two or three years. The level of accountability is a lot better than it used to be. We have got Bret Bjornson downstairs now who is our Building Inspector Coordinator, who is a certified Building Inspector, both commercial and residential. So people coming through the front door to ask questions, we have got a body there that can deal with questions on the phone and in person. We are conducting field surveys satisfaction surveys from our customers to find out if we do have problem areas so that we can address them quickly. We also conduct quarterly meetings with our inspectors to make sure that everybody is on the same page and I feel like we have gained a lot of Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 21 of 41 ground. That is not saying that we don't have more to ground to gain, but I think we have come a long ways. Bird: I would second that. I think Councilman Rountree would too. Rountree: I agree but there is always room for improvement. Borton: We will have them up on the 16tH Freckleton: Do you want me to go ahead and explore the insurance? Bird: As long as Bill and Will are okay with it, I am for it. Freckleton: Okay, thank you. Item 6. Discussion of Proposed Changes to the Private Security License Ordinance: Nary: Mr. President and Members of the Council the first item I have for discussion is a request regarding our private security license. We found a recent application. A person wanted to appeal their denial and what had happened is when the police had done the background check they found a number of criminal offenses, but they were all pretty old, some as old as 35 or 40 years old. But, all of them were outside of the three year window that exists in our ordinance currently. Right now if you ask for a private security license and if you have any criminal offense in the last three years you are not allowed to have one. If it is outside of the last three years it doesn't matter what it is. So if you are on a murder conviction and you were paroled, you can have a security license. You can have a rape conviction you can have a security license. Obviously, in this day and age those are concerning to us and Councilman Borton had asked us to look into that, so I think it should be in your packets a proposed amendment to our ordinance and the other thing that I was looking at is we tried to create a little bit of clarity and the language, but basically for certain types of -for misdemeanor offenses we kept the same three year window. If they had a misdemeanor within the last three years they still wouldn't be entitled to a security license and then we also accepted out certain offenses like firearms, battery and domestic violence types of crimes and we gave those a longer period of time for a solution so those have a five year window. We said if you had a prior felony conviction that you wouldn't be entitled to any security license and we try to distinguish when discussed it in our office on whether or not there were some felony offenses that probably as not as concerning, but it really is harder to sort of split that hair and we felt that it was reasonable from the city's standpoint to exclude that permanently that you wouldn't be entitled to a security license with us. Again I think that the legal basis issue that we would have to wrestle Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 22 of 41 with is what we are trying to prevent of the harm or concern that we have (inaudible) related to what we are basically creating an ordinance for. We felt comfortable enough at least in our staff that we could defend that in relation to felony prior offenses. We also told the time -that was the other thing that was just missing again, our ordinances just old and those types of things just weren't thought of, but it didn't even have any tolling times. So if you had been in jail for ten years for rape and you got out yesterday, but the conviction was ten years ago, you could have it because it didn't make any difference how long ago or whether or not you were in jail the entire time. We put that in the ordinance as well so that the time period does sort of stop. The other question that we have for you to contemplate is that we can bring this particular ordinance forward at any point if it is acceptable to you. But, I have an email correspondence with Ms. Smith, she currently does a lot of the licensing for the Clerk's Office, not all, but she said this standard might be applicable for all of our licenses or at least for the majority of them or for some of the ones that we have for escorts and some of the other types. I asked her if she could identify that or Mr. Berg has an opportunity to identify that we may want to just apply it to the standards for all of them if you would like us to do that. I hadn't prepared it in that fashion. I did it for the private security section. But, we could certainly look at doing that if that is your direction. Borton: Thank you Mr. Nary. Council any questions on the private security license? Rountree: Mr. President just a question. How does the direction we are going in terms of defining who and who can't compare with other communities in the Valley so we don't get cross wise with Boise giving more leniency and having somebody licensed in Boise that is operating occasionally here and you know cross jurisdictional? Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree it is stricter than some of the other cities. I mean, it is already stricter some of it. I got a call the other day from a gentleman who had a DUI a year and one half ago and was denied a security license under our ordinance and he was going to appeal it because he was already granted one in the City of Boise. So they don't have a restriction for that. So, it is probably stricter and probably these standards are significantly stricter than what we already do and maybe much more restrictive than what other cities do. So it really is sort of up to you. The security one is a little concerning to us. I know it is to Mr. Berg as well because again, you are giving people keys and access to buildings after hours; to gated communities after hours; to lots of places that we feel as a city have a responsibility to at least assure the public that people that are doing that have at least not a significant criminal history. Rountree: I don't disagree I was just curious - Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 23 of 41 Nary: I think it is probably stricter than most. That is not a bad thing. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I have too nitpicky or typographical type of questions and one that is actually - in the title in the second line it says qualifications for "s" private - is "s" a typo or should that be the word "a"? Berg: Just so you know I have not gone through my typing teaching corrections yet, so - Zaremba: The automated system wouldn't pick that up anyway. Nary: I think that has the right font for Mr. Berg, but it doesn't necessarily have the right footer yet. So yes that is a typo. Zaremba: So the bold thing where it says 3-8-4 -this whole listing is actually disqualifications, not qualifications in my opinion. Then here is the real question. "A" is not over 18 years of age and I interpret that as they have to be 19, right? Because being 18 is not over 18. But is that the intent that they have to be 19? Nary: The intent is that they have to be 18 and a day. Zaremba: So the wording would have to be is not 18 years of age or older or is not past their 18t" birthday, so if they are past their 18t" birthday they are okay or if they are 18 or older, but not just older than 18? Nary: We can say no person shall be issued a license that is not at least 18 years of age at the time of application or something like that. Zaremba: That is what I was trying to clarify because the way it reads to me is that they would have to be 19. That was it. Berg: Just on another note, Councilman, the Police Department especially Bob Stowe that gets to review them and John in his absence has had some difficulties in dealing with some of these licensing and this really makes a lot clearer and easier for them to approve and deny and have some grounds to do that. Like you said, the Attorney's Office has to defend this, but they are the ones that have to get the initial okay. So it is a lot better for them. Nary: Just for an example, the gentleman that had really old convictions and didn't have anything very recent, but was a concern to the police, we didn't have any grounds to deny it. The gentleman who had a DUI a year and one half ago, which may or may not be the most critical, but certainly it would be an exclusion under our ordinance currently or even if we passed this new one, again this is a Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 24 of 41 different issue but more recent, so we really don't have a reason there. He doesn't have anything to appeal and he is not going to. Those are things that police really do have a struggle when you have -this creates, I think, a better set of guidelines for them. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Another question that comes to mind as you mentioned who security licenses would likely be given to is there any distinction either in our ordinances or state ordinances or whatever between just private security guards and those that would carry a weapon? Nary: We have probably one of the most liberal states in the country for carrying firearms and so there are federal restrictions in regards to domestic violence offenses and so if you have a domestic violence offense pending at a form of judgment and all those things you may not be allowed to carry a firearm. Many the security companies don't carry firearms. I mean many of them don't. They still would be subject to the state law in regards to that and the state law preempts cities from creating different laws in regards to carrying firearms; so we couldn't create a different ordinance restricting the use of that because the state law preempts it. Item 7. Discussion of Proposed Changes to Parking Ordinance: Nary: I am trying to make this the longest ordinance we could ever have. This might seem familiar to you and that is because it is. We were fairly close a few months back to getting this finally back in front of you for final approval. Chief Musser raised some concerns and that provision that's now included here, school and city property, we had been using for certain types of parking offenses and you notice that now that is taken out and we tried to incorporate that into the body of the ordinance. Our intention really was that when you looked up parking in the city code you could look in one place and it would tell you about parking on streets, parking on public property, parking where it is posted, a certain fashion that you were required to obey and that they wouldn't be two or three different spots to look for one type of behavior. So I think we have got that, but then Lt. Overton had some suggestions this morning. So I don't know particularly, but he could certainly raise those and we could talk about them, but all we did with this latest redraft was take the provision of our city code, the school and city property and we took the parking provision out. What Chief Musser told me was that the officer occasionally would be either asked by the School District to enforce on school properties or if they were going to use this in the parks; if they were going to use this for people who either extended stay in the park, parked against Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 25 of 41 regulations that were posted in the parks whether it is time limitations -some of the ones I noticed for example at the pool in Storey Park there are certain areas that are designated for the pool to use. They are posted properly and so that provision allows us to enforce that if we choose. Our here next to City Hall we currently have it posted two hour limited parking, which actually applies to the entire world including our own employees so that has been a little bit troubling, but when we get to a new City Hall and having to deal with parking issues probably more and more as downtown becomes more used we probably will have areas like that so we still need a section to address that in some fashion. Some of it for parking; some of it for other stuff. We try to incorporate that - I am not saying this is perfect. It is hard to read a little bit so I understand that that has been kind of challenging and we are trying to get through it. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Question on that posting of no parking or time or restriction on parking and you mentioned the pool and you mentioned trying to enforce it on the school. I guess the question is can our Police Department enforce parking ordinance on property other than public property or public property that doesn't belong to the City of Meridian? In case of the pool that is Western Ada; in the case of the school is the School District. Nary: Well, it is clear you could have an inter governmental agreement to do that because they are taxing entities between - I don't believe there is any authority in the state code that would allow us to enforce it in a shopping mall. They would have to police that themselves. They could certainly hire their own police force, but I don't think the public taxpayers could do that; but because it is a taxing entity, I think the inter governmental agreement section of the state code is broad enough to allow us to do that. We don't have that currently and that would be something we could do. I think most of the time -when Chief Musser talked to me about it; most of the school property was done by the SRO at the direction of the school, so deals mostly with the high schools. Mostly in just getting kids to obey the school rules, which they have the ability to enforce. Rountree: Yeah, they really couldn't ticket them like - Nary: Right and they didn't ticket them. They could scare them into moving their car. But I'll work with Lt. Overton on his recommended changes, but I did want to at least bring this back to you again and maybe we would bring it back in a few weeks again for an initial discussion or whether we put it on for one reading and in case there are other changes that you would like to see or if you have concerns we could certainly do whatever you would prefer. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 26 of 41 Borton: Bill is this - is there some correlation with what MDC is doing in their parking plan and I know they were having real recent public hearings on time limitations for parking and parking enforcement. Are we going to make this amendment and then add some more amendments real soon thereafter with what MDC comes up with? Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council I thought of that. I had a discussion with Mr. Wardle from MDC about that and of course they are looking at what time limitations and such should be appropriate in the downtown core. This doesn't really impact that. I mean, unless it is in a private lot, it wouldn't really impact that. Most of the street parking is normally going to get enforced by the state code provisions regarding obeying the traffic controlled devices, obeying the signs. There is provisions on here if it was in a city lot, for example, the city owned parking lots this does allow us to cite within that and then they had talked about what enforcement mechanism they would use, police and how they would pay for it and those things. I don't see a conflict. I don't see an amendment necessarily having to follow on the heels of that either because I think the state code allows what we are going to be doing with that. So if it is all right with you I will work with Lt. Overton and you will probably see it again in less than a month, not six months. We will bring it back. Item 8. Discussion of Executive Personnel Benefits Program Policy: Nary: Council this one really is a clean up. We had a discussion a few months back about this particular one. We passed some basically director benefits a few years ago. We enhanced some of our benefit packages for the directors in the city. We found that one of the positions that we had, one of the appointed officials positions that we had wasn't covered by that. You felt that was appropriate. It was the only position that wasn't covered by that you felt was answerable both to the Mayor and the Council and made sense to fit into this program. So this is really just a cleanup of that policy to basically change some of the language, include the appointed officials. It gives some opportunity at the end of that. If you would like you can take it out certainly saying that you can't from time to time direct that if you want other positions included in that, you can do that. We would then just make sure that we track that of which ones have been approved to do that, but we can amend the policy at that point. But, other than that this really just follows the policy that we get implemented previously and then there was a provision here. It is the last bullet and was a discussion that we have had and again this is totally just a discussion point for you if you would like that. It is actually the last two bullets. One of the issues that comes up periodically in the city is that we do our annual increases based on the employee anniversary date and there had been discussion among the directors and with the Mayor about maybe basically taking all of the director positions and putting them at one anniversary date rather than sprinkling them throughout the year, Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 27 of 41 making it more consistent. We had discussed that as a possibility at some point for all of the city to do that. There is some fiscal impact to do that if we did. Right now Finance was not supportive of doing that and my staff who does all of the data entry weren't real supportive of doing that, yet, but we thought it might make sense from the director's standpoint again that the directors know that as we begin each budget year they would basically have all of the anniversary dates be the same and then also the pay could then be reviewed by you folks as well as the Council for the city. If you want that that is fine. If you don't think that's really within your purview that is fine too; whatever you think is appropriate. I was asked to include it for discussion. Borton: Council any questions? Berg: Mr. President at one time we did shift directors to October 1St. So is this a couple of recent ones that were hired that need to be addressed or --? You know because there is just a whole bunch of us that is all of sudden were shot there and the Mayor had to do their evaluations. Bird: I was shocked when - Nary: Yeah, I know Mr. Strong's was not in October. I know Anna's is not in October. I believe Chief Musser's was not in October, so it really just. depends. From what I understood historically, Mr. Berg is right I think they also did this once before. Lt. Overton keeps track of this kind of stuff too, but I think because it was before but what happens is again it is the issue of what happens is do we do this annually for everybody? Do we do it on anniversary dates when people get promoted or what? I don't really have a preference other than it is simpler to me if it was all at once; it is just that it is a lot of paperwork to do all at once. We have discussed with our merits system and we haven't finalized that. We have done some changes to the format a little bit this year that we think will make it a little bit, again a little easier to use. I mean I think we have made it easier and easier to use and I think we are still working on that to make it a real, I guess, continuing breathing document, but one of the things that we talked about was on the PAD's that we use for the employees that we might want to do those, again, not necessarily tie it around annual increases, but do those in the systematic way where the director ones may be done in late spring, April or May time period or June or somewhere in there and then after that the Sr. Managers of those departments within and the PAD process would take period during that period subsequent June or July and then the rest of the employees would be August and September and that way as they filter down from directors to managers to employees that that whole accountability system makes sense to folks. It is not scattered throughout the year, which is currently is but it really is driven by really following strategic guidelines as we do them manually, as we work through the budgets annually that we marry those things up. We haven't finalized that, but there was some discussion with that with some of the directors and I think that there is some real value to considering that, but again we haven't finalized it. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 28 of 41 This was again something that was brought to my attention that there might be a more systematic way with all of the directors and provide some, I guess, some continuity as to when these things get done because of time and constraints they aren't always done. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: Coming under a system where we were all on a calendar year and whether we go on a fiscal year or calendar year I don't care, but I would like to see this all married into like one time for everybody. I mean, to be truthfully I don't know if I would be working and keeping my mind in line if I had 15 different anniversary dates for my employees to make sure that when their anniversary date got up, their pay got raised or whatever. So if we do it all at one time, you get over and it is done with. I am sure there are some employees out there, not by anybody's fault that has went a month or two without getting a raise because they don't understand and the poor old director has been busy and you know if you have got a lot of people in there - I know the firemen get their raises October 1St. I don't know how the police -are you an anniversary dates, too? (Speaker unknown): Yes, lots of them. Bird: That has to be a nightmare. Berg: Well, the HR Department does a fine job of notifying the directors of who's evaluation is coming up, but you are correct when you are trying to keep track of especially a larger department like the Police or Public Works, how many different employees at different anniversary dates because they are different dates. It could be March 16tt' or April 21St and it is just scattered throughout. Nary: You are correct, Mr. Berg there certainly are times where we have gone even beyond one month to get that done. I think we are going to get there and I think if we can make the format and the method and all of that work better then I think it all does work together, but I don't think we are there yet. But, I agree with you. I guess because I worked in a system for 15 years that that is what you did. You knew October 1St. The downside is we have a little bit of flexibility when we have that gap. You know we fund at the beginning of the fiscal year all of the positions and the rates of pay. So, we buy us some cushion for flexibility of positions when we don't give increases because the person's increase doesn't come until January or March or whatever it is. It is not a big deal to me, but as I told departments to understand that that might be your cushion sometimes on your flexibility in your pay when you do that. It is just an issue. It is not a reason we can't do it, it is just a reason we need to be cognizant of if we do. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 29 of 41 Rountree: Mr. President I guess I would take the opposite on that. I can see the directors because they are appointed and they are going to be reaffirmed or reconfirmed every year anyway, pretty much or at least every election cycle. I would not want to be a director and have 15 people accountable for performance reviews under my supervision; hopefully it is six or less. But, I still wouldn't want to have a week in the year that I had to do six performance appraisals. I would rather do that sprinkled throughout the year with the good help of HR telling me when folks are done, but the real reason I would rather do that is that if you are going to lever your finances at all you need that flexibility of that staggered payout and you can lever that to your advantage in a department and as a city. Given our payroll now, there probably is not a lot of wiggle room but as we grow it is going to be hard to have that and take it back if we ever do want to lever those funds when we have given it up. So I would be a little hesitant about not looking at anniversary dates for the fiscal reason. Nary: I could add to that. At my other job before I left I had 11 people that I directly supervised and you are exactly right. Having 11 performance evaluations to do in about six weeks' time is a lot of work and it doesn't allow you to do much of any other work. Rountree: If you are going to do it right. Nary: Yes, if you are going to do it right. What we found in the city is we don't have many managers that have more than five to eight, you know less than 10 normally of people that they directly supervise that they would have to do their evaluations. Actually it may have changed recently, but I know when we first had this discussion a year or two ago the Mayor had the most direct reports in the city and most of the other directors or other managers didn't have quite as many. Some have changed. Some have more and we changed that, but that is a valid point. I mean, it isn't that much to do and it does buy us some room. But, if you would like me to include that for the directors in this policy I certainly can. It is up to you folks. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I guess I have a question. First are there two rating systems? Is there a merit system and a cost of living system and the second question to that would be it would make sense to me at least to do a cost of living on whatever their anniversary is, the computer just needs to keep track of that. But, even though I know it is a lot more work at one time, if there is also a merit increase to be considered I would think a director would want to have a pot of money that they can distribute among their people and they would want to make that selection all at the same time. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 30 of 41 Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba we do not have cost of living increases anymore. We only have merit and those are done annually. There are generally enough funds and again it is the same issue that Councilman Rountree brought up. How much is in your personnel line? The way they finance it for the merit pool for each department is, for example, this year the merit pool is four percent. So, the Finance Department - (Tape turned over) Nary: -- that we have there has never been an issue of having adequate funding to fund all of the increases. In the smaller departments what they did is they basically created, for lack of a better term, a fiscal anomaly. They added actually instead of it is a four percent pool they would normally add on the smaller departments like Mr. Berg's department or mine or the Finance an additional one percent into the personnel line so that way there is adequate funding because sometimes with the smaller number of employees you end up where if the top raise is five percent, well somebody has to get three because there is not enough money. Well, what they found is if they could put a small amount of money and it may even be less than one percent into that line it allows for that ability that if you had all of the employees really rate out as the superior performers, you'd still have adequate personnel dollars to fund it. Again, we haven't had an issue or a problem with that. We have over the last two years consistently tracked on all of our merit increases and it has been pretty consistent that of the three different ratings that we have the middle rating tends to be about 65 percent of the employees; the satisfactory rating is approximately 35 percent of the employees and then the top rating is about ten percent. So it tends to break out fairly consistently every year so there is adequate money there to do it, but that is how they fund it to make sure there is enough and like I said that little extra of not everybody gets an increase in October really helps spread it out over the whole system. Borton: Well totally a different topic -the only question that jumped out is what if you employ a director who is uninsurable for life insurance purposes? Are they entitled to alternate compensation of equal value for the premium that you are not paying on their behalf? Nary: Don't know. You are just full of questions I can't answer. I am sorry. Borton: There is no caveat that, assuming they are insurable or if insurable they get $100,000? Nary: No and the cost is so small to the city that it is -when we actually implement it there is no additional costs. The cost of the city is so small so if somebody really wants the $17 a year, I guess we could give it to them. But, no one has ever asked. It is such a miniscule amount of money for the insurance coverage. I guess I would not have interpreted that since -the question would Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 31 of 41 come to me is I would not interpret this as some sort of (inaudible) plan that could have this or not that and we will pay you the difference, like some employers do. We wouldn't do that. Borton: You just don't get it? Nary: Right, you just don't get it. Council any other questions on the policy? Bird: I have none. Borton: Clear as mud? Nary: I will bring it back for approval here in the next week or two. Item 9. Discussion of Proposed Changes to the Travel ~ Expense Policy: Nary: Members of the Council I have the travel expense policy in front of you and this is just the current existing policy. This doesn't have any changes or amendments to it at the moment. We had a lengthy and somewhat heated discussion today about this particular policy. I guess the first question for you is we have for a number of years had a policy that allows -basically we reimburse for expenses for meals for people that are traveling and most of the time - I have to sort of separate this a little bit in my mind and maybe not for you folks, but what primarily started this discussion was dealing with people that were traveling on city business for a conference or a training opportunity. Right now we pay actual expenses. They need to provide us receipts. They can eat up to $50 a day. If they eat $20, they get $20. If they $50 they get $50. If they eat $60 they get $50. They bring us the actual receipts. Finance has been concerned for two reasons. One it can be a real accounting nightmare to track that. People use the city credit card sometimes on trips if it is a senior level manager or department director and they will use the city credit card and they still track all of the receipts, but the card bill comes in sometimes before the receipts get to Finance. They honestly get receipts requests for reimbursements for gum and for a pop and an ice cream cone or Mr. Grady's personal favorite, Preparation H. Why you would want the public to know you needed to buy it or that you needed it is beyond me, but so they get lots of odd requests and sometimes really cumbersome requests - stacks of receipts. You know for a small department like mine it is generally not a big issue, but for a larger department like Police or Fire or Public Works it can be -you know, like Police Mike sent four people to a training class that is a two week class. They may have stacks of receipts to have to sift through and make sure the meals match up and they didn't pay for two people and they didn't buy alcohol and they didn't buy their wife's meal who happened to go along or whatever. So it can be a real nightmare. The other issue and concern for Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 32 of 41 Finance is trying to make sure we complied with all of the IRS regulations and the IRS is very, very particular about this subject and are very concerned when people go above whatever the federal perdiem is, what the individual city's perdiem's are, how those are accounted for and whether that is actually income or not income and Ms. Kilchenmann made it pretty clear to us that she feels personally responsible for the city's finances and making sure we are compliant with the federal regulations and I don't disagree with that. Their proposal that they would like to consider and the reason I didn't bring you a draft amendment is I think that we have to rewrite this if we are going to do it. It is really wordy and real hard to understand in its current form, but they what they would like to do is go to a perdiem policy; use the federal regulations and basically what we discussed today when we finally got to conclusion was we weren't talking about a perdiem for travel within the Treasure Valley -Mountain Home to Caldwell, Ontario area. You know those we generally do actual costs. Somebody goes to a training class in Caldwell for a day and they eat lunch, we generally just paid for that. We don't give them a perdiem to go there. That over night stay was really the trigger to when the perdiem was appropriate and we would use the federal guidelines as to what that perdiem is because they vary by city and location and such and they are generally pretty good and they break them out by time of day when you leave and meals that are provided and for an example if you are going to leave at six o'clock on a Saturday morning to travel to D.C. and you won't get home until Tuesday night at midnight then you can calculate how many meals would you be entitled to and if meals are provided for your conference. There is a certain percentage that is allowed for breakfast and a certain amount for lunch and if those are provided those are taken out of your perdiem and you get this amount of money and you can buy gum or Preparation H to your heart's content. It is easy to track. There is a system that the IRS requires where you basically have to fill out the form and they want to assure that you went. Again, I don't think that that is an issue for us, but I think that that is the IRS's concern that people get these perdiems and (inaudible) large places and they just don't go. They don't even attend it and then they get this money as free income. So that would be their preference. They don't think it is necessary to do the perdiem for hotel, only because the majority of the issues when we are dealing with, at least for training and for conferences predominantly there is a provided hotel and so if there is a provided hotel, it is sometimes easier to stay there and sometimes the perdiem doesn't always quite match up with very well with wherever the conference is located. So you might save $50 on a hotel room and then spend $50 getting the cab because that may be your only means to get to where the conference is daily to get back and forth. They didn't think that was probably a big issue to them at the moment and they thought we could really just prepay those and pay the actual expense and it is not an issue for that. We had a lengthier discussion and this is in some guidance that we are seeking from you on the other types of travel. So not travel for trainings and conferences where we can match up meals and flights and times, but trainings for other city business. Chief Anderson had to go to Wisconsin last year to take a fire truck there and go back and get the fire truck. We have had engineers from Public Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 33 of 41 Works that have to travel to a location to view some process or machinery of some sort that we may want to incorporate into the city. So whether those things trigger the same types of things, the Finance Department would say yes they should. What the director's discussed is whether or not you folks think there should be at least some ability if expenses go beyond that standard perdiem's for those types of events that there is some ability to come and request that additional reimbursement and whether or not you would want to see that or whether you would not want to allow that. I guess that is really your call. I told him I would ask you and see what your preferences were, but again they would craft the policy. They want to be the administrators of this particular policy, I guess, in conjunction with my office to make sure that employees are doing the guidelines, but their concern that we make sure we meet IRS standards and that we don't have an issue because otherwise they have to cut W2's or 1099's depending on what it is and they want to have to do that. So that is the issue in a big nutshell. Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: Bill one of my biggest concerns on this policy and I realize and I appreciate Stacy's concern over managing the money, but the four of us up here are responsible to the taxpayers for how it is taken care of. We have got to get away that these receipts are turned in in a timely manner. People that have credit cards if they don't get them turned in we need to figure out a way to do it. Five days is plenty to get - if you go to a trip and you get back you should have - I don't care if it is a week's trip, you should be able to sit down and that should be your first priority when you come back to work to get it over there because that little gal is breaking rules of accounting by paying off our credit cards before she has receipts to consider. I don't know how many of you guys carry credit cards, but I will guarantee my wife doesn't pay a credit card if she doesn't have the receipt. We are asking these gals do that because we are too lazy to get our receipts in and I am not excluding anybody from the Mayor and Council down. So let's put some bite in there. Your perdiem I think is great, but I think when we write this up before it comes to us, my suggestion would be to get with the Finance Department and the directors and make sure that this is very doable for everybody and I don't believe any trips should be treated different than any other trips. I think they all should be the same. That is my two cents' worth. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Bill I think Stacy's goal in the direction that came from her previous life. It sounds exactly like the State's system and it is a clean system. You have so much allowance for meals per day based on when you leave your station to Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 34 of 41 when you get' back to your station; it is broken down by breakfast, lunch and dinner, so much for each one. You can eat as much or and I know guys who traveled with their post (inaudible) and pocketed the perdiem, but you know there is nothing you can do about that. The other thing that this State system allows is a phone call home for $10. If it is a $2 phone call or if it is a cell phone, everybody put $10 on their expense account and it went through and receipts for hotels, whether it is included in registration or not, receipts for hotels. Any travel, whether it was for training or conference or an engineer going to look at a structure or fabricator or whatever, all the same -perdiem based on the city and the federal rate for that city because if you go to D.C. it costs you a whole lot more to eat than it does if you go to Lewiston and the federal rate establishes all of those and you know in advance what you are going to get or you can establish an amount. The state establishes an amount, it doesn't matter what city you eat in you get $50 bucks. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, but it is something that IRS sets the standard for; we don't have to worry about receipts, everybody is treated the same. I guess the thing that I would like to see is that people their resources more and if they have got a personal credit card, know that if they get their expense voucher in the day they are returned in a couple of days or less they are going to get an expense check that they can apply towards their credit card bill. I agree with Councilman Bird if they are on the city's dime on a city credit card that credit card better be back within a day of their return and their receipts and their charges on that better be accountable or I think the policy ought to be real clear it is their dime. There is no reason for that. It is not that hard to do. Nary: The only other thing and I think that you are all probably aware of it and I think that we have had this discussion before and I think the system that the Finance is talking about in the long run works a lot better. It is simpler for the employees, it is simpler for accounting. Once people get used to it, I think it is fine. Probably the only reason where I work before one of the reasons the Council at that point took the policy that was similar to ours is because they had the impression that the employees were basically getting $100 for perdiem and they are eating hotdogs at Circle K and they are just keeping $80. So that is why they went to an actual cost. Well right now we have 300 employees, so the actual cost reimbursement is very inconvenient. When we have 500 employees it will be really inconvenient and as we get larger it will become almost impossible - I mean someone is going to just do that all the time - Rountree: It will cost you just as much to keep track as what you think you are saving. Nary: Exactly. So, I think although there is the potential that you will probably sometimes be paying more in perdiem than the person probably ate and I use myself as an example. I went to Portland to a conference last year, we paid actual costs and I was there for four days and they did provide meals and I think I spent $80 to eat for four days' worth. If we did a perdiem system, it probably Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 35 of 41 would have been a little higher than that, but I think in the long run that little bit of difference managed out over the number of employees we have and the accounting for it all would really work out for the city's favor. Rountree: On that system there were actually some of us that put in for perdiem less than the maximum amount, if we didn't need that. Not a lot of people did that. Bird: Joe could go on $10 a day the way that he eats. Borton: If you use that perdiem policy, would you lose the ability to restrict the way it is expended? Like right now you can't spend it on alcohol and things like that. So, basically you just buy whatever you want? Nary: You buy whatever you want. Bird: If they go for three days, they get $150 perdiem for three days. Nary: Depending on where you go. Bird: I agree with Councilman Rountree that you don't go to Lewiston, Idaho at the same price as you go to Sun Valley, Idaho or Coeur d' Alene or Washington, D.C., so you have to have some judgment too, which they do. Nary: You know there wouldn't be restrictions, but I think you know what we have again it is that trying to always account for who ate what -you know one of the other problems that we have and I am sure you folks have all seen in your line of work is trying to get split checks, trying to get copies of receipts sometimes is next to impossible. You go to dinner with ten people; most restaurants won't give you ten checks. I went to this Portland conference and I went to dinner with ten people and luckily one of them said I will make copies of them and I will send them to you and he sent them the next day, but it is not easy to do. It is a pain. All right so we will work with Finance and clean that up and then bring that back to you. Freckleton: President Borton if I could add just one last comment to that. I have worked here just long enough to remember that we had a cash perdiem system in the city for several years and we went away from it and we missed it the day after we went away from it because this system with having to make sure - I have lost I don't know how many receipts over the years and if you lose them you are out because generally it is hard to get them back and I have been on a trip to D.C. and I have wanted to eat at the hotdog vendor on the street and he is not going to give me a receipt and so I am not eating there because you are restricted on what you can do. So the cash perdiem system was a far easier one for accounting and far easier for the employees when we had it before. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 36 of 41 Item 10. Discussion of Renewal and Amendment of Patio Lease at Generations Plaza: Nary: You should have this on your packets as well. Mr. Baird from my office has talked to Mr. Banoid. Some of you may not have known we actually owned the ground or the plaza is where the patio is for the building immediately adjacent used to be the 43 Degree's restaurant. The new restaurant is supposed to open here shortly, so we needed to get the lease back in play. It hadn't been used for a while so Mr. Banoid is going to make up the payment for last year that he didn't make. We had a percentage increase in there annually previously which expired in 2005. I think this time the proposal is three percent rather than four percent is what they are asking for. They wanted to be able to extend the patio at some point and wanted to be sure that it would meet both design review guidelines from the Planning Department; when they did that they also increased the rent because of the additional square footage that they would be able to use in that location. We have to do the set of regular meetings, but Mr. Baird wanted to have it on the agenda tonight so that you would have an opportunity to look at it in advance of it being on next week's agenda. So if you have any other questions for it, I don't want to take any more time with it, but if you have any 1 would certainly take those and if not, we will bring it back probably next week is what I would anticipate. Bird: I don't see any problem with it. I hope they do extend it all the way down there. Item 11. Discussion of Joint Meeting between City of Boise City Council and City of Meridian City Council: Nary: Mr. Gorton if you wouldn't mind, I have Item 12 that is right after that and if I could just do that one it would be fairly quickly. Borton: You bet. Gorton: I think we mentioned this last week or two weeks ago about the desire - Bird: (Inaudible--} before September 24th because Elaine and I talked about it. Rountree: Elaine and I talked about it last week. She wanted to know how to get it scheduled. I said to call Will. Zaremba: She has talked to me about getting together too and said there is a lot of stuff we haven't talked about. She wasn't more specific. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 37 of 41 Borton: We could sit here now - I don't know if you guys have calendars or send us emails and have you get us emailed dates to Will every available evening in the next 30 days. We will see what matches and then - Bird: Let me know. Joe why don't you get a hold of Elaine and you two set up a date and see if that will work. Rountree: Well I want to know what we are talking about because I don't want to go in there and - Borton: So like if it is just transportation - Rountree: If it is just transportation I don't know that I would necessarily want to go and listen to no roads. Borton: It is transportation - Bird: Ustick and Fairview as I understand it. Borton: And Blue Print and adequate public facilities. Rountree: Well I guess if it is adequate public facilities, fine; Blue Print, fine, but if it is a project specific that Dave is already working on or one of us is already working on in a group I don't want to talk about it and not - we are supposed to be doing that as a team approach in the community, not us teaming up with Boise or - Zaremba: -- trying to go around somebody else. Yeah, I agree. Borton: We could invite them to join us at the Police Station, I presume, out here? Rountree: I am not sure if they will let us in out there. They are toughening up their policy. Overton: You have to follow the rules. Bird: We have all got keys; we can get in. Zaremba: We need to find a place to meet where they are forced to drive through the Franklin, Ten Mile intersection at about 6:00 at night to get to the meeting. Bird: No we need to make them come out Fairview or Ustick about that time. Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 38 of 41 Zaremba: So we can discuss whether those are more important than the East Park Center Bridge. Bird: I don't think you are going to get that changed. Borton: We will just get it set. Nary: Treasure Valley Baptist Church has a room there and could meet there. Borton: Anyone traveling, taking time off or gone for a week or Hawaii or --? Okay we will get it set soon. Zaremba: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: On a similar subject what has happened with trying to meet with Kuna? Do we give up? Borton: Well for what I know, which isn't a lot they are in the midst of tumultuous election season where the boundary hadn't been at least what I was told, concern number one because some people don't know what job they might have by the time decisions are made. Then 1 recently saw maps sent out from the Mayor and Anna that had not only is Lake Hazel not the boundary, it is actually now north of Lake Hazel where they are coming. So soon it will be Overland and then the Freeway. I don't think there is a point in scheduling a meeting until after the election, but should come real soon thereafter. I haven't heard any request from Kuna to meet, it was just -they have got their issues. So, probably the first of the year. So, Council anything else? Zaremba: Who are we emailing to with potential availability? Rountree: Run it through Will - Zaremba: Okay and just give you some choices. Berg: And non choices. Rountree: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I know this is a workshop and this is not on the agenda, but I am going to bring it up and maybe Mr. Nary - I am not going to ask for an answer, but we can talk about it at some point and time. I have gone through your HR manual and you did a great job. It is really nice to see all of that stuff -the one Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 39 of 41 confusing item to me is that as you read through it, there is no clear distinction between a city employee and a City Councilman. In some spots it calls out City Councilman applicability and in other spots one has to assume it is or it isn't. So I think that is a point that we all probably need some clarification on at some point and time in the future, but yes, you did a great job. It is nice to have all of that in one spot and it is clean and it is straight forward and I think you covered just about anything and everything you would want to cover. So, good job. Nary: We can look at that. Thank you. Item 12. Executive Summary for Insurance Benefits: Nary: Sorry for the last minute on this. I just got this yesterday from our benefits consultant. These are our cost of benefits for this fiscal year. You may have noted for our medical Blue Cross we have a zero percent increase again, which was actually a great advantage to the city. If you recall last year was a two percent decrease, so now they haven't increased it at all for this year so they are still at a rate less than they were two years ago and that was per person. So that was a very good thing for us. That was probably our biggest positive. We also had zero percent increase for dental, which also hasn't been at zero for the last few years. We have always had a slight increase and we didn't this year. The other increases are fairly small. We have our EPA program. I think it is a 1.76 percent increase; our vision service plan has no increase. The United Heritage renewal was a small minor increase. We did increase the coverage for employees. If you recall we discussed this with the Fire Union contract. We did increase the general coverage for all employees for life and accidental death benefit. They did that at a pretty minimal rate increase and they actually allowed the increase for October 1St. So I actually signed the document before October 1St that would put it into place now so it is consistent with the Fire Department's union contracts. So all employees have the increased coverage with again no additional costs to the employee and a pretty minimal cost to the city. The express flex is one, if you note, there is a pretty lengthy discussion about it. We have had issues with service and if you have had any discussion with employees, we have had some issues with service off and on for the last couple of years with our provider. This year we have had more than we are comfortable with for our dependent care service with flex spending. So Ms. Clinton who is our Benefit's Specialist, she did research these other ones. We found this other provider. It is local. Their turn around is very quick. Probably the biggest asset we have had in the last few years was the Bennie Card that we have that you should all have that is a great access for employees to use their medical benefits. It is much simpler to use. One of our challenges with our current provider is we have had employees who go to the doctor and have to make sure they keep the receipt and send it in, which clearly should be covered and clearly doesn't have any reason that should have to be sent in to them and we have had that happen Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 40 of 41 a lot. Then we have had other employees who said they went and bought their prescription and they have to go do that. But, yet if they went and bought an over the counter medication they didn't. So there is a lot of inconsistency from the provider. This new provider has the benefit card, has a quick turn around time, has a history of quality service from other providers that we have consulted and they are cheaper. So it seemed like a good reason to switch. When we do our sign up for benefits we are going to have to do it with every employee because the benefit cards are also different. That was my other criteria that didn't want another red card so people would be confused which card they had. So we will have to go through that with each employee so they know what benefit they have and which one it covers, but it is a cheaper program and again we have continually increased our express flex type of dollars, which also as you remember saves the city money; all the money that people put into these types of plans, lowers their reported income which also lowers the amount of payroll taxes that we pay. Rountree: So there will be an open enrollment of that the first of January? Nary: Actually we do it in November for the sign ups and it begins the first of January. That is it. Borton: Thank you Bill. Item 13. Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(if) - (to consider and advise its legal representatives in pending litigation); Bird: Mr. President. Borton: Mr. Bird. Bird: If we have no more I would move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(a)(f). Rountree: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Mr. Berg please call roll. Roll Call Vote: Bird, aye; Rountree, aye; Zaremba, aye; and Borton, aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. EXECUTIVE SESSION: Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting October 9, 2007 Page 41 of 41 Rountree: I move we come out of Executive Session. Bird: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All those in favor say aye. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. Borton: Motion to adjourn? Rountree: Move to adjourn. Zaremba: Second. Borton: It has been moved and seconded to adjourn. All those in favor. ALL AYES. MOTION CARRIED. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:14 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: .~ , TAMMY DE RD, MAYOR ATTESTED: ~- ~~~~-~ ~~ 1~,231~7 DATE APPROV~p~++1°~'~tisi~r~~~j '~ '~$, ~r ~° ~. ~~~~ i G. BERG, JR., I C~.E ~'~,. ,r~~ ~N 4 s ., Qa ~1 i.~~~li rr ,.