HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes (2)Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting September 24, 2002
The Pre-Council Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:04
P.M. on Tuesday, September 24, 2002, by Mayor Robert Corrie.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Cherie McCandless, Bill Nary, Tammy
de Weerd, and Keith Bird.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Mike Worley, Brad W atson, Ken Bowers, David
McKinnon, Steve Siddoway and Will Berg.
Item 1. Roll-call Attendance:
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
Corrie: September the 24th at 6:04 P.M. at the Meridian City Council Chambers.
This time I will have roll-call attendance Mr. Berg. All at present thank you.
Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: Council Item Number 2 is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the agenda for the Pre-Council Meeting as published.
McCandless: Second.
Corrie: Motion been made and second to adopt the agenda as published. Any
further discussion? All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 3. Discussion with Earth Tech:
Item 4. Ten Mile Interchange Update -Steve Siddoway:
Corrie: Item Number 3 and Number 4, discussion with Earth Tech and Ten Mile
Interchange update. I believe are both very similar so we can do those at the
same time. We will, Steve do you want to start and then or whoever you want to
go.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
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Siddoway: Thank you Mayor Corrie, Members of the Council. Mayor called me
about a month ago and asked me to kind of represent the City's interest with this
Ten Mile Interchange study. We've met probably three times and in those
meetings discussion's just been very preliminary at this point. We've been
talking about demographics in particular and trying to nail down the projections
that we are trying to build to so that we don't under build it. We don't really over
build it but Earth Tech has come up with a series of just initial thoughts of general
options that are out there for interchange design. I know one thing that they were
looking for was some feedback, if there was any that the Council likes particularly
or doesn't like particularly that they think should be thrown out from the get go
and not be considered. I'm going to turn some time over to Dan Thompson with
Earth Tech, he's brought some graphics, and things, which we'll help, display so
Dan.
Thompson: Good evening I'm Dan Thompson I'm with the firm of Earth Tech.
Our business address is 3071 East Franklin Road in Meridian. Again, I'd like to
apologize, I've been to a couple of these Pre-Council Meetings at other
jurisdictions, and they've been more of a sit around the table type discussion. I
kind of planned it that way and didn't bring the proper graphics for this setting
and I apologize for that. As Steve said we did have a couple meetings, we've
had meetings with the Federal Highways Administration, ITD, Ada County
Highway District and City of Meridian and other interested parties. COMPASS is
also at these meetings. Probably the big concern we had was what's going to
happen out there if we build an interchange. Everybody said we don't want to
build another Eagle Road and have that occur again but there was a big concern
that we get the proper demographics for that area around there and there has
been a lot of discussion on the so far. A lot of the demographics for the
COMPASS model were sort of initialized by a gentleman by the name of John
Church and he's an economist here in Idaho he worked for Idaho Power did a lot
of their demographics for many years. After a lot of discussion with COMPASS
we thought it would be wise to, Mr. Davis thought it would be wise if we brought
him on board here and bring in some demographics to see his expertise in
predictions of the demographics. I don't want to go in to what he did and how he
did i t but w e d id b ring s ort o f a map o f (inaudible). B asically i s w hat, i f w ere
looking at the highways here, Ten Mile is here and they are broken up into the
traffic analysis zone, which is determined by COMPASS. The area were mainly
concerned with is zones 277 and 278 that's immediately north of the highway on
either side of Ten Mile. I guess one thing that concerned us is the prediction was
for about 2.1 million square feet of retail another 1.2 million square feet of office
as well as some industrial and housing by his projections. From our initial
reaction seemed like that was kind of a high estimate there were kind of trying to
look at and sport this on to FHWA and ITD and have them look at that and some
of the other zones. South of the freeway I think we kind of recommended maybe
a little more industrial development down there. There's a lot of low-density
housing we've been comparing this to your Comprehensive Plan trying to see if
this fits too. I guess we are looking for a feedback from the City to see if this
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September 24, 2002
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seems reasonable to the City also. This is, are probably our critical task at this
point. We're trying to get everybody to agree on this, COMPASS says they don't
want t o p roceed w ith any t raffic m odeling u ntil I TD and F ederal Highways a re
happy w ith w hat w e've done here. The next step I think we're g oing to do is
we're going to go to COMPASS and look at the demographics for other
interchanges in the area. The Meridian interchange the Eagle Road interchange
and probably the Gowen Road Interchange and compare that to what we have
here. We believe by narrowing it down on that we can get a pretty good feel for
what we think is going to be happening out there. At that point we'll start with the
traffic studies. Steve mentioned we did kind of look for some alternatives just
because we want to try to envision everything that we could possibly think of
that's possible. Try to narrow it down so we don't have to study everything in
here and we did these studies without the benefit of the traffic as you know
without any environmental so at this point these are concepts we don't even
know if they will work. The first thing you are going to notice is this is a typical
diamond interchange that's very normal but if you compare that to both the Eagle
Road and the Meridian Road Interchange, those interchanges have a looped on
ramp and that's to handle the volume of traffic. We don't know if we are going to
need that here or not, that's something may not make this one an option. This is
a standard one, probably the biggest problem with this one is there is a lot of
existing houses down there in the south west quadrant that would be severely
impacted, which would probably have to be addressed.
De Weerd: Steve can you show that?
Thompson: Another option w e l ooked a t was b asically t aking t he i nterchange
and shifting Ten Mile to the east and that allows us to. This farm right here is
apparently historical and allows us to miss that. It allows us to reduce the impact
on the housing on there. Other than that it's still basically a standard
interchange. One of the things that was talked about was the bridge crossing
highway 16 extension on down south that if this was the terminal point this sort of
gives it an angle to get back over to Black Cat or Ten Mile and creates that
opportunity for it. It's basically a typical diamond interchange. One thing I
mention here is that we did do what we call a comparative cost estimate on all
these just so we get a feel of not budgeting numbers just which one is more
expensive than the other. The first two were the most cost effective.
De Weerd: The first two were the least expensive.
Thompson: Least expensive.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members)
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
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September 24, 2002
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Nary: Just so, we talk about the same kind of numbers. When you're saying
least expensive. Your just talking about construction costs?
Thompson: Construction costs.
Nary: But your not talking about the land acquisition or any of that are you?
Thompson: We included a right of way acquisition cost in our numbers there.
Nary: Oh okay.
Thompson: Again they are comparative. For example as in right of way we
would just assume and I don't remember the numbers we used but it was 50,000
dollars an acre something like that. Matter what except for the housing assume
differently. All of them will be 50,000 dollars an acre.
De Weerd: Those were less then this option?
Thompson: That's correct, as you notice this one is going to have a lot of land
acquisition required on that one. Basically, its similar with just the one loop and
that allows us to avoid the houses in there. It does, we should all these to FHWA
and they said they pretty much meet with driver expectations and they don't see
any problems and this one is actually kind of similar to the Overland off ramp
down by the big movie theater down there.
Bird: Spectrum.
De Weerd: Edwards Theaters.
Thompson: They are going to get a little more exotic though. These next two
are called single point urban interchanges do you remember the diamond
interchanges it had two points of connection to the roads. These ones have one
point connection and that's why they are called a single point urban interchange.
They are typically installed in urban areas because they require a lot of retaining
walls and structure but they don't use much right of way. In an area where right
of way is very expensive these are very effective. In this one we kind of shifted it,
typically they would be located right over the freeway or something like that but
we shifted it so we could avoid the residents. One other benefit if this is elevated
it would act as bit of a sound wall for that, for those residences there we'll
probably end up building a little more sound walls on all of them. The one thing
that might be a possibility, this option would be an option to construct it with
basis. In other words we could construct the interchange and not have to replace
Ten Mile Road. Again with out the benefit of the traffic study I don't know if that
one happens. It might be possible instead of having to build a Ten Mile bridge to
five lines it might only need to be three or four somewhere of that nature.
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September 24, 2002
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Bird: Man that would be very expensive land wouldn't it? When you have two
overpasses going up over.
Thompson: They get to be very long spans. It is expensive and if you can
actually build it without having to replace the Ten Mile overchange it actually is
reasonably priced compared to the other two. It's very competitive to those two
when you throw in the Ten Mile Road overpass and then it does go up quite a bit
here.
Nary: So this is the really expensive one?
Thompson: Yes, these are Cadillac's. This is a classic single point urban
interchange where we are actually having our single point right over the freeway.
In this one we assume that the (inaudible) would go over the top of our
intersection there and pull it down. I do require a lot of retaining walls and things
like that, this one by our estimate was actually twice as expensive as the first one
here. This one will probably not be considered (inaudible) then what we have
right now.
De Weerd: But it was fun to draw.
Thompson: It was yes.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Is that similar to again the Edwards area. Where basically the freeway
was lowered underneath the overpass. Is that kind of the concept here?
Thompson: The one at Edwards is still more of a conventional type interchange.
We got the off ramps and on ramps are on either side of the highway there.
Where this one is just a single point here. I guess our next schedule is to finalize
our demographics and we hope to do that in the next week or so. Then we get
together with COMPASS and they'll g ive us some traffic numbers, we'll do an
analysis t o s ee w hat w e n eed t o d o t o accommodate t he t raffic and h opefully
precede with the estimating of it all. Again our goal here is to get what we hope
is a good firm handle on the cost of at least one of the alternatives we prefer.
We'll probably end up with a good cost for three of them anyway maybe four and
then the plan is to get in the budget for ITD and work on it from there. That's all I
have but I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Corrie: Any questions.
Bird: Very nice presentation.
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September 24, 2002
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Corrie: Very good, thank you.
Siddoway: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. I would just mention that I did
meet with Charles Trainer with COMPASS last week and on the demographic
projection numbers he is interested in revamping those to reflect our current
Comprehensive Plan that shows mixed use and future transit station and take a
look at what really those demographics in that area would have to be to support
transit in the future and then run some scenarios based on that as well. Charles
has agreed to take that on at least initially running the numbers for transit
supportive design in the area and then we'll be including that as well. I suppose
finally Eric Davis here he's the man behind it all. The developer that's looking at
the feasibility of that and he had some issues related to the contract that he
wanted to at least touch on with the Council.
Davis: Thank you. Things are going along well. I kind of back check on these
guys and I placed a call to ITD and back to Federal Highway and these are both
outfits that will face through the approval process but they've set us on our path
early on and just to see how are we doing what are you hearing through the
grapevine and through your staff about our study and they both had very good
reports and they said you're working with the right group and you know so I felt
good because there was some pretty stiff warnings on the front end. You just
don't assume you can put an interchange anywhere you want out there. That's
all you get an A plus so far. The you know I felt like this dialog would be great I
mean S teve s et t his u p a nd w ere g oing t o h ave h opefully w hen w e c ome o ut
here every month and have a report and I don't think it will be three or four more
months we'll be done. We'll just go in step and the process and you know we
need to have that same kind of feedback or at least monthly weekly however we
can t o g et F ederal H ighway, I TD a nd C OMPASS. I m can w ere h aving t hese
meetings kind of on an as needed basis but its rolling right along. This is not a
casual step these demographics became a huge issue and we all sat in a room
up at Earth Tech and said whoa okay you know how many people are going to
be out here in 25 years, how do you answer that question. We polled around
and used the best resources we had. COMPASS was probably the leading
resource. You know we were even asked as Developers slash brokers realtors,
what do we see out there in five years and it got to be whose crystal ball should
we use to give our sources the backbone that they needed to say this is.
COMPASS has got to sit up and say yeah we buy off ITD we buy off. The base
line that these groups have used in the past was pretty much developed by John
Church, I mean he is an Economist and he's had a real hand in these numbers
and updating the numbers to the 200 Census. It was almost a forgone
conclusion after our first meeting that in order to make COMPASS happy and
feel good about these things. W e needed to update their baseline with John
Church's input so we went to him. You know here's our dilemma, what should
we do, and what can you do f or us a nd a couple weeks worth of work. Our
proposal was 5,000 dollars and this is taking in another dimension for Earth Tech
they didn't expect to be going through all of this so they have given us a change
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September 24, 2002
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order. I have its 8,500 dollars and I've got a copy of that plus it has an updated
schedule in here and the schedule is enlightening cause it shows you all the
steps we took to go through. (Inaudible) but were not, we have a reimbursement
agreement at an 80,000 dollar limit were not there yet but were close to it were
up to 78,500 dollars. It just felt like there might, I don't want to but maybe at the
time I have to come to you again and say you know they put another pick up and
we got an increase and I think this reimbursement will expect (inaudible). I'm just
being I think conservative but keeping you informed of where things are going.
What was it, access that we talked about, demographics we talked about, there
was something that you brought up that I wanted to expand on, but if I think of it,
I'll call you. Are there any questions? We had the Eastborn that was out here
last week. Frank Eagan, I had him out on the site we met one of the neighbors
Ralph Ross went out there and contacted him since he is probably a like full
candidate for something to go across his property. We're trying to get ourselves
engrained with the landowners and over the next two or three months I will be out
meeting all of them again with a proposal that in essence is the basis of the deal
which was Eastborn's willing to act as a bank on this for the private side at least
a good portion of it, subject to the property owners reimbursing from their profits
on the land after, you know that's to present that. I have a package of
information for everybody that updates them on where we are with the study and
where we've gone and it's a simple three page participation agreement that I
think should be pretty easy to understand that Eastborn's approved for our use.
We'll see, you may hear through the grapevine, the neighbors will start talking
about, should I join in on this or not. It's pretty meaningful and we want to end up
at the end of December with a finished study and the ability to walk into ITD and
say here is the money that we have been able to raise on this (inaudible). I'll let
you know in a month how things are going.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Do you need any comments on what you showed us tonight.
Siddoway: Council Member De Weerd. I was just going to bring up the fact that
I will get all of the Council members reduced versions of all of these options and
would actually really like some feedback. Especially if you have any strong
reactions to any of them. Any feedback would be helpful so that I can gauge the
direction the Council would like to take this as I do my part. Do that and, so first
of all I'll get those out right away and then any feedback you can get to me
however you want to do by phone by email. Please do.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
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September 24, 2002
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De Weerd: Steve I think one of the drawings that was pretty interesting that had
Ten Mile kind of jogged to help with the alignment and not tearing down those
houses. We really need to get ACHD's input and feedback on that as well.
Cause they are the local roads that will be connecting to it so if we could also
maybe g et s ome p articipation a nd c omments b ack f rom A CHD, t hat w ould b e
very helpful.
Siddoway: I would be glad to send a copy over too.
De Weerd: Okay, they are.
Siddoway: I guess the final thing is this study that we are doing right now is on a
fast timeline they plan to be done by the end of November if they stay on
schedule and if - so I would propose to the Council that we bring Earth Tech
back in a month for some additional dialog and feedback as to where they are at
that point. If the Council would like that I'll coordinate with Mayor Corrie in
getting that done. Okay that's all I have.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve would you mark those drawings so and when we reply to you we can
say A B C drawings.
Siddoway: You bet. They are also named, you know they got the.
Bird: Okay they are named then I couldn't see.
Siddoway: Right there is the typical diamond the Urban interchange the shifted,
they all have names. So -
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
De Weerd: Yes.
Siddoway: Yes if we could figure out.
De Weerd: That would be very helpful.
Siddoway: Prioritize, not prioritize but list them in order of cost, we can do that
too.
Corrie: I'm sure ITD would like that as well, (inaudible).
Siddoway: Okay.
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September 24, 2002
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Corrie: Very good thank you I appreciate it guys. Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess since Mr. Davis is dealing with the landowners too if there is
a preference in that regard. I do know that the one that is on Ten Mile took up
someone's land that currently doesn't have a road through it. That might be
helpful to get input on that too.
Davis: You're right, there is a whole other dynamic that's going to come to bear
on this when these layouts are done. I mean we have to balance between what
Earth Tech was hired to do which is the interchange and then the ACHD side of
the things which is the roads that feed into this. The big element is access and
you know some of the variables. I mean there is a new type four access that
they call it, which restricts every half-mile to an access point. You know we have
to be thinking globally about here's this interchange but how do people get to it.
And how do I go out to landowners out there and say here's an interchange and
then but you can't get a curb cut off the highway that feeds it so the solution is
frontage roads and you know that becomes well you pays for those and then how
do you et easements. I'm hoping that common sense and fairness will prevail
such that if you know landowner A way down here a half mile away is a guy with
the first access. He gets that condition upon providing frontage road access
through his frontage that backs up to everybody else along the way. We're just
touching on some of these things right now in fact that type four access is not
cast in stone but its being talked about then I hear that I think well you know lets
figure this out. Where that moves and all of that is huge variables and I would
hope to diminish that to the greatest extent possible to keep that all private
interests at bay until you can honestly say this is the one that makes the most
sensible design and cost standpoint, which was our mission do be as objective
as we can be. That solves the rest of those problems in a fair way with our local
jurisdictions. I don't know that's what I'm thinking about.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: We kind of had that conversation with the north Meridian Planning
and the Comprehensive Plan up on Chinden. Looked at frontage roads or I can't
remember the term of it but where we have a road with just a single development
strip so you could have just one side that would have the - or a local road on one
side, C hinden then o n t he o ther s ide. That w as o ne o f t he options t hat w ere
talked about but some of that.
Davis: Which side?
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September 24, 2002
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De Weerd: Well you would have it -you would almost have a development strip
in between what you would call your frontage road and the highway.
Davis: Oh I see it would be on both sides of the road. It's an even level playing
field for everybody. When this came up that was the first place they started to
talk about was Chinden State Highway. It's a state regulation ITD was in the
wrong talking about this. It's interesting as it evolves but you know.
Corrie: Thank you. We have no more discussion on that.
Item 5. Discussion of Waltman Lane and Corporate Drive Intersection
-Mark Canfield:
Corrie: We have Item Number 5 is the discussion of Waltman Lane and
Corporate Drive intersection with Mike Canfield.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes, Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: That was a miscommunication when Mr. Canfield called. It wasn't on
the agenda so we put in on October 1St and somehow it showed up on this
agenda so this needs to be tabled to October 1St
Bird: Second.
Corrie: Okay, so a motion and second. All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES
Corrie: Mr. Clerk if you would put that on the October 1St agenda then.
Item 6. Tabled from September 17, 2002 City Council Regular Meeting:
Transportation Task Force Committee Report:
Corrie: We have tabled from September 17, 2002 City Council Regular Meeting,
Transportation Task Force Committee Report. I believe, who is doing that Dave.
No. Is there anybody here that is doing that one? I didn't notice anybody.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I think last week we asked that we be provided it in a format similar
to how it needs to be submitted to COMPASS in a chart form. That in addition at
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June 24, 2002
Page 14 of 32
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: On the capital improvement plan, you'll be taking that to the Department
Head meeting next week and when will we see it back again?
Corrie: Let's hope not more than two weeks.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and members of the Council. We can discuss it in the
Department Head meeting. Everybody has received a copy of this. They got it last
week so they've all seen it. We can have it whenever we schedule our meeting
together. Maybe it's something that we can include the Department Heads that a re
affected by this. We talked earlier that we'd schedule a session with like apre-Council
meeting so we can include them too.
5. (Items Moved from Consent Agenda)
Corrie: Okay. I (inaudible) go to Eleven C, right? Okay. Number six then. Partnership
with Retail Weston Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mil Interchange.
6. Partnership with Retail West on Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mile
Interchange:
Corrie: I've asked Eric Davis to be here this evening to kind of go over the plan. I think
you all have the Retail West pamphlet that we had discussed. I might have Eric if you
would come up and kind of give them a rundown of what we're doing or you would like
to do here and then if they have any questions on this.
Davis: Sure. Thank you. Members of the Council and Mayor. It's been probably since
February that we did a-we got our study a nd proposal done. We've made a lot of
progress. We've been out and had several meetings with the Mayor and I want to tell
you that I can give you the background of who I am and how I represent Eastbourne
and how we've assessed this from a development standpoint. Gary Funkhauser's here
with Earth Tech, who authored the proposal and he can talk about that in detail and how
we get-how you do an interchange from A to Z. Backing up a little bit, I've been
engaged by Eastbourne to work on the project and do their development services here
locally. We've a-Mike Ballantine with Thornton, Oliver and Keller has listed the
property and for interest with nationwide. We've developed a real strong feeling of
support from the City and the neighbors. We talked to all the property owners in the
immediate vicinity. The remarkable thing is that there's probably-you stand and look
north, there's two square miles there and probably represented by a half a dozen to ten
property owners. It's a remarkable opportunity. The location has been designated and
a lot of hard work by COMPASS and yourselves in the past. We went around and sort
of validated all of the support that's out there. We've met with Dwight Power of ITD and
Pam Lowe and COMPASS, Mike Wardle and we've picked away at the private side and
the public side and the planning side and, you know, is this real. Eastbourne has a
significant investment out here and they are of the persuasion with the capability to
finance the private side of a 50-50 share on a new interchange. There's been a
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June 24, 2002
Page 15 of 32
handshake here with ITD to say that you go out and see if you can muster that half and
we will support you as we did at the Isaacs Canyon interchange. We've taken a look at
what is that. Fingers and toes. Is it a $10 million dollar interchange? Is it a $15 million
dollar interchange? The study that we're proposing to do will answer that. Among other
things, it will give us a number. On the other side of it, to drum up the private
investment, we've been-first off, I can tell you Eastbourne is able and willing to put up
half the money with the understanding and commitment that they are able to recover
some of that investment. We've gone-I've been to each property owner in the
immediate area. We've talked about this in concept. So far, I haven't had anybody
say-well, with rare exception (inaudible) have anybody say, look, this isn't going to
work. You're crazy or no, I'm not interested. I think everybody sees the benefit. I really
have never-I mean, I've been doing shopping center work for over 20 years and-
***End of Side One'"**
Davis: --of a time at which things are lined up so well. So, I, you know, I'm here to
answer any of the questions you have but I wanted to let you just-at least offer a few
things as to what if you choose to participate in this study with Eastbourne in what we've
got and what does the project have. You know, to show an alliance at this point when
we're kicking off a project that will be, you know, looked at all over and it'll go to the
highest levels of Federal Highway and ITD, it's real important that we show an alliance.
This is a real good way to do it for creditability with tenants, with businesses that are
courting property owners. I think it's a great show of leadership and stepping out in the
right direction. Arm in arm and hand in hand and you'll be able to participate as we go
along with Earth Tech. Most of all, we'll find out what this thing will look like and what it
will cost within four to five m onths. It was v ery important to Eastbourne, you know,
being from Toronto and to know that they had a partner in this. It's a big thing to step
ahead and do this on your own but to have an alliance with the City that will host this is
a big move. I'm hoping you can help us out.
Corrie: Any questions?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: It mentions in your letter that you would like the City to share in the cost of
this study. What kind of amount are you looking for?
Davis: This, right now, the proposal that Earth Tech has, I think the fee in there is $68
or (inaudible) $66,000. We just thought that, you know, as things go and questions will
come up and we may have other things you want to study in a little more detail and it
might be fair to allow $80,000 for this and give yourself some margin at this point. This
is a preliminary study.
De Weerd: And what would be our share?
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June 24, 2002
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Davis: We figured half. That was our proposal. They're willing to put in half if you're
willing to put in half.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Mayor, what budget would this come out of?
Corrie: This would-I've talked with Gary. We could borrow from the interchange fund
and then with the latecomers fee, pay it back with the interest that we had there.
De Weerd: Is that the enterprise fund?
Corrie: I'm sorry. What did I say?
De Weerd: The interchange.
Corrie: Oh. Interchange fund? Enterprise Fund. I'm sorry. f had talked with Gary
about that. I haven't gotten an answer from him yet.
De Weerd: Hey, you get a percentage right there.
Corrie: I don't know what that would come out of. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mr. Mayor. Eric, would you want-I mean, I know Earth Tech up there, the
successful people will be billing on a monthly deal at that point. Could we pay our 50
percent or do you want the money up front?
Davis: Oh, it would come later or whatever you're comfortable with.
Bird: I, for one, don't see any problem with Enterprise Fund. Funding some back like
this, we can get it back with interest. I'm sure Eastbourne wants to recover their costs
in there. I'm sure the City would want to. I, for one, believe that this is a real
opportunity. We know that the more we help, the sooner, I hope, the sooner we will get
that interchange out there. You know, there is no guarantees regardless of how much
money you throw at it but I think anything you do will definitely help and I'm definitely for
that. I see no problem with helping something like this.
Davis: I appreciate that. To sort of keynote that-and I contrast this to a developer who
would ordinarily say, well, I will do this. I will put this interchange together but I just
need more (inaudible) signed up first or I just got to have J.C. Penney's. As soon as I
get a letter of intent, we'll go ahead. Here's the private side willing to make
infrastructure improvements regardless of that just for the sake of the fact that they've
done this before. They know they're in the path of progress. They know that there'll be
value there. I think it's really a unique circumstance.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 17 of 32
De Weerd: You know, I agree. I think that this is something that-a third interchange
has been very needed in this community and this is exciting to hear that kind of all of the
things a re a ligning t he w ay t hey're s upposed t o a nd t his i s a n o pportunity t hat i f w e
didn't participate, we would not be doing our citizens-we would not be representing our
citizens in a good way. I think when you start driving in our traffic and seeing how-we
know, realistically, with everyone's funding issues that if you don't get this kind of
partnership, we will not get an interchange at Ten Mile. We all realize that and this is an
opportunity that we should be active participants in as well.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I certainly would the have this interchange at some point in the future but, just so
I'm clear, ITD doesn't want to participate at all in the cost of the study.
Davis: You're right.
Nary: They're willing to put in the cost at some point in the future for half but not in the
cost of the study.
Davis: Right. You have to validate that. It'll go further. There will be plans that have to
be done. Gary can speak to these. He knows much more the process than I do. They
will basically-I guess the process we have to go through is get a letter of intent with
them. Dwight Power will take the proposal to the board and once we know what it is
we're talking about.
Nary: So, they're waiting for this study to really want to come to the table.
Davis: Yes. So we can make our deal. Then we say, okay, it's a $12 million dollar
interchange and it'll look like this. We've got all of our facts and figures and they can
then make a rational decision as to what it is they're agreeing to do. At that point, I'd
expect that 50-50 split on the cost from that point forward. The half ITD, which is
Federal funds, and half private side, which would be Eastbourne and the other property
owners.
Nary: On the other property owners that are there, as supportive as they were, they
weren't necessarily wanting to help pay for the study to get that there so they could sell
their property.
Davis: We asked. There's various levels of, I guess, develop of blood flowing through
that group. Some people just are farming. There was a pretty good consensus that,
yes, we realize there'll be increased value out there and if that day comes, we'll be able
to pay. We'll be glad to pay.
De Weerd: They want to see proof.
Meridian City Counal Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 18 of 32
Nary: But isn't that the same-isn't those some of the same people that assisted in
paying for the Ten Mile sewer study? Aren't those property owners some of the folks
that paid for that?
De Weerd: No.
Nary: Oh. I mean, I think it's a good idea. I'm disappointed that ITD doesn't want to
assist and participating in the plan.
Davis: They're really stretched. I mean, if you listen to them, it's really-and they just
sit there and say, you know, Mr. Davis, this interchange is an approved location we'll
grant you that. It's on the list but it may not happen for 15 years if somebody doesn't
step up and make it happen. It's a developer's challenge, you know. Nothing happens
unless you make it happen. So we're doing the best we can. You know, I don't blame
them. They've got a lot of things out there that are undone and higher priorities, I
suppose. It's an unusual opportunity to have someone step up with half of the money.
We just have to do our best to make that happen.
Corrie: The possibility of improving this and bringing it up even closer is this right here.
Davis: Oh, yes.
Corrie: In talking to Pam Lowe, she said this will move you, if it moves at all. This will
do it. We have the developers, same thing we had at that Canyon interchange down
there. We had a developer put in half of it and it moved right along. They have like,
what is it, five districts they have to work with at the board. District three is not the only
one but it can move that interchange up and they're also looking that they have to
improve the Meridian interchange to get the road capacity to Nampa. This is something
else that they're looking at because they can't tear this Meridian interchange down until
get the Ten Mile in. That's also an incentive for them to move. We're helping them
move it and the City's behind us. The developer is behind it and they can say okay then
let's do it. It's the roll of the dice. We know that as far as time. From what I'm hearing
from ITD, they would like to have the study so they can go forward with it now. That's
why I want to bring it to this Council.
Bird: Mr. Mayor'?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I'd like to make one statement to test that we learned on the overpass. The
Locust Grove overpass. I would prefer the see the City and the private partner up and
get this study done. If you get ITD in, they're going to bring Federal money in and it just
kicked us 24 months down the road when they brought the Federal money in. I've--let's
get the private-I'm shocked like Mr. Nary that more of the developers and land owners
out there wouldn't divvy up but I'm sure that they will in the end pay their share. I, for
one, see that I think there's a way we can get it. I think it's very beneficial to the
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 19 of 32
community. If it can move that interchange up six months, it's beneficial. The longer we
keep the Federal money out, the faster we can go.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I appreciate the reminder from Councilman Bird. So let's just get on with it.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Corrie: If we are through discussing, I will entertain a decision from the Council with
Davis to want to go partner-shipping. Mr. Bird.
Bird: M r. M ayor. I w ould move t hat w e g et i nto t he p reliminary c oncept r eport w ith
Eastbourne Development on the Ten Mile interchange, have an agreement drawn up by
the attorney for our approval and if it meets our approval, the Mayor to sign and the
Clerk to attest.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd. Let me get a second.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: Before I was to second that, I wanted to make sure it was the proposal by
Gary Funkhauser of Earth Tech to do this in partnership with Retail West.
Corrie: Okay.
Bird: Well, have they decided that Earth Tech is the-okay, I'm sorry. I would go along
with that that we do it and also if the second would agree, this is not to exceed $40,000
unless it comes back for another review.
Nary: I would concur.
Corrie: Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Roll call vote, Mr. Berg.
Roll Call: Bird, aye; Nary, aye; de Weerd, aye; McCandless, aye.
MOTION CARRIED
Corrie: Okay. Thank you.
Davis: Do you have any questions of Earth Tech?
Corrie: Does anybody have any questions for Gary?
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 20 of 32
Bird: I don't. His proposal looked very clean, very clean. I'm familiar when they-
Corrie: You've had a lot of experience with this. Right Gary?
Bird: They do great work.
Davis: I had Federal highway people call me that said-about an hour conversation
about telling me the rules of the road and how it was going to have to be and I said
well-
De Weerd: Do you want to speak in the microphone?
Corrie: We'll put it on tape.
Bird: We want to get it on tape.
Davis: I'm sorry. Yes, Federal highway-we've been checking around and they called
me on the phone, a couple of guys on the speaker, and they had me going for about an
hour about all of the, you know, it's going to be a rough road and you'll have to be very
diligent and these are the rules and I know there are rules but I'm going to learn a lot
more, I suppose. Then I said, well, Gary Funkhauser is going to run this for us. Oh,
they said, now that guy knows (inaudible) and got me off the hook.
De Weerd: So, how to throw names around, huh.
Davis: Yes. The right ones.
Bird: Yes. Right ones.
7. Tabled from June 11, 2002: Ordinance No. 02-956
Allowing for Criminal Background Checks on applicants of permits /licenses with
the City Clerk's Office:
Corrie: Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Gary. Item number seven is an ordinance.
Ordinance 02-956 allowing for criminal background checks on applicants for permits
and licensed with the City Clerk's office. S o, Mr. Clerk, if you'll read t he Ordinance
number 02-956 by title only please at this time.
Berg: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Ordinance number 02-956,
an ordinance of the City of Meridian amending sections 3-1-6 to delete and change
language in sub-sections 3-1-6A and B and to enact a new sub-section 3-1-6D to be
known as authorization of FBI National Criminal History Record Checks and to enact a
new section 3-1-8 to be known as an Appeal From. Denial Of License repealing all
ordinances, resolutions, orders or parts thereof in conflict herewith are hereby repealed,
rescinded and annulled in applying for an effective date.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 14 of 32
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: On the capital improvement plan, you'll be taking that to the Department
Head meeting next week and when will we see it back again?
Corrie: Let's hope not more than two weeks.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and members of the Council. We can discuss it in the
Department Head meeting. Everybody has received a copy of this. They got it last
week so they've all seen it. We can have it whenever we schedule our meeting
together. Maybe it's something that we can include the Department Heads that a re
affected by this. We talked earlier that we'd schedule a session with like apre-Council
meeting so we can include them too.
5. (Items Moved from Consent Agenda)
Corrie: Okay. I (inaudible) go to Eleven C, right? Okay. Number six then. Partnership
with Retail West on Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mil Interchange.
6. Partnership with Retail West on Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mile
Interchangeā¢
Corrie: I've asked Eric Davis to be here this evening to kind of go over the plan. I think
you all have the Retail West pamphlet that we had discussed. I might have Eric if you
would come up and kind of give them a rundown of what we're doing or you would like
to do here and then if they have any questions on this.
Davis: Sure. Thank you. Members of the Council and Mayor. It's been probably since
February that we did a-we got our study a nd proposal done. We've made a lot of
progress. We've been out and had several meetings with the Mayor and I want to tell
you that I can give you the background of who I am and how I represent Eastbourne
and how we've assessed this from a development standpoint. Gary Funkhauser's here
with Earth Tech, who authored the proposal and he can talk about that in detail and how
we get-how you do an interchange from A to Z. Backing up a little bit, I've been
engaged by Eastbourne to work on the project and do their development services here
locally. We've a-Mike Ballantine with Thornton, Oliver and Keller has listed the
property and for interest with nationwide. We've developed a real strong feeling of
support from the City and the neighbors. We talked to all the property owners in the
immediate vicinity. The remarkable thing is that there's probably-you stand and look
north, there's two square miles there and probably represented by a half a dozen to ten
property owners. It's a remarkable opportunity. The location has been designated and
a lot of hard work by COMPASS and yourselves in the past. We went around and sort
of validated all of the support that's out there. We've met with Dwight Power of ITD and
Pam Lowe and COMPASS, Mike Wardle and we've picked away at the private side and
the public side and the planning side and, you know, is this real. Eastbourne has a
significant investment out here and they are of the persuasion with the capability to
finance the private side of a 50-50 share on a new interchange. There's been a
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 15 of 32
handshake here with ITD to say that you go out and see if you can muster that half and
we will support you as we did at the Isaacs Canyon interchange. We've taken a look at
what is that. Fingers and toes. Is it a $10 million dollar interchange? Is it a $15 million
dollar interchange? The study that we're proposing to do will answer that. Among other
things, it will give us a number. On the other side of it, to drum up the private
investment, we've been-first off, I can tell you Eastbourne is able and willing to put up
half the money with the understanding and commitment that they are able to recover
some of that investment. We've gone-I've been to each property owner in the
immediate area. We've talked about this in concept. So far, I haven't had anybody
say-well, with rare exception (inaudible) have anybody say, look, this isn't going to
work. You're crazy or no, I'm not interested. I think everybody sees the benefit. I really
have never-I mean, I've been doing shopping center work for over 20 years and-
***End of Side One***
Davis: --of a time at which things are lined up so well. So, I, you know, I'm here to
answer any of the questions you have but I wanted to let you just-at least offer a few
things as to what if you choose to participate in this study with Eastbourne in what we've
got and what does the project have. You know, to show an alliance at this point when
we're kicking off a project that will be, you know, looked at all over and it'll go to the
highest levels of Federal Highway and ITD, it's real important that we show an alliance.
This is a real good way to do it for creditability with tenants, with businesses that are
courting property owners. I think it's a great show of leadership and stepping out in the
right direction. Arm in arm and hand in hand and you'll be able to participate as we go
along with Earth Tech. Most of all, we'll find out what this thing will look like and what it
will cost within four to five months. It was very important to Eastbourne, you know,
being from Toronto and to know that they had a partner in this. It's a big thing to step
ahead and do this on your own but to have an alliance with the City that will host this is
a big move. I'm hoping you can help us out.
Corrie: Any questions?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: It mentions in your letter that you would like the City to share in the cost of
this study. What kind of amount are you looking for?
Davis: This, right now, the proposal that Earth Tech has, I think the fee in there is $68
or (inaudible) $66,000. We just thought that, you know, as things go and questions will
come up and we may have other things you want to study in a little more detail and it
might be fair to allow $80,000 for this and give yourself some margin at this point. This
is a preliminary study.
De Weerd: And what would be our share?
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page t6 of 32
Davis: We figured half. That was our proposal. They're willing to put in half if you're
willing to put in half.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Mayor, what budget would this come out of?
Corrie: This would-I've talked with Gary. We could borrow from the interchange fund
and then with the latecomers fee, pay it back with the interest that we had there.
De Weerd: Is that the enterprise fund?
Corrie: I'm sorry. What did I say?
De Weerd: The interchange.
Corrie: Oh. Interchange fund? Enterprise Fund. I'm sorry. I had talked with Gary
about that. I haven't gotten an answer from him yet.
De Weerd: Hey, you get a percentage right there.
Corrie: I don't know what that would come out of. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mr. Mayor. Eric, would you want-I mean, I know Earth Tech up there, the
successful people will be billing on a monthly deal at that point. Could we pay our 50
percent or do you want the money upfront?
Davis: Oh, it would come later or whatever you're comfortable with.
Bird: I, for one, don't see any problem with Enterprise Fund. Funding some back like
this, we can get it back with interest. I'm sure Eastbourne wants to recover their costs
in there. I'm sure the City would want to. I, for one, believe that this is a real
opportunity. We know that the more we help, the sooner, I hope, the sooner we will get
that interchange out there. You know, there is no guarantees regardless of how much
money you throw at it but I think anything you do will definitely help and I'm definitely for
that. I see no problem with helping something like this.
Davis: I appreciate that. To sort of keynote that-and I contrast this to a developer who
would ordinarily say, well, I will do this. I will put this interchange together but I just
need more (inaudible) signed up first or I just got to have J.C. Penney's. As soon as I
get a letter of intent, we'll go ahead. Here's the private side willing to make
infrastructure improvements regardless of that just for the sake of the fact that they've
done this before. They know they're in the path of progress. They know that there'll be
value there. I think it's really a unique circumstance.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page t7 of 32
De Weerd: You know, I agree. I think that this is something that-a third interchange
has been very needed in this community and this is exciting to hear that kind of all of the
things a re a ligning t he w ay t hey're s upposed t o a nd t his i s a n o pportunity t hat i f w e
didn't participate, we would not be doing our citizens-we would not be representing our
citizens in a good way. I think when you start driving in our traffic and seeing how-we
know, realistically, with everyone's funding issues that if you don't get this kind of
partnership, we will not get an interchange at Ten Mile. We all realize that and this is an
opportunity that we should be active participants in as well.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I certainly would the have this interchange at some point in the future but, just so
I'm clear, ITD doesn't want to participate at all in the cost of the study.
Davis: You're right.
Nary: They're willing to put in the cost at some point in the future for half but not in the
cost of the study.
Davis: Right. You have to validate that. It'll go further. There will be plans that have to
be done. Gary can speak to these. He knows much more the process than I do. They
will basically-I guess the process we have to go through is get a letter of intent with
them. Dwight Power will take the proposal to the board and once we know what it is
we're talking about.
Nary: So, they're waiting for this study to really want to come to the table.
Davis: Yes. So we can make our deal. Then we say, okay, it's a $12 million dollar
interchange and it'll look like this. We've got all of our facts and figures and they can
then make a rational decision as to what it is they're agreeing to do. At that point, I'd
expect that 50-50 split on the cost from that point forward. The half ITD, which is
Federal funds, and half private side, which would be Eastbourne and the other property
owners.
Nary: On the other property owners that are there, as supportive as they were, they
weren't necessarily wanting to help pay for the study to get that there so they could sell
their property.
Davis: We asked. There's various levels of, I guess, develop of blood flowing through
that group. Some people just are farming. There was a pretty good consensus that,
yes, we realize there'll be increased value out there and if that day comes, we'll be able
to pay. We'll be glad to pay.
De Weerd: They want to see proof.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 18 of 32
Nary: But isn't that the same-isn't those some of the same people that assisted in
paying for the Ten Mile sewer study? Aren't those property owners some of the folks
that paid for that?
De Weerd: No.
Nary: Oh. I mean, I think it's a good idea. I'm disappointed that ITD doesn't want to
assist and participating in the plan.
Davis: They're really stretched. I mean, if you listen to them, it's really-and they just
sit there and say, you know, Mr. Davis, this interchange is an approved location we'll
grant you that. It's on the fist but it may not happen for 15 years if somebody doesn't
step up and make it happen. It's a developer's challenge, you know. Nothing happens
unless you make it happen. So we're doing the best we can. You know, I don't blame
them. They've got a lot of things out there that are undone and higher priorities, I
suppose. It's an unusual opportunity to have someone step up with half of the money.
We just have to do our best to make that happen.
Corrie: The possibility of improving this and bringing it up even closer is this right here.
Davis: Oh, yes.
Corrie: In talking to Pam Lowe, she said this will move you, if it moves at all. This will
do it. We have the developers, same thing we had at that Canyon interchange down
there. We had a developer put in half of it and it moved right along. They have like,
what is it, five districts they have to work with at the board. District three is not the only
one but it can move that interchange up and they're also looking that they have to
improve the Meridian interchange to get the road capacity to Nampa. This is something
else that they're looking at because they can't tear this Meridian interchange down until
get the Ten Mile in. That's also an incentive for them to move. We're helping them
move it and the City's behind us. The developer is behind it and they can say okay then
let's do it. It's the roll of the dice. We know that as far as time. From what I'm hearing
from ITD, they would like to have the study so they can go forward with it now. That's
why I want to bring it to this Council.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I'd like to make one statement to test that we learned on the overpass. The
Locust Grove overpass. I would prefer the see the City and the private partner up and
get this study done. If you get ITD in, they're going to bring Federal money in and it just
kicked us 24 months down the road when they brought the Federal money in. I've--let's
get the private-I'm shocked like Mr. Nary that more of the developers and land owners
out there wouldn't divvy up but I'm sure that they will in the end pay their share. I, for
one, see that I think there's a way we can get it. I think it's very beneficial to the
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 19 of 32
community. If it can move that interchange up six months, it's beneficial. The longer we
keep the Federal money out, the faster we can go.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I appreciate the reminder from Councilman Bird. So let's just get on with it.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Corrie: If we are through discussing, I will entertain a decision from the Council with
Davis to want to go partner-shipping. Mr. Bird.
Bird: M r. M ayor. I w ould move t hat w e g et i nto t he p reliminary c oncept r eport w ith
Eastbourne Development on the Ten Mile interchange, have an agreement drawn up by
the attorney for our approval and if it meets our approval, the Mayor to sign and the
Clerk to attest.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd. Let me get a second.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: Before I was to second that, I wanted to make sure it was the proposal by
Gary Funkhauser of Earth Tech to do this in partnership with Retail West.
Corrie: Okay.
Bird: Well, have they decided that Earth Tech is the-okay, I'm sorry. I would go along
with that that we do it and also if the second would agree, this is not to exceed $40,000
unless it comes back for another review.
Nary: I would concur.
Corrie: Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Roll call vote, Mr. Berg.
Roll Call: Bird, aye; Nary, aye; de Weerd, aye; McCandless, aye.
MOTION CARRIED
Corrie: Okay. Thank you.
Davis: Do you have any questions of Earth Tech?
Corrie: Does anybody have any questions for Gary?
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 20 of 32
Bird: I don't. His proposal looked very clean, very clean. I'm familiar when they-
Corrie: You've had a lot of experience with this. Right Gary?
Bird: They do great work.
Davis: I had Federal highway people call me that said-about an hour conversation
about telling me the rules of the road and how it was going to have to be and I said
well-
De Weerd: Do you want to speak in the microphone?
Corrie: We'll put it on tape.
Bird: We want to get it on tape.
Davis: I'm sorry. Yes, Federal highway-we've been checking around and they called
me on the phone, a couple of guys on the speaker, and they had me going for about an
hour about all of the, you know, it's going to be a rough road and you'll have to be very
diligent and these are the rules and I know there are rules but I'm going to learn a lot
more, I suppose. Then I said, well, Gary Funkhauser is going to run this for us. Oh,
they said, now that guy knows (inaudible) and got me off the hook.
De Weerd: So, how to throw names around, huh.
Davis: Yes. The right ones.
Bird: Yes. Right ones.
7. Tabled from June 11, 2002: Ordinance No. 02-956
Allowing for Criminal Background Checks on applicants of permits /licenses with
the City Clerk's Office:
Corrie: Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Gary. Item number seven is an ordinance.
Ordinance 02-956 allowing for criminal background checks on applicants for permits
and licensed with the City Clerk's office. S o, Mr. Clerk, if you'll read t he Ordinance
number 02-956 by title only please at this time.
Berg: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Ordinance number 02-956,
an ordinance of the City of Meridian amending sections 3-1-6 to delete and change
language in sub-sections 3-1-6A and B and to enact a new sub-section 3-1-6D to be
-known as authorization of FBI National Criminal History Record Checks and to enact a
new section 3-1-8 to be known as an Appeal From Denial Of License repealing all
ordinances, resolutions, orders or parts thereof in conflict herewith are hereby repealed,
rescinded and annulled in applying for an effective date.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 14 of 32
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: On the capital improvement plan, you'll be taking that to the Department
Head meeting next week and when will we see it back again?
Corrie: Let's hope not more than two weeks.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and members of the Council. We can discuss it in the
Department Head meeting. Everybody has received a copy of this. They got it last
week so they've all seen it. We can have it whenever we schedule our meeting
together. Maybe it's something that we can include the Department Heads that a re
affected by this. We talked earlier that we'd schedule a session with like apre-Council
meeting so we can include them too.
5. (Items Moved from Consent Agenda)
Corrie: Okay. I (inaudible) go to Eleven C, right? Okay. Number six then. Partnership
with Retail West on Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mil Interchange.
6. Partnership with Retail West on Preliminary Concept Report for Ten Mile
Interchange:
Corrie: I've asked Eric Davis to be here this evening to kind of go over the plan. I think
you all have the Retail West pamphlet that we had discussed. I might have Eric if you
would come up and kind of give them a rundown of what we're doing or you would like
to do here and then if they have any questions on this.
Davis: Sure. Thank you. Members of the Council and Mayor. It's been probably since
February that we did a-we got our study a nd proposal done. We've made a lot of
progress. We've been out and had several meetings with the Mayor and I want to tell
you that I can give you the background of who I am and how I represent Eastbourne
and how we've assessed this from a development standpoint. Gary Funkhauser's here
with Earth Tech, who authored the proposal and he can talk about that in detail and how
we get-how you do an interchange from A to Z. Backing up a little bit, I've been
engaged by Eastbourne to work on the project and do their development services here
locally. We've a-Mike Ballantyne with Thornton, Oliver and Keller has listed the
property and for interest with nationwide. We've developed a real strong feeling of
support from the City and the neighbors. We talked to all the property owners in the
immediate vicinity. The remarkable thing is that there's probably-you stand and look
north, there's two square miles there and probably represented by a half a dozen to ten
property owners. It's a remarkable opportunity. The location has been designated and
a lot of hard work by COMPASS and yourselves in the past. We went around and sort
of validated all of the support that's out there. We've met with Dwight Power of ITD and
Pam Lowe and COMPASS, Mike Wardle and we've picked away at the private side and
the public side and the planning side and, you know, is this real. Eastbourne has a
significant investment out here and they are of the persuasion with the capability to
finance the private side of a 50-50 share on a new interchange. There's been a
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 15 of 32
handshake here with ITD to say that you go out and see if you can muster that half and
we will support you as we did at the Isaacs Canyon interchange. We've taken a look at
what is that. Fingers and toes. Is it a $10 million dollar interchange? Is it a $15 million
dollar interchange? The study that we're proposing to do will answer that. Among other
things, it will give us a number. On the other side of it, to drum up the private
investment, we've been-first off; I can tell you Eastbourne is able and willing to put up
half the money with the understanding and commitment that they are able to recover
some of that investment. We've gone-I've been to each property owner in the
immediate area. We've talked about this in concept. So far, I haven't had anybody
say-well, with rare exception (inaudible) have anybody say, look, this isn't going to
work. You're crazy or no, I'm not interested. I think everybody sees the benefit. I really
have never-I mean, I've been doing shopping center work for over 20 years and-
***End of Side One***
Davis: --of a time at which things are lined up so well. So, I, you know, I'm here to
answer any of the questions you have but I wanted to let you just-at least offer a few
things as to what if you choose to participate in this study with Eastbourne in what we've
got and what does the project have. You know, to show an alliance at this point when
we're kicking off a project that will be, you know, looked at all over and it'll go to the
highest levels of Federal Highway and ITD, it's real important that we show an alliance.
This is a real good way to do it for creditability with tenants, with businesses that are
courting property owners. I think it's a great show of leadership and stepping out in the
right direction. Arm in arm and hand in hand and you'll be able to participate as we go
along with Earth Tech. Most of all, we'll find out what this thing will look like and what it
will cost within four to five m onths. It was v ery important to Eastbourne, you know,
being from Toronto and to know that they had a partner in this. It's a big thing to step
ahead and do this on your own but to have an alliance with the City that will host this is
a big move. I'm hoping you can help us out.
Corrie: Any questions?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
De Weerd: It mentions in your letter that you would like the City to share in the cost of
this study. What kind of amount are you looking for?
Davis: This, right now, the proposal that Earth Tech has, I think the fee in there is $68
or (inaudible) $66,000. We just thought that, you know, as things go and questions will
come up and we may have other things you want to study in a little more detail and it
might be fair to allow $80,000 for this and give yourself some margin at this point. This
is a preliminary study.
De Weerd: And what would be our share?
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page I6 of 32
Davis: We figured half. That was our proposal. They're willing to put in half if you're
willing to put in half.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Mayor, what budget would this come out of?
Corrie: This would-I've talked with Gary. We could borrow from the interchange fund
and then with the latecomers fee, pay it back with the interest that we had there.
De Weerd: Is that the enterprise fund?
Corrie: I'm sorry. What did I say?
De Weerd: The interchange.
Corrie: Oh. Interchange fund? Enterprise Fund. I'm sorry. I had talked with Gary
about that. I haven't gotten an answer from him yet.
De Weerd: Hey, you get a percentage right there.
Corrie: I don't know what that would come out of. Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mr. Mayor. Eric, would you want-I mean, I know Earth Tech up there, the
successful people will be billing on a monthly deal at that point. Could we pay our 50
percent or do you want the money up front?
Davis: Oh, it would come later or whatever you're comfortable with.
Bird: I, for one, don't see any problem with Enterprise Fund. Funding some back like
this, we can get it back with interest. I'm sure Eastbourne wants to recover their costs
in there. I'm sure the City would want to. I, for one, believe that this is a real
opportunity. We know that the more we help, the sooner, I hope, the sooner we will get
that interchange out there. You know, there is no guarantees regardless of how much
money you throw at it but I think anything you do will definitely help and I'm definitely for
that. I see no problem with helping something like this.
Davis: I appreciate that. To sort of keynote that-and I contrast this to a developer who
would ordinarily say, well, I will do this. I will put this interchange together but I just
need more (inaudible) signed up first or I just got to have J.C. Penney's. As soon as I
get a letter of intent, we'll go ahead. Here's the private side willing to make
infrastructure improvements regardless of that just for the sake of the fact that they've
done this before. They know they're in the path of progress. They know that there'll be
value there. I think it's really a unique circumstance.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 17 of 32
De Weerd: You know, I agree. I think that this is something that-a third interchange
has been very needed in this community and this is exciting to hear that kind of all of the
things a re a ligning t he w ay t hey're s upposed to a nd t his i s a n o pportunity t hat i f w e
didn't participate, we would not be doing our citizens-we would not be representing our
citizens in a good way. I think when you start driving in our traffic and seeing how-we
know, realistically, with everyone's funding issues that if you don't get this kind of
partnership, we will not get an interchange at Ten Mile. We all realize that and this is an
opportunity that we should be active participants in as well.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I certainly would the have this interchange at some point in the future but, just so
I'm clear, ITD doesn't want to participate at all in the cost of the study.
Davis: You're right.
Nary: They're willing to put in the cost at some point in the future for half but not in the
cost of the study.
Davis: Right. You have to validate that. It'll go further. There will be plans that have to
be done. Gary can speak to these. He knows much more the process than I do. They
will basically-I guess the process we have to go through is get a letter of intent with
them. Dwight Power will take the proposal to the board and once we know what it is
we're talking about.
Nary: So, they're waiting for this study to really want to come to the table.
Davis: Yes. So we can make our deal. Then we say, okay, it's a $12 million dollar
interchange and it'll look like this. We've got all of our facts and figures and they can
then make a rational decision as to what it is they're agreeing to do. At that point, I'd
expect that 50-50 split on the cost from that point forward. The half ITD, which is
Federal funds, and half private side, which would be Eastbourne and the other property
owners.
Nary: On the other property owners that are there, as supportive as they were, they
weren't necessarily wanting to help pay for the study to get that there so they could sell
their property.
Davis: We asked. There's various levels of, I guess, develop of blood flowing through
that group. Some people just are farming. There was a pretty good consensus that,
yes, we realize there'll be increased value out there and if that day comes, we'll be able
to pay. We'll be glad to pay.
De Weerd: They want to see proof.
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page l8 of 32
Nary: But isn't that the same-isn't those some of the same people that assisted in
paying for the Ten Mile sewer study? Aren't those property owners some of the folks
that paid for that?
De Weerd: No.
Nary: Oh. I mean, I think it's a good idea. I'm disappointed that ITD doesn't want to
assist and participating in the plan.
Davis: They're really stretched. I mean, if you listen to them, it's really-and they just
sit there and say, you know, Mr. Davis, this interchange is an approved location we'll
grant you that. It's on the list but it may not happen for 15 years if somebody doesn't
step up and make it happen. It's a developer's challenge, you know. Nothing happens
unless you make it happen. So we're doing the best we can. You know, I don't blame
them. They've got a lot of things out there that are undone and higher priorities, I
suppose. It's an unusual opportunity to have someone step up with half of the money.
We just have to do our best to make that happen.
Corrie: The possibility of improving this and bringing it up even closer is this right here.
Davis: Oh, yes.
Corrie: In talking to Pam Lowe, she said this will move you, if it moves at all. This will
do it. We have the developers, same thing we had at that Canyon interchange down
there. We had a developer put in half of it and it moved right along. They have like,
what is it, five districts they have to work with at the board. District three is not the only
one but it can move that interchange up and they're also looking that they have to
improve the Meridian interchange to get the road capacity to Nampa. This is something
else that they're looking at because they can't tear this Meridian interchange down until
get the Ten Mile in. That's also an incentive for them to move. We're helping them
move it and the City's behind us. The developer is behind it and they can say okay then
let's do it. It's the roll of the dice. We know that as far as time. From what I'm hearing
from ITD, they would like to have the study so they can go forward with it now. That's
why I want to bring it to this Council.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I'd like to make one statement to test that we learned on the overpass. The
Locust Grove overpass. I would prefer the see the City and the private partner up and
get this study done. If you get ITD in, they're going to bring Federal money in and it just
kicked us 24 months down the road when they brought the Federal money in. I've--let's
get the private-I'm shocked like Mr. Nary that more of the developers and land owners
out there wouldn't divvy up but I'm sure that they will in the end pay their share. I, for
one, see that I think there's a way we can get it. I think it's very beneficial to the
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 19 of 32
community. If it can move that interchange up six months, it's beneficial. The longer we
keep the Federal money out, the faster we can go.
Nary: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I appreciate the reminder from Councilman Bird. So let's just get on with it.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Corrie: If we are through discussing, I will entertain a decision from the Council with
Davis to want to go partner-shipping. Mr. Bird.
Bird: M r. M ayor. I w ould move t hat w e g et i nto t he p reliminary c oncept r eport w ith
Eastbourne Development on the Ten Mile interchange, have an agreement drawn up by
the attorney for our approval and if it meets our approval, the Mayor to sign and the
Clerk to attest.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd. Let me get a second.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: Before I was to second that, I wanted to make sure it was the proposal by
Gary Funkhauser of Earth Tech to do this in partnership with Retail West.
Corrie: Okay.
Bird: Well, have they decided that Earth Tech is the-okay, I'm sorry. I would go along
with that that we do it and also if the second would agree, this is not to exceed $40,000
unless it comes back for another review.
Nary: I would concur.
Corrie: Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. Roll call vote, Mr. Berg.
Roll Call: Bird, aye; Nary, aye; de Weerd, aye; McCandless, aye.
MOTION CARRIED
Corrie: Okay. Thank you.
Davis: Do you have any questions of Earth Tech?
Corrie: Does anybody have any questions for Gary?
Meridian City Council Meeting
June 24, 2002
Page 20 of 32
Bird: I don't. His proposal looked very clean, very clean. I'm familiar when they-
Corrie: You've had a lot of experience with this. Right Gary?
Bird: They do great work.
Davis: I had Federal highway people call me that said-about an hour conversation
about telling me the rules of the road and how it was going to have to be and I said
well-
De Weerd: Do you want to speak in the microphone?
Corrie: We'll put it on tape.
Bird: We want to get it on tape.
Davis: I'm sorry. Yes, Federal highway-we've been checking around and they called
me on the phone, a couple of guys on the speaker, and they had me going for about an
hour about all of the, you know, it's going to be a rough road and you'll have to be very
diligent and these are the rules and I know there are rules but I'm going to learn a lot
more, I suppose. Then I said, well, Gary Funkhauser is going to run this for us. Oh,
they said, now that guy knows (inaudible) and got me off the hook.
De Weerd: So, how to throw names around, huh.
Davis: Yes. The right ones.
Bird: Yes. Right ones.
7. Tabled from June 11, 2002: Ordinance No. 02-956
Allowing for Criminal Background Checks on applicants of permits /licenses with
the City Clerk's Office:
Corrie: Thank you, Eric. Thank you, Gary. Item number seven is an ordinance.
Ordinance 02-956 allowing for criminal background checks on applicants for permits
and licensed with the City Clerk's office. S o, Mr. Clerk, if you'll read t he Ordinance
number 02-956 by title only please at this time.
Berg: Thank you, Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. Ordinance number 02-956,
an ordinance of the City of Meridian amending sections 3-1-6 to delete and change
language in sub-sections 3-1-6A and B and to enact a new sub-section 3-1-6D to be
known as authorization of FBI National Criminal History Record Checks and to enact a
new section 3-1-8 to be known as an Appeal From Denial Of License repealing all
ordinances, resolutions, orders or parts thereof in conflict herewith are hereby repealed,
rescinded and annulled in applying for an effective date.
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 12
we all look back in kind of a nostalgic way and get a sense of what was and what
we'd like to be in the future.
Bird: Any other questions?
Anderson: Mr. President, I did have a comment for Mike. I too don't envy you.
You've got a big job ahead of you. I guess I do have a concern though that I
think is shared by the rest of the Council members. I'm not so sure the
development community is necessarily fully on the same page as we are. I
guess I see the planning process that you are going through as kind of a first
step. I think I'm sensing from the development community that they feel like
once we've laid out a plan that the City Council and everybody's just going to say
okay now start developing. That's not how it's going to work because one of the
key elements in the plan is then the funding to make the plan happen. All these
things, widening the roads, providing for the schools, providing for the parks,
providing for the public safety, that ought to be part of your plan is how are we
going to fund those things. That ought to be one of the key elements that have to
be stressed throughout it. I'm not one to endorse any of this development until
we know how we're going to pay for the infrastructure that's needed. You talked
about building a community. That's one of the things that we as a Council are
trying to do, build a community, build it in an orderly fashion but we have to be
able to provide those services. Right now, to just allow the development
community to take off and start building, we can't do it. They have to step
forward and partner with us and show us that they're willing to help pay for that
infrastructure that's going to be needed to go right along with that. I hope you
consider that in your planning process and that finance and funding be one of the
biggest elements in there.
Wardle: Mr. President, Council Member Anderson. That's exactly what we have
tried to do. We realize that we have to develop infrastructure and community
facility phasing as one of the implementation strategies and then create public
and private agreements on the right-of-way and utility extensions. Probably one
thing that isn't put in here that I intended to would be the other facilities that
we've talked about, the schools and the parks. It doesn't mean that necessarily
all of those facilities will be constructed but it means the preservation and some
type of means to get those in the public's hands in that process. It's going to be
a challenge. I have no misconception about that. I don't think the developers
frankly will have any misconception by the time we're at that point.
Bird: Any other questions, Council?
Wardle: Thank you.
Issue #3 Presentation on I-84 corridor study by Erv Olen of COMPASS:
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 13
Bird: Very nice presentation, appreciate it. Okay item No, 3 is the I-84 corridor
study by Erv Olen of COMPASS.
Olen: Thank you Mr. Mayor, President Bird, and members of the Council. It's
always humbling to follow Mike. I've always fashioned myself as being one of
the old timers around here and he certainly goes back a long time and has a
much better memory. I just hope I don't look as old as he does. I'm here to talk
about the I-84 corridor study. We're getting ready to wrap that up. It has been a
little over a year now that we started the process. We're getting ready to make a
final recommendation. This, starting tonight is a two or three week window we've
got to come and talk to each of our member agencies and see what you think
about what we have, giving you a chance to understand what's being proposed.
In a couple of months, you'll be asked to take some formal action on it. I have
two items that I've handed out. I'd like to actually refer to the first item first which
looks like this if you will. Probably it's on the bottom. Do you all have a copy of
the -- I know time's short and I'm just going to run through this. From the get go
on this I-84 corridor we've adopted or accepted the goal we have in Ada County
to have 25 percent of all the trips by other than driving. Up until a week ago we
hadn't really put much detail into what that meant. We set some money aside to
implement but we didn't really define it. I'd like to run through how quickly what
we're looking at in terms of implementing what we call a transportation demand
management element. Again the intent is to meet the 25 percent goal along the
corridor in the next 20 years. The assumptions that we've used to meet that goal
is to first of all really target the commute trip and the peak hour. That's what you
design the facility for and the commuter's generally the best audience to try and
achieve some of these. We also have decided to look at the most heavily
traveled portion of the interstate which is just west of the wye. Everything fun will
drive t hrough t here. If w e t ake our g oals for r idership a t t hat p oint, t hat's t he
most that we're going to be getting in the corridor. We decided to implement that
goal and we needed to increase the current estimate of (inaudible) roughly one
percent up to five percent. One reason we're so confident that might work is the
shuttle system we've been working with for about two years now has been super
successful from Meridian to downtown Boise. Actually it picks up in Canyon
County. The second assumption, the next one is to increase the ridership
roughly 20 percent from a current estimate of 10 percent to 12 percent. With
those changes and leaving it al status quo the bicycle, walk and the work at
home figures from the 1990 census, we've arrived at our goal of 25 percent. The
bottom of that is just too hard to see but I wanted to explain that. Using our travel
forecast model we can take that link just west of the wye and cut it and 20 years
from now predict where they people come from that pass through that link and
where they're going to. That helps us design and cost out a transit system. 51
percent of that link originate in the exits serving the City of Meridian, over half
never leave Ada County and come from this area. There are three exits. One is
Ten Mile, soon to be built by then and of course Eagle and Meridian. That
means less than 50 percent going on into Canyon County. So, half the bus
service that we're looking at really needs to orient to the City of Meridian. Other
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 14
interesting parts of this is six percent of all the trips passing through actually
come from outside of Canyon County. On the other side, a little over 80 percent
of trips are destined to Boise, Garden City. That's not a big surprise. Six percent
to Micron area and 11 percent actually going beyond Ada County to the south, or
to the east. I'm going to jump now to a description of, and I'm back on page
three, a description of the service that we're looking at. The express bus service
would require that we add 35 new busses in the corridor. Roughly five of those
are for b ackups but t o c ost t hem o ut, a l ittle o ver 1 2 m illion d ollars o n e apitol
cost. The big cost in this is operating those over the next 20 years. We estimate
almost 80 million to operate them 15 to 20 percent of that could be -
***End Of Side One'`**
Olen: -- the rest would have to be provided again. That's over roughly 20 years.
There needs to be additional park and ride lots developed in the corridor. It's our
iron fast rule that any new interchanges or any reconstructed or modified ones
will include park and ride. We're assuming 20 park and ride lots will be
developed over the next 20 years in the corridor. The commuter van program,
do you remember that? That increased by about 20 percent. That would require
that we had roughly 20 new vans in the corridor and the cost of those vans is
700,000 and the operating cost is about 7 million. That 7 million pays for itself as
a former van rider, my 55-dollars a month helped pay for that. The only real cost
to the public is the capitol cost of buying the vans. In order to make the system
successful, you've got to market it and expand the current employer programs
and get the employers to participate. Many of the downtown employers right now
do pick up the cost of a monthly bus pass for their employees to use it. That's
got to expand and the marketing has proven extremely successful, particularly
with the shuttle service. Finally the transit, its intelligent transportation system is
to implement a plan we developed several years ago that could do a number of
things for public transportation. It could be automated fare collection and what
they call smart fare where you don't have to exchange money and buy a card.
Some of you have probably seen that in your travel. It could have on board GPS
Global Positioning Systems so you can monitor at all times where they are and
how they're doing on the schedule. Finally (inaudible) devices so if they are
behind schedule, they can force a signal to turn green and let them through.
Over the 20 years we're looking at roughly 10 million dollars. In all, we're looking
at an investment of about 126 million dollars over 20 years to support this
demand management element not included in that cost would be service that
may not even leave Canyon County that would use the interstate from Nampa to
Caldwell or anything west of Meridian. People who want to come from Nampa
Caldwell to Meridian and vice versa. That would have to be added to this cost.
We estimate roughly another 20 percent to do that. We don't include any cost to
preserve the rail which is the foundation of our current and a starting point for the
I-84 corridor and pick a number what that's going to cost to preserve. We do
have a 150,000-dollar study that was funded for Via Trans to do an evaluation on
the right-of-way and what its value is. Basically that's part of the cost of this
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 15
demand management element. Finally the recommendations coming out of the
study are every time a new lane on the interstate is added that we fully evaluate
the need for h igh occupancy v ehicle I anes. I n fact i f y ou're g oing t o h ave 3 5
buses operating plus a number of van pools and others in the corridor it may be
necessary to have a lane exclusive for those vehicles particularly during the
peaks to get them into town much more efficiently and much more competitively
with driving. We don't include the cost of those. Eventually there will probably
be some high occupancy vehicles. I think this valley has got to the point they're
going to have to deal with that issue. I'm including this first because it really is,
usually we come in and talk about we need to improve the roadway which is a
big part of this. This also is a big part of it. If we didn't make this investment of
126 or so million we estimated that we're going to need 10 lanes on the interstate
west of the wye, probably through Meridian and Ten Mile. I don't know exactly
how m any s tructures t hat i s a long t here b ut e very s tructure would h ave t o b e
replaced because its not wide enough to handle that at 20, 25 million bucks in
construction. So when you look at the additional cost of the lanes and replacing
all the structures it would exceed the 120, 30 million that we think is needed to
implement demand management. I'll pause there and see if you have any
questions then I'll go on to the main part of this.
Anderson: I have a question. Maybe this is kind of silly but why couldn't a
commuter train be put on the rails even if we didn't own the rails, just lease it just
like the rail companies do now and run a commuter train and just schedule it in
between times when there's freight cars that are running through there?
Wouldn't that be a lot cheaper and is that feasible at this point to start adding
something like that?
Olen: That's a very good question. As you know, the regional sprinter that we
tried several years ago was hugely successful. A lot of it though was probably
people wanting to ride the train. I talked to families that wanted their kids to ride
the train. I think part of the problem is that it would be expensive to retrofit the
rail to be safe for the vehicle. You've got over 30 existing at great crossings that
would be problematic to do that and I'm not sure the Union Pacific Rail
companies would want to get into the commuter rail business. What the goal has
been is to try to acquire the rail for public use and then eventually of course put in
rail service between the two communities. That's a good idea. What we're
assuming is the preservation of the rail eventually we have to use the rail. A lot
of it too is land use. Frankly Meridian is right in the middle of that rail corridor
and the land use along there is going to dictate how successful that would be.
You really have opportunities to make it happen and I believe there's a strong
commitment from this City to do that. All of those things have to be in place. In
the mean time we can add buses that are flexible in where they travel. Once
they get people in the habit of using the corridor it's a lot easier to shift to the
railroad.
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 16
Anderson: I guess I just see it easier to get yourself established and get a rail
service running. Then you can always look at buying the rail itself and improving
all the grad crossings and all those types of things. If you've at least got the
service started and get people using it then you expand upon that and you start
to build on it.
Olen: We can certainly look at that. Another part of this funding, the highway
money wouldn't be eligible to do that. In talking with federal transit, there's a long
backlog nationally to get in line and get those things funded. They haven't been
sending positive signals that those funds would be available. I would like to add
also on the transit, I indicated on this last chart the eligible funds for these things.
Many of those things are eligible for existing federal and it's our (inaudible) we
can decide where those federal funds are used. The operating cost is not eligible
for federal, the 80 million dollars. That's really a big issue. The only way we're
going to realize this 25 percent goal is some source of funding. Right now the
state legislature has put a three percent cap so using property tax is probably not
reasonable. There's a constitutional prohibition at the state to use highway-using
money even though it may not be federal, in the State of Idaho you cant use it for
other than the road. So, there really is an issue here of finding ways to support
this level of transit. It requires local option of some kind. The cities, counties
have for years tried to get that and I think that effort needs to continue to make
this happen.
Anderson: I have just one more question. Its probably well beyond the I-84
corridor study. It would seem like to try to eliminate some of the pressure off of I-
84 and to avoid expanding it to 10 lanes like you're talking about and replacing all
the bridge structures that there ought to be some efforts right now to preserve
some of the major arterials like highway 20/26 Chinden Boulevard and Highway
44 State Street and try to make some of those area limited access and increase
the capacity maybe to four lanes because those two roads would move a
considerable amount of traffic in themselves even though they may never be
developed t o t he I evel o f a n i nterstate. There o ught t o b e s ome e fforts t here
before that all gets built into subdivisions all along that to try to preserve that and
make those some limited access.
Olen: Councilman Anderson, I couldn't agree with you more. That's the key.
We can cite all kinds of examples where that wasn't done. Recently and to our
great support the state of Idaho, the Idaho Transportation Department adopted a
controlled access policy on all their state roads. Highway 20/26 through Meridian
basically is a half-mile spacing and that is currently their policy. Then west of
that, almost to Caldwell is one mile spacing which does exactly what you're
supporting. That policy was just recently adopted and long overdue. It's really
going to help all of us. Also the Idaho Transportation Department has some
money set aside for fiscal year 03 to begin buying up right-of-way to preserve
both 20/26 and 44. You're right, the interstate cant carry it all. Unfortunately
though this study confines itself to the interstate. It's hard to do that because
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 17
there are some big picture issues. I think there are some positive things being
done and we started that on Eagle Road. There is an access control policy and
though w e c ame fi n a l ittle b it I ate o n i t w e a re making s ome p rogress w ith i t.
Now I'd like to quickly talk about the road element of it. The first chart talks about
what's already in the pipeline. These are considered committed projects. The
message I'd like to give with this is its pretty balanced between Ada and Canyon
County. The City of Meridian, we're showing the Locust Grove overpass as a
committed project even though it's still in the out year in the program everyone's
intent is that that's going to happen. Again, Karcher Interchange is shown on
there in Canyon County and improvements at the wye and so on. Anyway, those
are projects that are already in the pipeline that we assume are (inaudible). The
next thing our committee did is how are we going to phase the remainder of the
improvements that are needed. In contrast to the last chart, this really heavily
favors Ada County. If the first 10 years of the phasing that's needed, it identifies
the need to increase the interstate lanes from the wye to Eagle to eight lanes
through to Ten Mile interchange to six lanes and then east of the wye to six lanes
out to Broadway. The only new interchange identified in the first ten years is Ten
Mile. Also we identify the complete rehab of both Meridian Interchange and
Garrity in Canyon County. That's the first 10-year increment of what needs to be
done based strictly on need. The next 5-year increment identifies extending that
6-lane section on out to Garrity in Canyon County, putting in some additional
travel lanes to serve the Karcher Interchange in Canyon County. It's pretty much
in the next 5 years a Canyon County process. Then the final chart I'm showing is
the year 2020, what's needed to complete the 20-year needs along the
interstate? We're going to have to go to eight lanes out to Ten Mile, eight lanes
east of the wye and exchange the six lanes in Canyon County further west to the
Karcher Interchange. Also we would add another new interchange at Robinson
Road in Canyon County and at the request of our board we're showing a Five
Mile interchange in 20 years as needed. Then we've identified a whole bunch of
projects. If you're with me I'm on page 6, beyond 2020. These are projects that
if we had the money we could sure justify doing those projects within 20 years
but realistically the funds aren't there. It does include two new additional
interchanges in Canyon County. One after Middleton and one at Ustick. I think
that the group that h as been working with us on the consulting team a nd the
advisory committee has done a really good job in working together to identify and
agree on the phasing. The final chart that I've got for you is the harsh reality
what all this is going to cost. When this chart was developed we assumed that
25 percent of the cost for this corridor would be transportation demand
management so we put that 146 million in as kind of a placeholder. Now that
we've done a lot more detail, it appears that's a reasonable level of funding for
alternative transportation. The first part of this chart talks about the
reconstructing and rehab that's needed along the corridor at 341 million almost
60 percent of t he total cost and a Iso of course demand m anagement. In the
bottom it talks about the widening and brand new interchanges that are needed
in 20 years. The total cost of this is 585 million dollars. Our best estimate right
now is that if funds continue to flow the way they have and if we get a few breaks
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 18
on congressional earmark we may have 250 million over the next 20 years. That
leaves us over 300 million dollars short of doing what really needs to be done.
Today at our meeting with the Treasure Valley Transportation Team the group
that advising us, they felt that that's probably not something that they as a
committee could really deal with. They felt it was you as elected officials along
side our legislators from Ada and Canyon County. What they're recommending
is that maybe in September, October we could be in a workshop of all of you to
look at these need assessments and these costs and get your feeling on what
you're going to support to fund it. Public transportation expansion will not
happen without some form of local option passed. In the past the citizens in Ada
County have supported a user type fee to support roadway projects. In the past
20 years, we've been quite successful with two increases in gas tax some of
which trickled back down to Ada County, the impact fee system that Ada County
Highway District has and of course in Ada County there is a vehicle registration
fee. We have had some success in the past getting revenue enhancement. This
is abig-ticket item. It's going to take quite a bit of effort. It can be done. I'm
convinced of that. We are going to now look at a workshop of all of the elected
officials on this board and our legislatures and see if we can find some areas
where we can go out and peruse funding for. With that, I really don't have any
more to add. We are moving forward. We have a deadline of mid September to
get our final reports to the consultant. We're scheduled to have our committee to
meet two weeks from now to make their final recommendation. We hope this
can go to the COMPASS board in September for essentially accepting the
findings thus far and authorizing two more rounds of public meetings, one in Ada
and one in Canyon then coming back in October and November for final action.
We'll then go to the Idaho Transportation board the month after COMPASS acts
and ask them to adopt this. We've met with them a number of times and their
status reports are extremely supportive of the process we're following here and
seem to be willing to have locals decide what's needed and then they'll do their
best to try to support and I'm convinced of that. With that, I'd be happy to answer
any questions.
Bird: Council?
Anderson: (Inaudible).
Bird: Mr. Anderson.
Anderson: I'm just curious. I've always wanted to know. How do you guys figure
out, I mean how do you make the determination to go from four lanes to six
lanes? Is there some traffic count numbers that you use?
Olen: Yes there is. In our transportation plan in Ada County, we long ago decided
we couldn't afford to have free flowing traffic all the time for what we call level of
service C. So, we've adopted a level of service that's just short of total gridlock.
Its called level E and its typical of what you see in the mornings now and
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 19
evenings on the interstate system. Traffic still moves but there's an hour there
where it may be a little difficult getting through. The rest of the day it works well.
So, we're designing the system to handle the amount of traffic and the level of
congestion that generally we have today on the interstate system.
Anderson: The goal isn't to improve it it's to keep it the same?
Olen: Yes. We're talking about spending for the road part of this 300 400 million
dollars to have what we have today in 20 years. That's a good way of describing
it. If we didn't do that it would be pretty grim.
Anderson: How do you know what year that you need to go from six lanes to
eight lanes is it based off population projections there?
Olen: Yes, it is.
Anderson: That tie in with those traffic counts?
Olen: The COMPASS board adopts in 5-year increments growth projections
based pretty much on the comprehensive plans and those are what we used for
this study. When we did agree early on that Ten Mile needed to be added, we did
shift some growth to reflect if Ten Mile was (inaudible). We took some of that
growth out of what was currently assumed along Eagle Road and worked close
with your staff. So, we did do make some adjustments based on if you add an
interchange they will c ome. I think our projection now are more realistic about
reflecting that. We have them in 5-year increments and we have a travel forecast
model we use that was calibrated in 98 which is probably on e of the most
current ones in the country. With our consulting team and the committee we
made our judgments about what's needed when.
Anderson: Here's a bizarre thought that I'm sure you guys have thought of. You
mentioned 51 percent of the trips were coming from Meridian and Ten Mile and
east. Has anybody ever thought about building a half of an intersection at Ten
Mile, just out the off ramps going west and the on ramps coming east because I
would think it would save a lot of money and it would take a bulk of the traffic that
is creating the problem now at Eagle and Meridian Road and it would sure relieve
a lot of pressure there? It would be funded in a lot less time.
Olen: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Anderson. To answer your question, no we hadn't.
But there's a good reason, the feds will not allow now any new interchanges
unless they're full fledged. That s a brand new policy. If you're familiar with the off
ramp that was built to come into the mall of the connector, that could not be .built
under current policy. B ut it makes perfect sense and there are times when its
quite justified in my opinion to do that but right now we're not allowed to do that.
The same argument c ould be m ade f or Five Mile, very similar argument. The
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 20
feds have said no. So, unfortunately, well I shouldn't put it that way. We haven't
thought of it because it's not an option right now under current administration.
Bird: Any other questions?
De Weerd: Mr. President.
Bird: Yes, Tammy.
De Weerd: Would it not be less expensive to just try and use the rail corridor to
achieve some of these things that eight lanes could do, or six lanes rather than
eight lanes?
Olen: Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman de Weerd.
De Weerd: Or would it be cheaper?
Olen: We came to the COMPASS board and then Ada Planning Association a
few years ago to suggest that maybe we could use that corridor in the interim.
Maybe start out do a feasibility study for exclusive bus lines and eventually when
you get enough traffic use rail vehicle. Federal Transit Administration indicated
that if we did that they might be able to support funding for acquisition of it. The
feeling at the time was no we really want to just focus on rail for the corridor. Its
been considered as a longer term option and we haven't really looked at the cost
in detail of bringing that corridor in sooner. We have funded a study to look at
that. That will start in October that will really look at the feasibility of the right-of-
way along there and what it would take. That's the first step in trying to get that
corridor acquired early but no to answer your question we haven't. All we've
done is identify the need to preserve it for future use.
De Weerd: And to think out of the box, like Councilman Anderson suggested and
leasing the access to it rather than preserving and acquiring right off, those kind
of options you know seem to be viable. It just seems like this is an awful lot of
money that if you use Chinden, if you use the rail corridor if you used other things
you wouldn't have to be adding more lanes to a freeway which is very costly.
Olen: Absolutely. To answer your question, no we haven't looked at it. We did in
the original phase of this and it got us into some trouble. We did expand it to
look at parallel arterials. At the time our projections were we still needed the
widening we're talking about on the interstate but we also needed to widen some
of the east west arterials, Fairview, Cherry Lane was one. Ustick was one and of
course 20/26 particularly as you get into Garden City. The widening of those are
very costly because of some of the existing development. Not so much on 20/26
but on Fairview, Cherry Lane, and Ustick. We basically focused this effort on the
interstate corridor. We are going to be looking at the rest of the arterials when
we do our regional plan update which will start shortly. We're going to have to
Meridian City Council Workshop
August 14, 2001
Page 21
deal with the other but its my opinion that the balance that we're looking at now
with the improvements being proposed for the interstate, its still going to overload
the surface arterials and be a challenge. I think the suggestion to control access
where we still have the opportunity to do that is an excellent suggestion. It makes
a huge difference, almost 100 percent on what we can carry. The amount of
growth that we're projecting dictates that we're going to need it all. I don't think
we're overstating with this what's needed on the interstate. It probably wouldn't
be hard to justify 10 lanes. The original study a couple years ago did look at 10
lanes but we realize that financially that just wasn't going to happen and eight
lanes is the optimum. Those are all great ideas and I'd like to hear that because
we may have to go back and re-look at the rail as a cheaper way of maybe
satisfying the demand.
De Weerd: Or even right now, frontage roads along I-84 corridor in the
undeveloped areas because you didn't do it right up to this point. Maybe we can
do something now.
Olen: Right.
Bird: Any other questions? Thank you Erv, very much. I appreciate it.
Olen: Thank you.
Issue #4 Discussion of explanation of spread sheet for water, sewer
and trash delinquencies:
Bird: Item No. 4 is a discussion by Rick and Leslie on the water sewer and trash
delinquency spreadsheet. Its not that any of us see our water bills you know.
Howard: Well, I wasn't real sure what I was to prepare for. I kind of put together a
little packet for everyone.
Anderson: You copied my bill didn't you?
Howard: No, I didn't copy your bill.
Anderson: Good thing.
Corrie: It looks awful familiar to me.
Anderson: It shows I'm two months behind.
De Weerd: I would rather have this bill. Can I trade?
Bird: Yes, can we trade?
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting August 19, 2003
The Pre-Council Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00
P.M. on Tuesday, August 19, 2003, by Mayor Robert D. Corrie.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Bill Nary,
and Cherie McCandless.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Kenny Bowers, Anna Powell, Doug Strong, Diane
Stewart and Will Berg.
Item 1. Roll-call Attendance:
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
Corrie: All right I will start the Pre-Council Meeting for Tuesday, August 19, 2003
at 6:00 in the City Council Chambers. At this time, I would like to have the City
Clerk have roll call attendance please.
Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: The second item on is the adoption of the agenda. Council we have four
items on the agenda for the Pre-Council.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would move that we adopt the agenda as published.
Nary: Second.
Corrie: Motion been made and seconded to adopt the agenda in front of us. Is
there any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion say aye. Negative
votes, none.
Item 3. Update on Ten Mile Overpass Project with Eric Davis, Retail
West:
Corrie: We will proceed with Item 3. Update on Ten Mile overpass project with
Eric Davis, Retail West.
Davis: Thank you Mayor, members of the Council, staff. Thanks for having me
out. It was May 27th the last time that I was here and we were just about ready to
go in with the letter of intent to ITD. We had John Church here who gave an
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 19, 2003
Page 2 of 21
economic forecast and we were looking under every rock we could for money
because we felt like the more money we had the better chances we would have.
We went in the next day with an offer to ITD of five million dollars for the
interchange and we won't a pretty comprehensive letter of intent that we've
submitted and copied you guys on. That early June we were then invited to be
on the agenda for the Idaho Transportation Department Board, they had a
meeting in Lewiston. We were told just after June 2nd or 3rd you're on and you
come up a nd g ive u s a p resentation. We spent t he n ext t hree t o f our w eeks
pulling together, lobbying trying to make sure that we were working closely with
ITD staff and that there wasn't going to be a new issue that came up. I think I
brought you up to speed last time is that the bigger issues are the fact that once
you do the Ten Mile Interchange staff is saying well now you got to do extra
lanes on the freeway from Meridian to Ten Mile or Eagle. You can't get on the
Meridian o verpass b ecause i is t oo n arrow, s o w e h ave t o redo that. All o f a
sudden our 18 or 19 million dollar modified little proposal became over 50 million.
I call that the piling on effect, but the other two pieces the lanes and Meridian
Road and at Ten Mile those are already on to do lists that ITD had prioritized at
one stage or another. We worked through and discovered as we followed up on
our proposal that the board members were businessmen and they appreciated
any kind of a contribution and they certainly weren't going to just send us down
the road because all we had was five million dollars. We made a pretty strong
presentation. We flew up there, Gary and Mike Ballantyne and I went up and we
prepared - i t was a P owerPoint, a nd w e h ad t hese handouts t hat g of t o e ach
board m ember a f ew days before and they had them in their hotel rooms. It
included the letter of intent, there was an introductory letter and then the letter of
intent and then letters of support that first of which was the strongest was from
Mayor Corrie, a very good letter and was all the support that you know said last
time that's what we can do for you and that was good. We had a letter from the
City o f K una. We g of a I etter from Larry Craig. We h ad a s trong I etter from
Boise Metro Chamber and Saint AI's. Then throughout the presentation we
showed them that most of these items were already on their list and that we were
probably going to save them 50 million dollars overall. With 10 million dollars in
cost savings and things, we've engineered and the other five million we would
contribute from the neighbors. At that hearing the board was very strong and
unanimous in asking staff to follow up on this, we like these public private
partnerships. You know I was watching all the body language we had talked to a
couple of them in advance. We left there feeling like we did the best job as we
could. We couldn't of asked for any better response. Then about three weeks
later or two weeks later we got a letter from Monty McClure, who's the head of
our board, our district. I'll give you a copy of this. Basically thank you for
traveling to Lewiston on June 26t" to present the public private partnership for I-
84 and Ten Mile Road Interchange. The board appreciated the presentation and
the partnership offer. It is evident a lot of work has gone into this proposal. The
coordination with ITD and impacted local public agencies is commendable. It is
imperative to continue working closer with ITD District 3 and those agencies
particularly Ada County Highway District and community planning. The board is
supportive of the partnerships a nd will explore the feasibility of your proposal.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 19, 2003
Page 3 of 21
Staff will review options and make the Ten Mile Interchange a reality with your
involvement. Funding options and impacts other projects will be considered.
What we are heading for is a response from staff to the board in the September
18th and 19th meeting here at headquarters. We'll be working with them in the
meantime so again (inaudible) surprises but we do have kind of the bare bones
of a response. In fact the District 3 response at the Lewiston meeting was very
supportive of us. I mean they -Eric Shannon got up and Pam Lowe couldn't be
there that day but Eric stood up and told the board we support this and we think
it's a good idea and they asked a few questions and he was knocking down
answers that were right on the money. What we know they'll say is the scope is
much bigger then just that. We need to figure that out. It will impact other
priorities and we got to figure out a way to pay for this. I think they will, I think it
may involve some work at the Legislature to allow them to bond for public
infrastructure for federal highway improvements. It may also -some more
legislative work might be done to get them to allow design build arrangements
which are much more effective and faster. You know we are standing in the
wings ready to help with that kind of an effort if that comes to bare. The other
side of it is that with the increased scope of work going all the way to Meridian
Interchange and maybe Eagle and back to Garrity. The scope of the
environmental report will be longer then we anticipated and they are saying they
can't see how in the world it would take less then the time -construction start
wouldn't be until Fall of 2006. The big call to me was would that kill a deal. I
mean are you guys patient enough to wait that long and we said yeah, it's a blow
to us but we'll deal with it. Just let us get involved and let us take as much
charge of that process as we can and we'll do everything in our power to speed it
up but reality is reality. You would rather have a yes just a little longer then no go
away so things as they are they took the five million very seriously and I think
we've got -that's not an issue. The bigger issue is managing the process and
getting the bigger items paid for. Anyway that's where we are. After the 19tH
we'll know more and then I hope that between the 19th and say Christmas time
we are solidifying the letter of intent and moving toward a contract of some sort of
performance obligations in there. I'll keep you posted. I need to also go back a
little bit more in history. When we came here early on in an alliance we have a
contract and sort of a partnership with Eastbourne and the City to shoulder the
cost of Earth Tech's involvement in what we at the time figured was a preliminary
concept report. We set a budget of $80,000 and we did the report and there
were a number of steps in the sequence that were unforeseeable but I've g of
some of those explained in the letter from Earth Tech. We hired John Church
and remember back then we had his demographics so he'd get the growth
projections right. Then we had to add some more alternatives in response to
their review for the study. We had to then research the cost of t he Meridian
Road Interchange when that was thrown our way and the additional options to
widen that. We had a second response from Federal Highway that had to be
attended to and then last but not least were the presentation and the preparation
and travel to Lewiston by the engineers. What I would propose and you know
this is small in comparison to other things I've asked for here but I would propose
that the budget be adjusted from $80,000 limit to $100,000, the city's share going
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 19, 2003
Page 4 of 21
from $40,000 to $50,000 and that would be it. As far as we capped out Earth
Tech's performance under that original concept report and using their gray matter
and brainpower. The next step will probably be with lawyers and more working
with the property owners. If we get a solid response from ITD then we've got a
whole other venue with the property owners to take on. That would be my
request and I knew it would take Council action and we're in the process of trying
to pay EarthTech and needed to get it out. This is kind of a list that I just asked
Gary to put this together so we have a little bit of discussion about what the
extras were.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Eric, I have no problem but I would like an itemized statement and
breakdown. I also, I don't know if the Mayor has the original proposal or contract
that we had with Earth Tech outlining the scope of work that they were doing at
that time. The reason we are doing this is we just found out through some stuff
that we had partnership with ACHD that we got charged and paid for some of the
lots that were on another project all the way around the corner not even close to
where we were supposed to be. I would request a breakdown of the work -
Davis: A spreadsheet?
Bird: Spreadsheet, and I'd also like to see the original proposal or the original
contract stating the scope of work that they were doing for the $80,000.
Davis: I can resurrect this.
Corrie: We've got that.
Bird: But if we get the spreadsheet -
Corrie: - A spreadsheet on what you've spent and how it's spent and (inaudible).
Bird: Not just a spreadsheet. I'd like to see the invoices from Earth Tech and all
that.
Davis: Okay.
Bird: And I'm not doubting a single person I just.
Berg: Mr. Mayor if I could just address that as they submitted their information or
request for payment and our share of that, that he has submitted invoices and
documentation from Earth Tech. We can put it all wrapped up in one package
because he does explain exactly what they are charging for what they are doing
and then asking us to submit our portion of the bill.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 19, 2003
Page 5 of 21
Davis: There was usually a little narrative that they would submit with those
status reports, schedules, who did what. All right.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Now I appreciate Councilman Bird requesting that, it's important. I
do think he gave us a heads up that this would have an overrun and -
Davis: Well yes. Actually my mission last time was to bring this up but I ran out
of time and after asking for three million I figured it was counting decimal points.
De Weerd: I don't know we kept a straight face when you said that.
Davis: I hope you appreciate that I had asked that because you know the
neighbors, we've got everybody. Have you looked under every rock? I didn't
mean to be out of line I realized your budget was.
Corrie: You know when I sat in my office when you made that statement but I
would think $10,000 would be much easier to get then the three million.
Davis: In this case it's not the dollars as much as it is sort of an alliance. I mean
we set out to do this and we've done it. I think we've taken the ball and put it
over the goal line and fought the fight. I'd like to continue to say look we have a
solid alliance with the city and you know we got into this thing together. Send a
message back to the guys in Toronto that we're all still and you know here we
are.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I had talked to the Interim Director of ITD about how they are piling
projects on to this interchange request. I haven't met the new director but maybe
the Mayor can give him a call. I do think we have to find a way to separate it and
I have said that at COMPASS. I actually tried to get you $270,000 yesterday at
COMPASS but I was the only one that voted for it so I wasn't very effective.
Corrie: Well I should've went.
De Weerd: I think there is a lot of interest right now especially with the
momentum that State Highway 16 is getting and they do have some line items
projected and dedicated to that project and purchasing right-of-way. They are
hoping to extend it not only just south of the river but north of the river. I do know
Eagle is very interested in us getting that interchange. If Star, a couple of state
representatives, representative Moyle and Senator Bunderson are very
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
August 19, 2003
Page 6 of 21
interested so you have a lot of support. ACHD is supposed to pulling together a
joint meeting to discuss State Highway 16 and the extension to the interchange
or the interstate. That might even be something you would be interested in
attending as well.
Davis: That's great. We went to ACHD and had some pretty serious discussion
in fact some of our project overlaps what they have already designated as some
of their work. That there's a double up in dollars there, well on the stretch of Ten
Mile all the way from the freeway up to Franklin, that's a double up. The
intersection of Franklin and Ten Mile is a double up, signalization the whole thing.
They were a little more cautious and they wanted to get a commitment from ITD
and so we do have some homework to do there met with Hal Bunderson, he was
- this Highway 16 and in fact, that came up at the hearing in Lewiston, one of the
questions and it was addressed by Eric Shannon real well. He said, look Ten
Mile is what we need. We know that we need that anyway, so we will figure out a
way to make that connect and this is a good thing, it will enable Highway 16 to
have some more momentum.
De Weerd: Well Ten Mile Interchange needs to come first..
Davis: Yes.
De Weerd: Anyway you do have a lot of support out there so you can increase
the size of your letters of endorsement without too much effort.
Davis: Yes thanks. Thank you. Are we done?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor. I guess just one last thing is I appreciate all the foot work
and I know you have personal interest in it so there's reason for your insanity but
Ten Mile Interchange is very crucial to our community. You are doing footwork
on behalf of certainly your employer but also of our community because Ten Mile
Interchange is just very needed.
Davis: It makes it an easy job really when you know you've got everybody
behind you. At least its - I don't want to say easy but rally the troops.
De Weerd: I appreciate what you are doing.
Davis: Thank you.
Corrie: Very good, thank you. Gary thank you for everything you have done.
Item 4. Discussion of Skate Park Rules and Park Shelter Rules:
Strong: Mr. Mayor members of the Council, are you all set to talk about rules?
As you may recall when we passed the Park Ordinance a few weeks ago one of
the conditions that was identified in the ordinance was that any rules related to
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 62 of 68
Nary: Yes.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. All those in favor of continuing these items to November
5th, 2003, please, say aye. Okay. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 20: Water, Sewer and Trash Delinquencies:
De Weerd: We will move to Item 20. Sewer, trash -- water, sewer and trash
delinquencies. This is to inform you in writing, if you so choose, that you have the right
to apre-termination hearing at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, October 21st, 2003, before the
Mayor and City before the Mayor and City Council to appear in person to be judged on
the facts and to defend the claim made by the city that your water, sewer, and trash bill
is delinquent. You may retain counsel. Your service will be discontinued on October
22nd, and/or October 29th, 2003, unless payment is received in full. Is there anyone
present who wishes to contest his or her water, sewer, and trash delinquency? Okay.
Seeing none, they are hereby informed that they may appeal or have the decision of the
city reviewed by the Fourth Judicial District Court pursuant to Idaho state code. Even
though they appeal .their water will be shut off. The amount of the turn-off list is
$33,544.45.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would move that we accept the delinquency for turn off and turn off dates will be
October 22nd, 2003, or -- and/or October 29th, 2003. The total sum is $33,544.45.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. It's been moved and seconded to approve the turn off dates of
October 22nd and 29th for the turn off list amount of $33,544.45. Mrs. Deputy Clerk, will
you call roll?
Roll-Call: McCandless, yea; Nary, yea; de Weerd, yea; Bird, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: I just thought it was important before we leave is one item to discuss. At
Compass on Monday, the Ten Mile interchange was discussed, gave a presentation to
the board on the- local and regional significance of the Ten Mile interchange and
proceeding with the environmental impact study. The private developer did offer their
commitment of five million dollars to fund the EIS and that was discussed and on the
table. ITD came back with something that was different from what the ITD board
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 63 of 68
suggested and that is to have further study done to have along-term look at the north-
south connection to the interchanges that are being proposed in the I-84 corridor study
and Clare Bowman at that meeting also raised his concern of certain deficiencies in the
I-84 corridor study that would warrant more study and work being done and would put in
question even the --
Nary: Validity?
De Weerd: -- validity. Yes. Thank you very much. -- in the Ten Mile as the site for an
interchange. So, I did talk with Mr. Bird, I have left a message for the Mayor and did talk
to the private entities afterwards and I think it would be on the best behalf of our
community if we respond to the Compass board with some concerns. One, that an
800,000 dollar document on the I-84 corridor study that recommended Ten Mile as the
next priority for interchanges being built, if it has deficiencies, what those deficiencies
would be. Two, that if -- that since the board did vote to proceed with further study, that
they could use the on-call that ITD has for consultants to eliminate some of the bidding
and award process. Three. To explain more in the criteria what specifically this would do
to further delay the Ten Mile interchange EIS, how this study would really correlate with
that and so we can understand this. This was to be -- was to consider amendment to
the Boise Urbanize TIP and the full board voted on it, so that, too, should have question
as to why Canyon county was voting on a TIP item for the Boise Urbanized Area. So,
those are my concerns and I believe they are also Mr. Bird's concerns and just wanted
to update the Council as to that board action and any other suggestions that our letter
should incorporate, if you have any ideas.
Nary: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Yeah. I share the same concerns. You know, it's incredible to me that in one
breath Compass can say that we have a significant area, a significant type of need for
this interchange, but let's study whether or not it actually goes there at all and it
absolutely makes no sense whatsoever to me. Obviously, there is other people driving
this train that we can't seem to get an interchange built that makes sense to everybody
that's immediately affected by it, but is being somehow slowed by people who have
some long-term issues about it that aren't going to immediately impacted. I think that's --
that's just ridiculous to me. So I agree with you that we need to respond in writing. I
think as our representative on the Compass board currently would -- I would appreciate
if you would be able to pen a letter, maybe with Mr. Smith's assistance as well or some
of the other information that we have and Mr. Bird's input, too, that I think we do need to
make a very strong statement that we disagree that and we strongly want this done and
we don't need another ten years of study that at the end of the day we find out that it
wasn't really valid.
De Weerd: Well -- and I guess to further explain -the concern here, is Ten Mile
interchange has been on our planning document since 1978. It's been on the Compass
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 64 of 68
board priorities since 1996. The I-84 corridor says it's needed by 2010, because we
would have a population 44,000 people, which we almost have now. So, we are seven
years ahead of their projections. I think that shows warrant and consideration that they
cannot blink at this five million dollars that is on the table. If they don't do it now, don't
come looking for private funds from this community, that it is supposed to be built by
2010, and, you know, can we afford to continue to delay it, because every year we
delay it it's additional cost. The minimum -- or the soonest we could get it would be
2007. Those private dollars are still on the table and may still be there for 2008. But
think our community, whether this private interest is present or not, we need the Ten
Mile interchange.
Nary: And I think our residents need to know that.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with Mr. Nary on a letter, but I believe it's -- we should have a letter drafted
by yourself and our attorney Mr. Nichols and signed by the Mayor and all four Council
people. I think that will carry more weight. I agree with Tammy, she put on a very good
presentation. We had four people stand with us. Nancy Merrill and Dave Bivens -- oh,
and Judy Pevey-Derr, five of us, and Tammy and I with nay votes. The thing that
amazed me -- it's like Tammy said, why Canyon county was voting on something like
this, I don't know, they are real worried, you know, they have got themselves in a
pickle -- and this is editorializing and I don't care if you publish it, Frank. They got
themselves --
Nary: We are glad you're here.
Bird: They got themselves in a pickle at the Idaho Center and they are trying to get out
of it. They want to see the off ramp closer over to the Idaho Center, so they can do stuff
like that. Well, the only thing I have heard for 20 some years is that we are going to
have it at Ten Mile and it's in the plan. Now, all of a sudden we are not even sure it's
going to be at Ten Mile. And Eastborn has stepped forward with five million dollars --
Micron did five million dollars out at Issaac Canyon and, you know, that thing got done
immediately.
De Weerd: And it didn't even have the traffic, the trips that --
Bird: And it didn't have the traffic that we had. And they are trying to tie -- what they are
trying to do, ITD -- which aren't my favorite people right now anyway because of what
they have done to us on the Locust Grove overpass, delaying it there -- is they are
trying to put this whole project into the 56 million dollars. Well, you have got to build the
interchange on Ten Mile before you do Meridian Road's expansion and, then, you got to
get it done before you can do the lane additions. So, they are phased, I agree, but why
should the cost be -- you know, because they are saying, well, five million is nothing, it's
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 65 of 68
a drop in the bucket to 56 million. But five million to 16 million, which the interchange is
basically going to cost, is a nice chunk of money at a good percent, but they are trying
to do this other thing. And we have got to write a strong letter and it's got to be in
Compass's number one priority TIP as far as I'm concerned and we have got to see that
it happens.
De Weerd: Well -- and what also was a part of my presentation that shows through their
engineering studies and this was by Earth Tech, is by opening the Ten Mile interchange
you can reduce the trips on Eagle by ten percent. I mean that's a huge impact to not
only our population, but the mobile population that goes through there and our safety
services. So, Anna, I don't know if you have any suggestions as well, but certainly would
appreciate any input that you would have to put in such a letter.
Powell: I think you know the issues far better than I do at this point. I wanted to actually
raise a related topic. The TIP that they were approving the other night is the 2004 to
2008 TIP?
De Weerd: '8. Uh-huh.
Powell: And their -- the transportation task force is required to get the 2005-2009 TIP to
you by the end of I believe next month or maybe this month. It's coming up very quickly.
Right now the Ten Mile interchange is listed as number 13 and the reason that's done is
because of that whole chicken and egg thing that we were talking about the other day,
is that if you -- if you put it in a number one priority, then, it probably -- it lessens the
likelihood of your other priorities getting done, because there is no funding for it, but you
can't get the funding until ITD does the funding and back and forth, back and forth. But,
given tonight's conversation -- I'm just double-checking. I'm assuming that you're going
to want the transportation task force to put that as the number one priority, followed by
Locust Grove?
De Weerd: Ihaven't --
Bird: Wait a minute. Locust Grove is done. That shouldn't even be a priority. That is in
the plans. Boy, let's don't get started on that. That's the same thing that those people
are -- Locust Grove is a done project.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Excuse me. It's a done project. But I'm just -- I mean it's been through plans -- we
have bought right of way. We have spent city money. Right of way.
Powell: I'm not a member of that task force.
Bird: I know you're not.
Powell: I just saw their results, but all I know is it's still on the list, so --
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 66 of 68
De Weerd: We haven't seen it yet.
Powell: Well -- and I'm just wondering if you want them to change it before it comes up
to you or do you just want to see it as they have got it now or --
De Weerd: Let's --
Powell: Ijust know it's coming and I didn't know if you wanted it changed before you got
here or --
Bird: No. Let's see what they have got.
De Weerd: I appreciate that. Mrs. McCandless.
McCandless: I am on that committee and I have it on computer, the draft version of it,
and I'm to send in suggestions to Gary. If you want me to send in that -- what Mr. Bird
was talking about as a suggestion to take Locust Grove off of there, I sure can.
Bird: Why would that -- why would that even be on the list? Because supposedly it got
shoved back two years, because we got the federal money -- when ITD went to the
federal it shoved us back. That thing was supposed to open this year. That's why this
Council, all four us, put 1.8 million of city money towards that, because of the safety
factor that we felt was necessary.
De Weerd: Cherie -- I'm sorry, Keith. I guess maybe what you can asked Gary is if he
could contact ACHD and make sure by removing it we are not going to take it out of a
priority and a planned year basis. It is on the TIP. It is in the funded year. So, it may not
be compromised, but he may want to check on that first. You know, I agree that if it
doesn't need to be on there, we don't want it on there, but before we take it off, we
better make sure we are not compromising anything.
McCandless: And am I to understand that you guys would like to see Ten Mile number
one and take it off of the end of the list, so to speak?
De Weerd: I think we need to see the list.
Nary: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Yeah. I don't know about the number. I certainly know it is a priority. You know,
the one thing I guess I'm sitting here and thinking is we don't control as many things as
people think we do. We aren't really in charge of everything that you may think we are.
But we can be at least -- when people ask us what are we going to do or what did we do
to get that Ten Mile interchange built, this is what we can do and we need to do,
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 67 of 68
because -- and whether or not we need to move it up on the list, I think we -- I think we
are going to need to move it up, but I don't know where that belongs, you know, whether
it's one, two, three, or whatever. But it certainly is a high priority and, you know, we don't
want to lose -- we don't want other people as we have seen in other entities lose sight of
the prize, because we moved it around or took it off and they thought we didn't want it
anymore and that was the assumption they made to move forward and we don't want
that to happen. But this is something we -- that is very important that we need to do.
De Weerd: Yeah. So, if he can touch base and try and find out, I think they definitely
have some ideas that we could probably utilize.
Nary: And Frank's just glad he stayed until the end of the meeting.
De Weerd: And, Frank, certainly we will -- we will get you a copy of that letter. I think our
citizens need to know and it's not that I don't think we should work regionally with this
group, but I do know that there is some pressure needed at ITD to start looking at that
Ten Mile interchange and maybe -- my concern was is, what, is transportation going to
start telling us our land use? We have put six million dollars on our sewer, we have
already spent 100,000 dollars on the design, on the conceptual designs, 34,000 on
preliminary sewer study, and, then, you have 1.8 million -- or 1.1 million dollars in total
well and water issues and so we have a substantial investment here that we need to
protect and I don't see any other options as viable, other than Ten Mile. That's what we
have been planning for for 25 years and for them to come and tell us now, after that --
that was adopted -- that I-84 corridor study was adopted in 2001 by not only the
Compass board, but by ITD board as well. So, this is a little late in the game to start
questioning the -- okay. You say it. The validity. And, you know, it's just beyond belief.
McCandless: I agree with you.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: So, anyway -- Mr. Bird.
Bird: On another subject before we do. This is for Anna. On the landscaping deal, I've
had two phone calls, maybe you have had them, because I have told them to call you.
We took out a ten inch caliper tree out here in front of the city hall. Our landscaping
ordinance says that anytime you take out over four inch caliper trees you replace it back
with a like about of caliper and they are two in calipers. Where are we going to -- these
people want to know where are we going to put the five two inch caliper trees.
De Weerd: Who do you mean these people? He's calling himself.
Bird: No. No. It's not me. Not me. I can give you the name. I agree with it. I will say that
up front.
Powell: With all the landscape provisions -- is this in an Old Town area?
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 62 of 68
Nary: Yes.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. All those in favor of continuing these items to November
5th, 2003, please, say aye. Okay. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 20: Water, Sewer and Trash Delinquencies:
De Weerd: We will move to Item 20. Sewer, trash -- water, sewer and trash
delinquencies. This is to inform you in writing, if you so choose, that you have the right
to apre-termination hearing at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, October 21st, 2003, before the
Mayor and City before the Mayor and City Council to appear in person to be judged on
the facts and to defend the claim made by the city that your water, sewer, and trash bill
is delinquent. You may retain counsel. Your service will be discontinued on October
22nd, and/or October 29th, 2003, unless payment is received in full. Is there anyone
present who wishes to contest his or her water, sewer, and trash delinquency? Okay.
Seeing none, they are hereby informed that they may appeal or have the decision of the
city reviewed by the Fourth Judicial District Court pursuant to Idaho state code. Even
though they appeal their water will be shut off. The amount of the turn-off list is
$33,544.45.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would move that we accept the delinquency for turn off and turn off dates will be
October 22nd, 2003, or -- and/or October 29th, 2003. The total sum is $33,544.45.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. It's been moved and seconded to approve the turn off dates of
October 22nd and 29th for the turn off list amount of $33,544.45. Mrs. Deputy Clerk, will
you call roll?
Roll-Call: McCandless, yea; Nary, yea; de Weerd, yea; Bird, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: I just thought it was important before we leave is one item to discuss. At
Compass on Monday, the Ten Mile interchange was discussed, gave a presentation to
the board on the local and regional significance of the Ten Mile interchange and
proceeding with the environmental impact study. The private developer did offer their
commitment of five million dollars to fund the EIS and that was discussed and on the
table. ITD came back with something that was different from what the ITD board
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 63 of 68
suggested and that is to have further study done to have along-term look at the north-
south connection to the interchanges that are being proposed in the I-84 corridor study
and Clare Bowman at that meeting also raised his concern of certain deficiencies in the
I-84 corridor study that would warrant more study and work being done and would put in
question even the --
Nary: Validity?
De Weerd: -- validity. Yes. Thank you very much. -- in the Ten Mile as the site for an
interchange. So, I did talk with Mr. Bird, I have left a message for the Mayor and did talk
to the private entities afterwards and I think it would be on the best behalf of our
community if we respond to the Compass board with some concerns. One, that an
800,000 dollar document on the I-84 corridor study that recommended Ten Mile as the
next priority for interchanges being built, if it has deficiencies, what those deficiencies
would be. Two, that if -- that since the board did vote to proceed with further study, that
they could use the on-call that ITD has for consultants to eliminate some of the bidding
and award process. Three. To explain more in the criteria what specifically this would do
to further delay the Ten Mile interchange EIS, how this study would really correlate with
that and so we can understand this. This was to be -- was to consider amendment to
the Boise Urbanize TIP and the full board voted on it, so that, too, should have question
as to why Canyon county was voting on a TIP item for the Boise Urbanized Area. So,
those are my concerns and I believe they are also Mr. Bird's concerns and just wanted
to update the Council as to that board action and any other suggestions that our letter
should incorporate, if you have any ideas.
Nary: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Yeah. I share the same concerns. You know, it's incredible to me that in one
breath Compass can say that we have a significant area, a significant type of need for
this interchange, but let's study whether or not it actually goes there at all and it
absolutely makes no sense whatsoever to me. Obviously, there is other people driving
this train that we can't seem to get an interchange built that makes sense to everybody
that's immediately affected by it, but is being somehow slowed by people who have
some long-term issues about it that aren't going to immediately impacted. I think that's --
that's just ridiculous to me. So I agree with you that we need to respond in writing.
think as our representative on the Compass board currently would -- I would appreciate
if you would be able to pen a letter, maybe with Mr. Smith's assistance as well or some
of the other information that we have and Mr. Bird's input, too, that I think we do need to
make a very strong statement that we disagree that and we strongly want this done and
we don't need another ten years of study that at the end of the day we find out that it
wasn't really valid.
De Weerd: Well -- and I guess to further explain the concern here, is Ten Mile
interchange has been on our planning document since 1978. It's been on the Compass
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 64 of 68
board priorities since 1996. The I-84 corridor says it's needed by 2010, because we
would have a population 44,000 people, which we almost have now. So, we are seven
years ahead of their projections. I think that shows warrant and consideration that they
cannot blink at this five million dollars that is on the table. If they don't do it now, don't
come looking for private funds from this community, that it is supposed to be built by
2010, and, you know, can we afford to continue to delay it, because every year we
delay it it's additional cost. The minimum -- or the soonest we could get it would be
2007. Those private dollars are still on the table and may still be there for 2008. But I
think our community, whether this private interest is present or not, we need the Ten
Mile interchange.
Nary: And I think our residents need to know that.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with Mr. Nary on a letter, but I believe it's -- we should have a letter drafted
by yourself and our attorney Mr. Nichols and signed by the Mayor and all four Council
people. I think that will carry more weight. I agree with Tammy, she put on a very good
presentation. We had four people stand with us. Nancy Merrill and Dave Bivens -- oh,
and Judy Pevey-Derr, five of us, and Tammy and I with nay votes. The thing that
amazed me -- it's like Tammy said, why Canyon county was voting on something like
this, I don't know, they are real worried, you know, they have got themselves in a
pickle -- and this is editorializing and I don't care if you publish it, Frank. They got
themselves --
Nary: We are glad you're here.
Bird: They got themselves in a pickle at the Idaho Center and they are trying to get out
of it. They want to see the off ramp closer over to the Idaho Center, so they can do stuff
like that. Well, the only thing I have heard for 20 some years is that we are going to
have it at Ten Mile and it's in the plan. Now, all of a sudden we are not even sure it's
going to be at Ten Mile. And Eastborn has stepped forward with five million dollars --
Micron did five million dollars out at Issaac Canyon and, you know, that thing got done
immediately.
De Weerd: And it didn't even have the traffic, the trips that --
Bird: And it didn't have the traffic that we had. And they are trying to tie -- what they are
trying to do, ITD -- which aren't my favorite people right now anyway because of what
they have done to us on the Locust Grove overpass, delaying it there -- is they are
trying to put this whole project into the 56 million dollars. Well, you have got to build the
interchange on Ten Mile before you do Meridian Road's expansion and, then, you got to
get it done before you can do the lane additions. So, they are phased, I agree, but why
should the cost be -- you know, because they are saying, well, five million is nothing, it's
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 65 of 68
a drop in the bucket to 56 million. But five million to 16 million, which the interchange is
basically going to cost, is a nice chunk of money at a good percent, but they are trying
to do this other thing. And we have got to write a strong letter and it's got to be in
Compass's number one priority TIP as far as I'm concerned and we have got to see that
it happens.
De Weerd: Well -- and what also was a part of my presentation that shows through their
engineering studies and this was by Earth Tech, is by opening the Ten Mile interchange
you can reduce the trips on Eagle by ten percent. I mean that's a huge impact to not
only our population, but the mobile population that goes through there and our safety
services. So, Anna, I don't know if you have any suggestions as well, but certainly would
appreciate any input that you would have to put in such a letter.
Powell: I think you know the issues far better than I do at this point. I wanted to actually
raise a related topic. The TIP that they were approving the other night is the 2004 to
2008 TIP?
De Weerd: '8. Uh-huh.
Powell: And their -- the transportation task force is required to get the 2005-2009 TIP to
you by the end of I believe next month or maybe this month. It's coming up very quickly.
Right now the Ten Mile interchange is listed as number 13 and the reason that's done is
because of that whole chicken and egg thing that we were talking about the other day,
is that if you -- if you put it in a number one priority, then, it probably -- it lessens the
likelihood of your other priorities getting done, because there is no funding for it, but you
can't get the funding until ITD does the funding and back and forth, back and forth. But,
given tonight's conversation -- I'm just double-checking. I'm assuming that you're going
to want the transportation task force to put that as the number one priority, followed by
Locust Grove?
De Weerd: Ihaven't --
Bird: Wait a minute. Locust Grove is done. That shouldn't even be a priority. That is in
the plans. Boy, let's don't get started on that. That's the same thing that those people
are -- Locust Grove is a done project.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Excuse me. It's a done project. But I'm just -- I mean it's been through plans -- we
have bought right of way. We have spent city money. Right of way.
Powell: I'm not a member of that task force.
Bird: I know you're not.
Powell: I just saw their results, but all I know is it's still on the list, so --
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 66 of 68
De Weerd: We haven't seen it yet.
Powell: Well -- and I'm just wondering if you want them to change it before it comes up
to you or do you just want to see it as they have got it now or --
De Weerd: Let's --
Powell: I just know it's coming and I didn't know if you wanted it changed before you got
here or --
Bird: No. Let's see what they have got.
De Weerd: I appreciate that. Mrs. McCandless.
McCandless: I am on that committee and I have it on computer, the draft version of it,
and I'm to send in suggestions to Gary. If you want me to send in that -- what Mr. Bird
was talking about as a suggestion to take Locust Grove off of there, I sure can.
Bird: Why would that -- why would that even be on the list? Because supposedly it got
shoved back two years, because we got the federal money -- when ITD went to the
federal it shoved us back. That thing was supposed to open this year. That's why this
Council, all four us, put 1.8 million of city money towards that, because of the safety
factor that we felt was necessary.
De Weerd: Cherie -- I'm sorry, Keith. I guess maybe what you can asked Gary is if he
could contact ACHD and make sure by removing it we are not going to take it out of a
priority and a planned year basis. It is on the TIP. It is in the funded year. So, it may not
be compromised, but he may want to check on that first. You know, I agree that if it
doesn't need to be on there, we don't want it on there, but before we take it off, we
better make sure we are not compromising anything.
McCandless: And am I to understand that you guys would like to see Ten Mile number
one and take it off of the end of the list, so to speak?
De Weerd: I think we need to see the list
Nary: Madam President?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Yeah. I don't know about the number. I certainly know it is a priority. You know,
the one thing I guess I'm sitting here and thinking is we don't control as many things as
people think we do. We aren't really in charge of everything that you may think we are.
But we can be at least -- when people ask us what are we going to do or what did we do
Meridian City Council
October 21, 2003
Page 67 of 68
to get that Ten Mile interchange built, this is what we can do and we need to do,
because -- and whether or not we need to move it up on the list, I think we -- I think we
are going to need to move it up, but I don't know where that belongs, you know, whether
it's one, two, three, or whatever. But it certainly is a high priority and, you know, we don't
want to lose -- we don't want other people as we have seen in other entities lose sight of
the prize, because we moved it around or took it off and they thought we didn't want it
anymore and that was the assumption they made to move forward and we don't want
that to happen. But this is something we -- that is very important that we need to do.
De Weerd: Yeah. So, if he can touch base and try and find out, I think they definitely
have some ideas that we could probably utilize.
Nary: And Frank's just glad he stayed until the end of the meeting.
De Weerd: And, Frank, certainly we will -- we will get you a copy of that letter. I think our
citizens need to know and it's not that I don't think we should work regionally with this
group, but I do know that there is some pressure needed at ITD to start looking at that
Ten Mile interchange and maybe -- my concern was is, what, is transportation going to
start telling us our land use? We have put six million dollars on our sewer, we have
already spent 100,000 dollars on the design, on the conceptual designs, 34,000 on
preliminary sewer study, and, then, you have 1.8 million -- or 1.1 million dollars in total
well and water issues and so we have a substantial investment here that we need to
protect and I don't see any other options as viable, other than Ten Mile. That's what we
have been planning for for 25 years and for them to come and tell us now, after that --
that was adopted -- that I-84 corridor study was adopted in 2001 by not only the
Compass board, but by ITD board as well. So, this is a little late in the game to start
questioning the --okay. You say it. The validity. And, you know, it's just beyond belief.
McCandless: I agree with you.
Bird: Madam President?
De Weerd: So, anyway -- Mr. Bird.
Bird: On another subject before we do. This is for Anna. On the landscaping deal, I've
had two phone calls, maybe you have had them, because I have told them to call you.
We took out a ten inch caliper tree out here in front of the city hall. Our landscaping
ordinance says that anytime you take out over four inch caliper trees you replace it back
with a like about of caliper and they are two in calipers. Where are we going to -- these
people want to know where are we going to put the five two inch caliper trees.
De Weerd: Who do you mean these people? He's calling himself.
Bird: No. No. It's not me. Not me. I can give you the name. I agree with it. I will say that
upfront.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting July 16, 2002
The regular meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:35 P.M.,
Tuesday, July 16, 2002, by Mayor Robert D. Corrie.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Cherie
McCandless and William Nary.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Gary Smith, Shari Stiles, Brad Watson, Mike Worley, Will
Berg, Ken Bowers, Tom Kuntz, and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Come
Corrie: Okay. I will open the Meridian City Council regular meeting agenda for Tuesday,
July the 16th, 2002, at 6:30 p.m. I want to thank everyone for being here this evening.
Let's have roll call, please, Mr. Clerk.
Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: Okay. Thank you. Item No. 2 is Adoption of the Agenda.
Bird: Mr. Mayor?
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would move that we adopt the agenda as noted, with the addition in the Consent
Agenda of Item M, which is the retail agreement, the -yeah, Retail West, the
agreement with Retail West on the Ten Mile Exchange Survey -Interchange Survey.
And on the Consent Agenda we'd like to pull Item E and make it 5-E and Item J, make it
5-J for discussion. With that I'd move that we adopt the agenda.
De Weerd: Second.
Corrie: Motion has been made and seconded to adopt the agenda with the noted
changes. Is there any further discussion? Then all those in favor say aye. All ayes.
Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 3: Consent Agenda:
Meridian City Council Meeting
July 16, 2002
Page 2 of 89
A. Approve minutes from June 24, 2002 City Council Regular Meeting:
B. Approve minutes from July 2, 2002 City Council Special Meeting:
C. Approve minutes from July 2, 2002 City Council Regular Meeting:
D. Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law for Approval:
AZ 02-008 Request for annexation and zoning of 5 acres from RUT to L-
0 zones for the proposed LDS Stake Center by Lombard Conrad
Architects - 2515 W. Ustick Road:
E. Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law for Denial: CUP 02-011
Request for a Conditional Use Permit for a sports bar with pool tables and
big screen TV's in an O-T zone for Blumacs Sports Bar by Michael
McGuinness - 706 East First Street (N. Main Street):
F. Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law for Approval: CUP 02-015
Request for a Conditional Use Permit to renovate existing office -and
Convention Center into a private Jr./ Sr. High School for Cole Vallev
Christian Church by Jeffrey L. King - 200 East Carlton Avenue:
G. Findings of Facts and Conclusions of Law for Denial: VAR 02-008
Request for a Variance to add one additional sign on a large medical clinic
and radiology center building by Imaging Center Radiologists -- 2929
East Magic View Drive:
H. Development Agreement: AZ 01-027 Request for annexation and
zoning of 77.9 acres in a proposed R-8 zone for proposed Baldwin Park
Subdivision by Capital Development Co. - %4 mile south of McMillan
Road, east side of Linder Road:
I. Beer and Liquor License Applications by John C. Box for Bill N-
Lynn's Place, 229 West Franklin Road:
J. Will Serve Letter - W. H. Moore property:
K. White Drain Sewer Trunk Permanent and Temporary
Easement -- Quenzer properly:
L. Resolution No. 02-379: Corporate Resolution for Use of Facsimile
Signatures:
Corrie: Next we have the Consent Agenda and we have Items E and J has been pulled
and to be put on 5-E and J. Anything further on the Consent Agenda? Oh, that's right.
And the addition of the Retail West on the interchange -- Ten Mile Interchange Study
Report.
Meridian City Council Meeting
July 16, 2002
Page 3 of 89
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor?
Cowie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I move we approve the Consent Agenda as amended.
Nary: Second.
Cowie: Motion has been made and seconded to approve the Consent Agenda as
amended. Any further discussion? Hearing none, roll-call vote, Mr. Berg.
Roll-call vote: McCandless, aye; Nary, aye; DeWeerd, aye; Bird, aye.
Cowie: All ayes. Motion to approve the Consent Agenda with the changes is approved.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Department Reports
1. Planning and Zoning Department -Shari Stiles
A. Update on Preparation of Final Comprehensive
Plan /Resolution:
Cowie: Item 4 is Department Reports. Planning and Zoning Department, Shari Stiles,
update on preparation of final Comprehensive Plan and slash Resolution.
Stiles: Mr. Mayor and Council, I just wanted to let you know where we were on the
Comprehensive Plan. We had hoped to have it up for a resolution tonight. We did get
the copy back from our consultant with changes made. However, there are additional
changes that need to be made, clean up typos, and problems with some of the layout of
the document. We will be meeting with them next week to make the final changes and
would like to ask if your meeting on the 30th, if we could have a special meeting prior to
the meeting that I guess you would have with the Planning and Zoning Commission on
the 30th, since it is the fifth Tuesday. Not going to have any?
Corrie: We already decided on the 2nd.
Stiles: Are you not going to have any meeting on Tuesday?
Cowie: No. We will have it -the next meeting will be August the 6th.
Stiles: Is that when you -you want to hold it off that long?
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting September 24, 2002
The Pre-Council Meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:04
P.M. on September 24, 2002, by Mayor Robert Corrie.
Members Present: Robert Corrie, Cherie McCandless, Bill Nary, Tammy de
Weerd, and Keith Bird.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Mike Worley, Brad W atson, Ken Bowers, David
McKinnon, Steve Siddoway and Will Berg.
1. Roll-call Attendance:
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
Corrie: September the 24t" at 6:04 P.M. at the Meridian City Council Chambers.
This time I will have roll-call attendance Mr. Berg. All at present thank you.
2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: Council item number two is adoption of the agenda.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the agenda for the Pre-Council meeting as published.
McCandless: Second.
Corrie: Motion been made and second to adopt the agenda as published. Any
further discussion? All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
3. Discussion with Earth Tech:
4. Ten Mile Interchange Update -Steve Siddoway:
Corrie: Item number three and number four, discussion with Earth Tech and Ten
Mile Interchange update. I believe are both very similar so we can do those at
the same time. So we will, Steve do you want to start and then or whoever you
want to go.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 2 of 15
Siddoway: Thank you Mayor Corrie, members of the Council. Mayor called me
about a month ago and asked me to kind of represent the City's interest with this
Ten Mile Interchange study. We've met probably three times and in those
meetings discussion's just been very preliminary at this point. We've been
talking about demographics in particular and trying to nail down the projections
that we are trying to build to so that we don't under build it. So we don't really
over build it. But Earth Tech has come up with a series of just initial thoughts of
general options that are out there for interchange design. I know one thing that
they were looking for was some feedback, if there was any that the Council likes
particularly or doesn't like particularly that they think should be thrown out from
the get go and not be considered. I'm going to turn some time over to Dan
Thompson w ith E arth T ech a nd h e's b rought s ome g raphics a nd t hings which
we'll help display. So Dan.
Thompson: Good evening I'm Dan Thompson I'm with the firm of Earth Tech.
Our business address is 3071 East Franklin Road in Meridian. Again I'd like to
apologize, I've been to a couple of these Pre-Council meetings at other
jurisdictions and they've been more of a sit around the table type discussion. So
I kind of planned it that way and didn't bring the proper graphics for this setting
and I apologize for that. As Steve said we did have a couple meetings, we've
had meetings with the Federal Highways Administration, ITD, Ada County
Highway District and City of Meridian and other interested parties. COMPASS is
also at these meetings. Probably the big concern we had was what's going to
happen out there if we build an interchange. Everybody said we don't want to
build another Eagle Road and have that occur again but there was a big concern
that we get the proper demographics for that area around there and there has
been a lot of discussion on the so far. A lot of the demographics for the
COMPASS model was sort of initialized by a gentleman by the name of John
Church and he's an economist here in Idaho he worked for Idaho Power did a lot
of their demographics for many years. After a lot of discussion with COMPASS
we thought it would be wise to, Mr. Davis thought it would be wise if we brought
him on board here and bring in some demographics to see his expertise in
predictions of the demographics. I don't want to go in to what he did and how he
did it but we did bring sort of a map of (inaudible). And basically is what, if were
looking at the highways here, Ten Mile is here and they are broken up into the
traffic analysis zone, which is determined by COMPASS. The area were mainly
concerned with is zones 277 and 278 that's immediately north of the highway on
either side of Ten Mile. And I guess one thing that concerned us is the prediction
was for about 2.1 million square feet of retail another 1.2 million square feet of
office as well as some industrial and housing by his projections. From our initial
reaction seemed like that was kind of a high estimate there were kind of trying to
look at and sport this on to FHWA and ITD and have them look at that and some
of the other zones. South of the freeway I think we kind of recommended maybe
a little more industrial development down there. There's a lot of low density
housing we've been comparing this to your Comprehensive Plan trying to see if
this fits too. I guess we are looking for a feedback from the City to see if this
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 3 of 15
seems reasonable to the City also. This is, are probably our critical task at this
point. We're trying to get everybody to agree on this, COMPASS says they don't
want t o p roceed w ith any t raffic m odeling u ntil I TD and F ederal Highways a re
happy w ith w hat w e've done here. The next step I think we're g oing to do is
we're going to go to COMPASS and look at the demographics for other
interchanges in the area. The Meridian interchange the Eagle Road interchange
and probably the Gowen Road interchange and compare that to what we have
here. We believe by narrowing it down on that we can get a pretty good feel for
what we think is going to be happening out there. At that point we'll start with the
traffic studies. Steve mentioned we did kind of look for some alternatives just
because we want to try to envision everything that we could possibly think of
that's possible. And try to narrow it down so we don't have to study everything in
here and we did these studies without the benefit of the traffic as you know
without any environmental so at this point these are concepts we don't even
know if they will work. The first thing you are going to notice is this is a typical
diamond interchange that's very normal but if you compare that to both the Eagle
Road and the Meridian Road interchange, those interchanges have a looped on
ramp and that's to handle the volume of traffic. We don't know if we are going to
need that here or not, that's something may not make this one an option. But
this is a standard one, probably the biggest problem with this one is there is a lot
of existing houses down there in the south west quadrant that would be severely
impacted, which would probably have to be addressed.
De Weerd: Steve can you show that.
Thompson: Another option w e l ooked a t was b asically t aking t he i nterchange
and shifting Ten Mile to the east and that allows us to. This farm right here is
apparently historical and allows us to miss that. It allows us to reduce the impact
on the housing on there. Other than that it's still basically a standard
interchange. One of the things that was talked about was the bridge crossing
highway 16 extension on down south that if this was the terminal point this sort of
gives it an angle to get back over to Black Cat or Ten Mile and creates that
opportunity for it. But it's basically a typical diamond interchange. One thing I
mention here is that we did do what we call a comparative. cost estimate on all
these just so we get a feel of not budgeting numbers just which one is more
expensive than the other. The first two were the most cost effective.
De Weerd: The first two were the least expensive.
Thompson: Least expensive.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council Members)
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 4 of 15
Nary: Just so we talk about the same kind of numbers. When you're saying
least expensive. Your just talking about construction costs?
Thompson: Construction costs.
Nary: But your not talking about the land acquisition or any of that are you?
Thompson: We included a right of way acquisition cost in our numbers there.
Nary: Oh okay.
Thompson: Again they are comparative. For example as in right of way we
would just assume and I don't remember the numbers we used but it was
$50,000 dollars an acre something like that. Matter what except for the housing
assume differently. All of them will be $50,000 dollars an acre.
De Weerd: Those we less then this option uh?
Thompson: That's correct, as you notice this one is going to have a lot of land
acquisition required on that one. Basically its similar with just the one loop and
that allows us to avoid the houses in there. It does, we should all these to FHWA
and they said they pretty much meet with driver expectations and they don't see
any problems and this one is actually kind of similar to the Overland off ramp
down by the big movie theater down there.
Bird: Spectrum.
De Weerd: Edwards Theaters.
Thompson: They are going to get a little more exotic though. These next two
are called single point urban interchanges do you remember the diamond
interchanges it had two points of connection to the roads. These ones have one
point connection and that's why they are called a single point urban interchange.
They are typically installed in urban areas because they require a lot of retaining
walls and structure but they don't use much right of way. In an area where right
of way is very expensive these are very effective. In this one we kind of shifted it,
typically they would be located right over the freeway or something like that but
we shifted it so we could avoid the residents. One other benefit if this is elevated
it would act as bit of a sound wall for that, for those residences there we'll
probably end up building a little more sound walls on all of them. The one thing
that might be a possibility, this option would be an option to construct it with
basis. In other words we could construct the interchange and not have to replace
Ten Mile Road. Again with out the benefit of the traffic study I don't know if that
one happens. It might be possible instead of having to build a Ten Mile bridge to
five lines it might only need to be three or four somewhere of that nature.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 5 of 15
Bird: Man that would be very expensive land wouldn't it? When you have two
overpasses going up over.
Thompson: They get to be very long spans. So it is expensive and if you can
actually build it without having to replace the Ten Mile overchange it actually is
reasonably priced compared to the other two. It's very competitive to those two
when you throw in the Ten Mile Road overpass and then it does go up quite a bit
here.
Nary: So this is the really expensive one?
Thompson: Yes, these are Cadillac. This is a classic single point urban
interchange where we are actually having our single point right over the freeway.
In this one we assume that the (inaudible) would go over the top of our
intersection there and pull it down. I do require a lot of retaining walls and things
like that, this one by our estimate was actually twice as expensive as the first one
here. This one will probably not be considered (inaudible) then what we have
right now.
De Weerd: But it was fun to draw.
Thompson: It was yeah.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Is that similar to again the Edwards area. Where basically the freeway
was lowered underneath the overpass. Is that kind of the concept here?
Thompson: The one at Edwards is still more of a conventional type interchange.
We got the off ramps and on ramps are on either side of the highway there.
Where this one is just a single point here. I guess our next schedule is to finalize
our demographics and we hope to do that in the next week or so. Then we get
together with COMPASS and they'll g ive us some traffic numbers, we'll do an
analysis t o s ee w hat w e n eed t o d o t o accommodate t he t raffic and h opefully
precede with the estimating of it all. Again our goal here is to get what we hope
is a good firm handle on the cost of at least one of the alternatives we prefer.
We'll probably end up with a good cost for three of them anyway maybe four and
then the plan is to get in the budget for ITD and work on it from there. That's all I
have but I'd be happy to answer any questions.
Corrie: Any questions.
Bird: Very nice presentation.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 6 of 15
Corrie: Very good, thank you.
Siddoway: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. I would just mention that I did
meet with Charles Trainer with COMPASS last week and on the demographic
projection numbers he is interested in revamping those to reflect our current
Comprehensive Plan that shows mixed use and future transit station and take a
look at what really those demographics in that area would have to be to support
transit in the future and then run some scenarios based on that as well. So
Charles has agreed to take that on at least initially running the numbers for
transit supportive design in the area and then we'll be including that as well. I
suppose finally Eric Davis here he's the man behind it all. The developer that's
looking at the feasibility of that and he had some issues related to the contract
that he wanted to at least touch on with the Council.
Davis: Thank you. Things are going along well. I kind of back check on these
guys and I placed a call to ITD and back to Federal Highway and these are both
outfits that will face through the approval process but they've set us on our path
early on and just t o see how are we doing what are you hearing through the
grapevine and through your staff about our study and they both had very good
reports and they said you're working with the right group and you know so I felt
good because there was some pretty stiff warnings on the front end. You just
don't assume you can put an interchange anywhere you want out there. So
that's all you get an A plus so far. The you know I felt like this dialog would be
great I mean Steve set this up and were going to have hopefully when we come
out here every month and have a report and I don't think it will be three or four
more months we'll be done. But we'll just go in step and the process and you
know we need to have that same kind of feedback or at least monthly weekly
however we can to get Federal Highway, ITD and COMPASS. I mean were
having these meetings kind of on a as needed basis but its rolling right along.
This is not a casual step these demographics became a huge issue and we all
sat in a room up at Earth Tech and said whoa okay you know how many people
are going to be out here in 25 years, how do you answer that question. So we
polled around and used the best resources we had. COMPASS was probably
the leading resource. You know we were even asked as Developers slash
brokers realtors, what do we see out there in five years and it got to be whose
crystal ball should we use to give our sources the backbone that they needed to
say this is. COMPASS has got to sit up and say yeah we buy off ITD we buy off.
The base line that these groups have used in the past was pretty much
developed by John Church, I mean he is an Economist and he's had a real hand
in these numbers and updating the numbers to the 200 Census. So it was
almost a forgone conclusion after our first meeting that in order to make
COMPASS happy and feel good about these things. We needed to update their
baseline with John Church's input so we went to him. You know here's our
dilemma, what should we do and what can you do for us and a couple weeks
worth of work and our proposal was five thousand dollars and this is taking in
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 7 of 15
another dimension for Earth Tech they didn't expect to be going through all of
this so they have given us a change order and I have its $8,500 dollars and I've
got a copy of that plus it has an updated schedule in here and the schedule is
enlightening cause it shows you all the steps we took to go through. (Inaudible)
but were not, we have a reimbursement agreement at a $80,000 dollar limit were
not there yet but were close to it were up to $78,500 and it just felt like there
might, I don't want to but maybe at the time I have to come to you again and say
you know they put another pick up and we got an increase and I think this
reimbursement will expect (inaudible). I'm just being I think conservative but
keeping you informed of where things are going. So what was it, access that we
talked about, demographics we talked about, there was something that you
brought up that I wanted to expand on but if I think of it I'll call you. Is there any
questions? We had the Eastborn that was out here last week. Frank Eagen, I
had him out on the site we met one of the neighbors Ralph Ross went out there
and contacted him since he is probably a like full candidate for something to go
across his property. We're trying to get ourselves engrained with the landowners
and over the next two or three months I will be out meeting all of them again with
a proposal that in essence is the basis of the deal which was Eastborn's willing to
act as a bank on this for the private side at least a good portion of it, subject to
the property owners reimbursing from their profits on the land after, you know
that's to present that. I have a package of information for everybody that updates
them on where we are with the study and where we've gone and it's a simple
three page participation agreement that I think should be pretty easy to
understand that Eastborn's approved for our use. We'll see, you may hear
through the grapevine, the neighbors will start talking about, should I join in on
this or not. But it's pretty meaningful and we want to end up at the end of
December with a finished study and the ability to walk into ITD and say here is
the money that we have been able to raise on this (inaudible). I'll let you know in
a month how things are going.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Do you need any comments on what you showed us tonight.
Siddoway: Council member De Weerd. I was just going to bring up the fact that
I will get all of the Council members reduced versions of all of these options and
would actually really like some feedback. Especially if you have any strong
reactions to any of them. But any feedback would be helpful so that I can gauge
the direction the Council would like to take this as I do my part. Do that and, so
first of all I'll get those out right away and then any feedback you can get to me
however you want to do by phone by email. Please do.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page S of 15
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Steve I think one of the drawings that was pretty interesting that had
Ten Mile kind of jogged to help with the alignment and not tearing down those
houses. We really need to get ACHD's input and feedback on that as well.
Cause they are the local roads that will be connecting to it so if we could also
maybe g et s ome p articipation a nd c omments b ack f rom A CHD, t hat w ould b e
very helpful.
Siddoway: I would be glad to send a copy over too.
De Weerd: Okay, they are.
Siddoway: I guess the final thing is this study that we are doing right now is on a
fast timeline they plan to be done by the end of November if they stay on
schedule and if - so I would propose to the Council that we bring Earth Tech
back in a month for some additional dialog and feedback as to where they are at
that point. If the Council would like that I'll coordinate with Mayor Corrie in
getting that done. Okay that's all I have.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve would you mark those drawings so and when we reply to you we can
say A B C drawings.
Siddoway: You bet. They are also named, you know they got the.
Bird: Okay they are named then I couldn't see.
Siddoway: Right there is the typical diamond the Urban interchange the shifted,
they all have names. So -
Unidentified Speaker: (Inaudible)
De Weerd: Yeah.
Siddoway: Yeah if we could figure out.
De Weerd: That would be very helpful.
Siddoway: Prioritize, not prioritize but list them in order of cost, we can do that
too.
Corrie: I'm sure ITD would like that as well, (inaudible).
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 9 of 15
Siddoway: Okay.
Corrie: Very good thank you I appreciate it guys. Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess since Mr. Davis is dealing with the landowners too if there is
a preference in that regard. I do know that the one that is on Ten Mile took up
someone's land that currently doesn't have a road through it. That might be
helpful to get input on that too.
Davis: You're right, there is a whole other dynamic that's going to come to bear
on this when these layouts are done. I mean we have to balance between what
Earth Tech was hired to do which is the interchange and then the ACRD side of
the things which is the roads that feed into this. The big element is access and
you know some of the variables. I mean there is a new type four access that
they call it, which restricts every half mile to an access point. You know we have
to be thinking globally about here's this interchange but how do people get to it.
And how do I go out to landowners out there and say here's an interchange and
then but you can't get a curb cut off the highway that feeds it so the solution is
frontage roads and you know that becomes well you pays for those and then how
do you et easements. So I'm hoping that common sense and fairness will prevail
such that if you know landowner A way down here a half mile away is a guy with
the first access. He gets that condition upon providing frontage road access
through his frontage that backs up to everybody else along the way. So we're
just touching on some of these things right now in fact that type four access is not
cast in stone but its being talked about then I hear that I think well you know lets
figure this out. So where that moves and all of that is huge variables and I would
hope to diminish that to the greatest extent possible to keep that all private
interests at bay until you can honestly say this is the one that makes the most
sensible design and cost standpoint, which was our mission do be as objective
as we can be and that solves the rest of those problems in a fair way with our
local jurisdictions. I don't know that's what I'm thinking about.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: We kind of had that conversation with the north Meridian planning
and the Comprehensive Plan up on Chinden. Looked at frontage roads or I can't
remember the term of it but where we have a road with just a single development
strip so you could have just one side that would have the - or a local road on one
Meridian City Pre-Council Meeting
September 24, 2002
Page 10 of 15
side, Chinden then on the other side. So that was one of the options that was
talked about but some of that.
Davis: Which side?
De Weerd: Well you would have it -you would almost have a development strip
in between what you would call your frontage road and the highway.
Davis: Oh I see it would be on both sides of the road. So it's an even level
playing field for everybody. When this came up that was the first place they
started to talk about was Chinden State Highway. It's a state regulation, ITD was
in the wrong talking about this. It's interesting as it evolves but you know.
Corrie: Thank you. We have no more discussion on that.
5. Discussion of Waltman Lane and Corporate Drive Intersection -Mark
Canfield:
Corrie: We have Item number 5 is the discussion of Waltman Lane and
Corporate Drive intersection with Mike Canfield.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes, Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: That was a miscommunication when Mr. Canfield called. It wasn't on
the agenda so we put in on October 1St and somehow it showed up on this
agenda so this needs to be tabled to October 1St
Bird: Second.
Corrie: Okay, so a motion and second. All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES
Corrie: Mr. Clerk if you would put that on the October 1St agenda then.
6. Tabled from September 17, 2002 City Council Regular Meeting:
Transportation Task Force Committee Report:
Corrie: We have tabled from September 17t" 2002 City Council Regular Meeting,
Transportation Task Force Committee Report. I believe, who is doing that Dave.
No. Is there anybody here that is doing that one? I didn't notice anybody.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.