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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2008 07-07 Joint ACHDMeridian Citv Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 The Meridian City Council special joint meeting was called to order at 12:00 P.M. on Monday, July 7, 2008 at the ACHD Auditorium by Mayor Tammy De Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, David Zaremba, Charlie Rountree and Joe Borton. ACHD Members Present: John Franden, Sherry Huber, Rebecca Amold, David Bivens, Carol McKee. Others Present: Jaycee Holman, Pete Friedman, Mike Brokaw, J. Schweitzer, Bruce Mills, Sally Goodell, Steve Price, Justin Bledsoe, Kendall Kemmer, Andrew O'Connor, Gary Inselman, Christy Little, Terry Little, Sabrina Bowman, Scott Spears, Susan Slaughter, Will Berg. Item 1. Status Report on Fairview /Main Intersection Study: Bledsoe: Madame President, Madame Mayor a brief update on the Meridian Split Corridor Phase II. I was asked to specifically talk about the Main, Cherry Intersection. The first PDF that you will see is what will be done or what is currently planned to be done with the Phase II project. It is kind of hard to see all of the line work in there, but basically we will be removing that free running right tum lane and you will be removing the left tum lane into the Cherry Plaza if you are going eastbound. This is planned that with these improvements as part of this project that these intersections will function for a given period of time. I am not sure exactly what that given period of time will be, but it does look as the traffic builds in this area that something else will need to be done at the Main, Cherry intersection. Six Mile Engineers, the designing engineering firm for this company has looked at four alternatives and they are currently evaluating those and that report should be submitted to ACRD this week, preliminary. It is the second page of the four options of what to do there. Scenario A is remove the signal and stop conditions and also remove the entrance into the Cherry Plaza and then B, C and D are different variations of leaving the signal in the approach in there and then just restricting different turn movements and once that report is submitted the ACRD project team can get together, look at that, see what it means for long term, when that would need to take place. The reason that they looked at this before they issue this is because of the proximity of those two intersections. They are only 400 feet apart and you get vehicles cuing from one intersection, cuing back through another one and causing a domino affect. But, like as I stated on the first PDF shows what is planned with the Phase II project and then somewhere down in the future I have to look at something else for the Cherry intersection. The other information provided is just the conceptual layouts of the project, where we are at, the cross over have been identified for locations and try to minimize impacts there and use the ACHD properties and then also we looked at the alignments for the road of Meridian Road, shifting to the left, but Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 2 of 19 that looked like it wasn't the least impact for right of way. But at this point the project is on schedule for design and is scheduled to be completed next year with right of way in 2010 and 2011 the construction (inaudible). Is there any questions? Zaremba: Madame Chair there has been some discussions about on Meridian Road whether there would be medians reducing the left tum movements so when you are crossing - I am not being able to interpret from this drawing whether they are in there or not. Bledsoe: They are not shown on here and I am not sure exactly where they are at. I can look into that. Zaremba: But is that in the process of considering that there may be some somewhere? I mean it is - Bledsoe: When I was last associated with the project, yes it was something that we had talked about that there was areas that you could put medians in, but I am not sure where it is at this time. McKee: Any other questions? Any other comments? I am glad we are going to be working out this intersection here at Cheny Lane and Main when we do all of this because that is just not right getting in and out of there at that full complex there. That was difficult back in 1998 when I worked there and we had an office there and that was wild. I am sure it hasn't gotten any better. Zaremba: I think that it would be wise to make the Cherry Lane, Meridian intersection be the attractive intersection. I will put it that way. It really needs to work right. If the Main, Cheny Lane intersection or Main, Fairview intersection gets a little (inaudible) up in the process that is not such a problem, it is the Meridian one that really needs to work. If there is a choice between -since they are only 400 feet a part, if there is a choice between one of them that is going to suffer a little bit, I would rather it be the Main one that suffers and make Meridian work. Bledsoe: I believe the project that is scheduled for 2012 the improvements to the Meridian, Cheny intersection so that it would function for the 2030 period. It is just the Main, Cheny intersection that is something that needs to happen. Zaremba: Well and the other element that will help at some point is what we do with the East 3`d Bledsoe: Exactly. De Weerd: Madame President, I guess as that statement was made, for the businesses on the north end of Main Street it is actually imperative that that Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 3 of 19 functions. You know certainly bluffing off the entrance into the Albertson's on Cheny Lane Plaza is not a big issue. That will help that function better, but it is up to - to allow cars to flow off of Main Street is a big issue. I think once you improve Meridian and Cherry that is going to help that area a lot better with traffic. Item 2. Update on Locust Grove / McMillan Intersection: Kemmer: I am just here to give you an update on the status on the Locust Grove, McMillan Intersection projects. So Madame President, Commissioners, Madame Mayor and Council members, thank you for the time today. We are wrapping up the concept design work. The project team evaluated two intersection options for this intersection and I can pull this up on the screen if you guys would like to see the recommended - we have a recommended intersection alignment for the McMillan, Locust Grove intersection. It consists of four lanes, each on these three, the north, south, and west intersection and on the east approach we have a five lane section. The team also looked at an additional lane on the west approach, but we decided against adding that additional lane because of the impacts to the (inaudible) canal. We would have to do realignment to the canal and bring up some other issues that we would rather not do as far as maintenance and whatnot and the future impacts that would occur. We are, like I said; ready to wrap up the concept design. We are scheduled to start design of this intersection in 2009 with right of way and then construction following in the subsequent two years and one thing we will be coming back to the City of Meridian with entering into an agreement to work through any landscaping and maintenance issues for the area between the curb and the detached sidewalk with this project. So with that, I am open for any questions that you may have. McKee: Any questions? Bivens: (Inaudible). I guess one question that I had and I have had questions to me about that is moving the ditch from the north side and is that going to be an open or a pipe ditch. Kemmer: Well, we are going to open up this project. We worked with Settler's Irrigation District and they have requested that we keep the canal open and yes, we are planning on taking the canal that currently is on the south side over here and switch it over to the north side and then have it go through Locust Grove, instead of having this diagonal structure which we currently have -the condition of the structure that is there right now is going to have to be replaced anyway and there are recommendations from (inaudible) to our construction department to have just one structure through Locust Grove. We are planning on keeping the canal open (inaudible). Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 4 of 19 Franden: But where will you have the canal cross from the south side to the north side? Kemmer: It is just a little bit to the east of the intersection. We are proposing to have it cross in this area here and currently the north slew does cross underneath the roadway at this location, so we are looking at (inaudible) or crossing it onto the roadway. De Weerd: How does it affect that commercial development going in on the northeast corner? Kemmer: With the development of Woodland Springs Subdivision, during the development of their parcel, going through the application process we made them aware of the future location of the canal. They have incorporated that into their plans as well as a future -the canal company is requesting an additional 20 feet behind the canal, so that they can maintain it in the future. So they have accommodated that into their plans and we have worked with the developer on that to make sure that is going to all fit together nicely. Zaremba: Madame Chair, on the I guess you would call them planter strips that are going to be between the roadway and the detached sidewalk, any thought of having the adjacent property owners do the maintenance on it? I would assume when you say interagency agreement, you are talking about how Meridian would maintain them, but it is possible to have the adjacent landowners? Kemmer: Yeah, and we have been working with your staff -for some of these developments that have come in, the city does work with the, I guess, the end user to maintain some of the landscaping that is out there and in chatting with and I have been working with Matt Ellsworth and that is one thing that they are looking at doing in the future end users with some of the developers here of having them maintain that property, but I know the agreements that we need to have, we have asked our legal counsel about this and the agreements that we need to have are between ACHD and the city and it will then be up to the city then working with the property owners on those kinds of issues as far as maintaining. Bird: You need one source of responsibility because you couldn't dish it out to every homeowner because every homeowner would take care of it differently. De Weerd: It is just when that would come in for development and Madame Chair can I ask Pete a question? So, Pete I guess two questions, one on the north east corner and then in our detached sidewalks. We had that noted so that when those would come in we would have (inaudible) the landscaping and that be required as part of the Development Agreement. Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 5 of 19 Friedman: Thank you Madame Mayor, Madame President, Council and Commission Members. I am not that familiar of the development proposed, but I did happen to look at a site plan for another issue and what it showed was sidewalks by others and I can double check with Caleb, but I am not certain that we were able to get maintenance of the landscaping in that area in the conditions of approval. But, I can follow up on that and follow up on that project. De Weerd: Well, if you could and then also on that north east comer having that commercial development there, I don't remember that water issue as part of their application because we will have people there and that is rapid water. I would be curious as to what as far as a buffer, what we are requiring of them and if it changes their site plan at all. Friedman: I will check with Caleb on that. I don't know if they are familiar with that or not. They would probably be required of a four foot open fence adjacent to an open canal like we require in our code, but I will get back with him and then I will email the Council with those answers. De Weerd: I guess my only concern was when it was a cross street no one really (inaudible) the Idaho Power lines, but having it on that north side will add some new dynamics to that building there. Friedman: We will get those answers for you and get them to you. McKee: Anything, else? No. Okay. Item 3. Update on Community Programs: O'Connor: Madame President, Commissioners, Madame Mayor and Councilmen. We as in staff and Commission spent four work sessions on community programs during the month of April trying to revamp the program, simplify and streamline to some extent and since then staff has diligently worked to get the program together so I just wanted to give you a brief update on that. If you look at definitions we have never had a truly set definition for the program before so we established one of those for the projects to develop to expand and enhance safe, efficient and accessible pedestrian bicycle network for all residents of Ada County. We also felt fihat it was important to define safe routes to school, which this is taken almost verbatim off of the national definition as any projected designed and constructed with the objective of encouraging and enabling more children to safely walk and bike to school. We also felt that it was important to have defined objectives so those are to emphasize safe routes to schools, to reach out to public and respond to constituent needs to promote community and neighborhood improvement and support to optimize the use of fiscal resources, to progressively bring Ada County to ADA requirements improving the mobility for the disabled. For our structure of community programs, we basically broke it into three categories. You have your pedestrian Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 6 of 19 projects, you have your bicycle projects and your traffic mitigation projects so a lot of the traffic calming that we use such as the bulb out speed bumps that would fall under the category of community programs. The actual prioritizations that we have set up at this point are for the pedestrian projects, we will have a bicycle project prioritization that we will put together after the adoption of the bike master plan, which should be pending in the next few months. So, if you look at our former prioritization that we had, I didn't really have this in there to try and explain this to each individual prioritization that we had, I just wanted to show you how complicated it was before. We had three different prioritizations. We had different departments handling different prioritizations and it wasn't very clear from department to department and it took me a while to get my head around it. So, essentially what we did is ran these three prioritizations that we had pretty much through a funnel and took out the most important criteria and put it in a pedestrian prioritization. As you can see from here we put emphasis on the exposure rate as an atd of the roadway and in the distance to school and pedestrian was also up there with the most important factors. Existing pet facilities, this drives okay is there a shoulder to walk along that corridor? ADA attributes essentially if there is no sidewalk there then there is nothing ADA compliant about it so that would get full points. Distance to civic facilities and transit that was also a category. A civic facilities was a relatively loose definition but we kept it to Post Office and Government buildings, demographic data is there high concentration of low income residents there or a high concentration of disabled residents? Are there other funding sources that we can look at was a big issue as well? Other agencies support how much -and this will go out with the -sorry, the Transportation Task Force request this year and we will also ask what are the most important community programs are to each city. We will also be asking the school districts as well and geographic equity and cost benefit of the projects. So as far as the funding distribution goes for our community programs, the target of five percent was set for community programs like the capital improvements budget, which equates to be about $2 million a year if you are assuming a $40 million overall capital budget. So the next steps is we felt that one of our -one thing that needed to be addressed from our past dealings were that we needed better coordination with the schools and school districts to have a better connected system for the kids to get to school and to try and lower the need for safety bussing and things of that nature. We also updated the prioritization and bike ways will have the prioritization as I addressed earlier after the master plan is adopted and we will explore more funding opportunities and strategies and present community program changes to the cities and include community programs this year and the Transportation Task Force request processes. Are there any questions as that is the end of my presentation? De Weerd: Madame Chair, do you have any opportunity for funding support with the schools in lieu of their emergency bussing? I know that is a real added expense, but it might only be covered by the emergency aspect of it? But, it might free up some funds that they could actually help with matching dollars? I don't know. Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 7 of 19 O'Connor: We have not explored that yet, Madame Mayor. McKee: Well, yeah, because safe routes to school is really (inaudible) because the school benefits probably financially more than we really would, you know if they don't have to bus. Bird: (Inaudible) Ustick and Linder deal, they have to bus a half a mile away. (Inaudible) be curious if they didn't do it, but at the same token the cost of fuel now adays - McKee: We should find out if there is an opportunity. Another thing we are asking the school district to do is to prioritize what their needs are. The City of Boise has done that and Sarah (inaudible) has been just tireless in their efforts and in prioritizing and as she puts it, it is very difficult. We all know that prioritize needs are difficult, but there are so many of them. If we could get the City of Meridian to support us in talking with the Meridian School District, we don't have their prioritizations yet and we don't have the ones from Kuna. Kuna is probably something that.we could work on because they are a lot smaller, but the Meridian School District is so huge, it would be really beneficial if they would do the work and I realize how much work it is, but when we do get down to the point where we are able to go forward, that if we have their input for prioritizations would be very valuable? De Weerd: Who has the contact with the Meridian schools? McKee: I don't know. Do we have our contact or liaison with the school district? O'Connor: It used to be Eric (inaudible). McKee: I know it, but Eric - we - (Speaker unknown): We are still hiring, we have not replaced Eric, but Eric and his group are doing that right now. McKee: Okay, but with the Meridian School District, who is? (Speaker unknown): I think Wendell Bigham has been - Zaremba: Probably Wendell or somebody that works for him. McKee: If we could just let them know that Meridian Mayor and City Council support the fact that they need to authorize the work to get those prioritized and it would be a huge help for us. De Weerd: We can invite Wendell to our next Transportation Task Force. Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 8 of 19 Bird: Carol you ought to remember that excluding Kuna every city in Ada County is involved with the Meridian School District. McKee: Oh, I know that very well. It is so important to get Meridian School District involved because you take care of such a huge, huge area. There is going to be 500 needs and enough to fund maybe -you know, we need to figure out what is the most important. (Speaker unknown): Well, they are in the best position to know where their needs are and eliminate or reduce safety bussing. McKee: Well, it just makes sense for them to have the first say in it in lieu of having us trying to prioritize. We have our site plan and have been trying to go through prioritizations, but having the safe routes to school handled by the School District would be just a huge benefit. Zaremba: Madame President a couple of detail questions on the funding distribution. Approximately $2 million fund available and that is county wide, right? That is not just the City of Meridian? McKee: That was a really good try. Zaremba: Pedestrian prioritization, you have points for distance for school and that does that mean that the closer you are at school the more points it is? O'Conner: That is correct. So, essentially, in theory, if there is a direct connection to an elementary school that will be established that will receive maximum points. Zaremba: Then, I don't know whether this is possible or not, but Meridian has a community development block grant program going on that may or may not be able to - I don't see any eyes looking at me -may or may not be able to share funds with this program? De Weerd: Not this next year, but it is part of the intent. O'Connor: We also have been working with the City of Meridian for the safe routes school funding as well. Zaremba: Now, are you going to work with our staff before you bring it to the Meridian Transportation Task Force? O'Connor: I have been working with Matt Ellsworth. Zaremba: Oh, okay. On the prioritization for Meridian? Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 9 of 19 O'Connor: Well, prioritization and stuff Istill - well, I have a meeting with him next week actually. Bivens: In fact, if my memory serves me right we have sat in on some of those (inaudible). McKee: Yeah, Matt sat in. We didn't let him talk but he sat in. Berg: We did meet on the Meridian Elementary School and try to find some safe routes, but we didn't meet with the Meridian Principal there to determine those needs, but we never did meet with the District. O'Connor: I did a walk through with the principal and Matt at the Meridian Elementary for different pedestrian connections in the area. McKee: Well, we need to start with the littler kids and meet with those principals because they know everything on the ground, but it is just going to be difficult meeting with every principal and every elementary school as there is so many of them. De Weerd: Well and that school is a good place to start as there is not many sidewalks on that part. McKee: Any other questions? No? Okay. Item 4. Update on TLIP: Goodell: Council Members and Commissioners, if you recall we were out doing staff workshops and workshops with the Council in February and our consultants took the comments from all of the cities and county and compiled all of them in revisions to our maps and level of service and typology. Those products have been coming into us and we actually received the last of them in June and they have been kind of dribbling in. We have gone through a review process and we are scheduled to come back out to do another round of workshops with your staff and then presumably up to you guys at some point, beginning the week of July 21St. We have, I think, the sort of launching of that is scheduled for the 24t". What we will be doing is we will be bringing back the livable streets design guide, which has just minor changes in it at this point. The typology map, which the status of that is all your input has been taken, we looked at it and said well, there is this thought and what about that? You know, we have some questions and some more conversation that we would like to have. The variable level of service map, similar to the typology map, we have reviewed all of the recommendations from the cities and we would like to have some discussions with staff now to kind of peel away the next layer of the onion. You will get a new document, which is kind of the planning framework and it proposes the process and kind of the principles that we would approach shared planning, primarily at the Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 10 of 19 Comprehensive Plan level and kind of the sublevel planning and corridor planning, similar to what we did with South Meridian and it outlines that. That will be a new document to review and respond to and then we have also the draft cost share policy, which we are all anxious to get out and for everybody to take a look at. There will be a period of review. We will get back with all of the cities individually and talk with them in some depth to the extent that they think they are ready, they will be coming to the Councils and I imagine the cost share discussion will occur at the elective level to a substantial degree. Then all of that dialogue will probably occur in August. At the same time that all of this is going on, we have entered into a contract with COMPASS to do some review of some of the characteristics of the COMPASS model. As we went through the TLIP process our consultants identified some areas where they had some real questions or collectors. Are the functions of collectors really being captured well enough in the COMPASS model so that we can get - we are seeing the relief that we would expect to on arterials? Some issues related to speed, travel speed. Right now the way the COMPASS model works is the speeds that are posted on the roads today is what they are still showing in 2030. The model itself is really very sensitive to travel speed because really when you strip out all of the detail it is about the fastest way to get from point "A" to point "B" and so we thought and we are working with COMPASS to find a method to say okay this area is going to urbanize by them between now and then, so the travel speed should probably drop by then, which will cause rerouting of traffic and a different picture of where the traffic is going and what the capacity needs might be and where we might have long term capacities and then the other area we are looking at is the capacity of the roadways. The configuration today is relatively simple. In terms of the number of vehicles that could travel through a lane in an hour, all arterials are currently coded the same. So, Fairview and 55, Eagle are coded the same, for example, but they have very different characteristics. Fairview has a driveway every 100 feet even though we are all frustrated with Eagle Road sometimes; it actually has much better access control, preferred signal, timing and that kind of thing. So, we are going to work with them on trying to re-characterize some of those features so that we get what we know will be a little bit better representation on how the world is functioning in the future. Well, a key piece to that is the function of the state highway system and how that affects the local system. We want to understand that and especially we want to focus on that in preparation on the long range transportation plan. Anyway, not getting too far into that that piece of work between - we and COMPASS is supposed to wrap up an analysis phase by September 5~". Depending on the outcome we may see some changes in the model in that September, October window. We hope it will be that quick. Then we will come back and do some further analysis of the constrained corridors and the mobility corridors and when we constrain these roads where are we putting traffic and kind of what does that look like and have another set of workshops working with you and your staff to say here is what the recommendations were and here is what their implications are and try to reach and get that settled. If all of that falls into place in the timeline that I just described, next Spring we would be looking at that being ready Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 11 of 19 to do an adoption by all of us. The one real uncertainty to me at this point is when we complete that evaluation of the modeling, how much change to the modeling do we need to do? How much time will that take? Although, all of it is good because it will feed into the long range transportation plan, which is the next coming up. Any questions? Zaremba: At one time when the cost sharing was mentioned I interpreted it as being put into the framework if this plan was going forward and then the city approved something that screwed that up the city would pay the difference and that was the cost sharing. Is that the direction that it is taking now or did I pull that out of the air? Goodell: If I may, I think the better way to characterize the principles of the cost sharing is that we during the concept phase should agree on what this roadway and associated pedestrian configuration should look like and then similar to the conversation about what are we going to do as far as who is going to do the landscaping and in the long run we would enter into an agreement at that phase to say here is how we all want it to work. So then we go forward with design and right of way and acquisition and you go forward with your planning and common understanding of what it is that the project is going to look like and then the other part of that I guess is that there is sort of a basic roadway configuration and that ACHD would step up to the plate and build and acquire right of way for extra features, especially wide sidewalks and bigger buffer zones and those kinds of things. ACHD would look for participation from the city. I think those things are kind of the two key principles that underlie the draft policy and of course it will be a subject for discussion for you all beginning here shortly. McKee: I think it is really important because we really want -that we have the same vision and it does get tricky if somebody wants something and then they want to trade this for that and it gets convoluted and complicated and if we keep it simple like this then everybody should understand. Zaremba: Well and not to oppose everybody else (inaudible) that does sound fair to me and the way I would put it is if we decide we want some extra planter strips because that is the tone we want for Meridian, Eagle and Boise shouldn't have to pay for that. If Eagle decides that they want their street paved in gold, then Meridian shouldn't have to pay for that difference. McKee: Well, if one city wants something, the other cities shouldn't have to pay for it or the county. Any other questions for Sally? No? Thanks. Item 5. Update on Impact Fees: Brokaw: I will try and make this fairly brief. What you have in front of you is the report that we had Mr. John Church do for us to take a look at impact revenue for 2008 and FY09. We are getting pretty concerned about it. If you look on page 2, Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 12 of 19 you will see a nice roller coaster graph where Mr. Church graphed all of the monthly impact fee revenues going back to 2003. At the last five years you can see how it really has gone up and down. You go to page 4, that is where his revenue projection is and it will show on that particular graph on the right hand side his projection for the balance of 2008 and it came in at $12 million and he projected 2009 I believe a little over $11 million and to put this in prospective, our original projection for 2008 was $14.5 million. For 2007 it was $18.5 million and for 2007 we revised that down to, I believe, $13 or $14 million. I believe we ended the year at $14.5 million. So we came back in 2008 and did the budget there and we pegged it at $14.5 million projection. Now, we are in 2008 and we have had to reduce that projection down to $12.5 million, so we have to essentially defer $2 million out of this year's budget and some of that was in projects. What we were able to do to kind of soften the blow is getting very, very good bids on our projects and so a good portion of that was absorbed by, I believe, two or three different projects and we have had enough savings on those from the engineers estimates to the actual bids that we were able to absorb some of that. Now what all of this means, I guess, one quick other item too for 2008 right now through the end of June we have collected $9 million. Last year at this time we were at $11 million. So, we are showing a $2 million reduction and according to Mr. Church's study also he is predicting a slow down in commercial site plans, where what is happening we have had a significant slow down and residential and the building permits there and of course on impact fees, but commercial has been holding things up for about 8 to 10 months. His projection is that won't continue to happen. Unfortunately, in June it proved him right. In June last year we collected over $2 million, one of our biggest months ever and this year it was $800,000; so that is like a screeching halt. In order to hit the $12.5 million for this year, we have to collect over a million dollars per month in July, August and September and things are not looking real sharply. It is just very, very slow out there. The impact that all of this has, of course, is impact fees are collected for expansion type projects which are in the capital portion of the budget and we are in the process of putting together in 2009 and 2010 budget we do have a two year budget cycle year and right now we are projecting $12 million for 2009 and $13 million for 2010. Now, the projections when we did the current five year work program, were $3 million higher, so they were $15 and $15.5 million respectively and so what that means is there is going to be an impact in the five year plan and the time schedules you have seen before is just that things are slowing down and one other kind of negative note is that we have also seen a significant increase in the consumption of fuel. People are beginning to make some choices. Right now the projection is that you will probably see a five percent decrease and (inaudible) distribution and typically we receive $5 million per quarter on that projection. So, there is a quarter of a million dollars right there and we will have to see how that comes in. With that good news, I will sit down unless you have any comments or questions of me. Franden: What is happening with Meridian's building permits? Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 13 of 19 Bird: We had in the month of June, we had 43 new residential, we had17 commercial. We had $16 million in commercial and $10 million in residential. I just got that today, but 43 for the month of June in residential is horrible. If the trend continues and I think it is going to get worse; I don't think we have hit bottom yet, myself. If the trend continues we will not have as many new residential permits this year as we had in the months of March and April in 2006. We will be lucky to have 500 for the whole year. I don't think -now commercial has kept Meridian up and we are very fortunate that we still have some good commercial projects, but I am told some developers and in fact I know (inaudible) office buildings and shut them down (inaudible). So, I think we are in for another - and the election in November is going to determine a lot of that. It is not good. (Inaudible). The revenue isn't what the expenditures are. Fuel costs -you guys know what it is like, you have got a big freight out there. Our Police and Fire and Parks it is all (inaudible). Brokaw: Mr. Church makes one statement in his report that he doesn't expect the impact fees to come back up to the 2007 levels until 2010. Bird: I disagree with him. I think we are in for the late 70's, early 80's and didn't get back to full board until about '85. Took Meridian about four years before the economy turned around. I know out in the construction world those five or six years were pretty slim pickings. We are very fortunate, we don't get hit as hard here as the big cities do, but I tell you what it is tough especially when you are behind to start with and the growth for ten years - Huber: It would be nice to have the money now and jump in and - Bird: -- and do it. That is something that I don't get in the city. Right now we need to promote Meridian because this is the time when people are out aggressively looking for when the economy picks up and so now is the time when everything is cheaper and stuff like that to promote your city or whatever you are promoting. So, I don't think the slow down has really been a bad thing. I think it has helped some of us (inaudible) and get a breath of fresh air before the water flows over our heads. I don't think we will ever see the building the way we seen from '94 to '07 in Meridian. (Inaudible discussion) Zaremba: Even to use impact fees there has to be a match. Some of it comes from the registration fee and some of it comes just out of your general fund. As the maintenance portion of the budget gets more and more expensive, are you still able to keep the balance between the maintenance and the building part or is maintenance eating up any magic funds as well? Brokaw: I said this a few years ago. It is going to be a very good challenge to keep the mix that we have today. Simply because impact fees are dedicated to Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 14 of 19 just that one side of the equation, not the maintenance stuff. I guess what I predicted all along was once the road system gets bigger and bigger, built out more and more, more resources allocated to the (inaudible). With what has happened here we are there next year. It is a struggle right now to try and get it to a 50 / 50 split and I think 2010 if things don't come back real strongly then we are going to be faced -the Commission at least will be faced with either to reduce some levels of service on maintenance side or we will begin to see a budget that is over 50 percent maintenance and less than 50 percent of capital budgets. It is going to be a tough decision. Bird: On your maintenance have you guys ever looked into which is the best way to do it? Outsource or in house? Because you carry a lot of overhead in house and with the prices and the construction world as it is today - Brokaw: Over the years we have seen studies from other areas and have heard some horror stories in some areas. I think there are certain services the Highway District provides, just don't limit themselves, i.e., snow related costs where you get the phone call and it is time to go, you put the sanders on and you go. That was proven not to be too well served by the contract, whereas maybe street- sweeping or a portion of that, there are some possibilities there. Functions that I think we can, maybe in the future take a more serious look at those. (Inaudible). But, we do hire a lot of contractors to do smaller type things, for example, hired some here recently to do pathway comdors. We have hired some to do drainage work for us also. It just depends on the size of the work. We try not to do things (inaudible), so if it approaches that $100,000 level then we try to contract that out because we are just not quite willing to take on something that big. Bivens: I see some of the larger entities, like the City of Utah has gone to four ten hour days and some of the divisions, like Boise City (inaudible) and have you given any thoughts as to what that finds? In other words (inaudible) back and forth a little bit, but would it help the folks that drive in a little ways (inaudible) their trips if you will, what would that do to us? Brokaw: All of my maintenance forces and I believe Bruce's people have been on four tens - Bivens: I don't think the state - Huber: Yeah. Brokaw: Well they try to get there right at dusk, in the winter months. Bird: (Inaudible). Brokaw: Well they have got different crews at different hours. For example, -- Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 15 of 19 (Inaudible discussion) De Weerd: Madame Chair. McKee: Yes. De Weerd: I guess this is maybe a philosophical question, but Nampa has been very successful, their taxpayers has recognized how important road projects are and have passed bonds to do certain projects. ACHD hasn't really gone out and pursued that avenue. If you start seeing shortfalls in your impact fees, will that be another approach to look at and consider? McKee: We talk about everything, actually. Huber: We did have a conversation a while back when this hit that possibly on the larger projects we were going to have to look at a different way of funding it and larger wasn't defined as far as what dollar amount, but I know we talked about it and it's been maybe even a year ago that just what you are saying that on larger projects it was obvious because it just kills us when there is one big project going on. It really does with the budget and the conversation came up in that context more than what is going on now because as we see that there are larger projects scheduled throughout the CIP to look at a different way for the funding. But, remember when you go out for bonds there is a really expensive bond cost and price that goes with it. If you could just pass a bond and not go through what you have to go through, which you can't. I mean what does the bond cost Mike? It was high. Brokaw: It has been a while since we - I am not sure what it is. The main obstacle there I guess is the Highway District is not able to issue general obligation bonds like a city is. So we have to have a revenue source that is dedicated towards paying that off and that cannot be property taxes for the Highway District. So many, many, years ago in 1991 when we did issue some bonds we used some registration fees as the dedicated revenue source. Huber: Now you know why your registration fees are really important. Bird: Impact fees can't pay back bonds. Huber: No. Bird: That can't be a - Brokaw: There may be a way to do that, but I am not sure at this point. Bird: I mean you are taking away from your capital improvements there. Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 16 of 19 Brokaw: I would imagine our financial markets would pay dearly for the ups and downs as it is not aconsistent - Bird: I think Nampa was not through their street highway districts, they were actual bonds through the city, weren't they? They did it like a city (inaudible). Huber: That is why the registration fees are so critical on what that amount is because that is our bonding capacity and chose to do that. It is limited by the amount of the registration fees. What does it cost you, $20 bucks? McKee: Well, it might be less than that. Huber: Yeah, the maximum is $20. Item 6. Renewal of Vehicle Registration Fees: McKee: Okay, after that wonderful lovely news that just leads me into telling you exactly how important it is for vehicle registration fees be passed this November, I want to thank the City of Meridian for being supportive and David Zaremba being at each one of our meetings and it is actually moving along quite nicely. We have 40 of the most creative, intelligent people on the Board and very enthusiastic about getting this passed, but we found out that it was a little cumbersome, a little large, maybe if you compare it to the COMPASS Board. So we decided to make up an executive committee, maybe ten people on it and everybody is represented and we are going to meet for the first time at noon on the 11~' of this month and then again on the 18t" of this month to direct the main committee and where they need to go and that meeting is going to be on the 21St of this month. They are running a second poll and those polling numbers seem to be holding close to the one we ran back in October 2006. We have got the majority of that poll already funded from an outside source and so we are hoping by that 21St meeting we will have those final numbers for everybody. But, it seems like with this poll that raising the fees up to the $40 for a new car, along with renewing the registration fees is getting us a little over a 50 percent mark, which is where we need to be. There is still a definite cutoff at going up to $50. We have got 42 percent of the people that are willing to do that, so somewhere between 40 and 50 we are losing some folks. We almost have all the ballot language, about 90 percent of that is complete; we just need some more tweaking to do. That ballot language has to be before the Commission for approval and then to the county by the 6~' of August in order for us to get it onto the ballot and so far we are the only people coming to the constituents asking for money. So, Fred Tilman is keeping on eye on that to see if anybody else weighs in, but hopefully it will be really great for us to be the only one on the ballot asking for money. So that is where we are and again, thanks to David and thanks to you Madame Mayor for your support. It has been very helpful and of course all the people at the Board when they sit around are just expecting everybody's support, but it is nice to have it as well. Does anybody have any questions? Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 17 of 19 De Weerd: No, just that we support you and thank you to David. Zaremba: If the committee decided that it would be nice to have all of the Mayor's in the cities stand in a line in front of the television and say yes we support this and I have said you would be willing. De Weerd: And I have said that as well. McKee: Tammy thank you because that is -the public outreach, that was one of the first things that we came up is they don't want the ACHD Commissioner's up there in front of the camera, they would like all of the Mayors. So, I immediately said Tammy will do it. She will do it. (Speaker unknown): It is your huge financial commitment that we really appreciate. Zaremba: That will come up Wednesday in the budget. The executive committee on the 11t" and the 18t" and full committee on the 21St. McKee: The 21St is at 5:30 and the other two are lunch meetings here. Item 7. Other (Time Permitting): Mills: This is a list of the projects that we have under contract this summer. About $44 million a little less; last year we had about $57 million in contracts. McKee: And everybody complained about the traffic because of all of the construction last year. Mills: In the Meridian area we have about three different developer projects that we are working on -the McMillan Linder intersection is just (inaudible). So we will have both signals on that one and a signal up by the new high school operational and we are starting on the McMillan Ten Mile intersection and punching plans through (inaudible). I just wanted to give you that list to see what is going on. Questions? McKee: Any questions? Anything else? Anybody else have anything else that I didn't know about? Bird: I want to thank as a Councilman I want to thank -well Christy now, but it started with Bruce for being at our Council meetings. It is the biggest help that we have ever had. We have had one particular application here recently that Christy has come back with information for us that has certainly helped this Councilman with traffic and stuff. I appreciate what you guys do and how you work with us and have a person there and always first class and professional. Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 18 of 19 McKee: We appreciate them, too, because they come back and they give us a report. So we Commissioners get a report of everything you guys do. A written report. Huber: We know if you say anything bad - Bird: Remind Christy next time you are testifying - McKee: We all read them. We read those reports because it keeps us up to date on everything and it is kind of a relatively new thing for us - it really helps us. Bird: It helps so much for her -well Bruce and Gary too when they were there to come up and testify and give us the actual facts and figures when the developers are trying pull the wool over our eyes. De Weerd: I guess I do have a question about extraordinary impact fees on particular projects. How is that determined if that district or that area qualifies and what is the timing on that? Inselman: We would have to go through a process of the Commission to establish that it is creating an impact and then we would require a traffic study to determine the area that should be included, the qualifying improvements and create through resolution - De Weerd: So that sort of process would take how long? Inselman: About six months or so once you get started. We wouldn't really start until the development is through all of its approvals and make sure it has actually occurred and start the process and work with the city on the development of the full areas and assess the costs to the remaining properties in the area. De Weerd: I guess the reason I ask is in this particular area it is going to be connecting kind of a dead end large housing area to an arterial. It is off of Linder and will connect, actually to Meridian at Waltman and so it is going to give those residences an avenue out and it has a heavy impact on the development that will be connecting it. So, extraordinary impact fees have been mentioned and I think that would be a good district to really look at. It is actually not only created by this one project, it is created because that connection has never existed and they have one only way out. Inselman: If I might, this is very similar to the magic area. We have a district there that is paying for the (inaudible) same as Magic View and that is how that was funded and we are still paying that off. But, each of those properties redeveloped and pay a fee for a trip that they generate to offset those costs. We would do something similar there, except the developers (inaudible) - Meridian City Council Special Joint Meeting July 7, 2008 Page 19 of 19 De Weerd: And so that would go back to the developers. (Inaudible discussion) Inselman: Corporate is the real struggle for us because of that bridge across the creek, there is no one that is going to be willing to pay for that. We also (inaudible) and that would be a really good way to fund that. McKee: So it sounds like we have an eye on it, right? Okay anything else? Thank you so much. We appreciate you coming. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 1:23 P.M. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: TAMMY D RD, MAYOR O9ia3~o~ DATE APPROVED ATTESTED: ,,,,,~~ JAYCE . HOLMAN, CITY~,E ~9ti,,~~~~ .~ ~r~ ~~ ~ =_ SEAL ~. ~~ .~