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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008 04-08Meridian Citv Council Special Workshop Meetinq April 8, 2008 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 8, 2008, by President Charlie Rountree. Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, and Charlie Rountree. Members Absent: Joe Borton. Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Anna Canning, Matt Ellsworth, Jeff Lavey, Steve Siddoway, Keith Watts, Joe Silva, Tom Barry, Kyle Radek, Colin Moss, Allison Kaptein, and Dean Willis. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba Joe Borton X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayar Tammy de Weerd Rountree: We will open the special workshop meeting of April 8th. We have no clock. It must be about 5:30. Okay. It's 5:30. City clerk, roll call attendance. Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda: Rountree: Next item on the agenda is the adoption of the agenda. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we approve the agenda as published Zaremba: Second. Rountree: Moved and seconded to approve the agenda. All those in favor? Opposed same sign? Okay. Got an agenda. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 3: Proclamation for Renaissance Magnet High School's Skills USA Team Rountree: Third item on the agenda is the proclamation for Renaissance Magnet High School Skills USA Team. And, Mayor, I'm going to let you read that and present it. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 2 of 71 De Weerd: Okay. Okay. Well, here with us tonight is the Meridian -- well, I guess I'll just call it the Skills USA Renaissance Team and to some of you they might be familiar faces, since we just saw them at the Habitat For Humanity fundraiser that helped raise close to 8,700 dollars and -- for that. Congratulations. That was a great event. That was really cool. But I did have a proclamation to read and, then, a presentation to the group and we will ask them to make some comments as well. It's a very worthy program and Jim Baxter is the one that oversees this whole program. So, Jim, thank you for being with us as well. Okay. Whereas the City of Meridian is proud to recognize deserving citizens of this community, especially students who accomplish great things on behalf of their community and whereas Renaissance Magnet High School Skills USA students have demonstrated concern and compassion for a Meridian family by constructing the city's first Habitat For Humanity home, the Meridian build, and whereas Skills USA Team Renaissance willingly performed numerous hours in planning and constructing a home during their class time and weekends and whereas Skills USA Team Renaissance, in collaboration with the Mayor's Youth Council, engaged in special fundraising efforts to financially support the construction of the Meridian build and whereas the Mayor and City Council of the City of Meridian acknowledges Skills USA Team Renaissance and the efforts of their classmates and Mr. Inger's residential construction class. Therefore, I, Tammy de Weerd, Mayor of the City of Meridian, do hereby proclaim that today, Tuesday, April 8th, 2008, as Skills USA Team Renaissance Day in the City of Meridian in recognition of Team Renaissance's excellent achievement -- outstanding achievement and leadership. And I'd like to present this to the team. So, if you will all rise and come forward. And, then, I will ask that perhaps each of you can tell your name, your year in school, and a little bit about yourself. So, congratulations and good luck in the next competition. We do have pins for each of you. City of Meridian pins you can wear in your competition. Congratulations. So, if you would like to -- Inger: Good evening, everyone. My name is Mark Inger. I'm the residential construction teacher and I'm the one that is truly blessed with the students that I have to work with this year. They are an outstanding group who took on this project without hesitation. They came forward, built the home. We did have a bit of a late start, about five and a half weeks, but that's beside the point. But they have stepped up to the challenge and they, basically, framed that entire home in three and a half weeks, as I said before. They did not have any hesitation at all. They continued to fight that beautiful weather we always had to work with and constantly go fo-ward, as I heard yesterday from a group of students, gee, Mr. Inger, my hands are purple. We were out doing the siding in the morning and it was no question, we all know how chilly it is. But they kept going and that is fantastic. And I have the greatest respect and admiration for each one of these particular students, even though we have some that could not make it this evening due to other conflicts at hand. I understand that, as well as, obviously, everyone else does. We all have busy schedules. So, my hats are off to these fine youth and, hopefully, we are very successful in our skills competition that will be on Thursday down at BSU and there is approximately -- oh, gosh. I want to guess about five to seven thousand students throughout the entire state will be here in competition Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 3 of 71 throughout the entire Treasure Valley. They will go anywhere from the Renaissance Magnet School at formerly the Jabil building, all the way down to BSU out to the airport for aviation mechanics, and I believe the automotive team is actually in Twin Falls. So, it's spread out through the entire area. So, with that I will turn the mike over to the next following fabulous student, Rebecca Henderson. Henderson: Hi. I'm Rebecca Henderson. I am a junior at Mountain View. This is my second year in the residential construction class. Next year will be my third. And I'm just hoping to be a construction manager one day, so -- Mallory. Binford: ! am Ma!!ory Binford, I am also a junior at Mountain View. When I first signed up for this class, you know, building a house does not really sound like what it is. I mean you sign up for it and you get there and all it is is cement and you kind of get overwhelmed at first, but, then, it's really not as hard as it sounds and mostly just don't limit yourself to what you think can you do, because I think that's what a lot of high school students do. But this kind of opened my eyes to the fact that really you can really do anything. So, that's all I-- Pogue: My name is Taylor Pogue and I'm a senior over at Mountain View. This year was my first year in the residential construction class and I'm sad that it is my last year, but going on to bigger and better things, so -- through this class, though, I have learned a lot. There is a lot of experiences that you just -- you don't get anywhere else, especially in high school. Job site experience, you know, everything. We do it all. So, it's amazing what you can learn through this class and how much fun it can actually be. Mr. Inger's great to us and gives us a hard time sometimes, but all in all it's a fun class, so -- Inger: That's the other Inger. Pogue: I mean you just -- you learn so much and, like Mallory said, there is just -- there is so much that you do that you never would have thought you could have done before and so many new experiences where you can really find out what you're capable of. And I think it's an amazing possibility and I'm just thankful that I had the opportunity to be in this class this year. Combs: Hi. My name is Josh Combs and I'm from Meridian and this is my second year being -- I'm a sophomore. Yeah. Sorry. This is my second year being in this class. I have to -- in this class two more years and I got to this class from Mr. Inger's net tech class, he -- I guess he liked how I worked in that class, so -- that's all I have to say. Sorry. De Weerd: Mr. President, I guess before they take off totally, it was -- or after they have left. Rountree: They are gone. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 4 of 71 De Weerd: It was -- it was when I went over to a ribbon cutting on behalf of the city over in Boise at their habitat program in recognition of the Meridian High School -- or the Meridian School District's construction class that we really maintained a goal that we would have a habitat home in this community at one point. I think many of you know that because it happened here at a City Council meeting that Don Hubble stood up after hearing a city -- the student council -- or our youth council members talk about their goals and their project for habitat that he donated the lot, which really made this project and the first Meridian build possible. So, it started in this room, we thought it was appropriate to recognize it in this room as well. So, we appreciate you being a part of that. Item 4: CONSENT AGENDA (a) Award Bid / Approve Contract for Parks Security System to The Security Group for a not to exceed amount of $24,999.00 (b) Award Bid / Approve Contract for Settler's Park Maintenance Bldg to Haemker General Construction for not to exceed amount of $99,450.00 (c) Award Bid / Approve Contract for Heroes Park Construction to Boise Excavation for not to exceed amount of $149,936.56 (d) Award Bid / Approve Contract for Adventure Island Playground Phase 4 to Haemker General for a not to exceed amount of $288,000 Rountree: It's a great program. Thank you, Mayor. And they have all left, so I guess we won't say anymore about that. Next item on the agenda is the Consent Agenda. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Before I make a motion to approve the Consent Agenda, City Clerk, has everything been signed, sealed, and delivered on these contracts? Holman: Councilman Rountree, Councilman Bird, I believe so. I would ask -- Bird: Okay. Rountree: Keith do you have any input on that? Watts: Yes. The contracts for the Parks Department, the four contracts that we are asking for approval on, have been signed by myself; the department, and the contractor. They are ready to go. Meridian Ciry Council Special Meeting / Workshop Apnl 8, 2008 Page 5 of 71 Bird: Okay. Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda, the contracts, and for the Mayor to sign and the clerk to attest. Zaremba: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the Consent Agenda. All those in favor? Opposed same sign? Consent Agenda is approved MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 5: COMMUNITY ITEMS / PRESENTATIONS: (a) Tour of New City Hall Building Construction Rountree: Next item on the agenda are community items and we get to tour the City Hall. If there is objections, I guess we can go do that now, Gene, unless you want to say something. Get us organized so we know what we are doing. De Weerd: If you can speak into the mike, Gene. Bennett: We are ready to conduct that tour. Your monthly report on the progress and the bids that we received a week and a half ago are in your booklet there and we are ready to conduct the tour. We are also ready with City Council's approval to award the contracts to the low bidders for the water feature and also for the pavers and also for the concrete. Rountree: Any questions or further comments. Keith? Watts: Yeah. I'd like to bring to you -- I don't think this is working. Rountree: It's on. Watts: Is it? Okay. Bring to your attention in the water feature we did have a low bidder come in who did not sign the acknowledge addendum and used the wrong bid form, so he was excluded from the -- from the process. Just wanted to make you aware of that. So, we -- our low bidder was the second low, as we had to throw them out. Bird: Do you want to take them now? Rountree: Unless there is an objection, we can consider those at this point before we move over to City Hall. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 6 of 71 Watts: That would be good. Yes. Bird: I would have no objection. I think we ought to do it. Rountree: Okay. Bird: Can you just read them off? Rountree: Do you want to read off the -- Watts: Yes, sir. Rountree: -- the bids and the -- Bird: The numbers? Rountree: -- the numbers. Watts: Okay. For the water feature we have MR Mellor. The dollar amount was 216,775 dollars. For the carpentry building insulation and gypsum assemblies, the low bidder is American Wall Cover for 8,400 dollars. For the roofing and flashing we have Pro Tech at 10,495 dollars. For moisture protection -- excuse me -- moisture protection and water proofing we have Seal Co for 3,028 dollars. Bird: What was that price again? Watts: The amount? Bird: Yeah. Watts: It was -- Bird: Three thousand -- Watts: -- 3,028 dollars. Bird: Okay. Watts: For painting we have Commercial Painting Contractors, Incorporated. Dollar amount was 11,400 dollars. Concrete, we have Axelson, 296,200 dollars. And unit concrete pavers are Cobblestone Construction, 75,462 dollars. That brings our total award to 621,760 dollars. Rountree: Any other comments? Well, I'll take a motion, unless you have something to add to that. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page7of71 Bird: Do you have anything? Rountree: No. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I'd move that we enter into a contract, have the Mayor sign and the Clerk to attest after the contractors have signed to -- on our plaza to RM Mellor for 215,775 dollars. Who was the second one? Eighty-four hundred. Who was -- Watts: American Wall Covering. Bird: America Wall. And Pro Tech for 495 dollars -- Watts: That was -- excuse me. That was 10,495 dollars? Bird: Ten thousand. Holman: Excuse me. Keith, could you verify for the record -- I apologize. The water features with RM Mellor was how much? Watts: 216,775. Two one six seven seven five. Holman: Councilman Rountree, Councilman Bird, did you have it as 216? Bird: I had it at 215, but I had it wrote down here at 216. Rountree: 216. Bird: Pro Techs, then, is 10,495 dollars. Seal Co for moisture is 3,025 dollars. Watts: Three thousand -- that was -- excuse me. That was 3,028 dollars. Bird: Twenty-eight dollars. Geez, I have been trying to save some money for us. Commercial Constructors for 11,400. Axleson for the concrete, 296,200 dollars. And Cobblestone, 75,462 dollars. For a total of 621,760 dollars. Zaremba: Second. Rountree: Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page8of71 MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Rountree: With that, unless you have any further questions on the status of the booklet, let's reconvene at the New City Hall. (Recess.) (b) Update on projects for Lakeview Golf Course - Dick Davis. Rountree: I'm going to reconvene us from our -- one of our construction projects that we have got going on and the next item on the agenda is the update on projects at the golf course. So, Dick, I see you're just ready to get up here and tell us all about what's happening. Davis: Oh, boy. Am I ever. Rountree: Me, too. Davis: We are -- can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? We are -- De Weerd: We can hear you. Davis: We are -- yeah. We are still alive and well out at the golf course. We have been turning a lot of dirt this year. I think doing some great improvements. De Weerd: You caught my attention. Davis: Yes. When you couldn't see out your back window. Bird: I'd debate whether that's an improvement. Davis: Right. Right. Did Will get those pictures ready to hand out for these people? Holman: Sir, I don't think so. Let me look and see what I have in my packet here. Oh, wait. I have copies in my packet. Rountree: Just pass them around. Holman: All right. I will pass them down. Davis: There is Will. Berg: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, if you look on your computers -- which you don't have. De Weerd: It's a workshop. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 9 of 71 Davis: Okay. Anyway, what we -- what we have been doing this year -- I guess this is a little bragging I want to do here. In the Idaho Business Review, the golf review for the year, they -- they chose what they called the Divine Nine and this was nine Idaho signature holes, and how great it would be if they could say all be on one course, which that certainly isn't going to happen, but -- but we were fortunate enough to have one of our new holes that we built a couple of years ago be selected as one of the Divine Nine in Idaho and I mean we are in pretty deep company. Tamarack has one. Circling Raven in Worley up in northern Idaho has one. And Elkhorn in Sun Valley. So, we -- you know, we felt pretty -- pretty honored that these people would select our number one hole at Lakeview as one of the nine best new holes -- or one of the nine better holes in the state of Idaho. De Weerd: Congratulations. Davis: Thank you. Rountree: For a job well done. De Weerd: It eats all of my balls. Congratulations. Davis: Right. You know -- and the neat thing about it, my partner Eric called me and was congratulating me on this and I says, you know, the neat thing about it, by the end of the summer it won't be the best whole on the golf course. So, that's going to be in your backyard. We are -- number four we are -- we are expanding the lake on number four. We have put a bridge in. Built a brand new sand trap to the left of the green and we are going to build new tee boxes, both for the men and ladies on number four and that's our major project for this year. It's going to be a really, really gorgeous golf hole. It's going to be a little tough. I have been hearing lots of complaints from our players and -- but it's not going to be as tough as they think it is. It is going to be one gorgeous golf hole. And so we are all done with that, except we got a little -- you know, we got a little pile of dirt there that we are going to start moving to tee boxes as -- as the people that did the work for us get some time and we are going to build new tee boxes on four, five, six and maybe seven and eight. It kind of depends on how far the dirt goes. But we are -- we are going to build a lot of tee boxes on four. That's going to kind of be our signature hole. It's going to be a great little par three. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I mean president. Dick, I had thought maybe you would use some of that to cover the irrigation road access to -- to take it away from that road appearance, so that people stop driving on it. You know, every once in awhile you see these headlights in my windows thinking, oh, my gosh, you know, I think it's our Police Department doing some obscure thing. I don't know if Jeff is here anymore, but -- Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 10 of 71 Davis: If we have -- that is in the plans to work with the -- work with the irrigation district and cover that and seed that. I don't know whether we are going to have enough dirt left over from this project to do that, but that is definitely something we want to do is make that grass all the way through there. We are actually planning on moving that three green here in a few years and bringing it -- making it more of a little dog leg there and have it flow right down into the lake that's there. It's kind of sitting out by itself now. De Weerd: I like that. Bring it further towards my house. Davis: Yeah. That's exactly where it will be. Now, those trees you planted are going to grow up, so probably can't see it. But that's kind of what we want to do and -- De Weerd: I had permission. Davis: Okay. De Weerd: By the management. Davis: Good. You did. But, anyway, that's what we are doing. Rountree: Before you go on that, Dick, not that I have any personal interest on the new tee boxes on four, but do you have a drawing of that, so -- last night was rather interesting. You had a-- a local neighbor out there practicing with his shag bag and his first ball went off the back of the house. The second ball I think went into a lake. And his third baN just about got 2,000 dollars worth of windows. Davis: Oh, my goodness. Rountree: It bounced off the bottoms of both of the sliding glass doors. So, anyway, I'd like to get a sense of what's going on, so maybe we can get an idea where to put some trees. Davis: Yeah. Yeah. The tee boxes -- we are going to build a lady's tee box at that tree -- that tree that's up in front of the tee boxes now on the right-hand side, we are going to build a lady's tee box there. It would kind of -- it would probably be kind of befinreen your house and Mrs. -- Rountree: Hepper's. Davis: -- Hepper's house. So, that that plays for the ladies around 130 yards, something like that. And, then, the men's, we were figuring on building it more to the right, so they shoot more this way to the -- to the green, more straight to the green than they do right now. And, then, we are also going to build -- we are thinking of building a tee box to the -- to the -- right at the back of the pond, the north end of the pond. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop Aprii 8, 2008 Page 11 of 71 Rountree: That one that's there? Davis: Yeah. Actually, bring it right to the pond and let it flow into the pond. That's kind of what we are -- we are thinking we will do and that would be a really gorgeous tee box. And that would probably be the one we play most of the time, because it's a lot of water to carry over and it's going to really be a pretty hole. Rountree: Yeah. I can imagine you're getting a lot of complaints. You get about one in -- about one in five that don't go down and you retrieve right now. Davis: Right now. So, we will have to have a drop area, but -- but, anyway, that's what we are doing on four. We are -- we are -- and, then, the tee boxes on these other holes we are working on. We -- we've added a little bit to the inside of the clubhouse. If you haven't been there lately, we -- we put -- actually, it's a movable wal! in there to make it more of a private dining type area or for civic club meetings, you know, the Kiwanis Club has asked and Rotary and some of those people about coming out there and meeting and until we put this wall in, why we never really had a place that they could get away. And so now we have this wall and I'm pretty proud of the wall. I designed it myself and we can take it down and put it up in about 15 minutes. It's really a-- really a cool wall. And it looks nice, too. So, anyway we got a room there for, you know, civic meetings if they need it or whatever and -- and it's little more private. It cuts the golfers off from the -- kind of the dining area there. Then the guys have -- the guys we -- we bought a couple of bunks of railroad ties and we had a bunch of tee boxes that -- that, you know, over the years the golf carts kept pulling closer and closer to the green and closer to the green and afl it was was dirt and looked ugly and so we -- we made some curbing with railroad ties and we are planting grass on the sides of these tee boxes to -- we are doing that on 11 and 12 -- or around 12 and 13 and we are going to do it on 17 to get -- just get some more grass growing and cover up the dirt that's showing through. Another thing we did with some of this dirt that we dug out of the pond -- the area befinreen the eight green and the nine tee box was just horrid. It was just terrible dirt. And so we laid down about six inches of this good soil that we dug out of the ponds and we are planting that to grass, so that area wi!! be grass instead of weeds and hard pan and -- and I think that will -- that will look a lot nicer. A lot of this -- we had problems last year with nine -- the pond on nine and eight leaking and we pumped water into that until we were blue in the face and never could get water to hold in there and so I had a soils guy out this year and he says there is some Bentonite in there, but as big as that pond is it's really going to be tough to hold water, so -- so, we took and we pushed the top four or five inches of soil from the east end of the pond that was kind of along nine and, actually, didn't come into place on the golf course to the west end and, then, we packed that all down and we made that pond smaller and we will know here in a week or two if it's going to hold water, because the water will be coming in probably Thursday night. It will finally get in the ditch today. So, we got to get the -- we got to get Keith's grandkids and all the other kids to pick the balls out of there, so -- anyway. They are planning on doing that Thursday night. De Weerd: He's old enough to work there now? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 12 of 71 Davis: What? De Weerd: He's old enough to work there now? Davis: Yeah. About. Bird: Yeah, they -- Davis: So, let's see, what else? De Weerd: Did he get a new ID, Keith? Bird: Yeah. I did. Davis: Oh. Another thing, we are redoing -- we are redoing some of the irrigation system. We went and bought five new controllers -- big controllers. Four of -- or, let's see, what is it? Four of them -- what did Rich tell me? Oh. We bought six of them. Four of them will run 16 different stations and two of them will run 24 different stations. So, we can -- we can manage the water a little better and -- so, we got those and the guys haven't put those in yet, but we have got some new areas that we got to water, you know, where we put the dirt in on nine, we have got to water that, and so -- anyway -- and, really, this pond on four, it was -- what we did -- there was an area there that had no irrigation and so we made that a pond and -- Bird: There is some water in there. Rountree: It looks great. Davis: Yeah. So, anyway, that's where we are. If you got any questions -- we got a great website. Take a look at our web. It's golflakeviewgc.com and we had a guy develop this website this winter and I think it turned out gorgeous, so -- Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: David. Zaremba: Of course, this is just a personal observation, but the successes in the number of customers that you have and it looks to me like it's a lot busier than it was a few years ago -- are your numbers up? Davis: Oh. Thank you, Dave. Yeah. We -- we never did get a firm figure on what the rounds were. I tried to -- I tried to get that, but -- but from talking to the people I'm guessing it was somewhere befinreen 13 and 15 thousand rounds that -- before we took over and last year we did over 33,000. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop Apnl 8, 2008 Page 13 of 71 De Weerd: We can tell. Davis: Oh, yeah. Zaremba: The success of what you're doing. Davis: Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Heck, we might even make some money this year. I don't know. And I just bought ten new golf carts. That's another -- with the increased play we just ran out of golf carts and I ordered ten more golf carts, so that will give us 55. And Stan's was kind enough to lease me ten until the new ones get here, because we ran out of golf carts twice already this year and I just hate that when people are -- Bird: There is one over there that you can always use if you -- if it's not being used. You know that. Davis: Okay. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Dick, I just publicly want to tell you that I appreciate what you do for the kids. Not only my grandkids, but every kid in the valley. You're nothing but helping. Have fundraisers for them and being in -- being around that golf course since the day it was built, I have to tell you it's in the finest shape I have ever seen it and I appreciate what you have done with the city property. Davis: Thank you, Keith. Thank you. I really appreciate -- Bird: And, by the way, your restaurant is absolutely fantastic. Davis: Thank you. We try to. Rountree: They are leaving nothing for me say. I will second all of the good comments. Thank you. De Weerd: I third. Rountree: And I'll also add that he is a great arborist. Bird: Well, I don't know about him, but his help. Davis: Yeah. My help. It's not me. Bird: He can run the equipment, but shovels aren't too get in his hands. Meridian City Council Special Meeti~g ! Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 14 of 71 Rountree: He hires it done. Davis: Well, anyway, thank you very much and, you know, we appreciate the work that -- or the opportunity to team up with people and the opportunity you have given us, because it's been a ball for me and f love every minute of it. Thank you. (c) Summary & Update of the SAUSA with the Treasure Valley Partnership - Charles Nafziger. Rountree: Thank you. Next item on the agenda is a summary and update of the SAUSA with the Treasure Valley Partnership and that's Christian Nafziger. Nafziger: My name is Christian Nafziger. I have been the special assistant United States Attorney since February of last year. First of all, I'd like to thank Mayor de Weerd for her participation in the Treasure Valley partnership, who has been instrumental in doing this and I have tried to make a point to go to each city council and just give a brief update, since we have just eclipsed our first year, to let you know what we are doing and what we hope to accomplish in the future. I sent some materials over. I don't know if -- and so I won't go through that, but I did that just to kind of give you an idea of the type of cases that we are doing. Generally, the thought process is that the federal court is an ideal place to send a certain type of criminal defendant, gang members, and particularly with firearm laws, because federal sentencing guidelines are much stricter than they are in state court. It's not perFect for every case. A violent crime, obviously, doesn't have jurisdiction in federal court here in the Treasure Valley and so, you know, there are no aggravated assaults. There are no drive-by shootings. All that is left to the states. But we go about it by taking cases that involve firearms and narcotics and immigration and our goal is to send offenders to prison outside the state of Idaho. Obviously, there is not a federal prison in Idaho and so everyone who is sent to prison does their time away. And the majority -- I was a prosecutor for Ada County for five years before this and it's -- there is some really great things about federal court. I never thought I could send someone to prison for several years for possessing a bullet and, you know, without knowing anything more, it sounds -- oh, my gosh, who would go to prison for a bullet, but someone who has been involved in a life of violence -- very violent crime, you know, there is no -- with the sentencing guidelines, there is no fear of probation again or a third or fourth chance. And so I think it's been effective. Actually, I got out of grand jury today, so there is these five additional people that were indicted today dealing with firearms to gang members, trafficking firearms, trafficking Methamphetamine, trafficking cocaine and so the people listed here, as you can see, most of the sentences, you know, are the round 30 to 40 months. I have some cases coming up where people are facing mandatory fixed life and so we had some bigger cases. There is the two major cases that have happened since I came on, as far as a case in particular where - and there has been others where large amounts of Amphetamine and firearm trafficking and money laundering has been going on. So, I don't know if there are any questions that you might have about the program, but I do think it's -- it's been effective. I appreciate the ability to work with law enforcement for local, state, and federal. I think that Idaho's doing -- particularly the Treasure Valley is Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 15 of 71 doing a great job in partnering up. The metro task force has a Meridian detective involved -- Detective Harper. I have worked on some cases with him and it's nice to see when law enforcement kind of gets on the same page and, hopefully, I am someone that they can all come to when it's gang related and we can see if we can't solve any problem and hopefully solve larger problems, so -- Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: And, Mayor, I want to thank you for getting that information to us. I can't say how much I appreciate the work you have done in this one year, being a grandfather with kids and stuff, to see those people get taken off the streets and your success rate of convictions and stuff was -- was fantastic and I just appreciate the work and I'm glad we are able to participate and will continue to participate I hope. Thank you very much. Nafziger: And if there is ever any issues that you have, hopefully, Meridian doesn't have any immediate problems, but if they are, you know, I hope someone would just give me a call. You know, there is -- there is sometimes when there is problems that -- I don't know if all local law enforcement knows exactly who to go to, but if there -- if there comes to be a problem I-- you know, let me know and we will see what we can do to address it. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I echo, I think, every mayor and county commissioner in the Treasure Valley partnership and the partnering agencies, that this program you have really been able to give it a profile to show that, indeed, if we work together we can make an incredible difference. So, we appreciate the critical roll that you play in that and it -- it really has set a precedence to what we can do in other regards as well. But we'd like to think that our community is immune to what we think goes on around us, but it goes through us and it does reside here as well, it just hasn't been as prominent. So, the roll you play in making sure that they have prosecution and they leave the state has been real important to getting these guys out of the system. Nafziger: I can let you know it's been sort of a sobering experience. I have lived in Boise for six years and have been a prosecutor, so I consider myself relatively clued in on the criminal element, and it's a bigger problem than I had previously thought. I grew up in St. Louis and, obviously, St. Louis I think was just voted the number one most dangerous city in the union. And so it's, obviously, not to that level, but -- but the problem is there and I hope that it's at a stage where we could actually do something. It's not so big that, you know, we can't get our hands around it. So, thank you for your support. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 16 of 71 Rountree: Question or comment. I appreciate the work you're doing and really pleased that we can participate and, hopefully, help in your endeavors. But to your last point, have you established some sort of inetric to say, yes, in fact, we can quantify that we are making a difference or is there just an unlimited amount of these kinds of illegal activities going on in our communities and they are coming in as fast as you're removing them or is there any way to know? Nafziger: You know, t would say the best measure that I have been able to tell on -- if it's making an impact is with the local street crime units with the local police departments. We have four primary gangs in the Treasure Valley that sort of -- we have got a lot of smaller gangs, too, that, you know, do different stuff and -- but the four major gangs that we, one has been for the most part decimated. Just about every person of importance in that gang is now incarcerated in either federal or state prison. As soon as you put down one side, another side springs up, but I think that there has been -- I think the local law enforcement in Caldwell and Nampa and Boise would say that there is a difference between now and finro years ago. Usually the summer is our -- is where we stay the busiest and so we are approaching that, so we are approaching that, so it will be interesting to see if this summer now does not have the number of drive-by shootings and the number of things that you actually read about in the paper on a regular basis. Speaking with them, I think that the gig is kind of -- it's not up just here, but it's kind of on the street level, too. People -- people notice when FBI and ATF agents start showing up at a local police department. And I think word is out that it's -- you know, at least on the firearms, I hope that public service announcement, you know, hard time -- or gun crime equals hard time, is reaching the people and I honestly believe it has. You know, it's not going to stop completely, but I think it can be contained, so -- Rountree: Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess, too, you know, it's made an incredible difference from what others have reported back, that a lot of these leaders that are being prosecuted are leaving the state, because in the past it's been they have been incarcerated, but they have been in the state system and they just run their operations from -- from there. By taking them out of the area through the federal prosecutor, we have been able to curtail some of that ability to run their operations from their jail cell. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: You know, I just -- I can't say enough about what you have done and some of the other guys that are involved. Tammy -- Tammy and I had an opportunity to ride back with a-- and talk quite lengthy with one of the guys that are working on the gang -- ex- Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 17 of 71 gang member that's working and I think we have seen a decline in not only by taking them out of state, it would seem to me that it's better, because if they are in our state prison and not only keep running their stuff, but they get local people that's in there with them involved in these gangs, so when they get out we have very larger membership. I could be a hundred percent wrong, but -- Nafziger: I have seen that on -- at this location. Bird: Yeah. And, you know, I just -- the work you do is fabulous. Just keep it up and I -- like I said earlier, I'm glad we are able to participate and hope we continue to participate. Nafziger: Hopefully f can come back next year and have this summer up and -- well, hopefully, I'd like to come back and say I'm out of work, but -- Bird: We would be happy for you. De Weerd: We'd love that. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Is there any way to get more publicity for your success rate? I-- if there is a way to have prevention and scare people off, I would think that would help. Nafziger: I try to do a press release for every sentencing that I have. It's not always the case. The majority of these members are gang members. There are people that are just violent felons and so I try to publicize the gang related cases more. That is, you know, I think an important deterrent and on the bigger cases we will hold press conferences and those will, hopefully, be coming up here shortly. So, I'm aware of that and I'll try to -- try to get as much press as we can out there to let people know that we are trying and succeeding. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess maybe at some point you can get the Treasure Valley partnership and the chiefs and the sheriffs to stand behind you when you do that and just probably recount the difference that has been made over this year versus previous years and the numbers -- Nafziger: We did have a press conference where everyone did stand, although I think that occurred right about the same time that the Statesman started doing their story that's now got them for a Pulitzer. So, we sort of took a little bit of a back seat. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 18 of 71 Rountree: So to speak. Nafziger: Yes. And so, hopefully, next time we do something like that we -- I don't think I'll have another problem like that again. Rountree: Any other comments? We won't carry this any further. Bird: No. Zaremba: Thank you. (d) Discussion of Heritage Ball Fields - Parks Department - Steve Siddoway. Rountree: Thank you very much. Appreciate your time. Next item on the agenda is the next round on the Heritage ball fields. Steve. Madam Mayor. Okay. De Weerd: Mr. Rountree, Dr. Clark couldn't be here with us today and I would like to postpone this until next week when she can be here. Rountree: We will do her then. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: Jaycee, if you can take -- we will take a look at that on Friday -- Zaremba: Do we need a motion or can we just -- Rountree: No. I think we can just reschedule it. (e) Floodplain Ordinance Discussion - Public Works - Kyle Radek. Rountree: Public Works ordinance discussion. Kyle. Holman: President Rountree, Kyle had quite a stack -- Rountree: I think we all got it. Holman: You did all get copies of that? Because I have more down here if someone doesn't have it. Rountree: If somebody needs it. Bird: I didn't get one. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 19 of 71 Rountree: Okay. Well, you're going to get yours right now. Have you pretty much got this in your presentation anyway? Radek: Mr. President, yes, sir. I'm pretty much prepared to walk you guys throtagh the major changes that we have. Rountree: Okay. Radek: Madam Mayor, Mr. President, Council Members, this is kind of a long awaited thing, so I'm going to -- I'm going to take my time and give you a complete presentation. Since major flooding -- minor flooding occurred on the Boise River in the spring of 2006, several local governments in the Treasure Valley have taken a closer look at their floodplain development regulations. We have been involved in those efforts and believe that we have developed a code that exceeds federal requirements, works with other local governments and allows us flexibility to best manage development in our flood prone areas. My objectives for this evening are to present the key concepts of the new code to you for discussion and to get Council's recommendation to put the code on the regular city agenda -- City Council agenda for reading and approval, subject to legal review. First, I'd like to briefly review Meridian's physical floodplain picture and general floodplain concepts and, then, I'll present the main changes in the proposed code for discussion. This slide just gives you an idea of what we are dealing with. People usually just think of the Boise River as a source for flooding, but Meridian has several creeks and as you can see there is significant areas of blue on the map. The four creeks in Meridian's area of impact have over 24 linear miles of floodplain. The creeks drain about 80 square miles of land. The area of floodplain in Meridian's area of impact is 850 acres. I should say over 850 acres. And Meridian has over 600 structures in the hundred year floodplain. Those facts, combined with the perception that we can't have floods, because we live in a desert, makes Meridian almost an ideal place to ignore flood risks for a long time and, then, suffer significant flood damage. As I pointed in the article that I wrote for the city newsletter, we will have a flood event, it's just a matter of when. We have three different types of flood areas, determined, essentially, by the amount of effort expended on studying them. You can see examples of the three here. The A zone is an area defined by available contour data. No cross-section surveys we conducted and no base flood elevations were determined in A zone areas. The AE zones are areas where cross-sections were surveyed and hydraulic analyses were conducted to determine the base flood elevations and the AE zones with the floodway are areas where surveying was done, base flood elevations were determined, and a floodway was delineated. I showed this slide to you in the previous workshop. It illustrates how we arrived at the floodway and I'm also pretty proud of it, so I'm going to show it to you again for review. We can see here that this is the -- this is the hundred year flood and that's how we define what the base flood elevation is and that's how we define the hundred year floodplain, which is also referred to as the special flood hazard area. As development encroaches on the special flood hazard area, it squeezes the water out -- and this is how modeling-wise, FEMA arrives at the floodway concept. The floodway is the area that has to be reserved in order to transmit the base flood without Meridian City Councii Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 20 of 71 causing more than a one foot rise. So, the assumption is that after fill has taken place where fill is allowed, and development has taken place, then, the base flood will rise up to the base flood plus one foot. We need to remember that for later in this presentation for when the floodway is the only conveyance left. The concepts in the proposed code have been presented to several interested parties. None of these groups expressed major concern about the proposed changes and feedback from the Idaho Department of Water Resources, FEMA, and the Treasure Valley partnership was extremely positive. I apologize in advance. This is the most boring slide of the presentation. But, please, bear with me. This matrix shows the substantive changes from our existing code to the proposed code. I will briefly summarize each point and, then, I have some slides after this one that illustrate the practical issues associated with each point. First, for residential building floor elevations, our proposed code takes the finish floor to finro feet above the base flood elevation. That is consistent with the recommendations of the Treasure Valley partnership and with what neighboring communities are doing. As you will see on the next slide that I show you, it also makes more sense. Next, we are proposing to hold nonresidential buildings to the same elevation standards. Our current standards for elevating non-residential is the base flood elevation and we allow flood proofing. Building to these standards can make insurance extremely costly. It's also important to minimize nonresidential flood damage, because these are the buildings that provide the goods and services needed by residents, especially during and after a flood event. We currently have no rules for Lomar F areas. That is areas removed from the fioodplain by Lomars because of fill. The problem is the development might occur in these areas that is not up to the standards of the special flood hazard area. Our new code will solve this problem by leaving the areas in what's called the overlay district and, therefore, those areas will be subject to the same rules they were before they were removed from the floodplain and I will explain that a little more. The next finro points are related. In areas where there is no floodway delineated, we will require the applicant to hire a qualified hydraulics engineer to delineate the floodway. In areas where no base flood elevations are determined, we will -- we will require that the applicant hire a hydraulics engineer to determine base flood elevations. In this manner we will refine the information on our floodplains as they develop. And, finally, our new code revision will apply the no rise standard to water course alterations, such as bridges, culverts, and irrigation structures. The current code requires maintenance of carrying capacity. It's vague and, therefore, hard to enforce. Applying the no rise standard will ensure that we avoid undersized culverts and bridges that back up flood waters. This is a typical craw! space type foundation with the finish floor elevated to one foot above the base flood elevation. Originally, below grade crawl spaces like this were not allowed by FEMA. They are currently an exception, but they also must meet other requirements to be acceptable. One requirement is that HVAC equipment, including vents, is installed above the base flood elevation. As you can see, with the floor joists you can't get the vents above the base flood elevation, unless you raise the finish floor another foot. Also, a crawl space must have flood vents. Typical foundation vents are not sufficient and the area of flood vents must equal one square inch for every one square foot of enclosed space. The HVAC and venting issues are problematic with below grade crawl spaces. I'm pretty sure that most builders don't understand those requirements. Also, remember, that after development, only the floodway is left to convey the base flood Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 21 of 71 and the elevation has risen up a foot. Our solution is to specify that the finish floor is two feet above the base flood elevation and that the lowest floor is one foot above the base flood elevation. When you look at that diagram and you start adding it up and you're thinking, well, if the lowest floor of crawl space is a foot -- already a foot above base flood elevation, then, the finish floor is probably going to be somewhere like four feet above, which is fine. And it may -- a developer may say, well, my houses are going to kind of stick out like sore thumbs. Well, you're welcome to build a slab on grade house as well and we'd probably -- that's something that we probably should be encouraging in the floodplain and, actually, that's occurring in -- in one development right now. Before I go to the next slide, are there any questions on this? Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Kyle, that looks very nice and stuff, but in Meridian -- and I don't know if it's so much anymore, since our water table has went down, but most of the moisture we got under houses was because -- was from ground water. Aquifer. I don't -- if you're going to put out a drawing like that, you should show some kind of a barrier laid down on the ground underneath the house to keep the moisture from coming up. Radek: Madam Mayor, Mr. President, Councilmember Bird, that's a good point. I probably could have showed something there. Bird: And we are -- excuse me. Follow up. Rountree: Go ahead. Bird: Your flood vents, how are -- boy, tell me how they are going to work. You're going to have -- you're going to have your flood already and they are just going to come through -- because they are not going to come across. They are going to fill up first and, then, go. Radek: Yes, sir. The concept of the flood vent is to allow flood waters in and out of the crawl space. Bird: But it's only going to -- Kyle, it's only going to get out so high. From there down to the bottom of your footings isn't going to fali out. You're going to have to go in and pump it out. Radek: Correct. Bird: It's not going to run out. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 22 of 71 Radek: Correct. The idea of the flood vents is to avoid damage due to hydrostatic loads on those stem walls and -- so, again, to I~t the water in and where it can't let the water out, you will have to pump out a crawl space that's built like this, no doubt. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba: Zaremba: But what you're saying is that if that vent isn't there, the water pressure on the side of the building might move the building. Radek: Correct, sir. Zaremba: And the vent allows it to -- Radek: It will cause more damage. And I can tell you with fair certainty that -- that crawl space foundations that have been built in this city that are in the -- in the floodplain probably do not have those vents. And what will generally happen is when the home changes ownership and the insurance agent comes to inspect, because they know it's in a floodplain, they will see that that was not built correctly and the -- the perspective buyers will be looking at a fairly high insurance rate and the prospective seller probably will lose their sale because of it. Bird: It's going to be very expensive, isn't it, to put that in after thought. Radek: To try to retrofit that. Which is why we are saying we want to go away from the -- the flood vent requirements and HVAC requirements completely. We are going to put that -- that lowest floor above the base flood elevation, so we don't have these issues. Anything further on that slide? Rountree: I think there is a bit of confusion yet, Kyle. And give Mr. Bird here a minute to think about, but -- Bird: No. No. Go ahead. Rountree: You're okay? All right. Bird: I'm okay. I got -- I want to -- I want to see where he's going to put HVAC. Radek: In a slab on grade, you would typically not put it in -- you put it on the -- the attic area. Bird: With slab on grade, if you got a flood, it's going to float away anyway. Radek: And if you elevate the finished floor to two feet above base level elevation, I don't think that will happen. Meridian Ciry Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 23 of 71 Bird: Well, then, you don't have slab on grade. Rountree: What you do is you increase the grade. Fill it in. Radek: Essentially, fill in, so that the structure's out of the floodplain. Here is a-- I'm sorry. Bird: That's Creason Lateral. Radek: Before we discuss the rules for Lomar F areas, I need to show you the overlay district concept. This slide shows the floodway in red and the rest of the floodplain area in blue. The light blue is the 500 year floodplain, which is not regulated. Our new code will establish an overlay district based on the FEMA floodplain and floodway. To account for inaccuracies of mapping and surveying, the floodplain and floodway will be buffered horizontally by five and ten feet respectively. So, what the overlay district will look like -- oops. Based on that floodplain to floodway is -- it will expand the floodway by five feet and expand the floodplain by ten feet. And this next slide illustrates where a map floodplain in an A zone clearly does not properly overlay against the ortho photo. To amend the FEMA map, we would need to request a map revision from FEMA, which would take considerable time and some money as well. With the new code, we simply amend the overlay district through City Council and we are done. If the map were ever changed by FEMA, the overlay district can grow to account for that. I showed this slide also in my previous presentation. It shows what can happen when a property is removed from the special flood hazard area and, then, a structure is built without playing by the rules. So, in this example we have development on one side, fills and gets themselves out of the floodplain and develops and puts in structures. They don't have to submit for a floodplain development permit, because they are no longer in the flood plain. And they may or may not build to the based flood elevation, plus one foot. They may put a basement in there. And along comes development on the other side and the base flood elevation makes it so this development is substandard. This is not un -- this is not unlike what's occurred in some areas of the Treasure Valley in the past decade. The lots you see in yellow here are part of the Crossfield Subdivision. They have been removed from the special flood hazard by Lomar F, the subdivision had fill placed in it. And now lots are no longer in the floodplain. Our current code does not give us any control of how those structures on those lots are built relative to flooding. The overlay district will solve this problem. The overlay district can grow, but it will not shrink. So, areas removed from the floodplain by a Lomar will still be subject to standards in our code, because they will still be part of the Meridian Floodplain Overlay District. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman? Rountree: Madam Mayor. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 24 of 71 De Weerd: So, Kyle, even though they put in fill and kind of changed the area where flood waters would go, I don't understand -- Radek: Madam Mayor, this picture may be a little misleading, even though the blue area is drawn over those lots, because~the FEMA map has not changed yet, but they have issued a letter of revision, a letter of map revision saying the developer has submitted documents showing that the -- that those areas have been raised up and are now above the base flood elevation and are excluded from the floodplain. And so, in fact, those areas are -- those houses that are -- you can see being constructed there, are approximately finro to three feet -- t'd say three or four feet above the base flood elevation. De Weerd: Because of fill. Radek: Because of fill. Yes, ma'am. De Weerd: Not because of how they are built and water can run under them. Radek: Correct. De Weerd: So, doesn't that impact another area downstream? Radek: Yes, ma'am. That's an astute point. The -- anytime -- as in that diagram, anytime you squeeze those waters, the water is no longer going to be here, it's going to be somewhere else or it's going to be at a higher elevation and this is -- the Five Mile Creek floodplain where a floodway has been mapped and, therefore, the rise due to the ultimate development of that area has been accounted for in FEMA's model. So, here again, we have -- we develop to base flood elevation plus one foot and our new code recommends base flood elevation plus two feet, so that, basically, everything is base flood elevation plus one foot above and you don't have any problem after the ultimate development happens. Incidentally, these -- these lot -- I don't have any control over these lots, because they have been removed from the floodplain, but I do know that the structures built on these lots are, for lack of better terms, just fine, because this developer actually came in before the Lomar had been approved by FEMA, so I, therefore, made them, even though I knew those lots were going to be Lomar'd out, I made them do a floodplain development print. I know what the elevations of those buildings are. So, just in case you're worried about these particular lots, there is not a problem. Bird: I'm not worried at all. Rountree: So -- Zaremba: Mr. President? Go ahead. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 25 of 71 Rountree: Kyle, when they submitted that to the corps, there was no adjustment to the floodplain to the south. I mean you don't bring those homes to the south in jeopardy with an increase in -- potential increase in the flood waters because of the restriction created by this fill? Radek: The only agency they had to submit a permit to for this -- for this -- in this arena, the flood arena, is ours -- is the City of Meridian. The Corps of Engineers would not have been involved in this. There is no work in the -- below the high water mark. Five Mile Creek is fairly far away from these houses, you know, hundreds of feet and, like I said, the way the rise is accounted for is with the floodway concept. Five Mile Creek has a floodway, therefore, anybody building a structure in the Five Mile Creek floodplain knows that when the ultimate development occurs in the floodplain, the base elevation will rise up a foot. Does that make sense to everybody? Rountree: Okay. Okay. Yeah. David. Zaremba: This is kind of a follow up to the Mayor's question, but -- and it's based on having lived on the Mississippi River for many years and watching the Army Corps of Engineers just channelize it with levies and stuff, but anytime you have an area of a river that normally floods out and slows down and you channelize it by ~Iling on the sides, the water now goes through there not only deeper, but faster and the effects downstream are much greater than they would have been otherwise and I guess my question is when somebody does a project like this where we have said, okay, if you're going to fill, then, you have to go to a certain height and stuff, what do we do about mitigating anything that's going to happen downstream, because we have changed the flow of the water. Or they have changed the flow of the water. Radek: Good question. And FEMA really focuses on the base flood elevation and you are correct that when you squeeze the water and you increase the height of the water, you're going to increase the velocity of the water and -- Zaremba: That does more damage downstream. Radek: It does -- yeah, it does -- water would -- higher velocity does more damage where ever it is and that is not -- I guess that's not the focus of the FEMA regulations and maybe that -- I mean maybe that's something we should be considering, but I think -- I think focusing on the base flood elevation is -- well, I guess it's worked so far and they go hand in hand. So, I'm not sure it's something we need to -- we need to address. Zaremba: Okay. Radek: It's -- your statements are definitely true. Like I say, it is limited by the one foot rise maximum. A lot of places the -- a lot of places where they have squeezed the floodplain into a floodway, you don't get a flood. A lot of places it's a half a foot. So, the amount of increase in rise and increase in velocity is different. Some places you will get a little more increase, some places you'll get a little less. You run into a culvert where it Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 26 of 71 backs up, it stops it and, then, shoots through that culvert again. So, it's not a-- I guess it's not an cumulative effect that velocities will always continue to increase, so -- Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. Radek: The last point I wanted to touch on is water course alterations. Water course alterations are by far the biggest contributor to potential flooding. Every crossing, culvert, step structure, bridge, or other alteration is an opportunity to accumulate debris and to back up flood waters. Since these are our biggest problems, they are also our biggest opportunity to save ourselves from more problems by asserting a no rise standard, which will keep our creeks open and able to convey flood waters. In my previous presentation to the Council I showed you a few locations where we have had some undersize culverts put in and I think that's the absolute easiest thing for us to do to make sure that we can convey flood waters. The creeks we have, with the exception of Ten Mile Creek, are very short drainages and we are going to have short floods. We are going to have floods that last hours long. And we need to be able to get that water out of here and the way to do it is to make development put in adequate culverts that can pass flows and pass debris and not get clogged up and not be a maintenance problem and also look nice, too. And that is all I had. I'd like to open it up for more discussion if you have more questions. Again, I'm seeking approval to put this on the regular agenda for reading and approval or -- or if Council has other direction to go back and research more stuff or make some changes. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Kyle, first, I want to tell you what a great program you have put together and you have really researched and I certainly appreciate it. But we basically -- our floodplains go through drain ditches -- what we call drain ditches, am I not right? We don't have a river or anything like that within the Meridian -- we got Ridenbaugh Canal and it could break and you could have a bunch of water, but -- and I really -- drain ditches collect runoff; right? Radek: That's kind of their secondary function. Bird: Yeah. But I mean none of the water is transported down a drain ditch to feed irrigation, it takes irrigation runoff. Radek: That's correct. There are some places in Five Mile Creek that actually take out. Bird: That what? Radek: They are actually -- Meridian City Council Special Meeting ! Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 27 of 71 Bird: Yeah. In Five Mile Creek they do -- they do when it's got enough water. There is a couple of -- you know, there is some that it doesn't. They have to pump -- in fact, there is a couple of places. So, I'm wondering of the floodplain changes as we quit -- you know, five years ago we flood irrigated a lot more acreage than we flood irrigate right now and sprinkler and stuff -- and you have got so much more asphalt down that that runoff don't -- I hope the sewer -- or the runoff drains aren't going into the drain ditches, with all the oil and stuff in it, but -- so I-- I have -- I have a problem -- Radek: You don't believe it is what you're saying. Bird: I don't believe it. I believe -- no. No. Kyle, I believe what you're telling me and stuff. I don't believe we are in imminent danger and I would -- I would be the first to go -- which I will, check with a bunch of insurance people and see if they apply this to the City of Meridian area. Radek: I would guarantee you that they do, because I get calls from them. Bird: Okay. Radek: And I think to answer your question about the flows and irrigation, the base flood is -- the assumption of the base flood is a spring snow melt -- rain on snow melt event with empty canals. So, the model flow for what becomes the base flood has no irrigation water in it. So, I don't believe that the fact that we are -- maybe have less return flow in there is going to have any effect at all. And we have taken a critical look at the flood insurance study models and said -- we actually hired a consultant to look and there are -- there are several studies on Five Mile Creek, but only one flood insurance study for the rest of our creeks that was done by Toothman-Orton for FEMA and we have yet to find anything that's a glaring error saying, well, you calculated this wrong, we shouldn't have this much runoff. We do have some kind of interesting things going on at canal crossings, but for the most part it appears that the flood insurance study is a fairly decent study. Bird: Well, I appreciate the research and the stuff you have done, Kyle, and I have no problem changing the deal. I'm not sure that vents are going to solve the problem. I believe the biggest thing you could do is if you're worrying about pushing it, is make -- make every house put rebar in their footings and foundation and that happens very rarely in residential. De Weerd: I have it in mine. Bird: I know you do. Rountree: Kyle, I just want to say job well done. You have put a lot of effort in this and done some excellent work. I heard you say a couple places that we have worked with locals and we have had input from Treasure Valley partnership and in spite of what Councilman Bird just said, we have the potential of actually having a portion of a rather Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 28 of 71 large river in our impact area on the Boise floodplain. One of the issues that came up with that discussion with the city of Eagle was they were concerned about floodplain and floodplain impacts and wanted to make sure that anything we would do in the ordinance area with respect to floodplains was consistent, if not mirror what they have and my question is what you propose, does it do that? Radek: Yes, sir. The answer is yes. The finro foot -- the finro food standard is something we share with them. They have an additional -- they share with Ada County an additional item in there for a setback from the -- a greenbelt setback, which really more -- I guess -- it's not clear to me whether it belongs in the floodplain ordinance or the -- the planning code -- yeah. I mean the -- the idea of it really isn't a floodplain setback, so -- so we don't have any problem at all with being consistent with what they are going out there. Rountree: Okay. Thank you. Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Kind of a side issue, but I have been attending the meetings of the Ada County open space and parks committee. One of their recommendations to the Ada County commissioners is going to be that the commissioners formulate and suggest that the cities formulate a consistent Boise River floodplain plan that all integrates with each other and I think they are -- the committee is going to suggest that Ada County commissioners take the lead on that or at least that the county take the lead, because they have more of it than any individual city does. But you may want to stay in touch with the county at the parks department -- county parks is probably taking the lead on it, but they are going to suggest that we have coordinated floodplain management that's along the Boise corridor -- Boise River corridor. Radek: Absolutely. I appreciate your comment. It's not only -- only along the Boise River, but, actually, we -- you know, we had a case where we had a call in, somebody was filling in Five Mile Creek in the floodplain and a resident called in and we sent an inspector out there and that was actually county property, so we called up the floodplain administrator for the county and said, hey, you got some stuff going on here. So, we are fairly well tied in right now, so I appreciate your comments and we will endeavor to remain that way. Zaremba: Thank you. Rountree: Direction? Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would say bring her forward, Kyle. Rountree: I agree. Meridian Ciry Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 29 of 71 Bird: And make sure we are in mirroring everybody else's -- Boise's, Eagle's -- everybody and anybody that's along the Boise River. Rountree: Based on the head nodding that I see here, that's enough for me to move forward. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I am very grateful for the involvement of our staff. They have been involved in the Treasure Valley partnerships joint efforts and have taken a step I think over and above to really evaluate cumulative effects and be conscientious to making it Meridian's as well. So, the areas that we need to mirror those along the Boise River, I believe we have accomplished that, but we have looked at our own special circumstances as well. Rountree: As we bring this forward I think probably your next challenge with this issue is to make it consumer digestible. It's -- it's going to be a tough one for some people in these specific areas to deal with and as straight forward as you can make the explanations and I-- your graphics are great. To make it understandable why we are doing this and why we are requiring this in the future in these areas, that's the marketing piece. Zaremba: Mr. President? Included in that, if you could maybe invent or come up with some statistics of what the difference in their insurance cost is going to be. Radek: Absolutely. We have -- we have put out part one of floodplain 101 in the city -- city newsletter just a month or two ago and part two and part three will talk about exactly those things. How we are moving to higher standards. We are going to get breaks on flood insurance. All that good stuff. Rountree: Excellent. Thanks, Kyle. Radek: Thank you. Bird: Great job. (~ Follow Up Discussion on 2006 International Fire Code - Fire Department - Joe Silva. Rountree: Any further'? Okay. Next item on the agenda. Mr. Silva, fire code discussion. Silva: Yes. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Just to update you. We had originally brought the International Building Code, the International Fire Code in front of Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 30 of 71 Council for discussion at the end of February. At that point there was a-- some concerns about a section that dealt with the requirements for a secondary access when we serve greater than 50 homes. We had put a proposal before you for consideration that if a segment of a subdivision serving greater than 50 homes, if that -- it had only a single point of access, we would require not only that segment of the subdivision, but the entire subdivision to be fire sprinklered. You had requested at that time that I meet with the BCA Developers Council to solicit some input from them and feedback with respect to that issue. Understanding that, I met with the BCA Developers Council. Then, I was directed from that group, after attending their membership meeting, to work with a task force of three representatives from the BCA, Jerry Armstrong from Hubble, Gene Smith from Northwest Engineering, and Jay Walker from -- representing Brighton. At that point we kind of discussed the particulars of the proposal we had in front of Council and it was at that point we decided to go back to the current standard that we had been basically doing by policy at 50 homes. If you have a segment of a subdivision served by only one road and it has -- serves greater than 50 homes, then, it would require that those homes be fire sprinklered. They supported that concept. That had been our previous policy. And before you there should be a letter from BCA indicating that they are in support of our -- adoption of our 2006 version of the International Fire Code and they appreciated our efforts listening to them with -- and soliciting their input in respect to this issue. With that I would like to just request that this be -- seek your approval to put this on a regular council agenda for reading and approval. I would like to also request that legal give you -- I'm -- procedurally I'm a little -- I need some enlightenment as to procedurally how we will pursue adopting this particular segment of the code and putting the whole International Fire Code, 2006 version, into effect for the city and I was going to get -- ask Mr. Nary if he could provide some perspective on that. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I think attached to your documents here, Mr. Silva, there is an ordinance that was already at draft, right, and I think -- I think you had indicated we had a first reading. It probably would be wise, because there has been a time gap that we put it back for a first reading again and start over now. With the Council's direction we can certainly put it on for accelerated readings, or we can put it on for three consecutive readings. That's up to them. Silva: Thank you very much. Mayor and Council, I'll stand for any further questions you may have with respect to this issue. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I don't know why we can't just do it like we normally do and have a reading and pass it. And, Joe, I want to pass something to you that -- I had a phone call from finro BCA members. You certainly got an A plus from them for the way you handled it and I appreciate that very much so. It's -- it's a very good selling point for our city. You were very open minded and you listened, as I understand, and I appreciate it and you can be Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 31 of 71 very proud that they -- a couple of guys took time out to call me at home and tell me what a nice job you had done. Silva: Thank you. Thank you very much. Just one other thing -- one other point that I made with the BCA. They have been always striving for standardization of design standards. It simplifies the work the design team has to do. Why is that important to our city? Where we get a large retailer or any other developer from out of state, it's easy to convey that we use the International Fire Code, the international family of codes in our design. In our document -- our adoption document is probably the smallest one of any other agency in the valley here. With that being said, we are still meeting the special needs of our department and recognizing our resource level. So, thank very much, Councilman Bird, for that kind word. Rountree: Any further comments? De Weerd: Oh, I would also pass along the compliment. I just don't want them to get a real big head, so -- Silva: You don't have to worry about that. Bird: I didn't know whether to say it or not. I thought, well, I better tell him directly, instead of tell Anderson, so he could get a big head. Rountree: I thank you for sharing that with the rest of us and very good job, Joe. We appreciate that. De Weerd: Thank you, Joe. Rountree: Council's preference to move this along to get it scheduled for an agenda and expedited reading process or -- Bird: Yeah. Rountree: -- what's -- Bill, is that apropos? I think we have got all the issues taken care of. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council President Rountree, you know, I think you have had this certainly vetted enough in the community you certainly could do that. Rountree: Okay. Let's do that and we will add that to the list of things to work on Friday. Very good, Joe, thanks. (g) Tabled from April 1, 2008: Budqet Amendment Interdepartment Transfer from Citv Clerk's Office to Mayor's Office for Personnel Transfer for $95,048.00: Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 32 of 71 Rountree: Next item on the agenda Item G, tabled from April 1, budget amendment. Inter-departmental transfer. Mayor, is that yours? De Weerd: No. That's Robert's. Rountree: That's Robert's. Okay. Before you start Robert, Mike, did we get your question answered or -- okay. Thank you. De Weerd: He's just been away so long he had to come -- Bird: He had to come back. De Weerd: -- absorb it again. Nary: I thought he was filling in for Ralph. Rountree: Yeah. Bird: Where is Ralph? Rountree: He left. Nary: He went home. De Weerd: We exhausted him. Rountree: Okay. Robert. Simison: Mayor and Council. This is a requested budget amendment that will -- is a transfer of funds from the clerk's office to the Mayor's office to reflect their recent organizational changes in the clerk's office and the Mayor's office, with the addition of the community liaison position. It has no net effect on the overall budget. In fact, when I talked to finance today, it actually has a positive effect in the reorganization befinreen the two offices. While we are creating one new position in the Mayor's office, we are effectively eliminating two in the clerk's office, so -- in reality with the reorganization that we are doing, the end result is about a net effect of about 15,000 in savings to the city through the health insurance and other benefits with the position in the clerk's offices overall being eliminated. So, in essence, this is just more of a housekeeping measure to actually put the funds into the Mayor's office where this community liaison position actually is, as compared to the clerk's office, and puts our reorganization more in line with where we currently are. Rountree: Okay. Any questions? Bird: I do have one. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 33 of 71 Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Robert, this -- the amount looks like an employee's full year plus benefits. Simison: That is correct. Bird: And that -- the change wasn't made for the full year. Simison: Understood. Finance just wanted to do a complete change for the year to reflect for the upcoming -- for the future budget year, rather than doing just a partial change. It would be the effect that we wouldn't be -- we wouldn't be getting extra money beyond just the amount for the year for the purposes, but for the full impact it's just showing that overall we want to move that entire amount over for the years carrying forward. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: Which is consistent with any of our personnel changes, we want to make sure it's adequately reflected in the base and so that has been our typical practice with finance. Rountree: Well, I guess it seems to me if you make that budget amendment and the accounting amendment, the accounting process would transfer that whole element with the expenditures to date in that element. So, it would be starting with that amount, minus the expenditures that are made. So, you're not really getting that full amount, you're getting the remaining as a budget amendment. De Weerd: That`s correct. Bird: That's the way we have always done it. Rountree: And the accounting that goes with it transfers as well as part of the budget amendment process, if I understand it correctly. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: It doesn't come as a surprise. I think I understood that this position was going to be paid for, because we had finro unfilled positions in the clerk's office. I didn't understand that we were actually going to eliminate searching to fill those two positions at some point. Does this mean that the clerk's office will never have finro open requisitions or when they need to grow staff it's a new budget thing for next year or -- Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 34 of 71 Simison: Correct. There is one -- when this reorganization is -- when it's fully staffed out, we are going to be hiring one more position back into the clerk's office that will probably be a receptionist position, leaving the three other people besides the clerk as being the department specialists. Any further staffing requests in the future would need to come back before Council for filling in the clerk's office. So, we believe in our discussions that with filling that one position we can meet the current needs in the clerk's office and if that need changes and grows we will come back and make the request at that point in time. Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. Rountree: Robert, my question is why was it tabled? Bird: Joe wanted it pulled off for some reason. The biggest reason, you as the liaison, you wasn't here, I think. Rountree: Oh. Okay. Okay. Bird: Joe was the one that asked that be taken off. Rountree: All right. Bird: They had it on the Consent Agenda. Rountree: Okay. Bird: I would suggest that -- Mr. President, that we bring it back under the Mayor's next week and pass the thing, get it done. One week isn't going to hurt it. You know, we are going to pass this all -- a general budget amendment in August or September anyway, so -- De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess we have passed plenty of things tonight, why wouldn't we pass this. Unless you need it on another -- a third agenda. Bird: I don't care if you want to pass it tonight. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 35 of 71 Zaremba: I actually didn't hear the first part of Mr. Bird's sentence. Were you suggesting that we not do it tonight? Bird: No. I just -- I didn't care. I don't care. Joe's the one that pulled it off and he's not here tonight. Zaremba: But I think his point was that he wanted Councilman Rountree to hear it. Bird: Yeah. And I think so, too. Rountree: And I have heard it. Bird: Okay. Rountree: And I'm okay with it. Zaremba: Mr. President, I move that we accept the budget amendment. Bird: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to accept the budget amendment, Item G. Is that roll call? Nary: Yes. Rountree: Roll call. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. (h) Tabled from April 1, 2008: Bud~et Amendment for Community Development Block Grant for the Plannin~ Department for $230,544: Rountree: Next item is a budget amendment for a community block grant. Matt? Anna? Is Anna hiding -- Bird: Anna pulled that off last week and I think she's got it ready. Rountree: Well, I know we got the money and this is a good one. Canning: Sirs and madam, we had pulled it off just to get you the corrected numbers. So, it has the corrected numbers now. Bird: Mr. President? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 36 of 71 Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Anna, what was the -- this is after we had paid out the fee to Ms. -- Canning: This is just the award amount from HUD for the -- I think they call it plan year FY-07, which goes through September of 2008. So, that's what that amount is. I think what you're looking for is if Mayor and Council would like to have the discussion on the payment for Ms. Francis' work, whether that should have been paid from this grant monies or from just general fund monies was part of the question for the fiscal year -- or the planning year'07. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: It was told to me that that's the way we were going to do it. It was coming -- her fund was coming out of the grant, if we got it. If we didn't I guess we ate it, but -- and the same token, you have got some administration that should go to you out of this. Canning: Right. If we gave -- if we took the 40,000 from -- to pay Ms. Francis -- well, we have already paid her, but if we requested from HUD those funds for back payment, sort of, that -- as I understand it, the way it works is we pay the money and, then, we request HUD to kind of replenish that money is generally how it works. But if we were to do that, then, that would use up all the administrative balance available for that year. So, we wouldn't be able to ask for additional administrative payment of additional administration costs. Still working on terminology for HUD. Sorry. So, I-- I had not been involved with this issue, so I'm not trying to not provide information, I just wasn't in the loop at all, so if someone can jump in and help me out, I'd appreciate it. Bird: Mr. President. Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Didn't -- didn't Emily tell us that 20 percent of the grant was eligible for administrative fees? Canning: Right. Bird: Was that not right? Canning: Right. And that would have been the 40,000 that the city paid Ms. Francis. Bird: Okay. And, then, if we get a grant this year, then, we can take that 20 percent and use towards your administrative fees in your department; am I correct? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 37 of 71 Canning: Yes. We have been awarded -- we have been awarded for plan year'08. Bird: Okay. Canning: Which starts in September -- or October and we have been awarded that and, yes, you can use up to 20 percent of -- of -- actually, not just what you get granted, but what you spent -- Bird: Good. Canning: -- on administration. Zaremba: Mr. President, Mr. Nary's body language indicates that he may have something to say and nobody's looking his direction. Rountree: I was hearing him, though. I was hearing him. Nary: Okay. I was just waiting. I was trying to wait. Mr. President, Members of the Council. Mr. Bird is correct, the original -- the original thought process when we hired the administrator to establish the program to get the grant funded was to pay the administrative fees out of the grant. The down side is -- is, then, there would be no more administrative fees left to administer this grant. This 230,000 dollars. So, the decision was made to pay out of the professional services -- to pay Mrs. Francis for the establishment of the grant to pay the current administrative costs out of this grant. This 230 is for this current fiscal year that we are in now. The next fiscal year it's 237,000 dollars, 20 percent of that can go toward administrative costs. So, it's either pay the last one out of professional or do a budget amendment in this one to pay for administering it. There is a gap. There is always a gap, unfortunately, with trying to either set it up or administer the program. The intent Mrs. Francis was trying to do to try to bridge that gap was to create a program that, essentially, could run itself and she wasn't able to do that, that it wouldn't require much administration. And was what she was hoping to do. Mrs. Francis didn't complete her process. She did complete the work as she was directed, but we still had a lot of other work to do to finish it, to complete it, to get it funded by the feds. It took awhile, as you recall. So, you're correct, 20 percent of it can be used for administration, but this is for the current fiscal year that we were in. Mrs. Canning is correct, these CDBG grants, you pay the money out, you get reimbursed. So, you either pay for Mrs. Francis out of the grant and pay yourself back and, then, your administrative costs you would have to absorb now or you pay Mrs. Francis out of the professional fees that we already had established and you pay the administration out of the grant you have now. I don't know if that helps you, but I know -- Bird: It does. Nary: -- Mrs. Canning wasn't part of that discussion earlier and that's why she wasn't as clear on where that was being paid from. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 38 of 71 Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Anna, what -- for this fiscal year, what administrative -- what kind of costs do you think you wilf have in administrative fees? Canning: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilmember Bird, Mrs. Wheeler has not been working on it full time, so we may not use the full 20 percent for her. So, there would be an opportunity for either me to -- in order to claim that 20 percent we need to keep very detailed records of all the time we spent on these -- on these projects. I have not been doing that thus far, neither has Emily. If either of us were to start documenting that time frame, we could get up to the full 20 percent this year as well. With Sarah -- or Mrs. Wheeler starting on it a little late, we probably won't use the full one. I would imagine it will -- she will find that it will take three-quarters to full time to administer the program once she gets fully into it. Bird: Okay. Seeing how we give it to you, what do you recommend doing, Anna? Canning: Well, my only concern with going back and paying Mrs. Francis from the administration money is that I don't believe she has done any work on it since October. So, I think we are going back to a year where she wasn't actually working on it. We'd have to get documentation from her on -- I don't know if just a bill will be sufficient for the IDS -- for the HUD reporting requirements, so I have a little bit of concern about trying to go back and claim her time. Bird: Okay. So, what you're telling me is let's just go forward. Canning: Please. Bird: Just go forward and do it and we have learned a good lesson. Canning: Yes, sir. And we are -- Bird: I'm for that. Canning: It's complicated and we are trying to get up to speed on things. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I think maybe I'm saying the same thing, but I would support that initial investment as the seed money and, then, the rolling administrative fee just keeps us up to date from time to time. Works for me. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 39 of 71 Bird: Works for me. Rountree: We would have had to do it at one end or the other anyway, so -- Mr. Bird, this is your -- Bird: I would be glad to make a motion. Rountree: Okay. Bird: That for Planning and Zoning we have a budget amendment of 230,544 dollars. Zaremba: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve a budget amendment in that amount, which increase the budget. Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. (i) Discussion of Downtown Transportation Studies - Planning Department - Matt Ellsworth. Rountree: Thank you, Anna. Next on the agenda is downtown transportation study. Matt. Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, and Members of the Council, before I dive into that, in the wake of the tour of City Hall and since we are transitioning to the transportation issues downtown, I received an update from ACHD earlier this week that -- that they will begin work on a new traffic signal at the Main Street and Broadway intersection starting tomorrow and as soon as that signal is up and running they also plan to go ahead and remove the signal that's currently located at Main and Idaho. That's per the request slash recommendation of Meridian's Transportation Task Force over the course of the fast couple years as presented to City Council in 2006 and '7. So, that's kind of a heads up to you and thanks to ACHD for moving that forward. Okay. The reason that I'm here this evening is there are three different transportation related studies that are currently in process that is going to have implications for downtown Meridian. Those are the Fairview Avenue concept design, which -- which ACHD staff gave a presentation on, on March 11th this year. That study is a long range transportation plan for Fairview Avenue. The second is the split corridor phase two design, which is currently is process. And as currently outlined in the five year work plan, that project is still scheduled to move forward for construction in 2012. The third study that's going to have implications for downtown is the East 3rd Street extension and alignment study, which is -- as you're aware, will identify new north-south connection from Franklin to Fairview Avenue to provide relief for other north-south arterials downtown. So, I was hoping to present you with a-- just a couple of the ways Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 40 of 71 in which these three are sort of coming together at the moment and, like I said, Council received an update from ACHD's project manager for the Fairview concept design on March 11th, 2008. What that presentation entailed was sort of a-- two distinct categories of issues that have been on the table for the earlier phases of that project. Those two categories were issues that had somewhat been resolved at the staff and steering committee level and those that had not yet -- basically it was a presentation of the side boards that had been put on that concept design looking forward and City Council expressed some concern at one of those issues that was yet to be resolved and that is a question of number of lanes. ACHD's project manager indicated that the determination of five versus seven lanes is still very much up for discussion at this point. City Council made it clear that -- that they do not favor seven lanes on Fairview as it enters into downtown. So, looking forward from there, there was the -- oh, excuse me. Second bullet point -- Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Excuse me, Matt. Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I must have missed something, but I wasn't aware of that discussion. I'm not opposed to the seven lanes. Bird: I must have missed it, too. I must have had my head somewhere besides here. I'm certainly not opposed to seven lanes. I think everybody found that out Monday down at ACHD. Rountree: I think the Mayor was vocal about the seven lanes -- Zaremba: Well, there certainly are some design issues, but I'm not dead set against exploring it. Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I apologize if I misconstrued the discussion on the 11th. That's my fault entirely. Looking briefly forward here I'm not sure if this will -- would be an appropriate way to resolve some of this for the moment anyway. Looking forward in the Fairview concept design process -- and this is a bit of a departure from the discussion that was had at the joint ACHD meeting yesterday, the project team, in coordination with these three various studies, identified the appropriate way to -- to get to the determination of five lanes versus seven lanes on Fairview Avenue is by the formation of a policy steering committee and that's not only the answer to that one question, there are many other questions that will come up during the course of the Fairview study and ACHD's management thus far has indicated that the appropriate way to address some of those questions may be to bring together some decision makers from the affected jurisdictions to have the conversation early in the process. That being the case, in order to keep the phase two split corridor design on schedule right now and answer whatever underlying questions need to be answered for that design to move forward, as long as the determination of five lanes versus seven lanes on Fairview is answered and agreed upon by June to July, they will Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 41 of 71 still be able to move things forward after -- the consultant and ACHD's project manager reviewed that yesterday and earlier today. They indicated to me that that will not affect the time line for construction of phase two of the split corridor. So, I'm not sure if -- it did seem like a relevant piece of the puzzle to bring you guys up to speed on just then. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I will just for recall of Council -- when we discussed this a couple weeks ago I didn't hear anyone say we support seven lanes. I did hear there was a couple of tasks that Matt was given and coming back and letting us know if the modei included the rail corridor as some of the trips captured to come back and show what right of way has been set aside in that corridor, if there was going to be additional right of way needed and there are a couple of -- I think -- I don't know -- bottlenecks is not probably the right word, but there are a couple of places along that corridor that does not have the adequate right of way. And the express concern and certainly it was me in having asphalt curb, gutter, sidewalk and, then, asphalt when we get to our parking lots. So, just to refresh the conversation, there was no clear indication that people were excited and supportive of seven lanes. So, Matt, you weren't totally way out there. I heard the same thing you did is just to come back. Just wanted to clear that on -- on the record. As we get to this intersection, though, what we did have the discussion at ACHD is the Council didn't have any concerns or the finro Council Members that were there, on a seven lane intersection on Fairview and I believe it's five on Meridian Road, so -- and I think we all felt comfortable moving forward with that design. And particuiarly I know that Matt's been working with the TLIP information to see if there is an alternative compliance in design that we can use that would still fit the flow of traffic, but also our goal of not just being an asphalt design -- or divide on Fairview. Ellsworth: And, Mr. President, if I may, Madam Mayor. You're correct. There were several follow-up items that Council requested based on the March 11th discussion. In your packet is a memo dated April 7th, 2008, and in this memo -- it's really a two part memo. Part one was pertinent more to just the very brief brush on this that I was hoping to dive into for tonight. Part two, starting on page four, is a follow-up to that Fairview conversation in which I summarized, to the best of my ability, the content of the conversation as I recalled it, followed by the questions that Mayor and Council raised. I some -- some -- I had a lot of conversations with a lot of folks with ACHD and other area agencies and answered those questions that you raised to the best of my ability and there in the attachments is kind of a corridor breakdown that ACHD provided showing where current right of way lines are, so that you can compare roughly what impacts would wind up being seen on the ground depending on the width of the corridor that ultimately is implemented there. So, to plant that seed in the back of your head. That's -- that's the second half of the memo there. Shifting back to some of those follow-up conversations that I had on the -- on the question of five lanes versus seven lanes and the sphere that I was looking at this question, then, came down to what impacts would constraining Fairview Avenue to five lanes from seven lanes have on parallel roadway Meridian City Council Special Meeting ! Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 42 of 71 networks and intersections up and down Fairview and one of the assumptions to keep in mind with all of this is that it's all based on the Communities In Motion model. So, those assumptions are sort of the benchmark for these things, which has implications both for the population estimates coming into it and also for the lane widths of parallel roadways that can fill -- fill the need for traffic volumes, if you will. The consultant -- and this comes back to the coordination of these three studies. The consultant, who has been working on phase two design is the same lead consultant that the city and MDC have hired for the East 3rd Street extension study and he's also one af the sub- consultants on the Fairview study. So, all of these demographic assumptions are on the same page and that's moving forward very well. He, through the phase two discussions, came up with sort of a preliminary set of recommendations and, again, this is based on the Communities In Motion land use -- or, excuse me, the demographic information and the communities in motion model lane widths for the various arterial roadways. And, again, what I was hoping to do tonight is give a very high level look at what it -- what impacts it would have on the adjacent roadway nefinrork and intersections up and down Fairview to constrain that roadway and also to float a couple of the ideas that have been kicked around the table so far in these conversations as to how to mitigate some of the impacts of a more constrained Fairview or potentially even to create a better flowing system if Fairview is uttimately seven lanes. So, the consultant came up with both a near term and a longer term recommendation and the near term is based on, one, the assumption that the split corridor phase finro is constructed prior to the East 3rd Street extension. So, in between the completion of phase finro and the beginning of construction on -- or the end of construction, excuse me, on the 3rd Street extension. The set of near term recommendations included the following: Reconfiguring the Main-Fairview intersection and the removal of an eastbound left turn, which is north into Albertson's plaza and for the near term no other -- no other adjustments had been proposed by the consultant at this time. So, basically, what that near term adjustment entails is eastbound traffic coming along Cherry before it breaks into Fairview -- after it breaks into Fairview, would no longer be able to make a left turn here into Albertson's at Main. You have Albertson's over here and Main Street. Instead, those drivers would -- would need to make a left or north turn on Meridian Road and continue into the plaza right here. So, basically, the adjustment is removal of the left-hand turn at the intersection of Main and Fairview for eastbound traffic. Now, in the longer term, which would be after the extension of East 3rd Street -- or East 3rd Street, excuse me, connects into Fairview Avenue, would be to restrict the Main-Fairview intersection to a right-in, right-out only. There has also been some discussion of removing the signal for Main-Fairview along with that restriction to right-in, right-out. And, finally, to install a signal at East 3rd Street and Fairview. And part of the rationale behind doing this is to increase the amount of distance in befinreen the signals at Meridian and Fairview -- or, excuse me, Meridian and the next signal for eastbound traffic heading down Fairview Avenue, if that makes some sense. And the memo goes into greater detail. Basically, what the model results were showing was that there is not enough stacking distance between Main Street and Meridian Road and on Fairview to allow those east or westbound movements enough -- enough stacking room at five lanes to continue flows. So, part of the logic there is even though at five lanes it's still -- based on the model would not provide enough stacking distance, that might be a way to minimize some of Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 43 of 71 those -- some of those challenges. So, you can see it visually here. Again, you have Meridian, Main Street, 3rd Street off over here. Let's see. Bird: Show me that right-in and right-out. Ellsworth: For traffic heading northbound here on Main Street, they would no longer be able to continue north into the Albertson's plaza, they would no longer be able to make a left-hand turn onto Fairview, instead, they would be restricted probably by a median, if I had to guess, to right-hand turn out only. Bird: But isn't Main Street going to be in the phase two -- isn't it going to be going south only? Rountree: Huh-uh. Ellsworth: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, the phase two project has it set up for the cross-over to occur somewhere befinreen the railroad track and Franklin and with that being the case Main Street would remain up further north here toward Fairview in its current configuration. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: Get control of yourself. De Weerd: Sorry. Mr. Bird really disturbed me there for a minute. I'm really concerned about taking the signalization off of Main Street. I think you're going to kill traffic on Main Street there. I don't know how you're going to get anyone off of Main onto Fairview and I guess that's the intent, to take the ability to turn left, and all of your businesses between -- I think Carlton is the first cross-connection befinreen Main and Meridian and Fairview, all of those businesses would severely suffer. I guess how I had imagined it would be is to have a signalization there that would be consistent with the signalization on Meridian, so you -- you continue that -- that flow through and, then, you would have the east-west traffic or the going west traffic join that after you had a stop light on Main. But Main Street, as in any community, is -- is kind of the blood line of -- of the heart of our community. I really think that that would be a huge disservice to our Main Street -- our revitalization efforts and I don't know if Mr. Wardle has any comment on that, but I would absolutely hate to see that light go away and expect those people to -- whoever is on Main Street will just have to go right. Bird: Madam Mayor, I agree with you a hundred percent. I don't -- I think we would be stupid to take that out. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 44 of 71 De Weerd: He said he thought he would -- okay. Bird: I thought we would be stupid to take that light out. De Weerd: I wanted to make sure that was on -- Bird: Of course, I thought we were going one way, too, so don't pay any attention to me. Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, just to provide some of the rational behind where they were going with this, essentially, westbound traffic traveling on Fairview Avenue would, then, be required to make a left-hand turn into 3rd Street and work their way over to Main Street via some east-west connection. Now, that's another piece of the puzzle here leading back to a different study. Currently, the only way to make that movement is down on Carlton, which might be a bit too far. It's another component of the East 3rd Street studies to take a look at. We are at a possible location somewhere between Carlton and Fairview might be located where you could make that possible. As far as exiting northbound trips onto Fairview, similarly, they would need to make their way over to the signal at East 3rd here and continue out to make the left up there. Again, the rationale for floating the idea that the consultant had in mind was increasing the signal distance for cars on Fairview and he -- he was looking at this, of course, for the best possible traffic situation. Obviously, there are community concerns and other concerns and that's exactly why I wanted to get it in front of you this evening, was to see as early on in the process, which of these potential mitigation measures are, in Council's eyes, detrimental to downtown and which -- Rountree: Matt, if you would go back to that aerial. And I'm -- they probably have considered this, but it seems to me that this is the -- one of the real tough points. If they could take that out of the signal phase and make it a right-in, right-out, and maybe even adjust it so it's not necessarily -- maybe in this location or in this location and, then, maintain the signal that would operate those three legs, I don't know if -- they may have looked at that. t don't know if they have. But this always has been a movement that's complicated that intersection and if you could eliminate that, make this a right-in, make it a right-out only, no -- no cross-traffic through, and, then, have these operate right in -- eliminate this left-hand move, make this through or right-hand, make this left a right- hand, make this through or a left hand -- Ellsworth: Council President Rountree, to make sure that I understand, you were talking about northbound traffic -- Rountree: Would not -- would not have -- Bird: Southbound. Rountree: Southbound traffic would not have egress into. They'd either have to come down -- come down here and right in or they'd have to come down here and get in. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 45 of 71 De Weerd: So, close off that -- Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Start with maybe seeing if that could be right-in, right-out only and if that's not going to work -- and my suspicion is it's not, because you're going to have a lot of rear- end accidents making this move, eliminating it. They still have access, they have access here, and they have access here and they have access here and they have access there. And they also have access here. Bird: That's -- yeah, that's -- De Weerd: There is too many dots up there. Rountree: Yeah. This is the one. Bird: But, Mr. President, you're saying to eliminate that entrance there? Rountree: Yes. We should have done it years ago. Bird: But I still don't think we can eliminate the signals there. Rountree: No. Make -- make that -- retain that signal and have it operate these three legs. Bird: Yeah. You're right. We can -- there is an entrance in here that you can either go like that or you can go back around and come out over here. There is an entrance there and there is an entrance there. Rountree: The people that live there -- live there now go right here -- Bird: Oh, yeah, but he don't live there. Rountree: Let's get some more dots up there. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: We need colors so we know who is pointing to what. Zaremba: Not to be contrary, but the suggestions that Matt has described, I have seen work well other places and I kind of would like to see the modeling. And, actually, it would be interesting to see the modeling with all the options that we have talked about, variations -- I agree that that exit -- what's a driveway, not a street, probably should be closed. It has always been difficult. But I would still like to see what the model would show with no signal there at all and only a right-in, right-out to Main that has worked Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 46 of 71 other places and if we consider the goal of moving the through traffic off of Main, so that the traffic that is there is the destination traffic, I think unless we do something to make that intersection less attractive, we will not encourage the through traffic to move over to Meridian. I think we will still -- a fully active signal there is likely to continue the same problem we have, even though Meridian should be more attractive when they are done. But I'm not absolutely stuck on that, I'm just saying I'd like to see how the modeling shows that as one of the options before we eliminate it entirely, because I-- as I say, I think I have seen something similar work very well other places. For the goal that we have expressed, which is reduce the through traffic. Rountree: Boy, have you got enough ideas, Matt? Ellsworth: Mr. President, my head's spinning. Bird: Leave the lights on. That's all we care. De Weerd: Yes, he has enough ideas. Rountree: Give them a try. And I see ACHD's back there taking notes like crazy, so -- De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess if -- if we need to show a modeling on -- on that idea, I still maintain it would -- it would severely hurt Main Street. But I woufd like to know an economic impact, too, on the businesses that would be currently existing there. Zaremba: Mr. President. That absolutely should be an element. I would include in that economic impact the base line of trying to determine how much the through traffic is stopping and bringing customers now. 1 don't think very much of it is. Rountree: Anna, you were about ready to jump in the middle of this? Canning: Yes, Mr. President. I just -- Mr. Ellsworth brought up a good point in that sometimes when Council requests us to make suggestions or to ask on some of these studies for additional studies to be done, we need to have the -- they haven't scoped it in their project. So, I just wanted to warn you all that we may need to come to you and ask you to request those jurisdictions to make those changes. Sometimes the staff is unable to make them without some approval from their bosses. So, we just may need to come back to you. That's all. Rountree: If you want to prepare a letter to that effect, I'm sure we can get it signed. Canning: Okay. Meridian City Council Special Meeting ! Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 47 of 71 De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: Since we do know that -- that notes are taken and a formal report is filed at the end of our meeting -- because I'm not going to make anymore wet blanket comments, we do know that those reports are made and read. We could even say something in this meeting just to make sure, because I could get a phone call tomorrow. Bird: You know, they have to report back. De Weerd: Again, just for the record, I-- my concern is to eliminate and make Main Street pretty much a dead end and -- Rountree: Okay. Matt. Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Rountree: Do you need anymore from us? Next subject? De Weerd: He loves his job. Bird: He's done. Rountree: Well, it's entertaining, if nothing else. All right. So, that completes your presentation, Matt? Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. Council President. Rountree: Thank you. Thank you for getting us stirred up. De Weerd: Thanks, Matt. (j) 2008 Parks & Recreation Fee Schedule - Park Department - Steve Siddoway. (k) Boys & Girls Club Building - Park Department - Steve Siddoway. (I) Parks & Recreation Power Point Presentation - Park Department - Steve Siddoway. Rountree: Good discussion. Next item on the budget -- or budget. On the agenda is Parks and Rec fee schedule. Mr. Siddoway. And you can just run through the next three, since they are yours it appears. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 48 of 71 Siddoway: Thank you, Mr. President, Mayor, Members of the Council. Never fun being the last on the agenda, but we will do our best to get you through these last three items in a timely fashion and hope they -- we can engage you in some good discussion. This first item of ours is an update to our 2008 fee schedule. Before getting ,into it I want to acknowledge two of my staff that are here in the audience today, Coiin Moss, Allison Kaptein, our two recreation coordinators. Colin Moss is over the sports program and the special events that we have in the city and Allison Kaptein is over the recreation program activities, all the classes and things that you see in the activity guide and they do a wonderful for me. With that, in the interest of time, I'd just like to invite Colin up to the microphone to give you a quick overview of the updates to the fee schedule and see if you have any questions on those. Moss: Thanks, Steve. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Steve, if you would just scroll up to the top, I guess. There is not a whole lot of changes this year. I don't know if anybody got a copy of this in their packets. In the interest of time I won't go through every single change, but if anyone has questions, I'm certainly available to provide explanation. Rountree: Any comments, concerns, issues, questions? Bird: Not yet. De Weerd: I have none. Rountree: Okay. Have you scrolled through them all, yet? De Weerd: Although I should make up something. Moss: Okay. Well, thank you. Rountree: So far we don't have any. Siddoway: Most of the changes are related to either new classes that we are adding to the program this year that you see here or adding a ball field reservation fee that's in line with all other ball reservation fees for new fields that we have coming on line this year. You have the typical items. Rountree: Go back. Siddoway: Okay. Bird: I can't read -- no. Wait. The whole bunch. Go down a little. Is there something there -- baby signs? Tell me what that is. Moss: That is a preschool development, a baby sign language class. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 49 of 71 Bird: Oh, yeah. Okay. I got a grand niece that does that. Yeah. Don't do me any good to -- Nary: It's a very effective learning tool. Rountree: It is. Bird: That's what I understand. You know, that's the way it's going, but -- thank God my kids are raised. Nary: Belly dancing is a few more down, Mr. Bird, if you -- Bird: I think I don't -- Rountree: Belly dancing. Bird: We could -- we could have some laughs. Rountree: Okay. Scroll on through. Siddoway: Okay. I have reached the bottom. That's it. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Most of these are individual fees and I assume the individual would pay them as they attend the class or the event or whatever. The very first one at the top appeared to be a team fee, the one that went up by 125 percent -- 127. Moss: Correct. Zaremba: How are the team fees billed or paid? Does the team president or the coach or somebody -- Moss: Right. Each team has a manager who is responsible for bringing in the fee for each team and this particular one is just -- it's not actually an increase, it's just kind of a restructuring of the fee. We are actually removing -- we are removing the player fees, just to make things a little bit more -- a little bit simpler for the volleyball managers, because before you would -- we would charge 15 dollars per player that they would list on their roster we would make them have a minimum of eight players on their roster and so instead of having that fee, we are just adding the player fees into the team fee, so that, you know, the team fee is a total of 250 dollars now, which includes the player fees. So, it just makes it so there is one fee instead having to add up all the players and add your team fees. So, it just simplifies things. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 50 of 71 Bird: So, actually, you're just adding 20 dollars if you had eight players. Moss: That's -- yeah. That's correct. And the reality is most teams have more than that, to be honest with you, so it's saving teams some money in the same process. So, we are kind of experimenting that with the volleyball, see how it works and in the future we may -- we may go -- go towards that with softball as well, but the reason I-- the reason I personally like having the player fees is just -- you can -- you can keep track of how many people are participating in your leagues and just for -- to keep track of the increases and how many people participate. Each individual player is accounted for in the player fees. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: On your men's senior softball, is that -- is that your regular stuff like Will's kid plays and stuff? Is that the good fast pitch or slow pitch -- Moss: That men's senior softball league is a 50 and over senior softball league that -- Bird: Oh. Okay. What's the one -- where is the summer one -- Moss: Are you talking about the league that MAA -- Bird: Yeah. The one that -- Moss: That would be under spring softball where it's highlighted yellow and the yellow highlight is just denoting a word change. We changed it from spring-summer softball to -- Bird: Oh. Okay. I misread that. Men's. Women's. Because I'm going, geez, I didn't pay no 550. Moss: Yeah. So, that's what they registered. The men's senior softball -- the 50 and over league -- actually, the Meridian league has kind of disbanded: We kind of had a disparity in the level of competition of the four teams we had registered and the two teams that were getting their butts kicked every week didn't want to play anymore and so all the teams -- those teams kind of disbanded and -- Bird: Why would you charge us older guys more money? Moss: Those -- because as you can see it's a 16 game season for the senior league, as opposed to a ten game season for the -- for the spring men's, women's -- Bird: Older and make us play longer, huh? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 51 of 71 De Weerd: Well, they can play more. Bird: They do complain more. Moss: Those senior guys actually were in control of the league for the most part. They told me how they wanted their league run and I-- and I pretty much implemented that. They have lots of different rules. Siddoway: Mr. President -- and, Colin, while we are on the subject of softball, would you just briefly address the growth that you have seen in the softball program and the use that our fields are seeing right now? Moss: Yeah. Absolutely. We -- in the past few years since I have been here it's -- I mean it's been tremendous growth really. I believe in the first year that I was here we had 40 -- between our mens and our coed leagues we had 44 -- 44 or 45 softball teams. Last year we had 67 and this year we registered 84. And so it's been tremendous growth and we are reaching -- reaching the capacity that we can have at the fields. The addition of the Heritage ball fields will help a little bit, because we have a 60 and over league that plays with wood bats and they have agreed to move to the Heritage fields, because I guess they got tired of never being able to hit any home runs at our current fields and they wanted to move to the 200 foot fences, as opposed to 300 foot fences and so they will be moving to those fields to make some extra room on the fields that we currently have, but, you know, next year we will be able to -- we have grown by over 15 teams for the last finro years and next year if we grow by that much we will have to turn teams away, unfortunately. De Weerd: They still make wood bats? Moss: Absolutely. Bird: Oh, man. Yeah. Wood bats are -- in fact, the high school just went to Lewiston for a tournament up there with wood bats. And our legion team goes -- Moss: Nationally wood bats are -- due to the booming business of inetal bats and particularly illegal metal bats, the high performance of inetal bats can cause some pretty serious injuries with pitchers and third basemen, the players that are closest to the -- to the home plate and I believe last year there was even a district or a league in the state of New York that all the high schools in that particular league are using wood -- are going back to wood bats, they are not using metal bats at all for high school baseball. And so I'm not sure if that's going to catch hold nationally, but certainly this 60 and over league that we have had in Meridian has just absolutely exploded. We have ten teams in the 60 and over league right now and it's -- it's very popular with the -- and wood bats serving a dual purpose of adding to the safety, as well as increasing the nostalgia, you know, playing with the wood bats -- Bird: That's all we ever had. Meridian City Council Special Meeting I Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 52 of 71 Moss: Yeah. I mean it's very, very popular right now and it's a recreationally-based league and so they have several rules that make it very -- it encourages -- encourages the guys that have been run out of other leagues, because their competition level is not high enough, encourages them to come back out and want to play, such as you can have a courtesy runner from home plate, as opposed to having to run to first yourself. And so even guys that, you know, they can swing the bat, but they can't run, are encouraged to play. And so I believe they have some -- a lot of -- a lot of older guys that would not otherwise get to play that participate in this league. A few guys that are over 90 years old even participate. De Weerd: Really? Bird: And if you have ever bought very many of those aluminum bats -- I know Mr. Rountree has, because he had a kid play. But I cannot believe the price of them. I sponsored the equipment for the firemen's team last year and Ron went in and bought two bats -- well, I could have done two football teams for what those finro bats cost. I'm going geez. Moss: Brand new bats for -- at least -- I participate in slow pitch and it's pretty incredible. You can spend three or four hundred dollars pretty easily on a brand new -- brand new bat. Bird: Four hundred easy. Moss: Yeah. Bird: And, you know, Colin, you hit on it. I think as these kids are getting so much better at the high school level, throwing the ball faster and these kids are hitting it, they have got to go back to wood bats or they are going to kill somebody. You know, you get somebody throwing 90 miles an hour and one of those big kids get hold of it, and rips it back at the pitcher, he gets it in the head, he's dead. Moss: Yeah. They either need to do that or start placing a lot higher restrictions on the bats that they allow in play, because -- I mean right now with -- in the amateur softball association, which we contract to do our slow pitch, there is a list of -- there is a list six pages long of the bats that are banned in ASA play. Bird: And who does the checking? Moss: The umpires every game. We provide a list -- a laminated list at all the fields for every game, so that the umpires -- the umpires are fairly familiar with the list, although, like I said, it's six pages long, probably about a hundred bats long, and so it's impossible to memorize it, but we have a list at every field to reference, so that our score keepers can be looking and the umpires can reference if they need to. So, we try to take a hard stance on it, but as I was just addressing to the softball managers last night, you know, Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 53 of 71 there is -- there is a lot of problems nowadays with illegal bats and especially with players sending their bats off to special bat makers who will drill in the core and insert something new that makes the bat -- I mean that totally alters the bat and it's, unfortunately, a big business right now. Bird: Give me an aluminum bat and body putty and we will fix her up. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I would just like to thank you both Colin and Allison. You know, our recreation program has come a long way and certainly you can see that in the program and the participation. It's nice to see a successful program that continues to be expanded on and we have been waiting awhile to see progress like that. So, thank you. Moss: My pleasure. Rountree: And for me as well. Good job. Bird: Mr. President. Can I ask you one more question, Colin? Moss: Sure. Bird: What's our sign-up on girl's fast pitch? Moss: For the new girls fast pitch league we had -- we have nine team registered for the 14-U division and five teams registered for the 12-U division and that I think is a great step for the first year. We are planning on expanding on that -- on that next year, but I-- you know, I'm very excited that as soon as we get those Heritage ball fields up and running, we will have -- they will be used right away. So, you know, now -- now instead of -- instead of the teams that are here in Meridian and a few that are in Boise having to drive out to participate in their fast pitch league in Caldwell, which they have had to do for the past, you know, however many years it's been, they can now stay right here in Meridian. So, it's going to be very nice to have those fields. Bird: I would -- I would request that at the end of this fast pitch I would like to know how many Meridian youth were involved. Meridian taxpayer youth. Moss: I can -- I can get the -- I'll have rosters of all the teams. Bird: You will have all the rosters. Moss: I'll have rosters of all the teams with the addresses for all the girls and so I could certainly provide that information. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 54 of 71 Bird: I appreciate that. Moss: And so, you know, I will -- if the point that you're getting at is that a lot of those participants will not be Meridian -- Meridian youth, you know, you may be right, because this league that we are offering that we are going to start offering this year, is going to be a very competitive league that's going to bring in the best competition in the entire Treasure Valley and so, you know -- and especially starting in the fall league where we will be playing games on Saturdays -- it's my hope, anyway, that we will start -- we will start a fall league that will play on Saturdays and the intent is to provide the Treasure Valley with a central point where the best teams from around -- around the Treasure Valley and southern Idaho can participate in a league and we will bring -- we will bring teams in from Twin Falls, we will bring teams in from possibly as far away as Pocatello and McCall and Cascade and places like that and not -- I mean, you're right, those won't be Meridian youth participating, but, you know, they will come and they will have lunch and dinner and they will stay in hotels and things like that. Bird: Well, I don't have nothing but the toumament. But I'm telling you, go to Nampa, Caldwell, or Boise and live in Meridian and play on a recreation, you pay -- you pay an out-of-city fee and we -- we are entitled to that. Our taxpayers are entitled to that. Man, I did it for years. We didn't have rec programs here when I was young. And I pay through the MAA with our -- we pay for out of town for our players. Moss: You're absolutely right. Boise -- Boise has pretty stiff out of -- nonresident fees and so -- Bird: I think it's 30 dollars now per player. Moss: Yeah. It's -- yeah. For a player to play in the Boise softball league I think you're about right, it's 11 dollars per player I think for resident players and somewhere around 25 or 30 dollars for a nonresident player. De Weerd: So, are we going to see that in your fee schedule next year? Moss: For resident, nonresident fees? I'm actually not sure of the procedure, if that's something that we need to be recommended by the Council or if that's something that we can just act on and take on as policy within our department. I guess I would have to -- De Weerd: You would have to bring it to Council, but it would be -- Bird: But it should be in your fees. De Weerd: You would bring a recommendation for discussion and it would be up to them. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 55 of 71 Rountree: Yeah. And you can support that one way or another based on your registration. Moss: And we certainly -- I mean I-- it would be fairly easy to bring forward some reports of what our population is of what -- who participates in our leagues. Not only who participates in our softball leagues, but registers for our classes and things like that and just off the top of my head I would think that you would find it pretty even, Meridian residents versus non-Meridian residents. I think we get a lot of people that participate in our classes and leagues that are from Boise, Eagle, Kuna, just because we are in the middle of the Treasure Valley and so I get -- I can't -- I can't tell you how many calls I get of softball teams that say, you know, me and my buddies want to play on a softball team, but we live in Nampa and they live in Boise and so nobody wants to drive either way and so we are playing in Meridian. And so if you -- if we do start instituting nonresident fees, I think that we would lose some of those teams, because they would not be willing to pay the nonresident fees and would, you know, go one or the other to where half of their team could not pay the nonresident fees. I don't -- I don't know that I'm for it or against it at this point. Bird: They were charging in the '60s in Boise and Nampa for nonresident, because I paid them. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: One of the ways to deal with the limited quantity, of course, is to raise the price of using it and if we are reaching capacity on the fields with the teams that we can get out there, it doesn't hurt us to charge a fee to the nonresidents and give us greater capacity, it would seem to me. That's just an opinion. Moss: And, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba, my - just -- my personal opinion, I guess, would be that I would like to just see more fields, so that we can accommodate the more -- the more teams, because as the organizer of the league, I love to see it grow like this and I would -- I guess wouldn't -- wouldn't like to see anything pass that would stunt the growth of the league and so that's just -- I mean a personal opinion. I can completely understand the logic of charging nonresident fees, though. Rountree: Further questions, comments? Bird: I have none. Siddoway: Mr. President? Rountree: Is this an information only to bring forward as an ordinance change? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 56 of 71 Siddoway: Yes. And I believe procedurally this would need to come before Council and fees need to be adopted by resolution; is that correct, Mr. Nary? Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, yeah, we would have to advertise the fee changes and, then, it takes two weeks -- well, two separate publications. So, it's about three and a half -- three to four weeks before we can bring it back. Siddoway: So, we would just seek your direction -- Nary: Right. Siddoway: -- and bring this back to you at a regular meeting as such? Rountree: And in terms of providing legal notice, I would suggest that you only create a list of the changes and not pay for the publication of the entire list, because the column for legal advertisement is pretty stiff. Save you some money. Siddoway: Right. You're saying just publicize the ones that are actually changing. Rountree: Just the changes. Not the name changes, but the fee changes. De Weerd: The ones that are new or above the five percent. Rountree: Or above the five percent. Siddoway: Okay. Zaremba: And, Mr. President, our discussion about nonresident fees is for next year's budget. Bird: Next year. Yeah. It's too late for them. Rountree: To take a look at. Yeah. Moss: Okay. So, just to be clear, would the Council like parks and recreation department to at least prepare a proposal about adopting nonresident fees? Siddoway: Should we bring that back for next year or did you -- keep this moving forward for this year? Bird: I would think you would want to have plenty of time. Zaremba: I wouldn't hold this process up while you do that. Rountree: No. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 57 of 71 De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. Moss: Prepare something for next year. De Weerd: I guess as you look at your budget request and that sort of thing for this coming budget and look at it in terms of fall winter play, you still have time to do that, but don't wait until next spring. I think you can have that dialogue with Council certainly as you approach your budget time and even consider that as far as evaluating your fee structure. Bird: Yeah. Siddoway: Mr. President and Madam Mayor, so if I'm understanding correctly, we will move forward with this one as proposed and, then, investigate the other fees, but perhaps not wait until this time next year to look at those nonresident fee. Bird: Yeah. De Weerd: Uh-huh. Siddoway: Okay. Rountree: Thank you. Moss: Thank you. Siddoway: All right. Our next item for discussion is regarding the Boys and Girls Club building and the -- as you know -- as you probably all know, the Boys and Girls Club is vacating the current building just down the street here on Idaho, the former police station, this summer and are moving to their new location at the old Meridian School District offices. Excuse me. And not only are our sports programs growing, but our recreation classes, summer camps, et cetera, are growing immensely and we have a growing need for space. You should have in your packets a memo from the Parks and Recreation Commission from their March 12th meeting, making a recommendation to Council that upon vacation of that building by the Boys and Girls Club that it become available for the Meridian Parks and Recreation Department and Allison Kaptein is here tonight to talk about our need for that space. So, I'd like to turn the time over to Allison. Kaptein: Thank you, Steve. As Steve said, I'm here to talk about the use of the old Boys and Girls Club slash police department building for use as a community center is what I have labeled it. I don't know quite what we want to call it, if we -- we would have to call it something, obviously, so for now I have labeled it Meridian Community Center. Steve, if you could do the next slide. This is a list of the -- of the summer classes and camp -- it's noncomprehensive -- that we will be offering this summer. The classes with Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 58 of 71 one star are classes that are held in city parks, which are -- that's only available to us seasonally as it's hard to hold soccer camp in January in the park. Double starred are classes with multiple sessions. For example, if you see kids multi-media art camp, that is our art camp that has different themes that run weekly, starting June 9th through August 1 st, five days a week, 9:00 to noon. So, the list is -- is bigger than the list you see here. We also have tennis and golf class that are -- take place around the city. Our summer is admittedly our busiest season, as you can see, but our school year program is rapidly increasing. On average we have about three classes per evening at Meridian Middle School is our primary location, although we also have several other locations around the city for our classes. On our busiest evening, which we have -- Tuesdays this year happen to be our busy evening, everyone wanted to teach on Tuesdays. We had six classes in one evening at Meridian Middle School, as well as I said before, classes around -- around the city. Our summer schedule is even more hectic. This summer we will be having six classes or camp. And by camp I mean the ones that you see up there, like jump rope camp. We have a belly dance camp. And those are week long mini camps put on by independent contact instructors. So, we wil{ have six of those or classes at Meridian Middle School every day this summer. We will also be having our Camp Mer-IDA-Moo, which is our traditional day camp and we have two sites on either side of the freeway, one at Meridian Elementary School and one at Mary McPhearson Elementary School and those are every day this summer through August 1st. We are just expanding and expanding, as you saw on our fee schedule the tons and tons of green new classes and we do have limitations in our ability to use the school district's buildings, as well as other spaces. Steve, you can hit the next slide. Our current facilities that we are using are Meridian Middle School and that is where we have most of our classes. We do have a partnership with them, we offer an after-school program there and they allow us to use their space. So, like that's where I said we had, you know, three classes on average, six classes on a busy night. This summer we will have six classes a day, probably two in the evening, because things slow down in the summer for adults, but pick up for kids. We have computer classes at Meridian High School, at Meridian Middle, and Heritage Middle. We have adult sport leagues that Colin is in charge of. We do have daytime programs at Boise First Church of the Nazarene Community Center and, then, we also have a program with the Sanitary Services Company where they offer classes in their own building. The -- I think the benefits to us having a community center of our own would be, number one, to increase recreational offerings as a whole. One of the -- an example of that would be programs for kids when school is not in session. I think we could call it something like Vacation Station or something cute. I don't know. You know, Spring Break -- a Spring Break program similar to our summer camp, a winter break program, we could have, you know, day long programs. Something I'd really like to see is some sort of leadership program for teens that would maybe run in -- when they are not in school or maybe even when they are in school. We could expand our summer camp programs to ten weeks. Currently we can only be in the school -- when school is in session, aside from the summer, they do allow us to be in the school, but only until the first week in August and, then, they -- the teachers, obviously, need to come back to prepare their classrooms and their curriculum. So, they asked us to not be in there after August 1 st this year and we have tons and tons of community members who ask us can you run Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 59 of 71 summer camp longer. This is great -- this is a great thing for my kids. This is a great thing for me fiscally. Why can't it be ten weeks long? So, if we had a place that was not constrained on someone else's schedule it would be easier for us to do that. I don't think that having this old Boys and Girls Club building would solve all of our expanding issues. 1 think it would help us to expand further to be able to hold multiple classes there, as well as classes at the various other locations. But I think it would -- it would make a big dent. The biggest thing that I think that it would help is my next point, increasing our daytime recreation programs. During the year we can only offer programs basically after work hours, from school it's 4:00 to about 10:00 p.m. -- 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Which makes it extremely challenging for us to have any sort of senior recreation program, which is a great need in the community. And I think that being able to have a place to get that -- the ball rolling would really make a huge difference, as well as for our early childhood programs. That was -- Councilman Bird mentioned the baby signs class. That class and our preschool fun class, which is similar to a mommy and me class, is very popular and also community members have expressed to us the need of a place for young families to go during the winter when parks are unavailable, you know, moms and fathers take their kids to the park for an hour. There is no place for them to do that in the winter with the weather being bad. So, those are just kind of a real quick -- quick presentation on -- on our thoughts on our needs and our expanding program. I know it's something that we could discuss in great length, but that's -- that's what I have for you. Thank you. Rountree: Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess one of the things that as I was growing up we had a community center across the street from our junior high school and it gave teenagers a place to hang out after school. Kaptein: Right. De Weerd: I know that the Boys and Girls Club serve a certain age limit and, then, after that it's not cool to hang out there. Kaptein: Right. De Weerd: And they are trying to have that separate entrance for teenagers and that sort of thing. But have you considered maybe using this for maybe Saturday night dances for teenagers, a place where they could hang out -- and I don't know if that's cool or not. Kaptein: Right. I think that that is something that would be -- I think that would be fantastic. My heart is really in teen youth programming and as we all know, you know, Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 60 of 71 junior high is when kids -- it's easy to lose kids and I think having something in the evenings for them to do -- and this place would be fantastic. When I was in college I worked for Moscow Parks and Rec and they had those teen dances all the time and as a youth staff member we had to chaperone them. De Weerd: That's where I grew up. Kaptein: That's what I was going to ask you if you grew up in Moscow. De Weerd: In fact, Jim Hall was the youth director at the youth -- Kaptein: At the youth center. I worked there for four years. It's great. It's a great facility. And I think that would be great. I know Boise has something like that, I think, at their -- at the Fort Boise where they have like Friday night teen night or something and I think that would be fantastic. I think that's something we could do. It would be very easy to program and low budget after we had kind of the whole thing going. It would be easy to -- to do and I think a great service to the community. Rountree: Comments? Bird: I have none. Zaremba: Mr. President, I think that's an excellent idea. I agree with calling it community center, if you're searching for a name. I think that would -- I know people have been talking about having a community center for at least ten years. I think having this as a start to that idea would prove real quickly how seriously we need a bigger community center. So, I'm in favor of getting the foot in the door there. Kaptein: I agree with you wholeheartedly. Rountree: I assume this is an information item, because this is not the only request that we are going to see for this building I'm sure. Siddoway: It is informational, Mr. President, and just to engage the Council in discussion and some direction, so -- Rountree: Appreciate the idea and as we get to that point -- what's the time line with the Boys and Girl's Club? De Weerd: Mr. President, I believe that their time line is to open the new facility for the new school year. So, end of August. Rountree: Okay. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 61 of 71 Siddoway: Mr. President, what would the process be to securing a decision at some point on the future use of the building? Will it be done by motion of the Council at some point or how does this move forward? . Rountree: Having never divvied up city property before, I don't know. I assume the process would be for the Council to make a motion, a resolution, or -- I don't know. I don't know that we have ever done that. Bird: We just made a motion -- a resolution is when we did give it to the Boys and Girls Club. Rountree: Is that how the Boys and Girls got it by a resolution? Bird: And we -- well, we leased it to them for a dollar a year, but -- and, then, that was paid for -- De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor'? De Weerd: I guess when they vacated it goes back to city use, so -- Rountree: Right. It would be Council action on what that use would be. De Weerd: Yeah. Zaremba: Mr. President, I don't know how we would -- what would we do, advertise for alternatives. The only other alternative I have heard is the food bank and nothing against the food bank, but I would choose parks department over the food bank. Rountree: And I think that's a choice we have to make when -- Zaremba: But how do we ask for other suggestions? Or do we -- Rountree: Oh, I think they will come. Bird: I was going to say, I don't think you will have to ask. We heard a suggestion this morning. Zaremba: Okay. Bird: Tammy and I did. Nary: Mr. President? Rountree: Bill. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 62 of 71 Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor. Councilman Zaremba, you were actually reading my mind. I guess the question I was thinking you may want to ask of Mr. Siddoway, what would be a date that would be most beneficial to the parks to be able to plan some programming. You know, if they need -- you know, if they anticipated a vacation date of the Boys and Girls Club is August 1 st, for example, and there may be some need for -- I don't know if there is a need for remodeling or anything else, but whatever they need to be able to plan some programming probably would be a drop dead date for the Council to figure out if there are proposals that need to come in front of you for you to make a decision to move forward, so that they could actually efficiently use the building. So, that might be the most logical place to start is when would they need to know. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess, Bill, as we look on city owned property, to consider leasing it out or giving it to a community use versus a department use, it would be determined more surplus, would it, or -- Nary: Yes. It has to be -- for you to lease don't need it. If you lease out city property, at the time. So, you're correct. it out, you have to make a decision that you the decision is that there is no city use for it Siddoway: Mr. President, Madam Mayor -- Zaremba: Mr. President, I would say tonight we can't make that finding. There is a potential city use for it. Kaptein: Madam Mayor and Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba, I would agree that we -- at the parks department, anyway, feel like we have a great use. We do have a great, great partnership with Meridian Middle School and they have been more than fantastic to work with. They accommodate our needs. But they can't accommodate our every need and I don't think our partnership is for us to overrun their facility with all of our programs. They have plenty of other people and groups and their own groups that would like to use their facility. Rountree: In terms of timing, I guess from my perspective, is that whomever -- whether it's city or whatever, it would have to probably correspond to a budgeting cycle and if there is any renovations that need to be done or budget amendments or additions that need to be made for maintenance and operation of the building, because whoever gets it is going to have to maintain and operate it, that it would have to be done probably in the next couple months in order for folks to start including that in their budget preparation. I can't imagine we could wait much further than July. I don't have a real strong recommendation of how to find all the potential uses for the city. This is the first Meridian City Councii Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 63 of 71 one I have heard for the city. I have heard for other community uses. I think it's something we need to dialogue with and I don't know if the Mayor's got a suggestion of some way of working with department heads. I'm trying to have them identify potential uses. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: We can certainly have it as an item for discussion at our next directors meeting and -- or maybe even operational meeting to see -- I think that the other departments don't have these extracurricular type of needs. The fire department has their safety center that they do a lot of their classes. The police department and the main fire station do have nice training rooms that they have to offer both their departmental needs, their prevention needs, as well as their public uses as well. I think the parks department is kind of the only one that is out there. But we certainly can have that discussion at -- at the directors meeting and verify that. Rountree: Steve, you had a comment? Siddoway: Yes, Mr. President. The -- I have been in conversation with the Boys and Girls Club regarding their timing. It is my current understanding that they plan to be out around June 1 st, depending on how their renovations continue to proceed. I got that information from them about three days ago. So, I need to follow up with them and see if they are still on that time line. He had said that they were -- he had been given a time of May and told me June 1 st to give a little buffer to what we were told. Rountree: It seems a little ambitious. Siddoway: So, I'll follow up on that with them. We would like to be able to occupy it as soon as possible for our summer programs, if possible. And since our -- internally our budget enhancements were due last Friday in anticipatio.n of this discussion, I have already submitted the budget enhancement you talked about for the maintenance and operations of the building, as well as some basic amenities for some folding tables and chairs that we would use to hold some classes. But that will be coming forward later as part of the budget process, but we have thought forward to that. Rountree: Okay. Very good. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Have you had the opportunity to actually walk through the building and inspect and think about it? Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 64 of 71 Siddoway: Yes, we have. Allison and I met at the Boys and Girls Club building with Joey Schueler about -- Kaptein: A month ago, maybe. Siddoway: Yeah. Kaptein: A month and a half. Yeah. I think that the building would be conducive to our needs. I think there might be the need for some remodel. I don't think a lot. It -- you know, it would be a matter of maybe walking through with a more keen eye as to our needs than we did a few months ago. But I think that with the separate classrooms and part of our budget enhancement that Steve talked about with some room dividers to maybe create multiple classrooms within their one big area to facilitate our needs. Rountree: Thank you. Kaptein: Thank you. Rountree: We will take that under advisement. Siddoway: Mr. President, Madam Mayor -- Rountree: Go ahead. Siddoway: Okay. Last month as I was before you giving an update on several issues, one of the items was a Powerpoint presentation that we planned to take out into the community to meet with groups like Kiwanis or whoever we might be able to meet with and start telling the story of parks out in the community. Parks and Recreation. And it was requested at that time that we bring that -- the presentation forward to Council for you to see as well. So, this is that presentation. Excuse me. I don't know why it's not moving to the next slide. There are several benefits of parks and recreation in our community and one of those benefits is economic and without going through all of these, it's definitely a factor that businesses look at when locating a new business. Perhaps not as important as schools or tax incentives, but it's regularly the third most important factor in determining for locating new corporate headquarters. There are economic benefits to parks and recreation that come as a result of the enhanced quality of life that they mean for people that live within that community. There are also health benefits associated with parks and recreation and just honing in on the middle one there, if you -- by creating places for physical activity, you get almost a 50 percent increase in the frequency of physical activity and that, in turn, creates a large savings and health care costs nationwide. And that's just kind of a big picture overview of some of the benefits. Most of this presentation is geared toward our own park system and this is our current park system. You can see that we have parks distributed throughout the City of Meridian and our one regional park is Settlers Park. We have four community size parks in Heros, Tully, Storey, and Bear Creek. And, then, we have some neighborhood parks scattered throughout. And we have the ability to walk through Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 65 of 71 these, depending on the needs of whatever group we are meeting with -- if I come up and click one of these parks, it will send me through to a presentation about that specific park. We can talk about the amenities in that park that are there today. We can talk about future amenities and we have some photos -- you can see the existing shelter. This is the Adventure Island playground. A tremendous asset to our community. The existing concessions building in Storey Park and the recently opened Meridian Youth Baseball complex. If we look at Heros Park, we can look at the amenities there and the -- currently it's soccer fields. We have plans in the future -- perhaps we should break this one down as we did the previous one, to current and future. But we plan to put restrooms, playground, picnic shelters, and things out in that park as well. Tully Park -- again, the amenities. The ball fields. We have the skate park out there. Soccer field. We have two picnic shelters. Very popular. Existing playground, et cetera. Out at Storey we have the ball fields that are out there. The shelters. The playground is -- gets a lot of use out there and is one of our parks with best shade and certainly very heavily used. Bear Creek is our one community park in the south Meridian area and we continue to hear a need for possibly another community park in that south area. It also -- it has two ball fields, a soccer field, picnic shelter, playground and also is very very popular. We have neighborhood parks across the community. Seasons Park. Renaissance. 8th Street. Champion. Chateau. Kiwanis. And these are those smaller parks that are, you know, approximately seven to ten acres in size that -- that serve more of a localized need for several neighborhoods, but within a single square mile. In addition to the neighborhood parks, we also take care of several pocket parks. The one here adjacent to the City Hall, Generations Plaza. Centennial Park next to the Boys and Girls Club building. And, again, just to build on that, the ability to use that building as a community center adjacent to one of our parks really enhances its use for us. And, then, at Fire Station No. 4 there was also a small pocket park built as part of that. One of the questions we get most frequently is about our shelter reservations. Often people know about a shelter. Know about your shelter at Settlers Park, you know, where else do you have shelters, and we actually have a growing list of shelters and this allows us to engage the community on where we have shelters and what their fees are and how many people they will accommodate. Construction projects. De Weerd: Steve. Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: When is the shelter at Kiwanis Park being built? Siddoway: It currently does not have a date. Elroy has been coordinating with the log construction companies. We came before Council about a month ago and we talked about whether to move forward with just the straight volunteer effort or whether to go with certified logs, with a certified contractor. We have -- we have got a clear set of plans and things from one local contractor. We have been trying to engage a second one, but we -- they haven't been very responsive. So, our goal is to get that moving forward this spring still, but we still need to get a contract underway for that. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 66 of 71 De Weerd: Okay. Siddoway: You can see it here on our list of construction projects. It needs to get its finishing touches with the installation of a playground and picnic shelter. The -- we need to add the -- the shelter is right there. Adventure Island playground and Heros Park, those projects were both approved tonight on the Consent Agenda and will be moving forward this spring. The 8th Street Park pedestrian crossing is dealing with a lot of floodplain issues that we talked about earlier tonight. We have been through the floodplain analysis and have met the no rise certification that's required by Public Works and we have had a follow-up meeting with Nampa-Meridian and are moving forward to work on construction documents on that. The splash pad will be getting upgrades this spring in preparation for its opening for Memorial Day weekend and I need to come back before you to talk about Settlers Village Square. We have just received the construction documents and cost estimates. I believe that we will want to break that specific project into several phases due to funding constraints, but I-- we will make that part of a future presentation. But we would -- we do have some funds available and would like to move forward with a phase of that project this year. We also have future parks. Julius M. Kleiner Memorial Park, that's now on the record as part of the annexation that came through. Sixty acres planned for a park as part of the Meridian Town Center project near Fairview and Eagle. William Watson Park, a neighborhood park as part of the Bainbridge Subdivision, currently on hold as the subdivision's not under construction, but certainly coming forward. And, then, the unnamed park is the Borup property and we got 30 acres there at Cherry Lane and McDermott and we will be -- that one is on hold pending water, sewer, and others. But we do have a site there and we want peopie to know that not only do we have our existing park, but we are also planning very much for future parks. Any questions about the park side before continuing? The recreation is also a big part of what we do. We have the -- we have three activity guides that come out every year. The one that you see here for spring and summer is our brand new activity guide for 2008 summer -- spring and summer. It actually publishes a week from this Saturday. So, that will be out and has grown from even what the last summers was and we continue to offer more and more classes. But we have three -- one that comes out for spring and summer, one that comes out for fall, and one that comes out for winter and separate offerings in each. You have already seen a lot of this in the previous presentation, so I'll skip over it, but, you know, a lot of people don't know how much we offer and this gives us an opportunity to go out in the community and say, you know, look -- look at all that we have to offer. There is a very wide range of recreation opportunities. We have our teen activities club where -- this is at Meridian Middle School. It's every day. They participate in science projects, field trips, community service projects, et cetera, and we have a group of kids that participate there. Our summer camps are tremendously popular over the summer. Sports camps. Camp Mer-IDA-Moo is -- goes throughout the summer and is our traditional summer camp. I won't go through each of those, but -- but the demand for those continues to grow and is very high. Sports leagues, as we talked about with Colin, continue to grow. Not only do we offer softball, but volleyball, basketball, and now we are offering girls fast pitch softball. Under volleyball and basketball and softball it -- we have coed teams, we have men's teams, we have women's teams. Movie night in Meridian. Just to -- it's just Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 67 of 71 amazing how this has been embraced by the community for its first year and we are moving into its second year and its free to the community. They will be held this year every Friday night during the three months of June, July, and August. Last year they kind of bounced back and forth befinreen Friday and Saturdays and it created some confusion to -- this year they will all be on Fridays. And a tremendous amount of fun. And our schedule is published and is available on our website. I don't know if anyone's had a chance to look at that yet, but we would encourage you to. De Weerd: Steve? Siddoway: Yes. De Weerd: Before you move on with the movie night, I think it was -- was talked about forming a partnership maybe out at Meadow Lake Village for the senior community in providing maybe a couple of movie nights for them. Has that progressed? Moss: Yes. Madam Mayor, Members of the Commission -- or Council, I did meet with a gentleman out at Meadow Lake Village and I-- his name is slipping my mind right now, but that was going to be a part of something else we were going to bring to Council at some point, which was the rental -- the proposed rental of the movie screen, which was my indication that that was maybe not going to happen anytime soon. And so some kind of partnership would have to be formed to do anything with -- so that any outside organization that was using the movie screen, so it -- it hasn't progressed anywhere past -- past just meeting with him, because I-- it was my understanding that's with the -- with the Council not liking the idea of renting out the movie screen, that that may -- that may put an end to that. But I'm not sure what kind of partnership you had in mind. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: 1 think it's an excellent partnership opportunity to serve the 55 and older group and providing movies -- I know the senior center had mentioned something, as well as Meadow Lake and they have a great facility to accommodate older -- for the older sector. Rountree: Careful. Bird: And I have probably got enough movies for them to watch, too. De Weerd: And you can just get them from Mr. Bird. Bird: Francis the Talking Mule and Ma and Pa Kettle. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 68 of 71 Moss: Madam Mayor, I think that is -- I think it's a great idea and I was very excited when I originally met with him, but -- and so a partnership is certainly something I'd like to do. He's already talked with some sponsors and it's my understanding that he's going to be working with the same audio visual company that we work with during the summer that sponsors our program. I don't believe they are going to be sponsoring his program as well and so it's probably going to cost him a little bit more money and so that is just a-- I guess a decision that we would have to make that -- that, you know, we are willing to invest the staff time that's involved, because I certainly wouldn't want to just give them the movie screen without having them any experience of how to -- how to set it up and things like that, because it would take -- it would take me just as much time to show them how to do it as it would for me to just go do it myself, so -- De Weerd: I think it would be an excellent partnership and serving a different segment of our community. Moss: I agree. It was -- I believe it was my understanding that they wanted to do one show before our show started and, then, one show after -- on Fridays and possibly a Saturday or two in befinreen. So, 1 think the other -- the other thing that we discussed was just making sure that the two programs were -- were different, so that we didn't kind of over -- over saturate the city with all these different movie shows and we'd keep the -- keep this one to -- as we say, you know, the -- the Meadow Lake Village crowd and have the old -- older movies that would appeal to them a little bit more, as opposed to movie night in Meridian is generally the family friendly kid movies. You know, we have like Madagascar and movies like that available this summer. So, I think that's a great idea, assuming that we -- we keep -- we keep the movies -- I think the titles will separate the crowd -- will separate the crowd out. De Weerd: The locations will, too. Moss: Yeah. Siddoway: And I would concur. We just want to make it sure we are not competing with ourselves and diluting the popularity of what we got, but I think it can be done, so that it won't. De Weerd: Infrequent. Siddoway: Moving on. The Christmas tree lighting, another special event, in Generations Plaza. We have our Barn Sour Run. It's a-- we have a 10K, a 6K and a one mile fun run every summer. Colin, it's the weekend before Dairy Days? After. Weekend after Dairy Days. You know, we are constantly listening and there is a lot more ideas out there. These are just some of what we have heard. The need for a community center. Community Park south of the freeway. People would like to be able to reserve shelters online. Right now they do have to contact us to able to do that. Our software doesn't allow that. Activities fair. This is kind of a fun one. Our adult dodge ball league. It's actually going to be a reality this fall and it's going to be publicized in Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 69 of 71 our activity guide and you would be surprised at the amount of interest it seems to be generating. We want to engage people. So, this slide -- how can I get involved. We want people to give us their feedback. We have a link here to the -- the survey and if I were to click on this it would go right to it, but we have already had over 300 responses to our survey and it continues to grow every week. So, we want to get out and continue to get out into the community. I directly contacted the senior center last week to make sure they had it. They had not seen it yet, so I made sure that they had it and they are publicizing it among their members. But the response is great. To become involved, they can become an instructor with our recreation program. They can volunteer at one of our events. And we have a Care Enough To Share, which is a scholarship program that if people donate funds, we will provide scholarship to needy children to attend some of our activities. And, then, our last slide. Asking people what we currently don't have that they'd like to see available, either in terms of programs or facilities or, really, any questions that they would have. And with that I would stand for any questions or feedback from Council. De Weerd: Very nice. Rountree: Comments? Questions? Bird: No, just very nice presentation. Rountree: Good job. Bird: Very nice. Rountree: Thorough. Zaremba: Excellent. Moss: Thank you very much. Bird: Appreciate it. Item 6: CITY ORDINANCE REVIEW: (a) Ordinance No. 08-1354: Outdoor Sales and Temporary Use Permit Ordinance (2nd Reading): Rountree: All right. Next item. City ordinance review. And I assume that, Bill, you're wanting some guidance from us on that? Nary: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, actually, this is just second reading. Rountree: Oh. Okay. This is second the reading. Okay. Take it away, Jaycee. Meridian City Council Special Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 70 of 71 Holman: Thank you, Councilman Rountree. This is the second reading of the City of Meridian Ordinance No. 08-1354 by title only. An ordinance of the City of Meridian, replacing Chapter 4, Title 3, of the Meridian City Code, relating to outdoor sales and temporary uses, providing for definitions, regulating mobile sales units, regulating temporary uses, providing for a citizen's use permit and providing for a savings clause. Rountree: And that's all we need. Bird: Charlie, ask if there is anybody in the audience that wants to testify. Rountree: For the record, if we had anybody in the public here, that would want it read in full? Hearing no response from nobody that's here -- Bird: We continue it to next week. If you want to read it, throw the paper out there. Moss: t have plenty in my head. Item 7: EXECUTIVE SESSION: ISC 67-2345(1)(fl (to consider and advise its legal representatives in pending litigation): Rountree: Thank you, Robert. We have a request for Executive Session for an update on a legal matter. And I think that's -- is that F? So, if I could get a motion to that effect. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per ldaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(f). Zaremba: Second. Rountree: Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Borton, absent: MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. EXECUTIVE SESSION: Rountree: Motion to come out of Executive Session. Zaremba: So moved. Bird: Second. Meridian City Council Speciai Meeting / Workshop April 8, 2008 Page 71 of 71 Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All those in favor'? MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Bird: Moved we adjourn the special meeting -- workshop meeting. Zaremba: I second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded that we adjourn. All those in favor'? MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 10:25 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) TAMMY D D, MAYOR ~5 ~ G~ ~ G~ DATE APPROVED ATTEST: JAYCE L. 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