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Home My WebLink About2008 07-09 BudgetMeridian Citv Council Special Workshop Meeting July 9, 2008 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:00 a.m., Wednesday, July 9, 2008, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, Joe Burton, and Charlie Rountree. Others Present: Directors -Staff. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Joe Burton X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd De Weerd: Okay. We will go ahead and get this meeting started. I'd like to thank all the directors that are here for being here and certainly would like to thank Stacy and her staff for all the work and preparation you put into getting ready for today. For the record, it is Wednesday, July 9th. It's 8:00 o'clock. And we will start with roll call attendance. Madam Clerk. Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda: De Weerd: Okay. Item 2 is adoption of the agenda. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I move we adopt the agenda as published. Burton: Second. De Weerd: Okay. I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as published. All those in favor say aye. You even said it before I asked you. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 3: Presentations and Discussions of the Proposed City Department Budgets (approximate times): 8:00 am Introduction /Preparations 8:15 am Revenue Presentation /Finance Department ~~ ~ ~ ' ~, ~ 5 - }[ ~ ~ i t ~ ~ iE ~ ~ ~ 4 ~ 44 ~ ~~~` ~ f s ~•{t 1~~ ~ ~ ~ $ ~ ~ i ~~ ' c ~ ~ k ~ ~ { t ' 1 ~ ~ - i . 8' ~ !E n . S ~`i` ~a. " ~.~~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ .~ i ~ ~~ r ~ I~: E ¢}¢} r ~ ~ .~+it ~ ~ ~~ r ~ r, . ~~ _ 4 Sb SS f ~ h ~ r ~.`S ~ { ~ ~ S ~ { f t. w '~ ~ ~ ~ t };z ~ jl~ t { ~S. ~ t _r 1 i ~ ~i ~ r~ t} f .3'. 1 ti , 1, i~- 1~~. ti It r '1 k;~ ( t ~~ ti ~,~ ~ '' 3 t f .i e ra ~ ~ +~ ~~~~~ s' s~~~ ~:d' ` ~~,t< .~ ~~ ~~ t y y ~ ~> ~~~ E EIF,~~, t 3 3 1 a ~ i t i ~ x ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ;~` ~i t. H i. ~, . t . ~ _ i ,r i ~ . . a ~ ~ r~~ ~~ a '~~ Y ~ ~ '~ ~5 ° d ' { ~ r a ~~ y m " ~ J tj ~ ~ - .i- a F ' , ~ i ~ ~ ~ a: { ,~~ - a ~ r ; ~ ~' ~ ~ ~~ ~ k cf j~,~.. , ~ .~~~} ~i~Z.; "~ tai - ~~ '~ ~ 1 - k MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 2 of 160 De Weerd: Okay. We are doing well this morning. Okay. Item 3 are presentations and discussions of the proposed city department budgets. We will start with our esteemed CFO. Kilchenmann: Good morning and welcome to the FY09 budget session. I think the first order of business is Todd handed you out some summaries and this is like a moving target Todd was chasing last night. Are there any questions on those or, Todd, anything you need to explain about them? Lavoie: No. The paperwork is just supplemental paperwork for the documents that currently exist in your binder. There is minor changes that we found that we changed to the budget, so just as we get to the pages, just supplement them and you should be good. Also there is a new flash drive on everybody's computer. Electronic copy we are going to try for the first time this year. Everything that you have in the book is on that flash drive, so if you're more of a digital person and want it on your laptop, plug it into your computer and you will have everything there. Feel free to ask me where to find a file and all that, because there are a lot of files in it. I tried to make it pretty simple, pretty intuitive. De Weerd: That's good. Lavoie: I tried. This is the first year, so I'd like your feedback whether or not we'd like to do this ongoing. The goal is to get paperless eventually. That's all I have. De Weerd: That was a hopeful suggestion. Kilchenmann: I would like to thank -- I know you all know Todd, but he's done 99.9 percent of the work on this budget. De Weerd: We know. Kilchenmann: His second year, so he got really thrown into the fire and he's done an excellent job. The first thing I wanted to do is kind of just tell you a little bit about the process we went through. We, actually, start in February working on the budget. We got through a lot of number crunching in our office, so we get to the point that we have what the base budget was for the prior year and what the new base budget will be and, then, Todd goes out and visits with each- department and sits down with them and Todd actually takes a history of each line item and goes line item by line item through with the department and we are looking for things we -- that they either don't use or we can take out or things that need to be increased, like fuel or energy, that can be increased without going through a budget enhancement. So, Todd goes through that with everyone and, then, he brings it back and I go through it for items that they have asked to increase, that maybe Idon't -- I think should be a budget enhancement. So, then, we get to that point and we put all of those materials together in a similar draft fashion that you have in your book and, then, we go to the Mayor and to each department and this year we met as a group of directors and we had the whole budget in front of us and we ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ; , ~ ' ~ ~ ~{ i' 1 ~ ~ , ~ ~ ~ = ~ ~, ~ ~ ~, ~ :a 1 a ~ ~`~. ' ~ ' ' • ~ ~ z ~ ~ , : ~_ v +~ r j ~; ~ ~ ~ s f 11 l . ~ ~ ~''9 .. 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I r ~ C. , ~ ` ~ ` { ~y ~` r~ yJt' jf i ~ 1~i•. ~~~ 1 ~ ~ [ ~ t s i I ~ ~ ~ j ~ ~ f h ~ ~ -~ t ~ i ~ _ ~w ~ ~ ~ p` ~ ~ ~ ~ tl ~ ~ ' ~ t i Jyyq) ' ~ ; a MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 3 of 160 went through and we came to a consensus on what items we wanted to leave in for the cun'ent year, what items we might want to put off to the next year, what we could do with .available funding. I think we started with like 13, 14, 15 million more enhanced dollars than we had money for. So, it was a process we haven't really done as a group before and I was skeptical, I'm telling you, I was very skeptical, but it actually worked very well. Everybody really was able to prioritize what they really needed and explain it to the group and go ahead and leave things in or plan things for next year. So, are there any questions about the process that we went through? I think in your books you have all the initial enhancements and you can see where they were withdrawn and so forth. So, the first -- the first thing I'm going to do, I'm just going to -- we have gone through the revenue manual and we haven't changed that. I'm just going to do a brief fund discussion and this is the General Fund -- this is a budgeted fund balance projection, so I have -- this is just as it is budgeted. It contains no projections. So, it's telling you what will our unreserved fund balance look like if we spent exactly what we budgeted and we took exact revenue that we budgeted. So, you can see we have left in the 6.5 million dollar operating reserve, giving us an unreserved balance of basically almost six million by the end of the year. Now, that being said, we will probably have revenue savings of -- I would say at least a million dollars and I'm sure we will have operating savings. So, that position can improve by, you know, up to two million, two and a half million, but being conservative we just want to say that we are looking six million dollars ending fund balance. The next slide is the impact fee funds and fFre and police have actually out performed their budget numbers. I'm sure they will slightly exceed their budget numbers. And one of the reasons is because they not only get residential impact fees, but they get impact fees on commercial building permits. The parks department -- you know, mid way through the year we were looking at maybe up to 300,000 dollars revenue under budget, but I just looked at it in June and I -- I'm thinking it will be around 150 under budget. So, you can see that. It leaves them with a negative fund balance of about 200,000. The fire truck fund is just -- it's not an impact fee fund, but I just stuck it on here, because it is a fund we have. One of the ideas that we have, because we have some big public safety projects that we need to start saving for and we try -- you know, looking at what we need to budget cun'ently and how can we save for those projects and because we have experienced savings in the General Fund over the last few years, one of the ideas that we looked at is perhaps we can take a portion of that savings and put it into this fire truck fund and change the name of the fire truck fund into a public safety fund, because the fund's already established, it's already in the system, it's already got a bank account, and that will allow us to start building up some money for the firing range, the police station expansion, replacement of fire trucks, et cetera. So, we won't know -- we know -- we really don't know exactly what the left over is until we go through the year end close, so the idea is that maybe we could get to the year end close and automatically part of our budgeting process was that in January, we looked at what's left and we make a determination X percent or half or all of it goes into this public safety fund. So, that's kind of one of the new ideas we came up with this year. I'm actually -- this is on your agenda for me to do right before the development planning, but since we are in fund balance I'm going to do this now. This is a projected fund balance. The General Fund fund balance I gave you was a budgeted one and this is actually a projected one. So, those are not budget numbers, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 4 of 160 those are my projections. So, if we look at the development services fund, which is fund 50, we are looking at a net change balance of I would say 50 to 100,000 dollar positive. So, if you look through there I have a net change balance of 87,000, leaving them with an ending fund balance of 750,000. We had two amendments this year in that fund. And we take out -- because we maintain and operate a reserve in development services, too the four month reserve, that gives us an ending balance of 1,000 dollars, which is positive. Fund 55 is our CIP fund and you're going to see something kind of funky on this, because the auditors really want us to do capital projects out of the CIP fund. We are not -- I don't necessarily agree with that. Like if we are doing a police station, that came out of the police budget. And in the case of City Hall, because it's being funded by a variety of funds, we are going to move that all to the CIP fund. So, if you look at a fund report you will the see City Hall all out of the Capital Improvement Fund. And how we have to do that, because it's too complicated if more than one fund records an asset, so we make operating transfers from the other funds into the City Hall fund -- or into the Capital Improvement Fund. So, you can see that enterprise -- remember we budgeted four and a half million, we will transfer from their operating to the CIP fund. We will transfer the money invested in the General Fund to the CIP fund. So, that's what all of those fund transfers are that you see in amendments at the bottom. They won't actually be amendments, they will be transfers. And so when we get all done, we will -- the CIP fund will be at zero, because it's not likely that we will be able to make transfers from Development Services Fund this year. So, that's kind of what you will see going on there. .And we looked at development -- when I looked the Development Services Fund and tried to look at where they would end the year, there is some factors that are allowing them to break even that have developed through the year. One thing is that commercial building permits have exceeded our -- our budgeted number and just, for example, the Selway Apartments, we just had permits for that go through that were high, so -- De Weerd: Oh, yea. Kilchenmann: Then, the Planning Department is going to have savings in their PC -- or their personnel costs. Some of those reasons are they -- they had a vacant position for part of the year,. the principal planner and, then, they converted that position to an associate planner. And, then, when we -- when we budget your health insurance, we budget at the high with a family. We do that, because initially years ago they would go through and see and count, well, this employee has this insurance and this one has this one and, then, if a turnover -- an employee changed -- I rr~ean it's not accurate anymore, so we just -- real conservatively and budgeted the whole amount and Planning had a significant savings in their insurance. So, we budgeted everything at family and, obviously, all the staff -- current staff are not using the full family health insurance. So, think they had like about 100,000, 130,000 dollar savings. And, then, the big health is the building contractors expense, because we didn't spend that, because the building -- you know, that's matched to sales. So, I hope we never ever ever consider not keeping inspectors as contractors, because that's a huge lifesaver. Then, I have on the -- on the right-hand side is just a review of the Development Services Fund transfers to the CIP fund. It's hard to read on this slide, but through '07 they have transferred 8.2 million to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 5 of 160 the CIP fund and we have spent -- we did -- oh, we did a project at the police station think with the K-9 training facility and one small park project and, then, the rest of that is being spent -- has been spent for the City Hall. Okay. So, the final slide that you can just take and stick in our book or whatever, is a history of the General Fund balance per the audit and it shows you the four funds that make up the General Fund. The debt reserve is just the 400,000 we have to keep reserved for police station debt and, then, the VIP fund, impact fee fund, and the unreserved General Fund balance. And this one I -- I haven't done a projection yet, but probably will do that and have it in your financial statements -- your monthly statements soon. So, are there any questions on any of that? Okay. The next part is my actual presentation. My presentation -- since I have no fees or no enhancements, I'm just going to review our strategic plan a little bit and tell you what we plan to do over the next year with our budget dollars and these -- these challenges are taken from our strategic plan and I'm just -- I'm not going to go through the whole strategic plan in agonizing detail, but to highlight some of what we feel are external challenges, one of our big challenges is something that we spend a lot of staff time on is the result of fiscal irresponsibility that governments and corporations have been guilty of the last few years. That has generated a tremendous amount of change in legal and statutory requirements for my profession for our accounting statements, the way statements are done, and I'm sure that wave of bank misconduct this past year will generate even more changes. So, that's a big focus for us is maintaining -- you know, maintaining and following through those rules and regulations. And, again, that's the same with the second -- the second one that changed in the generally accepted accounting principles has become extremely complex and as you heard me whine last year about the audit, because it really focused a lot of responsibility back on the entity itself, which is good. I mean it makes for a higher level of ethics, it makes for a higher level of accountability and transparency. One of the big challenges for us is that ultimately, no matter who comments on it, the finance staff is responsible for all the financial transactions of the city and sometimes it's hard -- we don't actually come up with these rules ourselves. You know, they are rules that are standard practice or they are regulatory or legal and we need to be able to explain that to staff. De Weerd: See, we thought you all just sat back and schemed on what you could put us through the next -- Kilchenmann: Yeah. Zaremba: And that's why you made it up every time differently. Kilchenmann: No. We are not that creative. So, sometimes it's a challenge for us to explain that and -- and get everybody to buy into it, because there are things that do create extra work for all of us. Another one of our challenges has to do with changes in technology or, for instance, bank regulations. For example, when we went to Check 21 -- and I don't know if you have heard of that, but those are rules governing how banks handle transactions and Jaycee can attest to this, but the complexity in doing credit cards is a lot more than we expected. We have bank regulations to follow. We have reconciliations that are very time consuming. We have 15 people who we all have to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 6 of 160 pay money to in the whole process of passing those on. So, that -- those kind of things are challenging for our small staff. It's basically a professional staff. We have four people. We have Todd, Rita, Barb and myself and we used to have Jaycee and somebody stole her, so we have a new person. And so our level of -- De Weerd: That would be me. Kilchenmann: Yes. Our level of professional expertise and the time we spend doing this project definitely had increased. And the current climate for us hasn't increased our workloads. In fact, it just -- it just kind of increased the level of expertise and service we need to offer. For example, for long range planning, fee models, and we need to get you and the directors, staff accurate information, because you need to make decisions quickly as the economic climate changes and, for example, we used to just be -- in total building we were besieged in title changes. Well, now that's practically dropped out to nothing. But, on the other hand, the number of turnoffs have increased to three, three hundred and fifty a month, bankruptcies, foreclosures, and, then, rental arrangements have drastically increased. So, that department is really a good economic barometer of what's happening in our city. And looking at our work plan -- and Todd and I are going to share this part of the presentation, but we are looking -- we want to start doing five year pro forma and fund balance analysis for each of the city's funds. When you see the Enterprise Fund, you will see that done for the Enterprise Fund. Extremely complex analysis. But I think it provides information that is vital in this kind of -- you know, we all should plan, but when we are looking at more limited resources, it's extremely important that we -- we plan five years into the future. We want to do some documentation on our budget process. We need to do some best -- look at some best practices and kind of incorporate that into a more formal document with emphasis on control base growth, long range planning, and my favorite decrease amendments. I'm ever hopeful. Funding for capital projects and matching revenue expenses. Another thing that we need to do -- we need to do it because it's a good practice and we probably will have to do it, because of GASB -- GASB requirement, is performance budgeting and benchmarking. We will look at standard formats that are accepted by GASB. Again, GASB is the Government Accounting Standards Board. And we hope you see at least the start of that in next year's budget. Another thing we want to do is have a formal Council adoption of a capital improvement five year plan. We have got a capital improvement plan that needs to be updated. We send it out -- I think that process needs to be more formalized where we bring it to you and you discuss it and by off on it, have your input into it. We want to -- the Mayor wants to categorize line item expenses, dividing them into the variable, which are things that aren't controllable, like fuel. Standards which we -- like our own employee center, this X amount per employee. We do the same with car maintenance. Is that true? Line items that can't be over spent, like dues and licenses, furniture. And, then, those zero based item that we start fresh with each year, like electronics. And, finally, we continue to look at those items that could be fee based. One idea I just threw out there that's done not a lot in Idaho, but in other states is some kind of monthly surcharge for street lights. So, then, the next part of the presentation Todd's going to talk a little more on the operational side of our department and what they have planned. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 7 of 160 Lavoie: Good morning, Madam Mayor, Council. De Weerd: Good morning. Lavoie: As Stacy said, I'm going to talk about the operations. What we are going to do with the future monies that you guys allocate to us. I'll try and do it pretty quick for you. The first thing that we are going to talk about is the payroll and HR. In conjunction with the HR department and Bill's staff, we are going to be installing a new program called ABRA. It's going to be a one stop shop for all HR and payroll functions. So, what it's going to do is eliminate a lot of duplicate paperwork processes we currently have in- house right now. We are still in a data conversion stage, but it should be in full force, full use fiscal year 2009. The next thing we are going to look at is accounts payable. You heard me use a word paperless. We are looking at making the accounts payable paperless. We are going to look at scanning documentation in our accounting software, then, that can be referenced at anytime, anywhere, via the web and whatnot and we won't have to go to a file anymore. If anybody in the field wants to look at what's attached to the, you know JW bill, they can look at it right then and there if they want to come to the site about A-B. MIP. That's our accounting software. We are actually looking at purchasing a new module that will be a front end reporting tool for most of -- it's abig director project manager -- big director manager type of module. That's going to give a lot of key indicators right then and there in the front page. They won't have to ask for reports, it will be instantaneous on time, like six or seven key indicators that they so desire. That should be in full production FY09 as well. Policies and procedures, as Stacy talked about, we kind of need to start looking at our policies, with the IRS laws changing every day. The GASB changes. We just need to be held accountable for everything we decide on, everything we spent, .like Stacy said. Everything comes down the Finance Department. If it's spent, it's our responsibility. We just need to kind of retool apologies, make sure we are in compliance with everybody. We just don't want to make -- make sure we stay out of trouble. That's our ultimate goal. A clean audit is our number one thing. Our goal is to have a clean audit, but it takes a lot of work to get that. So, with policies, controls, and changes, we think we can get that. MUBS. We are looking at actually purchasing a tool that will scan our checks directly from the office, instead of going to the bank. So, we will get our money into the bank faster, which will yield a higher interest turning to us. That should be in full production in the next few months. We are -- or you almost got that purchased. Sheltie Gallagher, the new MUBS manager, she's got that going for us. She looked into it and it's going to be pretty useful we think. The budget -- as you see, the budget book is big. It gets bigger every year. We'd like to look at a new tool that's going to be electronic that's going to be web based, that's going to consolidate a lot of this work. It's pretty manual. It's a very manual interface. Let me rephrase that. It's very manual right now, as a lot of your directors know and you guys know. There are tools out there that will completely -- not completely, but, you know, make it pretty seamless where you don't have to do as much manual work, it could be all a line, it's going to be realtime data, so if you want to do your budget at anytime, you go to the web. So, we are looking into that. We haven't found the tool yet, but we will be looking at it in fiscal year'09. Hopefully'010 or'011 we MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 8 of 160 may come in front of you with -- with a proposal. We talked about the controls for the audit. We are going to use some of our money that we have for our auditors -- auditing firm Ide Bailey, and we are going to work with them and talk to them about the numerous tax laws that continually change every year and have them give us guidance on any changes that they think we should do with our payroll logs or financial statement logs. First, we will use them as a source to give us good guidance and make sure we stay out of trouble and try to achieve that clean audit. And the final thing is the purchasing department. We are looking at a tool right now with Tom Barry and the enterprise department, to get a program that will consolidate all city projects into one program, will be web based, or anytime anybody can look at it programmed -- a project - - alarge project and see if it's on time, over or under budget at anytime. They could look at any of the AP vouchers that are on that project. This will, essentially, hopefully, eliminate any overbudgets, it will keep everything on time. We will be able to give you guys better reports at any moment on any project, whether -- if you want to know if it's going to be processed on time or over budget, you guys will have access. Right now we don't have a tool that does that to this extent. We think it's going to be great. We think the engineers are going to be able to use immensely and, hopefully, that will be done in '010. So, you will probably see a proposal from us in '010 on that, hopefully. Might be in '09. We will see if we have any money. And the Mayor had asked in a meeting that we go over Other Govemment. I want to know if you would like me to go over that. now or new -- there is a new way we are doing kind of the bookkeeping for Other Govemment -- Other Govemment and city expenses. Would you like me to go over that now or later? De Weerd: Yeah. We have you scheduled at 3:25. Lavoie: Okay. I will go over that later, then. De Weerd: Yeah. That way we stay on schedule on the others. Lavoie: Not a problem. De Weerd: Thank you, Todd. Any questions for Stacy or Todd at this point? Zaremba: Thank you. De Weerd: Council, I would let you know that because that budget that's presented to you this year -- Rountree: Madam Mayor, I do have a question for Todd -- De Weerd: Okay. Rountree:. -- or Stacy, either one. And a lot of your planning and a lot of actions are related to software or systems that theoretically increase your efficiency. Before you - ,t i { ~ 1 ~ i~ ~ ~~ ~ ; b .f~~,.~ t ~ ~~ ~ S ~, I ~~_ r ~ ~~ ~ a t~~.t ,~ ? i f . R k ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~k~ ~Y' S ~ ~' R i ~ ~1 f y i f ~ 1 ~ ~ ~~J Y ~ ~ i I - ~ ~ ~ f ~ ~ g y ~~- ~~L° ~ }i i i R ~ ~. ~ R ~ '~1 i I ~ ~t u ,j7 ~S a i ~ ~ } f ~i . 1 f-. ~ ~ w ~ ~ 2 ~ ~ '~ {~ ~ }~ ; 7 ~ . ~ 1 5.i I ~ . ~~ 3' 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r ? i ~ ~, . t ~ 4 ~ ~ `i~. r .tt kr ~ ~ ~ ~ ~''.. t ~ ~ , ~ ~ 1 ~ 4.~ ~c ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ,y z ~ ~ ~ t ~ ` ~ t ~ 'i~`Y y-' ~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~~, t i E " ~., ; ' ~ ~~ ~ ~ C ~~ ,- i ~~ f ~ 1 s. 7 ~ ~ i t E ~ f a3, t ~, '}~ ~ ~4 ~ ~ i ~ ~ k K ~ ~ ~ i } ' ~1 } ~; ~~ ~ Fa ; j t F / J x i x f ~ s ~ ~ t ~ ~ Y ~ t ~ ~ ~' 7 ~ ~ ` 1 ~F :~ ~~ ~ . ~' s ~ x+ ; rt 3~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ? ~ ~ { ~ ~ P i I _ ~ ~ k ~ _ ~ i ~ fry( '~ ~ ~ r ~ . ~ ` ~!~ S' s ~ ~ ! ~{ ~ ~ S { l ~, 2 k 7 f fll ~ + { / ~ _ ~ { ~ x '; - F~. . . 1 !~.' { ' I ' ~ ~~(~,y#{ ` -1F..~il ~'~ : .S 1{ £ ; j ~, ~: ;~ ~~ } ~ ~; ~ ) ~ TT" f ~ ; f '. h ~ I 1. ~ { ' ~_= ~ ~.~ j !{ l~1 ~ti ~~ A ~.S ~ y -:~~. r ~E~ ~.1 v ; -, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 9 of 160 acquire those or as you acquire those, are you going to establish some matrix to tell us that, in fact, you did become more efficient and the expenditures were worthwhile? Lavoie: Councilman Rountree, we will definitely be working with the MIS committee first before we purchase anything, to make sure that it is in compliance to the -- the rule that Terry and IT staff has set for the backup -- you know, the support. Then, hopefully, we will be available to give you the matrix that say that, you know, we are going to be able to save X amount of time or X amount of dollars and be more efficient. We will definitely do that analysis first. Rountree: Certainly would be something I'd be looking for. Kilchenmann: For example, the ABRA that you -- you actually approved that in last year's budget and that is -- I think that is -- we can measurable results and I think we can give those to you. In fact, we can actually implement it and we can follow up and give you per -- we have already discovered it saves double entry, because HR isn't entering and we had HR entering it into -- like Excel stand alone and, then, Barb entering it into the MIT system. Or Audi entering it twice. So, this will eliminate -- Audi won't need any of those other systems, it will all be in ABRA and, .then, ABRA downloads to MIT once a month and all those changes automatically come over. Rountree: Just for me and maybe the rest of the Council, but that kind of feedback is what I like to hear, is that are the outcomes what we expect. Kilchenmann: Yeah. This one I think we can definitely say they are. Barb's all happy. Rountree: Oh, that's good. Kilchenmann: And when payroll is happy, we are all happy. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: On that same line, it would be helpful to know if money has been saved and time has been saved. But I would also have a line in there that says this is a service we didn't provide before, if there was a new service that was available, because it was now easier to do, that helps, too. De Weerd: Well -- and I think that the goal here is not only to create better efficiencies and tools for our staff, but also to continue to built on the transparency that the Finance Department has really been striving for over the last several years and access to the numbers and that sort of thing from our citizens. So, it has two purposes on this and, certainly, I know the -- the MTI or whatever that committee is -- it's goal is to create systemwide programs that allow better efficiencies across the board in all departments. ~:. ~. ~~ ~` ,~ t ,, i ~` F; ~, ' { t{ . ': MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 10 of 160 But we will make sure that those measurements are identified when that's brought back to you. Kilchenmann: And I think something that kind of has been really nice in the last few months is that we have worked a lot, for example, with the Enterprise Fund that's the kind of work that's really not necessarily gone on between accounting and the Enterprise Fund before.. A lot of just -- and it's been great. I think, you know, everybody has a different piece they need to put into that puzzle of where we are going and the software that Todd talked about for the contract would be a joint effort between both groups, which helps insure that it's something that isn't just used by one group and it stands off by itself and it's not integrated into rest of the system. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Joe. Borton: Two questions for Todd. This is maybe more citywide. In doing your interviews, one of the things I noticed going through is the green sheets. I might have e-mailed you about it -- is the sort of more specificity with account code 57-200, employee seminars and training and it looks like it needs half of that now broken out in travel, transportation, lodging, per diem. So, in almost every department the last several years no one, for whatever reason, come close to using it. So, the question is when you're having the interviews and walking through with directors on that particular item, it hasn't been used and you're told we are going to use it, we need to use it, do you include it? Do you say, no, that's not good enough. We have it. It just seems, though, they are all spread out more, but they are all high. Lavoie: Council Member Borton, as you can probably -- as you talk to a lot of the directors during my meetings, they will probably all say that I want to cut everything. That will probably be pretty common. And they are all nodding behind me, aren't they. I do go over every line item and ask them -- you know, we do look at historical trends. If it's down, I go if you haven't used it, let's cut it. I. give them, the directors, the choice to tell me what they want to do with their money for their employees. I don't know of their ultimate goals, but I do bring it up as if they don't spend it, let's reduce it, at least through. the last average. So, I do present that to them as a choice, as an option, as my first -- you know, that's why I try to reduce it, but that is brought up to them. De Weerd: Councilman Borton, I guess just to build on that -- and Stacy had mentioned in some previous comments on what we want to do in the categorization of the expense line items, we are looking at some of those line items that we are -- there is variable standard fix or zero based and we would like to identify what each of those categories are with the directors, put together those areas that they do need to come back with an annual plan. Training will most certainly be one of those. And that way, you know, they have a plan for their employees and we can bring that in the budget process. But once we kind of allocate the different line items into those areas, we certainly do have ideas ~ I ~, ~ I ~ ry ~ ~ i i, X ~ ~ ~ j y ~~ S ~ ~ ~ +~ t 1 , I . j ~ +,1 ~VyP'4 ~ j . y. L ~~ {{ ~ ~~. 1 ~ ~" t 4 ~ I i ~ ~ ~ c u '' ~ " ti ~ ~ ~. ~ ~f r ~ ~ , ~ ~E I ' ~ ~ ,t~ I i~ ~ tir ~~ ~ t - ~l I 1 ~ ~~'~' ' ~ ; ~ ` ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ` s ~! ~ ~ t ` ~ iii 3 1 , ~ ; ~ ,; , ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ { ~ ~ ~ ~ i ? , ~ t ~ s ~a; ~ f ~, ~ ~, 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ 3f g ~ ~ t '~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i ~~ } + ' ~ s ~ ~~ ~ 17 I 1 1 ~q ~ ~ , ~3 1 a E ~ ~ ~ y ~ 4£ ~.: S l e x ~ ~ ~ 'i F ~1 FI 1 ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ f ~ {{1 ~ i ~ i i ~ ~ [~p ~ k ~ ~ S i i i ~ i... ? ~ i a ~ 7 ; ~ 1 I~ ~ ~ t { ! f ~d s v; 7 ~ i i i 1: t E1~ ~'~,.. ~ J S l ra. i ~~ i141 -? i ~~ 1 ( ~' e I ~,~ ~t, ,t i t $ C 1 y ,r '~; r ~ ~j ~ G~ . 1. { ~ p MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 21 of 160 Bird: I know a lot of snow plowers in the McCall area just use a one ton truck. Siddoway: We have one one ton truck. Bird: Why couldn't a snow plow be put on it in the wintertime? Siddoway: I don't know. Could you talk to that, maybe, Elroy? Huff: Mayor, Members of Council, Councilman Bird, I have never put one on one of those before. I think it might be possible. It's a real long truck. We look for some maneuverability with that in some of the situations we have to get into, so I think that was part of why the enhancement is the way it is. I have seen some -- most of the trucks I see locally that are plowing are four by fours. I think in a one ton situation, if you put enough weight in your one ton you can -- you can probably make that work if you get it distributed right. Bird: You got one over there, a red one, that's fixed like a construction truck that should have enough weight in the back. I'm sure that's a one ton. That red -- isn't that a red one ton? Huff: It is a one ton. Actually, I was thinking about the newer one ton that we use on a daily basis that -- Bird: You have got -- most of them got duals on the back and I have always found that a two wheel drive one ton is easier to tum in tight corners than a four wheel drive in four wheel. I have had four wheels for four years, so -- Huff: The only one that I would use that I think is safe enough that we could take a look at is the -- the longer one ton. The red one for backing up and going forward and doing things like that, I'm not comfortable with the visibility in that truck at all. But, other than that, it's certainly heavy enough -- it's one of the older trucks that we have in the fleet, but it's -- it's a heavy one. It's -- Bird: My~concern on buying afour -- four-by-four just to do snow plowing is last year we did have to plow, but there has been years where you have had to plow. So, you're investing 32,000 in something that might be used once every ten years, where you could buy a two ton -- half ton pickup to do 99 percent of your work at half the cost. That's all I was looking at and you got a truck over there that you could just put a plow on. Huff: That truck also, if we were to fund that, would also be a full time tow vehicle for a couple of things that we are doing now that we are towing as we are on the edge of not being safe as where we should be. So, that's afull-time truck used in towing all the time during the summer months and there is not an idle time for that truck. iii. ;~ :~ {,;. t ~~'; ~;. .:'~~ i i. ~fi 4~ `a L kv l: r:: ~ ~ ~ h a ~ i, Ci S_ {,,, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 22 of 160 Bird: Do you need a four wheel drive to tow? Huff: Not necessarily. That's more for -- that's more for the snow removal, but it handles. the weight if what we are doing to towing and -- and unless we got some other situation we would need it for that, but wintertime, for plowing and maneuverability, that's the best safest thing for us. That's the reason we have asked for it that way. Appreciate that. Siddoway: We do do a lot of towing of equipment year around. During the summer our large mowers and things like that, so -- and our -- as Elroy said, we are kind of pushing the limits of a couple of vehicles safety-wise and if we just -- which would be a safety improvement as well for our towing during the summer. Okay. Our fifth enhancement is a small one, 4,000 dollars, but an important one to us. It would be a contribution to Meridian Middle~School. We have a very heavy partnership with them where they host most of our recreation classes. They do host summer camps. Sports leagues. As well as after school programs. And in the spirit of that partnership, since we contribute to the wear and tear of their facility, we would like to contribute 4,000 dollars that would help go towards improvements at that school. Bird: Steve? Siddoway: Yes, sir. Bird: Do you not -- for the adult basketball league and all that, do you not pay a fee to use the gyms? Siddoway: No. I don't believe that we do pay the school. No. We pay no fee for the gym. Bird: Okay. Siddoway: They give that to us free of charge. Bird: That's very good. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Just a comment on the partnership with the school district. You haven't got to it yet, but Item 7 indicates that the school district is willing to donate 20,000 dollars to something that we need done there. It would seem like the 4,000 which we are asking on the one is a good trade. Siddoway: Thank you. Christmas decorations and banners. I have a revised enhancement here to hand out. The original one that's in your packet asks for 83,500 , ~ ~ ~~ ~ i~ 5 ~ " ~ i ~ ~ ~;~ ~~' ~ $ E 'f, y{' ,yy ~ ~4 'Fr~ } 1 jj ~ }}'~ A. 7F d ~. a ~ ~ ~ 3 iy ' _ M~ ~ iff i S 3 ~: ~ ~.~ ~ ?~ ~ r ~ . { ~ I. ~ f ~ j ~ III ~~~?? i ~ ~ {( ~ i ~ ` ~ ~ ~ t } i~~ Y~ i ~ ~ { ~ ! i 1~ . 1 I ~ ~ ~ F ~ i 1~` 7171 ( f ~~ F~~~ 1 t r y 7 f ~ '-. 33' ~ ~ f ~ ~ ! I ~ 7 n ( ~ 11 Ip' 1 ~ ~: 7 ~ ~ 9 7 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ rt ~ w,' f t ~i ~ , i ~ 1 ~ ~~f~: 4 ii ] ~ ~ -lt h ~~ ~_ ~ 1~. A ~ ;: I f ~ 7 ~. J ~ a .y u' r ~ ~,~ ~~ Y ~~~ ~ r{ a i ~~#l ' J d ~ S i i I ~ ~~% ~ ~ ' 7 ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ! ( 1~., ~k ~ ti ~fk ~fi' ~ F~. ~ ~ i c - a r ~ 7 I ~ S 7, t i ~~ i ~ j a ~ ~ ~ 7 ~a x 7 f~ ~ ~ q r~~ b ~ ~ 2 ' t ~ ,~ Y ~ t t,~ j~.: ~ ~ i ~ ~. ' r~ 7 ~ 7i - ~ Y 1. - e ~. 4 S- ,~. ~ ? j 3 "~ 7 ~ r :E r gar. J 7 ~+,~~ 9 r ~ i ~~, 3 ~ ~ ~ ` . 7 fi. ' 1 v m { . ~. ~. y. . 7 ,,, ~~' # ~~ ~y ~`~ r ~ d-F ~ a ~ 44 ~. i ~' 7 '~4 I '# } '~ ~ i~l ' I ~~~~~= g t 4 ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~ s ~~ ~ I t ~' ~~{ ~~~f~ ~ ~ ~ {~ ~ F w f~ ~~. i s ~ I a Y i 9 ~ ~ ~ Q 7 ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ r ~ . ~ ~ , i ` i ~ [[[ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 23 of 160 dollars and about 37,500 dollars would be city funded, with the anticipation of the balance of that either being funded in a partnership with MDC or waiting. We were fortunate -- well, we met with -- we met with MDC a couple of weeks ago. They had asked us to look at ways to decrease those costs. We were fortunate in that the same day at AIC there was a vendor for commercial Christmas decorations and their prices were quite a bit cheaper. So, we have been in contact with them over this past week in bids and working this out. If you look at the -- the second page of I just handed out. A little section in bold in the middle. The proposed amount for MDC to fund would drop 46,000 to 22,300 under this proposal and the proposed amount for the city would drop from 37,500 to 20,600. What that gets us is Christmas lights on the new City Hall, both on the building and on the trees surrounding City Hall. Anew 16 foot Christmas tree for the foyer of City Hall. And for the main street light poles along -- along Main Street and, then, banners and lights for those banners along Main Street. Questions? Okay. Our seventh one is Heritage Middle School ball field fencing for just under 40,000 dollars. The sideline fencing along those fields are -- are four feet. We feel that there is a safety concern for overthrows and we'd like to raise those to eight feet per city standard. There are no outfield fences at this time. We would like to add those to demarcate where the outfield line is and, then, encroachment from people that are spectators, as well to give an edge to that for home runs and such. The School District, Ihave -- it -- I had a conversation and I had an a-mail from Dr. Linda Clark stating that they are willing to fund half of that 20,000 dollars. We feel it's important for safety and I have also thought, given the potential controversy of funding improvements on the ball field, how could we -- how could we recoup some of our costs associated with this that looked at the possibility of increasing our team fees for the softball league and teams that play out there 25 dollars to help recoup those fencing costs- over time. I conservatively estimated, based on the registrations that we were currently seeing, that we would anticipate about 1,250 dollars a year by increasing the fees 25 dollars per team. Bird: Steve, on that same deal when we -- when we had talked about Heritage fields earlier, I believe Councilman Rountree and myself asked that once this league was -- the fast pitch league was over we would get a report on how many citizens of the City of Meridian -- taxpayers of the City of Meridian was involved in that -- I believe that it was over. Could we get that within a couple weeks? Siddoway: I don't know if we will know where each player came from. I will try and get that. I can tell you, though, that they did come from all over the valley. I mean this is seen as a regional facility and we did have teams coming from as far away as Twin Falls and Fruitland to be able to play here on those fields. The turf equipment, we are asking for an enhancement to purchase a turf slicer as part of our turf management program that we are implementing. A turf slicer is similar to an aeriator, but it does not leave the messy plugs up on top where our parks are pretty well year around. We have a lot of mess associated with the plugs when we aeriate. This will help with soil compaction from heavy use in our parks and will help us avoid more costly renovation projects like we are seeing on the baseball field out at Settlers Park this year. Okay. The adult sports expansion enhancement for 5,000 dollars is to fund the cost associated with a growing sports program, but this enhancement will be off-set by revenues. I MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 24 of 160 expect this one to be a wash in terms of cost to the city. Bower Street shop renovation. This is our current facility. We have tried to figure out how to put aBand-aid on the existing shop and keep using it until we get a new shop. With administrative staff now moving to City Hall, we do have a couple of unused -- we will have a couple of unused offices in the back. If you look at the photo on the bottom, you can see where there use to -- at one time there was a roll up door here and it comes into this area where those offices are that are no long needed. This enhancement would allow us to put the roll up door in there, convert this back into a shop and give us sorely needed shop space until we do get a new facility. Our tree inventory software. We now have over a thousand trees in our existing park system. Tracking them in an ad hoc manner I believe no longer works. We anticipate a hundred more being planted in the next several years. We need to make a long range management plan to monitor the urban forest health and do replacement and pest control program. This enhancement does cover the license that Public Works would need for us to have access through GIS, a GPS unit and our GIS license in the Tree Works professional program. The Storey Park restroom. We only have one restroom left in our.system that does not -- is not part of our automatic door locking system. It makes it susceptible to vandalism. In order to install the automatic door locking system it would require new doors and jams, power supply, time clock and associated wiring and we can install that for as little as a thousand dollars. The final one is a new computer. When we move into the new City Hall we will need a second work station at the front counter to help take shelter reservations, course reservations and sports reservations for the public. The enhancement does include a computer, software, and monitor per IT's cost. With that I will stop and thank you and we are trying very hard to implement those plans that we have and I will stand for any questions. De Weerd: Council, questions? Rountree: I don't have any questions. I have some comments. De Weerd: Okay. Borton: I have a question. You go first. Rountree: You have got a question? Bird: Ask the question first. Borton: Steve, in no particular order, I kind of jotted some down from hearing what you -- as you went through these. One of the things we talked about on the recreation program awhile back was trying to create some sort of business plan that would show us the cost and expenses and income associated with the rec program. Siddoway: Yes. f i 1 i I ~ I ~{ r~ y~~~ QJ ~ I ~ ~ i' s? ~ ° a ~ i ~ ~ j ~ ~ ~ ~ s } ~ ` a}' ~~ ~~ i ~ ~x ~~y~ ~ ~~ ' f ~~~ ~~ ' .'~ ~ i ~ i ~ !t,: 3 b . ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ f .9 , ~ ~ I I ~~ i I ~)'~~ I 3 4 e ~:, I~ L t .. 1~~ Y ~ S'~ i l~ t i +SS i ~ ~: ~ { g~ ~ ' ~ i ~ 9 ~ F ~ ~ ~ ~', i . r~ a- ~ ~ ~,` I ~ `~ ~'~ . t ~. ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ i ~ e ' 1 ~ 1 I ~~ ~ ~~ s q 4 ~ f 3 ~~ ~ ~ ~ r r ~ ~~y~ I a , ~~ ~i r ~ ~ . ~ 1 - ' ~ ~ 3 3 }} ` t ~ ~ ~ 1111 I ~ ~ ~ ~q~i > ~ ~ } ~ ;, ~ f ~ ' i ~ ~ c N T ~ .i ~ 3" 'r. ' ~ ~ ~ ~ 'E ~ ~ j ~ ~ ,, ~ ~ i i ~ j ~. i ~ ~ d+l~. ~a~.: : ~ ~.~ { .. t ~ ~ i I i ~ ~f i ~ ~ ~~ ~~. ~~. S y ~E'i ~ ~~ ~ ~ ; ~~' ~ i MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 25 of 160 Borton: And it kind of ties it down to the cost for the community center and the rec programs and costs and revenue offsets. Is there anything that -- Siddoway: Yeah. I do have cost versus revenues already pulled together for sports and recreation. I have not factored in the community center into those, because it's just been looking at our trends up until now, but we can add -- we could add that, make some projections, and bring that back. Borton: Okay. That would be great. Siddoway: Okay. Borton: On the Heritage ball fell fences, that's phenomenal if the district's apparently committed some funds. I know there was discussion trying to get some of those private clubs to participate. My initial reaction would be -- and maybe this was the district's, too -- to be reluctant even budget for it and really try and help get them on the hot seat to participate like they have originally told us they would. Siddoway: The sports teams you mean? Gorton: Yeah. Some of the private clubs. It's used a ton. I'm out there a bunch. It's really popular. So, I don't know if you let their obligation off the hook too easy if we fund -- and maybe the district would feel the same way, if we fund it all and really they have no skin in the game. So, that's just one concern on that. Siddoway: Okay. De Weerd: I guess, Mr. Borton, just a comment on that. They were looking at the partnership for the dugouts and benches and those kind of things that -- the fencing was more of a safety issue that we felt was important. I guess that -- when we talk to partnership with the different clubs, the people we originally talked to were no longer involved in that, but I believe that those -- those expectations or suggestions have certainly been out there. The fencing is a little bit different from what that was, but -- and that's why I guess Steve came back and said -- is looking at increasing the team fees, so that we can recoup those costs over time. I just wanted to -- in the original discussions that was a little bit different and unfortunately -- Siddoway: I don't know a lot of that history. De Weerd: Yeah. Unfortunately, the fencing we weren't a part of the decision on what fencing went in and it is a safety issue that brought this up. Borton: I appreciate that. It begs the question that maybe I need the update from current status of their obligation for the dugouts or whatever. What specifically these private groups are going to be doing in that process, how much they have raised -- .. , t, ~ ~ ~, ~~ ~ ,. ~ht; - ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~ ' ~: T NNNN i : t , Y k ~ y H' ~ : ~~: -; ~ ~, x =,, ~~ A 4 . , ` ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~, ~, =, F ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ Ft r i k `' r [ F , . r 4 ~ r P MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 26 of 160 Siddoway: And I know of none at this time to my knowledge that they are -- that the clubs are doing, but raising the fee is one way to, you know, for lack of a better term, force that participation. But we can make some improvements and they can help pay for it through their team fees. But I'll certainly look into it with those groups that are out there. You bet. Borton: And then -- Madam Mayor? The last question was the need for the maintenance building. Been hanging out there. We know it's coming. I don't see any allocation of -- like Stacy described, a savings account that when you start building up to help solve that -- that issue of -- Siddoway: You're right, we don't -- I don't have a cost estimate or a location for one yet. We have been looking into the issue -- we, Councilman Zaremba and I, met with the -- the school district representatives to look at a possible site out on Lanark. That site does not look like it's going to work. We have been considering possible locations with -- in association with the water department building out at Eighth Street Park, but, really, we don't have a solid proposal yet to bring forward, so that's why it's not on there. But we could start saving towards one. Borton: You got to just start rat holing funds? Siddoway: I think that would be -- that could be good. I had enough requests already, I guess. But I think that's a great idea. De Weerd: That rat holing is an official accounting term; correct? Borton: And, then, the last two questions of the Meridian Middle School after school program, I'm not smart enough to see where it's showing on the green sheet, but there was talk when the year ended. I know it's a great program and it didn't seem to be huge and we are going to look and see is it something we want to continue to fund or let it go. There is that cost to -- Siddoway: Right now we are planning to give it a second year. This last year was its first year. In talking with Allison, we are hoping to give it a second year and try and blitz the advertising for it, you know, attend some the school assemblies and try and get the word out and as things go right now it's just funded as part of the base budget. It has been successful and we would like to -- we have talked with the Boys and Girls Club about partnerships and we do feel like we are filling different Hitches, we are not competing with one another, and so I think we would like to fund it for this coming year and see if we can't grow the program. And if you have specific questions about it, I can invite Allison up. Borton: That's all right. If you can bring it back later. I was just curious if you have some data that shows what the costs are, any way to try and pull that out. Siddoway: Yeah. .f f' ~! i ~.~.; i¢ .i f. ~ kSti. ~ ~ ; n ~ 1 ~ ~ '~ ~S g f ~ I ~~ ' s I ~ d ~ I ~ T ~ - ~' E ~` ~j ~° ~i ~ ; ~ I ; . ~h , ~~' ~ y '~ ~ ~ ' . x 11 Y , }~~: x ~ _ j ` , 7 r C . ;ti 01 0 '~ ~ ~ I ~ i i- c 4 G ~~ M i l ~ E # k~~i l t ~ ~ ~ ~ ,I ~ . ; fig, ~ 54~ ~ ~ ~ .f ~, ~ ~ k ~' ~ ~ , ~ ~, t ~~ ~ L' i ~ :. by ; i+ 1 ~ u. i ~ ~ Y '~ v ' ~, ~ ~ s` ~ ~ ~. ~ ~ < ~; r <~ ~ ~ I ~- . ~ .~ r ~ < ~, , , < , MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 27 of 160 Borton: So, if we said we want to cut the program, what does that mean? And I'm not saying I do or we do, but just to be able to know that would save the city 2,000 dollars or 82,000 dollars or -- I just don't know. Siddoway: Do you know a ballpark? Allison tracks that .budget directly, so -- Kaptein: Okay. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Borton, the -- last year or the year before -- it was last year when we were doing budgets, last year we had 6,000 dollars approved to add to my base recreation class expense budget for the after school program. We did not spend all of that money, but that's approximately what is allocated. The issue with cutting the after school program -- and I would need to explore this further with the middle school, my understanding last summer was that if we were not going to run the middle school after school program, the middle school was not going to allow us to use their site for recreation classes, which pretty much leaves us with nothing. So, that -- and that was my understanding coming into it, having been hired in June, with budgets in July and just jumping straight into summer crazy recreation programs. That was my understanding from Mrs. Austin, the principal over at Meridian Middle. Things may be different now, but it was kind of a -- we will see if we can use our building when the Council approves the after school program. So, that is where we are at, I think. Borton: Okay. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: Allison, don't leave. Kaptein: Yes, sir. Bird: Repeat that for me. We are talking about the Bill Berg and West Lowe gyms not being able to be used if we don't fund this after school program? Kaptein: I don't believe that the gyms were included in that. And we are talking specifically more classroom space, cafeteria, for the recreation classes that we hold, ballroom dance, art, those sorts of things. I don't believe the sports program is affected by that; You'd have to double-check with Colin, but that's my understanding. Bird: I don't like to be threatened by anything. Not when over half my tax bills go to the school district. Kaptein: Thank you. Borton: Thank you. Thanks, Steve. % ri I ~ I j:: ~ ~' ~' t nl ~~ `~ (' e~ p :1 . . ~. .._~ . ~ ." ~ ~ { ' l l g !~ j ` L fF~ ~ En ~. 1 f n i,' ' fF ~~; I ' ~ t s` f F ~ }~ ( l G. h I. ', ~ f ~ i ~~ ' ( i t ~ 1, i ~r i MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 28 of 160 Siddoway: Thank you. De Weerd: Other questions, Council? Zaremba: Huh-uh. Thank you. De Weerd: Mr. Rountree? Rountree: I guess I'm really concerned with the 23.4 percent increase in the overall budget, given the year we have had and the year we are looking at. And I'm not comfortable even thinking about approving it at this point in time. I think we have got to give it a lot of consideration. Is this the appropriate time to do some of these things. I'm the first one to say -- and was one of the first ones to get the parks commission going and all that kind of stuff and get impact fees and we do need this stuff, but we have got a tough year ahead of us I think, so I'm having a difficult time being comfortable with some of the enhancements. I'd like to explore what we can do at Heroes Park for less, potentially. I do not support the Heritage Park enhancement. I do not support the Bower Street shop renovation. I do not support the tree inventory. I do not support -- I'd like to see better tree decorations, Christmas decorations. As far as the snow plow, would suggest that in your replacement you look at replacing the '79 Ford pickup with a three-quarter ton pickup and if we need additional snow plowing on the years when we actually have snow -- this last year was the first year in about ten or 15 we did, that we look at an emergency budget enhancement for contract work to do that. So, I'm looking at the ways to trim this, yet still accomplish some activities. I'm also a little perturbed that we did ask -- and we talked about Heritage ball field, that we wanted to know who and where they were coming and we can hear the numbers, but we cannot yet find out whether or not or how much benefit the City of Meridian's getting out of that. And as far as Settlers Village Square phase one -- and this is no reflection on you, Steve, but when we estimate for projects and that's a completed price, the pencil better be sharpened when we approve it, because we approved that last year to get phase one done and in place this summer and it's not happening. So, just take that as a word of advice on any of these other things. Be a little more generous with a little less -- you know, that way we will have funding to do these projects, because when I sit here and approve a budget to do something and the public asks about that something and I tell them it's budgeted and it will happen, I expect that we figure out how to make it happen. Siddoway: Yes, sir. And on that specific one that's why I was still looking at ways to do it this summer by perhaps borrowing against that land acquisition account that's there right now. Rountree: And my opinion this summer is too late. It should have been in place as soon as weather permitted. But that's neither here nor there. It didn't happen. And don't -- again, that's not on your shoulders, but that's the kind of thing I think we need to watch out for. !~ ~ ~. ~ i I ~ r i ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I J ~ 4 S ~ k S ~ ~ i 75 i -{ ~~ ~ { ~ r i ~ J ~ ~ ~~. t t a ` ~ ~ ~ ~'~ 1~ ~ ~ ~ z ~ > .b.. 'K ~ a ~ ~ 3 ~1 i- t ~ n ~ ~~ i ~ _ .~ ~' +S A ;J~ J - 1 .r i. q '-~ ~~~ ~, ~ ~ i ' ~I r ,_r „ 'J t{ }fir` ~ £ _ i~ ~ ~ E ~ ~; ~ ~ ~` ~ ~ `~ r ~ t ydd i i :~ f 3 ~i ~ j j -~i ( i ~ ~ ~ ` i i ~ ( ~ + ` ~ ~ I ~~ . i ~ d 3}A'!~',, ~ I . i~ ~I ~ ~' ~ i t. ~. 1 ~# ~ Y .+i•: 2 'i ~ ~ ~ t # ~ I ~ ~ } 1 ~~ z ~ ': f ~ ~ ~ l I ~. h i i-_ M G *' ~ iii 7k~ Y I ~ 3 ~ G ~ ' E 1 ~i ~• ~ ~ I , ~~~" i ~ ~ ~ z 8 ~ ~ ~ "{ ~ ~ a ~ i_ ` ` ~1 3 1 ~ H ~ ~~ i y a s v I t b I~ .. ~ ~v ff ~ ~ ~ ,t ~ ~ f fem. ~: _ ~, h.~ r i i .~ ~ ~ f ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ , s ~ i -a' ~ ~ ~y } But ~ ~ t ~. ~ = ~, y F ~ -~ ~ ', y i Y f ~ - f, k- t ~ ~ ~ ~.f G 1 s.; f { r'. ~ ~ ~ ~. ~ ~; Z ~ r ~ llFt ~:'r-. ~.~: ~ I e - MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 29 of 160 Siddoway: Okay. Rountree: My big concern with that kind of increase, given the year we have got, out of the General Fund -- and I just threw out some concerns I have where potential cuts are. That's my opinion. There is four of us, so we will find out how we do this as we go through the day. Siddoway: Yeah. I'm not sure fully how to respond, other than to say that we have worked together as a team to try and bring you a balanced budget based on Stacy's conservative revenue projections. So, I believe that the funds are there and just hope that we can fund those items that you see as important to the city. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Just a comment also. I agree with Councilman Rountree that this is a year for belt tightening all the way around, but on behalf of our citizens, who are also belt tightening, we are likely to see increased use of stay at home, use our parks, as opposed to taking the trip to Yellowstone or someplace else and I think certainly the enhancements to complete parks, the facilities that are in the parks and available to the citizens to use, I think those are important to get done. Siddoway: And I would add that we continue to look for cost savings opportunities through things that we can do in house, as well as those partnerships and leveraging volunteers whenever possible. Rountree: Oh. And one other comment. What about recycled material furnishings for the community center, apply for a matching grant, which I'm sure you'd get. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: I, too, agree with Councilman Rountree, but he said it a little nicer than I was going to. The phase one, Steve -- and I realize that it isn't your problem out there, but we did budget for it and I thought that was in the plans to get started as soon as spring weather broke and, to be truthful with you -- and we discussed this. I'm quite shocked that it wasn't, but that's certainly not your fault. I just feel the same way, that there is -- we have just -- it's hard when everybody else is cutting budgets and cutting costs and we are adding 23 percent. Now, we have got -- in my opinion, we have got a pretty good -- for ten years a pretty good parks system. The employees and stuffs done a great job and administration getting that -- we know we are not complete. Our recreation program is ten times better than it was ten years ago. So, I -- but Ijust -- I just have a hard time telling the taxpayers that, you know, you guys -- ~ ~ 4 rr 5.., ~ h, t r i- ~ k t~ F ~ f o~ ~ 1 r t Y ~~ F } F; q ~~~ z ~ i { a r t .; ~ i~ ~ ~ ~t ~ ' t' ~ . , ~ i7 . ~ f ~. ~', s ~~ i ~ i } k ,, s' it { ; ~" ~ E ~?u i rf, ~ d t '1 ~ . y ~ a. k' .~ ;~ I 5 f~~. I ~~. ~ ~3 _ t ~ < < ~~_; MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 30 of 160 De Weerd: Can you speak a little louder? Bird: Oh, I'm sorry, Madam Mayor. I never get accused of being quiet. Holman: I'm sorry, Keith, but I think the stenographer is having a hard time and they can't hear you very well in the back if you're not on the mike and Charlie's a little quiet, too, when he was leaning back. Bird: Well, I have never been accused of being quiet. I usually don't need the mike. But, anyway -- I lost my train of thought now. And that was a good point. But, anyway, that's my feeling is I just -- I just don't think that at this stage of the game that we need to be increasing our budgets by 23 percent and I think there is some enhancements there that while they are nice, they are not necessary. And I think there is some things that we might have to do with something old for another year or something as well. Siddoway: We can do that, just so long as we are clear and understand the -- you know, what comes with not funding those and that we are ready to accept that. Bird: The sad part of it is is your impact fees, as Stacy stated right off the bat, your impact fees get affect by residential. Siddoway: Yes. Bird: The other two -- the safety impact fees include commercial and thank the good Lord that our commercial volume has stayed up, our dollar volume. Siddoway: Yes. Bird: And so we don't have the -- we don't have the revenue that we had a couple of years ago coming in and that makes a difference. That's my two bits worth. Or penny. De Weerd: Well, Council, I guess I would look for further direction so Steve can come back on bringing something in response to your questions about Heroes Park and what he needs to cut out. A large part of that is the restroom facility, which has -- when we brought this to you earlier, been suggested as a priority to get facilities out there. We do have a commitment to the neighborhood as well and answering to several different subdivisions' comments and complaints and one of the areas that we most recently improved. So, if you can give him a better idea of how you would like to see that trend, a percentage or an amount, so that we have a better opportunity to bring something back a little bit more palatable. The other regard, what I would ask of finance, if it's at all possible -- we have an obligation from the General Fund to spend money to match capital improvements or the impact fees. We don't do that very often in parks and when we do we get these kind of comments. And so I really need to see what you're actually looking for. This -- this will go to credit what the city's obligation is to impact fees. So, we need a little bit more direction, so that at the end of the day for the discussion, we can bring something back to you that can help respond to your comments. ' ` ~_ ~ ~ qq ~ yy ~ ~, j i I :I ` ~. j ( ~~ ~ i ~t.~~g, ~ {~ 4 i ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~_ ~ x a 6 -~ ~ ~ _ ~ ~ ~~ ~ I s; I s ~ t t I 1fj } ~ i ~ ~ t 9 ~~~ ~ 1 s ~ i ~jFA ~' }"~` ? i ~ ~ , ~ t ~ f ~ ~ £ ; ~'~ s, b ~ i 1 f 9 ~I d ~ iii , tl ~ ~ ~ ~x i a ~ r 3 ~ ' E ¢ . r ~ 1` i t ~ ~ r, ~ l{ t I # ~ z~ t L -~ ,a, ~ i ~ ~~ ~K- ~ , ~ ~'. ~' a ~'. ~ I ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ 1 ~ n i ~ ~j;i ~ ~ i~ r1 ~ } 7 ~ F i ~s '' i i ~ { ~ ~i ,y ~ } •' !!+ f ~~~. ~ ~ j t i i ~ r ~~; r 7 ; ~ '~ ~ E ~ ~ F i. jit ~ ~~ J 23q ~~: ~ ~' ~ a ~ fff ' 1 ~ l i F f ~ b ~ $ ~ ~ r t~ ~ p ~ 1}j ! j S~ r ' ~ ~ i 'S { ~ a} ~' i i mot` `~~ I ~ i j~ € g i ~ ~ ~ t t 'd~ ~ '~ E Isi~ ~ ~~~ o- ~ ;~ i I yy t i ,{ ~ i `~ n 'C t4 y ~ i~ S, f ,~ 6 ~ '~' (S- _ y4 ~ 4' ~ I L ~ ~ U d I s ~I -l 3b~~, ~~ 1 ~ ,~ G I ' I ~ ~ ~ j~r~ t 4r• 4 '~ ! )) 1 it'.` I ~i~k~~~. ~ -t + XX ~ ~.~ fi~ ~I } ~j`. ! 1 ~" i } '~ } i'-~I li% ., ~~~~±. .~, ~ l.( MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 31 of 160 Rountree: Madam Mayor, you know, you -talk about Heroes Park. I -- and we've all agreed that the restrooms are a priority and there is no question and I know that's the biggest portion of that. With respect to your comment about we have an obligation, understand that nowhere anywhere have I seen what that obligation is at this point in time. De Weerd: And we will respect that, too. Rountree: And we need that. And I know that we probably aren't going to get that percentage down that much, but if we get it down three to six percent on some of these things that, yeah, they are important, but I got to tell you you probably can get by another year until the times are a little better without the tree inventory system. That's 17,000 -- that's almost 18,000 dollars. And, you know, in our multi-million dollar budget that's chump change, but, you know, it works on that percentage, is this year we need that or could it wait a year. Siddoway: Well, that's why toward the end -- we have prioritized what we see as the -- the order of priority, so that one is toward the end of that list. De Weerd: Well, Steve, what I would ask is maybe you and Elroy can huddle and see what -- what you can bring back to respond to Council's comments, see if we can get an update on our match to the Capital Improvement Plan and our impact fee obligations and just have that so that there can be more robust discussion during the discussion phase. Does that sound reasonable? Bird: That sounds reasonable to me. I'm like Councilman Rountree, I mean Heroes Park, the reason -- Rountree: I mean I'm a little grumpy this morning, because I had to get up early, so I don't know about the rest of these guys. De Weerd: Oh, gosh, congratulations, Steve, on being the first up. One for the team. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. Siddoway: Thank you. De Weerd: Appreciate it. We are a little bit behind schedule, but we will keep going on if -- Council, if you don't mind. We are going to break or do you need a five minute break? Rountree: I'm just getting geared up for Keith. De Weerd: Okay. Maybe -- oh, oh. Maybe they need a five minute break. We will take a five minute break. Okay. Just switch over. s , s :~. , x; ~ ,~ r t y; ~ _ { I - st S i t ~ i ~II ~.. ~ j t 4` ~ ~ fo ~., tt i i~~; ~, i a a` L ? Y~ t r a g F f ~ a ~ a [ y ' 9 ` { ! fk # ~ J ~ `` it t I~~ ~~ ~,~ F ~ 8 ~ ~ 7 ~ , rr r F ~ ~ r ~ , *y , ~ h ~ ~ kt ~ , TTTT ~ ~ r ~ rt ~' a '~ t'i ~ , ~~ ~' F a MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 32 of 160 9:30 am Break (Recess.) 9:40 am ~.egal, HR, IT Departments (Boise Prosecution) s ~~ De Weerd: Okay. I'm going to go ahead and start the meeting again. We have now in front of us -- it's Legal, HR, and IT Departments and also our Boise prosecution presentation. So, go ahead and tum this over to Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Thank you for letting me present our budget presentation today. I have our presentation split up a little bit, kind of like a public hearing, something you're generally used to. We have a section or a portion of this that I will present. Terry Paternoster, our IT manager, will also present the section on the IT enhancements that we are looking at for the next budget year and, then, a portion of our hour time we had set aside for the presentation from our friends from the city of Boise that handle our prosecution contract, both to update you on the progress and the process and how the prosecution has been working, as well as the costs for the coming year. So, we can go ahead and get started. I tried to use a consistent theme throughout. That is a barrister on the right if you're wondering what in the world is that thing. That is a banister. So, we can move onto the next slide. De Weerd: And they are all faceless; right? Nary: These are some of the numbers that HR deals with in the coming year. We have requested through finance a three percent salary market adjustment for the fiscal year. That's consistent with the budget adjustment that we do for the entire city budget. We did request a four percent merit pool, as we had in the prior year, in this current fiscal year FY-08. It has been a four percent merit pool. That is the same pool that we have used -- an amount we have used for the fire contract as well. Just numbers that you're aware of, full-time, part-time employees of the city we have 287 cunently. Additionally, we have 46 seasonal employees. Those are -- a lot of them are parks and rec folks, recreation programs, day camp, those type of things. We have two interns in the city. That percentage of the employees to population is lower than all comparable cities and all I used for that calculation or that basis was in looking through the AIC manual, they list population and full time employees within the various cities in the state. We are approximately one employee up to close to 250 to 280 residents, depending on which number you use. Most other cities in the state are well below 200, many are around the hundred category. The city by Kuna, according to the book, is the only one that's probably significantly under staffed. But all the other cities are much significantly higher numbers of employees versus residents that they have. Applications in 2007, we had 1,132 applications for open positions. We hired 41 new people. We promoted 42 people. We terminated 37. And we hired some 34 people last year for seasonal and this year it's gone up. That's due in part to the parks and rec program that have increased and the different offerings that they have had. { 11 c ! i{rrF~ Ey.' f ~ t J~ t 3 4 M1 i ~ I t ~ 1 ~ 1 ~i "-~ P i'~ ai!~ 4 1~ i n ~ V'-~ ~~~ -P i y ~ ~ ~ 111 ~ f ~ ~ Y i 1 q ~a i 4i ~t ~ ~ ~ ~ 4 e~ ~ fi, ~ ~ { ~ ,r d r~s! k 3 ~;. i ~+ 1 t f 3 r x I t ~ ~ t } ~ I~ A3 (~ ~; ' j ~- v ~ ~j ~ r R ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ s ~~t r. ~ s € ~ ~ ~tA ~ ~ ii ~y 4 S ~; A f 1 ~~ ~ ~S 1 ~ v } i } ~~ ~ x ,I t i i S ~ ;' jjj~ f _ i I t s. I ~ T 'k ~, e ~ t .;~I i F ~~~ ~~~1 I Y r~~ ;i t t i r t MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 33 of 160 Borton: Real quick. Does that termination mean termination or they left? Nary: Both. When we classify termination is both the voluntary and involuntary termination. So, that's everyone that's left, including retirees. Borton: Thank you. Sorry. De Weerd: No, that's -- Nary: Next, our current benefits have not changed as to what we offer to employees. We have a Blue Cross program. Delta dental. We have a vision provider to Blue Cross. We provide the flexible spending account for folks, including the benefit cards. We now have 138 employees. If you remember three and a half years ago when I came here we had less than a hundred employees, we had about 80 that were in the program at the time, now it's 138. Part of that has been through your being able to fund the program and being able to make it make more available for employees. Prior to me coming here as the HR director, all the employees had to pay for the program themselves, which meant very few ever used it. Now, we have a much higher usage and what we find, again, as I told you in the past, flexible spending is probably the one benefit that benefits both the employee and the city, because it lowers the employee's income -- of taxable income, it also -- it also lowers the contribution that the city has to make towards that. This year, unfortunately, right now we are looking at a potential 11 percent increase. We, actually, had originally budgeted the potential of a 15 percent increase. That's overall. Most of that is driven by Blue Cross. We are going to market this plan to Blue Shield to see if we can get a better rate, either from Blue Cross from that or from Blue Shield. Blue Shield has improved in the quality of services and their ability to provide greater services in the last few years and other cities have done the same thing and have been successful at being able to get better rates. We are hopeful to bring that 11 percent down a little bit, if at all. But that's our objective right now. I did give approval to our consultants yesterday to go ahead and market the plan. We do provide all employees with life insurance. We provide them with short term disability and long term disability, as well as, of course, the AP, and, then, PERSI, of course, is a required benefit that we provide. We have optional benefits for employees to access, including the Person Choice Plan, which, essentially, is an additional 457 type of plan. We have a variety of different financial management plans. We have had Chris Kline, he just, in fact, sent me yesterday a request that he was going to be doing an analysis for us to see what types of plans we use and what might be better in the marketplace for our employees to access. Again, these are voluntary. The city doesn't contribute to them, but it might give employees better information for long term retirement needs. We are also looking at the potential -- De Weerd: Well -- and, Bill, I think on that, we want to have an assessment in how those plans perform and if we are offering them to our staff and they are poor performers, we really don't want to -- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 34 of 160 Nary: Exactly. We have been very stingy in allowing more vendors into the doors since I have been here, because I -- as the Mayor stated, I really feel that if we are going to have employees -- have access to the employees for folks to use this, even for voluntary plans. We want to feel comfortable that they really provide a service to the employees. So, Chris Kline is going to do that for us to help give us a little bit more information. We can take that information back to the benefits committee. Another interesting thing we discussed at the last benefits committee meeting that we may be able to offer employees on a voluntary basis -- again, is pet insurance. Many employees don't have kids, so they have pets, and this would not be city funded, this would be employee funded, but there are options out there that exist in the marketplace that might be beneficial to employees. One of the things I asked our consultants to be sure of, in the past many of those plans were not offered or not attractive to people, because they didn't cover basic pet care. It generally covered catastrophic care and for most folks it wasn't really worth the risk to spend that kind of money for those kind of things. But many of them do now offer general care for their pets and so that might be something that might be available as an option for employees. Again, it's voluntary, it's not city funded. We will just see what the marketplace has for that. I did want to make note before I forgot that our staff from the legal department and half of our HR department or a third of our HR department is here. Audi is here. Nancy is out of town this week. And Marilyn is manning the fort next door. And our IT staff is here as well. So, I appreciate all of them being here. De Weerd: And, Bill, I think you had a couple of new faces that Council probably hasn't seen and -- Nary: I will have Teny introduce them. There is a picture of them in the presentation and I will have Terry introduce them when he gets up here. De Weerd: Thank you. Nary: Next a few of the accomplishments we have had in the last year. The wellness committee, we have actually had in place for a couple of years. This last year they have worked very hard on two things. We did an altemative transportation survey throughout the city in anticipation of moving to City Hall, the cost of fuel that exists today that we are all aware of. We wanted to look at some way to provide incentive and opportunity for employees to take altemative transportation. We, unfortunately, in the city don't have a lot of access to mass transit, but we do have access to van pools, car pools, bicycling, and some other methods that people are interested in and I tell you -- I don't have the numbers -- the final numbers from the survey, but the response was overwhelmingly in favor of altemative transportation and car pools and van pools and incentives to do that were very much favored by the employees and so our objective with the wellness committee is to take that data at our next meeting and start to develop a program and a plan to bring back to you to fund and to look at what can be done inexpensively. We have bike -- a bike locker available in the new City Hall for people who bike to work, but we also want to provide other means. We have many employees that live too far away to be able to bike here, but van pools or car pools are available to ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ w~ ~ , '~ a ~: ~ ~ ; ~I ~ ,,~ ~ I z ~ ~ , : N ' ' ~ ' ~ , ~ ,{ i r ~. r ~ j i f~f 'l ~? ~! 7 r n 1 ~ V ~ ~~ ~1 ~ ~ ~ t S x ~' F1 f y i Y ~ ~ ~ t ~" r i I ~ ~~ ~ t ,fr i 7 ;~ 1 ~ r;1 t ~ 3 ~YT3, 3 ~ 3 8,~ }3 ~ ~ £ d-I ~ ~ + y . ~ ~i..~ ~ _{{{~ 4 . - 1~~;~f 1 r{ ~ I• ` ( g l5 ¢ i [ 1 S . . ~~ j ] ~ ~ { i £ ~ yyg~ I~~ r t~ ~ ~ ~ r - ~ 5~ ~ f ~c i ~ ~ f i w ~ a ~ -i i u ~~ ~ ~ f ~ „ r -; ? ~ a* r xxrrLL r ~i ' ~~ ' i~~i L t 3 ~.i n - ~~. ~ rl ~ k a i ~ ~ ` ~ I ~~ ~ {{ ~ ~ '. 5 '~~ ~ a ~~ a E x. y~ i~ t Z ~ ~ ~, ~~ ~ ~ s" r 4} k ~ ~ { ~ :fir I i ,'~ ~. 1 ~ I i I ~ ~ ~ ~;'K ~:,- . ~~ 1 ti i ~ S S', bfi _ ~~~ x ~ V ' ~~ ~ ''' i ,, hyyy ~ ,, _ r.. -. j Y ~T~ .3 ~ } a ., I, q t ~' I ~k ~{ ;# t , L ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~S ~ti E ~ ~~ T y y ~ ~ k ~'~. ~ S ~ i ~ j , f ~ L, ~ ;~. 1 ~~ ~ e 1 it ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~~ _~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ! ~. a ~ ~ ~; r i ~ o ~ g ~i ~~ ~ ~~, ~ ` ' ~~ ~ t L ~ r ~ ~ } ~' ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 :~ I. i ~ -. r I 1 I ~ • t f ,. i~ .i~ r`'~ ~ I ~. F ~ ~'. - ~ ~, w. H }~ I '. 1.~ ! p ` ~ .i 3 ~; .1 * t r ^ ~iaEe ~ i .~.Y ;.I , a~ ,~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 35 of 160 many of them. We are going to look at trying to target different areas of where people live and maybe that might be something we can work out through scheduling to be able to allow employees that live say in Middleton, Star, or somewhere else, that they could actually car pool to work together. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: I'm sure you're aware of this, but the ACHD Commuter Ride program will help you put that together. Nary: Yes. Yes. And that's exactly where we would go. Once we get our data together that's the next step is trying to figure out how we can make that work with ACHD, because they already have a program in place that we don't have to recreate. So, no, I totally agree with you, Councilman. The employee workout program. This is really a desire of the wellness committee for the last couple of years is that we have that in the new City Hall. It is designed. It's a very large room. We are working with the fire department and a vendor to look at outfitting that room. What we have found and what I was able to report back to the employee committee at the last meeting is that gives us LEED points. That's a benefit to the city that we unintended at the time it was thought of, that, ultimately, now, besides the value that it brings to the employees to give them an opportunity to use the facility in the building, have showers and lockers and things like that, but be able to use that for the employees' benefit, also benefits the city in the LEED category. We have done some policy revisions. Two of them were probably the most significant that you all are aware of was the travel policy -- we made some significant changes in that. You have seen that now reflected in the budget, trying to comply with the IRS regulations. We have broken that out now and now we have the per diem policy in place and we have found -- although it's still in its infancy it still seems to be working well. People seem to get it. Obviously, we will have some fine tuning to it, but, generally, the policy I think is -- was put together very well and I think everybody's contribution really helped make it something usable for the department. The drug free workplace, as you know, we were responding to a -- a federal case out of this circuit that prohibited drug testing in certain areas. What we did in revising that was to eliminate it for the ones that the courts don't allow, but make it real clear that when we are talking about a drug free workplace in the City of Meridian, we are not just talking about illegal drugs, we are also talking about abusing alcohol that has an impact on your job. We want to make that clear to all employees that those two things that this city is concerned with and it's not necessarily going to tolerate and that it can impact your employment. We -- over the last year and a half or so we have had amulti- department code enforcement team. We meet monthly with the police department, code enforcement folks, Lieutenant Overton's group and Sergeant Gonzales and the four code enforcement officers, my staff, the planning department and the building department to address exactly what's up there. Garbage, weeds, and signs. We deal with that monthly, what can be there, what can't be there. Mrs. Kane from my office has been the primary contact for many of the issues that we have from the police. The rock MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 36 of 160 guy is our recent issue we have dealt with. All of you drove by the rock garden that was down there at Franklin and Main Street. Wasn't permitted. Wasn't allowed. Eventually, we were able to convince them that that wasn't the best use of that property and they -- the rock guy went away. But we spent a lot of time and effort in coordinating with the police and planning department and the building department to make sure we match up, so that, ultimately, if something does end up at the prosecution end, which our prosecutors are here, that we have vetted that through all the different departments, make sure it's compliant with the code. We have tried all the other means to get compliant and now we tum it over to the prosecution. I think it's been very successful. I think it's real positive for all the departments to be able to have that interaction, so that we can really make sure we put the best face forward with the different issues that we have with the public. We have had some IT enhancements this year. And that wasn't really an enhancement slide, I just thought it was a funny slide. De Weerd: I think it's me. Rountree: It's true to life. Nary: Yeah. That's what I thought. We have had a number of them as you can see up there. The help desk software that we added to the city in the last year. Terry's group and division has really stepped up in helping the department of findings ways to track different projects, especially the Mayor's office with the multiple amount of projects they have. It's a better tool than we have had. They have added staff. Brad Lloyd is our primary help desk person, has really been an asset to various -- various employees in the city in getting them more comfortable with our system and how it works and improve the Planning and Zoning application process with the Planning Department, the ABRA software you heard about earlier with -- with finance, that's been a great addition to the HR side. The intranet look up now for employees on the intranet, they have a means to go and find other employees' photos, they can see who works here. I'll tell you, every time I look through it I think I don't think I have seen this person before. So, it's a great means to be able to see who works here and when we get into the new City Hall I think that will be helpful as well. They have been able to create a better means of managing the a-mail, so that we don't have overloads of a-mail like we have had. Many employees used to get commands -- it seems like weekly that their a-mail boxes are full. They have been able to manage that. It's also helped as we have had some voluminous public records request that some of you are aware of. We have been able to manage getting those a-mails for those requests by that system, so IT has been a great help with that. We have automated time sheets. I think all of our time sheets are now automated, even the fire department which were probably the most complicated ones to do. IT has been able to get that working. The VPN is a great tool for telecommuting for folks that have the ability or the time to work off site that allows them access to their desktop. It's not just an a-mail access, which is what our old system allowed, but actually allows them to access their programs, their documents, their e- mails, everything from their home computer. Everybody but the Mayor is able to access that, and that's been a great tool for everybody -- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 37 of 160 De Weerd: That's something to brag about. Nary: Yeah. It's by design. All the directors chipped in and said maybe we won't have the Mayor access that. That would be a good thing. De Weerd: No more 2:00 a.m. e-mails. Nary: We had a graphic design intern this last year, Brianna McCutchen, and she was able to help many different programs and departments in trying to put better graphics on their -- on the Internet, whether it was to provide a logo for like the Mayor's book club -- it was a different skill set than we have had in the past in the IT department and it's been really -- it was really a nice addition. I mean she brought just a different flavor, a different set of skills and it was a real accomplishment for IT. Next.we did receive AIT achievement award this year for the internship program. We have had it in place for a few years. We found it to be very successful. It's a lot better than the flat figure I thought was a lot nicer. De Weerd: He said it was subtle. Nary: Yeah. The AIT recognized that that value that we have of providing an opportunity for these high school students to work in a workplace, many of the folks that -- I'm sure many of you interacted with over the years, whether it was Brianna, whether it was Shawn, whether it was Nick, whoever went -- Zach. We have had some great interns here that have been -- I think it's been good for them, it's been good for us, they are cheap help and were great help and they are -- and they are here to learn. Terry has been a great mentor and guide to them. They have teamed a lot about working in the workplace and I think they make better workers where ever they go, because they have had an opportunity, as young adults, to work here and see what it's like to work in an office environment and in this type of workforce and I think it's been a good thing for everybody. Future needs. Things that we are looking at. City Hall work space. Obviously, as we all move into City Hall there are different needs that are going to come up and we are looking at how we do our business and how we can do it more efficiently and better in our work space. We did a walk through last week with some of the folks, legal -- our HR folks walked through a little before that -- to try to see how we can make that acceptable for the public and acceptable for the employees and we will be probably working on that for at least the next year. Department alignment. As we get larger in the city, as we have greater needs in the city, we need to look at how our department itself is aligned and how we can make it, again, more efficient and more responsive to the workforce. Again, we have a large work force. It continues to evolve. The needs that they have, the issues that they have and sometimes the conflicts that they have are things that we have to address both from the legal side, as well as the human resources side. The public connection to us, whether it's people that are applying for jobs, people that make inquiries about different activities in the city are doing, whether they think it's a legal issue or something else, we have to make sure we are able to respond to the public in a timely manner, meet their expectations. There are technology improvements every day. You will see some of those in the enhancements that we are looking at. We MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 38 of 160 want to make sure we have consistency among the different users in the city, that they are able to talk to one another -- you know, that's probably one of the biggest frustrations in many organizations is one department has one set of programming that another department can't necessarily access or, even worse, our outside vendors or outside contractors send us information that we can't open or we can't use, because we don't have the right programs to do that. The Mayor has asked us to look at a policy in regards to saving some fuel and use of vehicles. We will probably fold into that in the transportation as well and it's a policy, so we will probably be having more discussions about that in the next couple of months in how we address that issue that appears to not be going away. The 132,000, by the way, on that slide, I took off of your letter to the public. That was what was proposed in 2030 1 think is what that is. That might be low. Bird: I was just going to say -- Nary: That might be a COMPASS estimate. Bird: Why don't you -- yeah. Why don't you send that to the state, because that sure isn't state revenue sharing. De Weerd: 1 would say that's an illegal use of the logo by squishing it like that. Nary: It was a little bit squished at the time. Yeah. The logo police have already mentioned that to me. Next is our human resources and city attorney staff. That was part of our cow presentation we had for Dairy Days. Those are all the folks, both the attorneys, our legal support, as well as our HR, HR support for that. Marilyn is our office assistant. She absolutely refused to be in the picture, that's why she's not there. So, it wasn't that I intended to leave her out. She did not want to be in that. Here is attorney enhancement. A receptionist. I didn't make up that -- I didn't Photoshop that picture. That, actually, is on Microsoft's clip art, but in the City Hall work space -- and you all are familiar with the floor plans. We have a reception area to greet the public and employees that is separated from the HR staff and the attorney staff. Currently, because we have never had to deal with that, we' don't have a support person that can actually do that. We have folks that handle benefits. We have folks that deal with a variety of different HR issues. We have one part-time office assistant who comes in three days a week that answers the phones and helps with a lot of the clerical support. We have a legal support person that handles all of our development agreements, contractors with developers, all of our ordinances, all of our -- all of our legal preparation for the three attorneys, 'as well as we are looking at adding a part time attorney as well and I don't have anybody to do this. And so that's our -- that's our -- our number one attorney enhancement, it's our only attorney enhancement, is to be able to make sure we can greet the public, make sure we can respond to those needs at the counter to be able to address those things as they come in the door and not have to take and mix people around just to try to answer the phone, just to try to greet the public -- there is many other functions a person could do with afull-time person. So, that's the reason for that request. Human resources. One of our enhancements is an HR analyst. As mentioned, we are looking at realignment and how we can make a more efficient HR Y ~ ; y ~ , ~ ~i' ~ }. }~ , Y S ~. ~ 'I ~ c R~ S f ~k- _i ( I-: ~ 3 r z 7 ~' ~ t~' 1 ~~ ~ 1 S ~~`1 6 ~ ~ i ~ j I ~~r ~ ~ ~ ~ :~ ~ ~ - gl ~ ~ F ~ .~ ' y ~~ ~ y, J I ~ ~ t:j j ~ ~k`.~y'. ~~„ ~,~ t r ~ tty;~ £££0~ i ii ~ t ~ ~ ~.. y i ~'~ } C ~~kl a ') ~ ~;~ f E, , T .I '4 ' } t , t l 3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 51 ~i~. f ( I ~ ~ t . ~. ~ ~ ~ , i ~ i ~ I : 1 ~ '~ a ~ ~ t t ~ ~ k ~ i x ` I ~ ~ a d ~ '~ ? i ~ ~_ " ~ ~ e ' i ~ 666 " 1 s ' ~; { E 1 ~ ' ~ c a ' ' t ~ ' ~ ~ ~ w 1 t l ' c ~ ~ ~'~ I' ~ j ,~ ~, ~ y ~ S ~ ~ d _ } i ~ ,ti „ F y t i , : k . ~iyyrr;p e , f ;. 7 ,~ ~ ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 39 of 160 department. I want to make sure we have the ability to have outreach with the employees, to have a place for employees -- decide right now -- Audi is busy with the benefits work that's necessary in handling both the worker's comp issues, as well as the benefits issues and she certainly has a lot of contact with employees. But Audi's position doesn't have enough time in the day to deal with conflict issues or any other types of things other than benefits. Nancy's position is the only one we have, besides myself, to deal with any of those things. That's the reason for this request is to allow us the ability to realign, to look at a different structure for HR for our long term needs to have some succession planning, but also to get to provide both investigative expertise when we have some needs. We have outsourced a couple of times when we have had those needs, because we didn't have. the time in house to do it: We also do -- some of the training right now is done by outside vendors. We will probably still have some of it be done by outside vendors, but some of it can be done internally, especially compliance type of issues, and that's my objective is to look for somebody that can help us with internal training, whether it's Family Medical Leave training, whether it's Americans with Disabilities Act training, whether it's FLSA training -- we have many of those things from a compliance standpoint we just don't have the time to do and don't have the time always or the money to hire vendors to do it for us. We have a large work force in different locations and so we really -- having a person to be able to do that I think would be a better asset for the city and increase our level of service. Next professional services. This is the same number we have had in the last few years, but in the past we had dedicated that funds to our -- essentially management leadership vender with AspireOn. We still want to do some of that work, but in meeting with all the directors when we were able to go through the budget and go through the different enhancements requested -- and I will make acomment -- I guess some of what Stacy and Steve said, is since I sat over in that chair that's something I thought was a better way to do it and this year we were able to get a budget put together, not with just the Mayor's input and finance's input, but all the directors input. I think it was an invaluable process, because many years I sat here and I had no idea what anybody else wanted, I had no idea how many other employees they wanted to have, I didn't have any concept of what was important to them and what mattered or what our response may be from HR and legal would be to whatever their needs were. This was a great exercise. I think it was invaluable for all the directors to be involved in that and I thank the Mayor for allowing us to be a part of that it. I think it was a better product that you have in front of you because of it. Anyway, the directors -- the directors remarks to me was they -- they enjoyed and wanted to continue, but some of the services that AspireOn can do for us, but they also wanted additional services and they wanted opportunities to look at other vendors for other things besides just, essentially, one type of training. And so what they requested, which I agree with, instead of just being really just an AspireOn contract, which is what you have seen in the past, this is really for all varieties of professional services and my intent is, then, to work with the different departments so that we can meet their needs. Many times we can't always meet their needs as they have to find training money or we have to just forego certain types of training that we think are beneficial either city wide or department wide and we just don't have the funding for it. In the past few years we have had a small amount of money for some of it. I think this year it was -- it was either 5,000 or 2,500 for other professional services. Do you MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 40 of 160 recall? I think it was five. Anyway, use it up on the police project and that was it. And we had -- and we had to use other money to fund it. We didn't have any other money left. So, the intent of this is use it for all training for the city, for the departments. Some of it was AspireOn for some of their management stuff, but not to the degree that it's been in the past and some of it for other things. Next is IT and I'll let Teny take over, unless you have questions on this part or if you want to wait until the end. . De Weerd: Why don't we wait until the end. Nary: Okay. I'll let Terry come up. Patemoster: Hi, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Thank you for letting the IT department present •today our budget enhancement for fiscal year 2009. De Weerd: Welcome back. Patemoster: Thank you. De Weerd: This is a great way to come back from maternity leave, uh? Patemoster: Yeah. We just had a baby back on June 5th, my wife and I. It's the third one. So, I was off for a little bit, but I'm very happy to be back. Life is much more consistent. Starting with the first slide we have up here, this is the Information Technology staff. I think a lot of the enhancements that have been done in the past year can be contributed to the commitment and dedication of the staff that's up there. I'm not sure if you know everybody, but if the IT department would stand, just so that the Council can see you.. Over here we have Mike Tanner, which is our programmer. He came to us from Micron and has been an excellent asset to the city and a great benefit and he seems committed to stay at this point, which is good. We have Brad Lloyd, who is our help desk and lie also came to us from Micron. It seems like one person's down turn is another person's benefit. So, we have been blessed by the down turn at Micron. Brad's our help desk and he does a lot of great services. He's very patient. Anybody who's utilized his services can attest that it's been a great improvement to the IT department. He's very service oriented. He's patient and -- De Weerd: Thank you. Patemoster: -- very willing to help anybody and he doesn't make you feel dumb, which is very important. Right here we have Will Shannon, which he's a programming intern that's come to us from the technical charter high school. He's helping us improve some of these different applications the city has and he's been here about a month and has been working out very well. Then in back we have David Keeley, who is our server administrator, and David's been here for a few years and David helps us maintain the overall application of the servers within the city that take care of the back infrastructure that really makes things work and go. And, then, we have Keith Danielson and he's our network administrator and he goes on site a lot. He also helps maintain the backups ! I ~ t~ !~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t ~ ~ L' ~ ~~ I t ~ ~ } 1 ~ T ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~~ ~ ~ s ~ i ~ ~ i ~ ~ '~ 1 ~ ~I ,i i rri 1 { ~ ~ :i f ~ ~' ~ 'd ~ ~ ttt I Y i! I' i Tfttk: b~' , ~ d ~~ ~ ~z a ~' a s 7' + 1 ; y F ~; i a 1 t ~._ ~ ~ a ~ if : j ~ s ~ ' 1. ~ 1 ' ~ ` ~ ~ i 3 ~ ~ ~ ~ , r i ~ ~ . I ~ , I y ~ ~ 1~ t i ~~ ~ I :~ ~ ~ ; j ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~~ l 6 t % ~ i I k ia, 1 ! ~: i ~ r, -_, ~ 1 ~ 8 +7^ ~ ;F' ! s f ~ ( ~ ~ ~ ( ~ {'~ ~~ i ~; y t _ J ~ Y ~ ~ s { I ~ ~ ~ , e ~ ~ r 7 t q ~ ~ t , r ~ ~ R I ~,,~ • ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 41 of 160 and does a lot of customer support and I think that the IT staff is much different today than it was three or four years ago and I think that the level of service is improving within the IT department. So, thank you guys. Going on to the next slide. Going to the enhancements. This first one is a fiber build out and, basically, what the purpose for this enhancement is is that right now the way that the city connects the departments together is that we have a wireless network and although the wireless network does what it's intended to do, it definitely has, you know, some problems as far as reliability goes. I would say that the wireless network typically works 99 percent of the time, but when you have one percent of the time when it's down, it's really troubling, especially when it's two days in a row like it was recently for the fire department a couple months ago. It's very frustrating. And so what this request is is ACHD over the past few years has put fiber optics into the ground when they have done their builds and their digs and have done the road construction and what ACHD has been kind enough is that they have offered to allow the city to connect into their fiber ring and use their fiber optics, so that we can connect certain departments where the fiber is close enough for us to connect into for a reasonable cost. Basically, the departments that we are looking to connect together is we are looking to put the new City Hall, connect it to fire station one, to fire station four, with the police department and the water tower. You might say, well, why the water tower, it's kind of an odd location. But that's really the central hub for our wireless network. ~ Unfortunately, the cost of putting fiber optics in the ground for the city is very cost prohibitive. If the city was to go ahead and put in these fiber optics ourselves and say we don't want to use somebody's service, we don't want to be dependent on them, the equivalent would be about 500,000 dollars for the city to put this in. And so to do it for a fraction of that cost is a great benefit to the city. ACHD so far has been very willing to allow other agencies to connect in. We are not sure how much longer they might do that and so we think that it's time imperative that we do it now, that this is something that's very important, which, thus, it's the number one enhancement for the IT department. Going on to the next enhancement. This is for a training lab. As you may know, in the new City Hall there actually has been space allocated for a training lab. One of the deficiencies -- and it's been a long term vision for me personally, has been to provide training classes to other city employees for some of the basic applications, like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Powerpoint. How to use the intemet. How to do the help desk software. Right now the city doesn't really have a way to do this effectively. You know, typically when we have offered training in the past, invite employees into the Council chambers and we have one of the guys up there running a Powerpoint presentation providing this is how you do it. But although that is somewhat helpful, there is nothing better than really hands-on experience and we believe that through this enhancement that it's going to allow the city to provide better training to the employees, but improving the efficiency of the employees and saving cost, since it will reduce the amount of expense the city will have to pay to send people to training like Execu-Train or some of the other labs, which the IT experience has been is that it's increased about 50 percent over the past year just to send people to training, so -- Borton: Madam Mayor? MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 42 of 160 De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Just to jump in with a quick question at this point. It reminded me of an IT computer replacement question. When I looked at this enhancement and it showed you were going to use 17, 18 computers that aren't replaced to try to use them in this training lab, the question jumped to me why those computers would be replaced in just - - in departments generally. If you are going to use them to teach people to run our latest software, why would you need to get rid of them in the first place? Paternoster: Well, I think that one of the challenges with computer replacement is -- and it's been definitely a topic of discussion that's come up -- is when is the right time to replace a computer, which I think, ultimately, is really what the question begs. And think that, you know, for us is that -- you know, we do have a five year replacement policy that we have tried to implement. I think as we replace some machines recently we have realized that sometimes that policy doesn't always work the best. But in this particular instance, really, the reason that we feel that we can re-use these particular machines is that oftentimes when a user works at a computer, if they are using multiple applications at a time, they are not just using one application and, usually, it's that multi- tasking that really increases the load on the computer. In addition, the typically newer applications and keeping people up to date as far as the desk tops is a little bit more imperative with the machines that are used day to day versus something that's in a training lab and we might bring somebody in to use Word for a few hours and so the machines definitely would be -- I don't think are very well -- I don't think it's in the city's best interest to actually keep the machine in a live production environment. I think that it's much better in a training lab. I think one of the things that we are trying to do is to be conscious of the fact that budgets are tight, we are trying to be wise and good stewards of the money the city spends, therefore, trying to reuse a machine that maybe isn't the best machine in a day-to-day operation, but might work for a training lab. Borton: Okay. Paternoster: It might be next year that we come back and say, you know what, Joe, you were right, we found out that the machines didn't work so well and we might -- anymore with that? Borton: No. Paternoster: Let's go onto the next one. This is for a new position that the IT department is requesting and it's -- actually, this position is for a web content engineer and you might think, well, what's a web content engineer? And, basically, this is for a position that their duty is to .maintain the city's website as far as the content for consistency, for information to make sure that information is easy for citizens to find. We believe that this position actually will save the city time and money by making it more accessible to the citizens to find information. One of the difficulties with any website is making sure that information is consistent, that when you go to one page is it actually consistent with the other departments. Right now the way that the system ' I . 1 f F I G ~ ~ ~' ~ ~ ` ~__ J ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ! .~ t ~~ _ i. ~ .. t' { ~ ~ ~ . ~~ ~ ,iy{ f1 ~tf S,; 1 yyy l ! ~ ff„ ii ~ :~ `I- h j}r ~ 1 T~ ~? 2 f ~ / ~ ! ';; t f ~ ~~ 1 1 ~ j FFF + { C ~ Y y ~ ~ ~ ~ f ~ ~ ~.7 s C,~ y `` ~.~ 1 f~ I I f ~ ~ L ( ~ ! i•~~ i I ii M1 ~ l 4 .~ ~ 1 '~ I I i ~~ ~45~. LI ~yi~ ~ 1 I ~ ~., ~ µ~E ~ ~. ` ~ ~ ({ ~ f ' { r ~ ~t t ~:, t j I ~ t i i ~ ~ ~ ' ~ ~ 4( LR ~ Z~ ~t~ ~ ~ I S ~ . ~ ~ E... ~ ~' , s ~ ~ ~ ' I , f ititit ~ ~ ~ i 4' ~` ~ ~ ~ YYY ~~ + f~ , { + '~ ' ''~ ~ r ' ~r~ ~ ~ 1 1 I f ~ ~ 3 j I , S , ~~~ ~ ~ M ,! t , t ~ I ~ yy ; ~~ ~~ ~ ~ A ~ ;,' F ~ ~i ' y t,' ~. 3 {{ 1 G ~ { i i j ~, ` I5 ~~ ~ ( I . l i I 4~ j ~ .yg~ t'i ~ C} ~ ` ' Y ~f ~1 Q ~ 1 ~1- > ~ '* u i ~ ~ `~ 'S 1 a ~ 1, t E ( ! ~l '~r ~ i y Na'C t `4 t 37 c 7 ~ '' - ~ ~ i I ~ y3 r ' ' ley q~ ~ I b ~ ~ t } ~ ~ t ~~ r 9 ~ !k ~: j ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ f '}p~ g; I Q~ I ~ 1 ~ ' ~ tr_ ~ _ .~ ~ ` i ~ ~ j _ i '~ r~ 3t t }} ~ ` ' ` ~ ~ i ~ . ~ ~ t I E. I a r ' ~ ~~ ~ ~~ f F i ~ ~t ,~ I ~ S ` ' ,~ " ~ 1 r ~ ~ I i f i ,~, ~~: i t ~tt ~ Y fi q t i~ t ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~'s ,~ ' I ~t~- ~ ; I j~ ~ ! 4 [ ~ $ '~'.. ~ p~p '~ 5 `=!l MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 43 of 160 works is each department has a responsibility to maintain their site -- their section of the site. So, if I'm the Public Works Department or the Fire Department or the IT Department or the HR department, I control my site. Now, that may be great, but, unfortunately, there comes inconsistencies with that. Through the MIS committee, the information steering committee, we have had discussions regarding this and we actually had a survey of multiple departments earlier this year and the majority of the people supported having this type of position, to have one person really be that filtering person for putting content onto the website, so that that way there was consistency with the information, rather than having, you know, a mishmash and just have the people think, well, this doesn't really look professional. Onto the next slide. This is for a Microsoft Office upgrade. We are actually going to withdraw this enhancement. The reason being is that the purpose for this enhancement is to get everybody on the same version of Microsoft Office. Right now the city as a whole is on Office 2003. Microsoft's current version is Office 2007 and they are coming out with Office 2009 next year. Well, previously when the enhancement was submitted it looked like that they were coming out with Office 2009 next spring, the spring of 2009. After further research it looks like that that's been delayed and won't happen until the fall of 2009. Therefore, we believe it's in the city's best interest to forego this enhancement this year and wait until next year with it. This next enhancement is for backup software. One of the most important things to a city is our data. Making sure that are data is safe and secure and that it can be recovered. When the city needs information that we can go back and find, in the past the City Council has been generous in making sure that the IT department has the resources to make sure that we have a lot of our data backed up, that we have a disaster recovery plan, that we have the resources at hand to make sure that our data is protected. One of the problems that the IT department experiences is that backups are really inconsistent and it's partially due to software. It's partially due to people. About one-third of the backup jobs .that run nightly fail. Partially because there is a problem with the system, sometimes it's a problem with user en'or where our tape didn't get put into the backup system. Right now backups are handled by each department, so if I'm at the police department there is an individual who is responsible for putting the backup tape nightly. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't. If the person goes on vacation, sometimes that's not real consistent. What this enhancement is asking for is that through the increase of technology improvements there is ways to do backup centrally through compression that would allow us to centralize the backups at City Hall, rather than having each individual department backup the servers that are on site. And so what it would do is it would take off the burden of responsibility from the department and allow us to back things up centrally, so that it's in one location. The other benefit is like locations like the wastewater treatment plant, the water department, which have servers, those servers don't necessarily fail, so well into the disaster recovery plan. Sure we do a backup, we take the tapes off site. If something bad happened out there, like there was some sort of disaster, we would be able to get the data back, but the data would only be able to get back up to the point that we had the last backup tapes. Sometimes those backup tapes fail. You go -- you put in a backup tape, you think you're going to find something, and there is nothing there and so you end up going back a couple days, which costs staff time, because usually that represents somebody's work that was lost and so through this enhancement we will be able to backup centrally. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 44 of 160 Once it's here at City Hall we actually backup the data three times. It gets backed up to a SAN, which is a storage area network. We, then, replicate that over to the police department, so if we were to fail here, we would be able to quickly recovery from the police department. And, then, we also back it up to tape. Because we think that there is nothing more important than our data. This next enhancement is for web consulting and, basically, what this is to do is that the city's current website runs off a back in tool that's basically an administrative tool that allows people to add, convent, to add graphics and to do different management features. The current tool we use we got from Circle Tree Media as a free donation about four or five years ago. Although the software worked, there has been definite limitations because the software is not supported. It does not have updates. There is bugs within it and most of the people that use it would say that, you know, it doesn't always work as well as they think. Occasionally you will go in and make a change and everything will just disappear and you will think where did everything go? What happened? Well, what this enhancement is to do is to do two things. It's first to purchase another back in content management tool, so that we have better management of the actual pages that are displayed and the resources. The other part is to do a design of the website, so that we can get a new updated design that would just give the city a better look. We've had the current design for over four years now and we believe that it's time to bring in somebody outside to help us get a professional look to our website. Especially considering when you look at the website, the website is a huge tool for citizens. I mean it's a way for us to reduce staff time. People -- I don't know about you, but when I'm at home I don't want to call somebody, would much rather go to a website, go pay my bills, go find my information, get it and just take care of it. Because I can do it at anytime. I don't have to wait until 8:00 o'clock in the morning. I don't have to make sure I'm there at 5:00 o'clock at night. I can do it at anytime. Going on to the next enhancement, which is probably, obviously, our big enhancement -- is for the Enterprise software system. This enhancement has been long coming. I don't think that it's a surprise to anybody, the amount. I know that personally spoke before Council and said that we have been in the process for over two years now looking at different systems, doing analysis, and trying to figure out what exactly direction the city should go, what are the different systems available and we have had strategic audits done, IT audits that have recommended that we have a centralized system. And I know that the Council has definitely been supportive of this type of enhancement. Going on to the next page, which, basically, lists some things out, is -- the purpose of this enhancement is -- really can be defined in a few things and I think that the first thing that's important about this enhancement is that this is going to provide a method to enhance communication between departments. One of the biggest problems that the city has today is that although we have a lot of different systems that serve their purpose, none of those systems talk together and so what happens is you have a lot of redundancy of data. You have a lot of inconsistencies between data between different systems. You don't have a way to go to one system and necessarily pull together information. Through this particular system. we believe that we are going to be able to bring together a lot of the different services and functions that the city does into one centralized location that will provide better management, better communication, so that if somebody calls the Public Works Department or the Planning Department and asks questions to get the answer, if they were to call another department they would get MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 45 of 160 a similar answer. They wouldn't get a different answer, they would get the same answer, because the information that they are accessing would be consistent, it wouldn't be different. During this process one of the things that we have done is that we have actually -- the process started off by doing a lot of analysis and just looking at what do we have in place, what type of database, because at the time when we looked at it we had over 200 different databases that the city was utilizing. The number's actually increased today a little bit. After that we started saying, okay, what systems really need to be talking together, which departments are having communication problems and gaps and, then, the process after that was we started contacting other cities to say with these particular problems does any city actually have a solution, does anybody really have something. What we found is largely that you're not going to find one solution that's going to solve all your problems. It would be nice, but everybody said dream on, you're basically going to be lucky if you can do about 50 percent. And that's what we found. Through our analysis is we looked at about ten different software applications after talking to the cities based off of what they recommended and we went off and we started talking to vendors and we went through analysis through a subcommittee of the MIS committee made up of five people, a couple people from Public Works and the Building Department, two people from IT, John Overton from the Police Department, and Jaycee Holman and we looked at a lot of different systems. Through this evaluation we tried to come up with consistent criteria to say does this software work or is it garbage, will it really serve our purposes and will it serve our purposes not only today, but is this the type of vendor that the city would want to do business with, because they have a strategy not only for today, but for years to come. And during that evaluation the different areas that we tried to figure out is do they have a building permit. Right now probably the biggest sore spot for the city is with our building permit software. The city is using something called PT Win. We have had it for about ten years. We paid less than 5,000 dollars for it and that's about all it's worth and although it works for us today, I think it's not really designed for long-term use. It doesn't have a web interface. The database it uses is not a consistent database, but is used through the city. The city standardized on and Microsoft people back in, because it's a database that we can interface with, we can integrate. So, even if the system doesn't necessarily integrate with the other systems, we can make integration happen and that PT Win system, when we were in the boom period and the city was growing, it was crashing often. We had to send the database to get it fixed, because it just. didn't work. And so that's one of the main areas that we were really trying to evaluate. Based off of that we wanted to know does it have a plan interface, does it do any of the planning functions? Does it manage permits? Does it do code enforcement. Will it interface with utility billing or does it have a utility billing module. Does it have an IVR, which is a voice response system. Does it have GIS features. Does it have an accounting feature. Does it have document management. Does it have request tracking. These are some of the different things. Is there the possibility that the city could develop against the system? So, let's say that we purchase the system, is there a way that the city could do development, rather than paying an expensive programmer who flies in from some other state to do development? Through this process we, basically, were able to narrow it down to about two systems that we think that meet the needs of the city. Now, at this point we still have apprehension on whether or not those systems will do everything that MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 46 of 160 we need them to do. We still believe that there needs to be a gap analysis performed, basically, an analysis of what the departments do, so that that way we really can figure out if we go and purchase a software application, like this Enterprise system, what are the problems, because no matter which system you purchase the sales guy may say, oh, no, it will do everything. It will serve your wildest purposes. We are realistic and we know that that's not always the case and so we believe that it's important that we bring in a third-party consultant, which there is money available to bring in somebody to analyze that for us, to help us to find that gap analysis, to help us make sure that we are just not seeing it with binders on, because we have been looking at the same application for ten years, but we are really looking to the future. De Weerd: And that's in this year's budget? Paternoster: That's in this year's budget. Right. And the enhancement that we put in involves a couple things. It involves the software and, then, it also involves an application developer. Basically, a programmer who can be involved and the reason that it has a position with it is this -- the software itself isn't real expensive, I mean you might think, well, what do you mean, it's 863,000 dollars you're asking for, what do you mean it's not real expensive. But the software itself for this type of system is really about 200,000 dollars, but the rest of the money is for software maintenance and integration. It's because you have to pay people to come on site and integrate it and make it work exactly the way that we need it to work and that's about 50 -- I mean that's about twice the cost or three times the cost of the actual software. Now, at the time that we were doing this analysis -- and I wrote up the enhancement, the enhancement says, well, you know, we believe this is the first phase and at the time we weren't sure, because we still had a couple different packages to look at and we weren't positive at that point whether or not another package might come available that was worth more money. The enhancement that we are asking for today is sufficient to implement the Enterprise system and provide us with a lot of that centralized communication. A web tool. Purchasing the system will also help us to eliminate the need to purchase -- I mean to hire a web programmer. One of the things that we were looking at in the enhancement I previously had in place, but I had asked for it through the Mayor was to hire a programmer to do some web integration and enhancement for us. But the problem -- but the thing is if you buy the right software package, they have already done this for us. They have already integrated a lot of these pieces, so that you can do your building permits, you can integrate them with GIS, so that if you want to look at a geographic region and see what type of building permits or what type of other permits have been taken in this area, it will tell you that information. It does a lot of those nice web integrations, so that we don't have to hire somebody to do it. The advantage if you can get a software application -- I mean a software vendor to do that is that we are sharing of the benefit and splitting the cost between everybody, because if they develop it, they develop it for everybody and we split the cost. I think that at that point that is all I have to say. De Weerd: Good. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 47 of 160 Rountree: I thought this was the police presentation. Bird: The police will be fast and efficient. I have a question or are we going to wait until the end? De Weerd: Yeah. We will let the Boise prosecution team do their quick presentation and -- Nary: All lawyers are very short winded and very succinct. Bird: I was just going to say we have got more lawyers in here than we have got anything else. I'm almost scared. Nary: Don't you feel safer today? Bird: I can't believe the chief didn't bring more police officers. Nary: I have one more slide and we can talk about this this afternoon, but Idid -- we are looking at the custodial contract with City Hall and whether or not the contract for that service is currently -- this is a tentative amount based on really just a rough estimate of the cost from Western Building, what it would cost'for the City Hall building, as well as if we were to look at hiring our own custodians that would manage -- that would, basically, take care of ail the buildings in the city, except for the fire station, and what the cost of that would be, but we can talk about that at 3:30, the other government section, and, then, sometimes the budget process feels a lot like this every year, so I wanted to at least end on that note. I would introduce Cary Colaianni, the Boise city attorney, and Steve Rutherford, Teny Derden and Jodi Nafzger from the Boise city attorney's office to talk about our prosecution. De Weerd: Thank you. Welcome. Colaianni: Good morning, Mayor. Council Members. Thank you, Bill. Appreciate that. De Weerd: I'm sure your budget process is much smoother than this, uh? Colaianni: Well, let me say this, Mayor. We prepared a long program and a shot program and from your comments I'm going to give you the short program. De Weerd: Great idea. Colaianni: So, again, thanks for the opportunity to come and present the 2009 proposed prosecution contract with the City of Meridian. This is my fourth year as Boise City attorney presenting it to you. It is, in my opinion, one of the crown jewels of my administration and we treat it as such. It's very important to us. We have had a successful 2008 and we are going to talk to you today briefly about a -- what we intend to be a more successful 2009 prosecution contract, because we intend to provide t 3 .1 t F: } ~ 1; i ~. t. j! ~ ~ cl . Ei < ~ t'' ~ a r , f~~ y ! ~~ 1 ; ` ; ~ 77 i' ~ ~ I ;. } ~ {. 1 ~ t I: L * 1 . 'F"~ ~, G Y' ': ,. } t C ~,. F D r ."1 MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 48 of 160 enhancements that heretofore have not been seen in .prosecution anywhere in the state of Idaho and I think I can say that. One of those things that we are going to talk about today is our new case management system, which we mentioned last year. It is now up and running and tracking your cases. Not just tracking them, but allowing our lawyers to go to court and look at your cases live and present those, as well as provide you with some meaningful information and reports to tell you how we are doing in prosecution of your cases and, then, let the chief know exactly what we are doing. We have been talking to him about that offline. Also, we will be talking to you about providing additional police and vice coverage in this coming contract this coming year and some other perks. And with that I will tum it over to Jodi Nafzger and let her give you some of the details. Thank you. De Weerd: Thank you. Nafzger: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you for this opportunity. I wanted to note for you some of those improvements that we are offering as part of our services to the Meridian Police Department and the city. First of all, as you know, we have a seasoned group of prosecution staff, but we are in a unique spot now that we have truly experienced attomeys in those roles. We have about 28 attorneys in the office, 18 of those are devoted criminal attorneys. But, obviously, prosecuting the cases that come out of Meridian are different than providing police advice to the officers who help us with those and who investigate those crimes. So, one of our biggest goals this year is to focus on broadening that level of experience within our office and so we have seven or eight attomeys that are dedicated police attomeys. We started a rotation as part of our services to Boise Police Department and we also provide at two to three attomeys that are police attomeys for the Meridian Police Department. We are working with Chief Lavey right now to extend our service to include another half day. Currently Terry Derden spends Tuesdays and Friday afternoons at Meridian being accessible to officers, processing public records requests that come through the department; truly that's also an opportunity to sit down and meet with the victim-witness coordinator and talk with victims of domestic violence. So, we want to provide an added service of being there more often, being accessible, and we are working with the chief to isolate the best day to do that and be more accessible to officers. Additionally, we, as you know, provide legal service. We are available 24 hours a day. Currently Terry Derden is available 24 hours a day and perhaps most importantly for Terry's quality of life, we also have the pager, which is truly within the location of seven or eight police attorneys that are answering questions of police officers anytime day or night. We are also continuing our training part. That is a very important part of the service we provide. We provide annual training to the police department. We train all the new police officers in advance academy three or four times a year and we also do briefing scenarios. Every time a new case that affects police officers becomes a law in our state, we provide a multiple choice -- literally a question and answer session that can be worked through in briefing and, then, that is -- as the chief has told us, then, that gets put in a book and is accessible to officers and so that's something we are providing and making sure that new cases are quickly covered and not just in our annual training each year. And, finally, I wanted to tell you about our new division manager, who hired, which is going to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 49 of 160 become a huge resource for police. Ralph Blount comes out of the A.G.'s office. He's been a deputy A.G. formerly and has also trained at POST, taught at POST, provided some paralegal training and services before that time and has been a paralegal for the Attorney General's Office before his spot as an attorney and he is truly coming to us with a huge background working back on how cases progress through our court system and is really going to provide an asset to police. So, those are some of the improvements that we are offering Meridian Police Department and the City of Meridian and hope to provide you excellent police resources. With that I'll turn it over to our Chief Deputy Steve Rutherford. Rutherford: Good morning. De Weerd: Good morning. Rutherford: Just to follow up on what Jodi said, really, the goal is to enhance our prosecutor's experience. We have got some folks who want to do more than just go to the courtroom and so we thought feeding those folks to live police officers and police administration to answer questions, again, that experience would prove beneficial to them in their careers and to Boise city police and Meridian city police as well. I'm here to talk to you about just a couple quick things and, then, be the closer. The first is to make you aware that there is a new court trial system that is saving you money as we speak and it's an enhancement that's brought to you by the court system and our office. Previously, the way we handled court trials was we subpoenaed your officers to show up and a pile of them to show up and some cases would go to trial after we talked to folks, some cases wouldn't, but the bottom line was you were paying officers to be there. We have gone to a pretrial system now, so instead of handling 240 court trials a weeks, we are handling 240 kind of pretrial conferences for court trials. So, on speeding tickets and those kind of things, the officers don't have to show up in court and we are actually showing some success in that out of, you know, 60 settings in a day we will have eight or nine of those that actually are going to go to court trial, we will set those for another day and, then, we will have to only have to subpoena the officers for those nine, instead of subpoenaeing officers for the 60. So, it's new. We are still working out the kinks, but ultimately it will save you some money in the long run. Currently, the trial court administrator is engaging a consultant to do an efficiency study to try to figure out whether or not there is a better mouse trap, whether or not there is better scheduling. It is a welcomed study in our estimation to just the theory of adding courtrooms, adding judges, which is difficult for us to keep up with and just makes our City Council weary when we come back and ask for more prosecutors. So, we have participated in that study by offering 5,000 dollars towards the cost of that study and we will be reporting to you about the benefits of that study. Hopefully, we will deliver. Finally, the case management system -- Terry has some handouts for you and, again, will be very brief, but I think it's a significant improvement. This is the thing that Terry talked about as being a fundamental change in our office that prosecution in this state has not seen. We implemented this system over the spring, went live on June 2nd. All new cases now are fed into this system. This system effectively is a large rolladex. Every person that touches a case, prosecutor, police officer, witness, victim, defendant, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 50 of 160 is a record in this system and if you tum to the page that says manager screen, it looks like this, it will show you a little piece -- a tool that I have. It shows you the actual number of cases per prosecutor at any one time. So, I can tell exactly how many cases each prosecutor is handling. When Terry Derden goes to court tomorrow and sentences 20 people, he comes back and feeds that in, those cases will drop off. So, it's a realtime view of what these prosecutors are doing and least you feel bad for Jodi Nafzger, she is a screening attomey and so every citation, every piece of correspondence that comes in our offices goes across her desk, gets assigned to her, and as soon as those files are routed back to police or dismissed or charged in some other form or fashion and assigned to a new prosecutor, those drop off her numbers and feed into those other prosecutor's numbers. This system will provide benefit to you in that it creates efficiency for our prosecutors again in that in a wireless environment we are at the courthouse and we have this information with us, instead of a paper file -- and Council Member Borton will understand this -- a pretrial conference, instead of showing up with a paper file, with a police report, an audio tape or a CD, we will have a prosecutor with a laptop that will tum the laptop around at the pretrial to the defendant and the defense attomey, they can listen to the audio tape in the courtroom, they can look at the photos. If there is video they can look at the video. All is electronic on that -- on that computer on a wireless system. So, there is no more reason to continue cases while the defense attomey or a defendant comes and reviews an audio and comes and looks at a video. All of the information for them to make a good decision to settle the case or make the case go away is going to happen in the courtroom that day, which should lead to some efficiencies. Finally, I think the most important thing for you in terms of enhancements -- we intend to bring you quarterly reports and those quarterly reports will be very specific and can be tailored to what you ask us for, what Bill Nary asks us to bring. We can tell you how many -- we will be able to tell you how many Meridian cases we have, how many we have active, how many we have closed, what the dispositions of those were. For instance, this case so -- or case management system is so sophisticated that if, Mayor, you told me that at the end of the first quarter you wanted to see how many citations were written for your new covered load ordinance and how many officers and written citations and what happened with those citations, I could hit a button back at my office and make that happen. De Weerd: Now, would this be able -- you know, I have been asking our police department if we could track citations based on location, like Eagle Road, Franklin, you know, some of the major arterials on who are residents and who are not residents. We'd like to kind of track the number of nonresident vehicles that we do cite. Can you do something like that? Rutherford: I better turn it over to the guy who implemented the system. De Weerd: Okay. Derden: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, in addition to my Meridian duties, I have been the project manager for Justware. You said you wanted to know all the speeding tickets at the location of Eagle Road and Overland and you wanted know -- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 51 of 160 break it down even further to address. That would be in there. When a citation comes across to us we have to enter all the personal information, the name, address, phone number of the person. It would be easy to tell just where a search for that location of Eagle and Overland or where the complaint of where the crime occurred and, then, also break it down by what their home address showed us. So, we could see that -- that someone at a Meridian address, this is a Boise city address, or any other address entered in the system. So, it's possible. We have the ability with Justware -- we have believe 48 hours every year that we have bought as part of our contract with them to have them build us specific reports. So, there is some time lag in having us -- have a crunch made and have them build you a report, we are also hoping to train someone in our office to be the person that builds the report and from the way that looks that might very well be me. But we have -- we may have these others to even build specific reports that could do that sort of thing. So, yeah. De Weerd: Okay. Just one other question, then, in that regard. Will it be able to track fine collections? Derden: Madam Mayor, Justware has a financial piece to it that we are not currently using. It tracks our restitution, because we need to keep track of that for probations and things ordered. We have left our fine agreements still within Ada County court. What we have looked at is we are doing the civil piece for our Justware system in the fall, hopefully, sometime. We are going to be tracking financial data. It may be that if we see that that works well, we will come back and track the financials in the Justware system. De Weerd: Any other questions, Council? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Real quick. If it's a report that might be available, could you depict the city and the geographic hot spot regions based on certain crime statistics that would show up where there might be a high frequency of DUIs or battery, things like that? Derden: Yeah. Madam Mayor, Councilman Borton, I think I understand what you're asking me. So, could we look at -- by breaking down locations of where crimes occurred, where the number is? Borton: Yeah. Kind of scatter plotted on a map. Derden: I think that would be possible to do that. What the report would show us was the location. I mean we have -- we have a locations that we charge on a citation or a complaint. This is where the crime occurred. There would be no problem, I think, with pulling up a report of give me all those locations and, then, all locations that match. It may take someone to actually eyeball it and put it on a map itself. But finding all the J .: $ ~ fC ti ~~ ? a ~ ~; F ~. ~ I 1- r' ~ `~ ~; a ~; .. ~! r ~ L 5 ~ .r-' ~ '~ !> MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 52 of 160 locations is something that we do track, because it's going.to be part of the case. Also the complaint. De Weerd: I think we already do that with our crime analysis. Derden: Okay. So, finally, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, again, as we go forward, we are going to provide you some -- some reports on a quarterly basis that give you what we think is meaningful information, but as you see opportunities for us to give you information that you specifically ask questions about. De Weerd: Fine enforcement. Fine enforcement. Derden: On fine enforcement, we are in a weird spot, quite frankly, with court in terms of whether or not, with this new (STAR implementation, whether or not the court's going to actually use a collection service. There is a .state statute that allows the court to use, basically, an outside -- to hire a collection agency to do the collections for them. The collections now is through Ada County is -- through the courthouse system is somewhere below 20 percent, as I understand it. The idea would be, if, in fact, they do this, they use a collection agency, they can tack up to the cost of recovery or any of the cost of the collection agency. The statute gives Ada County the authority to tack up to 30 percent on for that fee. So, ultimately, it tags the user for us having to go that route. But collections is a huge, huge focus and now it's kind of brought to the attention of an interim legislative committee. But that's one thing that we as courts don't do very well is collect stuff. So, that is --that's going to continue to be an ongoing discussion. But right now that is the leading candidate is a collection agency -- an outside collection agency. The county holds most of the cards in that situation, unless they do what the city of Boise did, which is have your own collections force and that's somewhat effective, although, you know, a meaningful countywide solution or district wide solution for this district would be probably the best. De Weerd: Well -- and I think that's what Garden City does. They have a collections and they collect over 300,000 -- 400,000 a year, I believe. Derden: Right. I have put before you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the contract extension document. I hope you have seen this before. It really reads very similar to ones in the past. We haven't added the fact that we are going to add a third half day. That was an off-line discussion with Chief Lavey and we think it proves meaningful for both your folks and our prosecutors, so we are just going to add that. The annual increase -- or the increase this year is 5.6 percent. As I looked over the last three years, we have brought 28 percent, 20 percent, and 20 percent, I'm happy to report that it's 5.6 percent. Really, that accounts for a small increase, similar to the increase you're experiencing in health benefits, in addition to we continue to try to keep our attorneys at market rate and so we -- there has been a small bump for that as well. Otherwise, the total amount for this year would -- of the proposal is 255,074, for a monthly installment of 21,312 dollars. I would be happy to answer questions. ' ~,' ~ 1y ~` f ` ~`1 ~ s ~ i I ~ ~' ~+ ~ i` ~' F I ~ '~ fit.: 3 i. 1 ~ ~~~ ~~ ~n ~~~ 1 a ~'~ ~- i { MMM ~ I ~~ ~ G ~ S ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~_ .! ~ i : i I 1 ~ i , ~ i .. ~ k (,Y S - 'j ± ? { 1.. T ~ Y ~ ~ ~ T ' t i ' ~' ~ ~ ~ A . k`L ' ~ ~ tt f , ~fi ' ~ ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~ ~ ~'~ ~ ~ ~ x Y r i ~ ~ I' i i' f i y , i i. ( ~) if l3 ~, t f i ~ ~ Y ~ ( ` i ~ } 4L"~~~~ r ~ ~s ~ ~ ~ - t ~ F t , 11 )' ~ i3 y i 5 ~ )5 tA(I ~ S n I I~.1 ~ ~ ~ S y~ . P ~~ ~ } R a i i '~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~,: ~ ~ ~ _ _ ~ £~y i ~ 3 ~ "~' ~ ~ ' ~~ ~ ~ ~- ~ ~.j ~ 7 ~ j ~##~ t .. '~ i~}'~ ~2 ~ ~ .fir ~ .R +' 1 ~ ~ „ E ~ 7 I.., ~ ~ ~fiT,~ . ~., '~ i ? ~~F ~ i1. . ~~ f ~i N ~ i ? ~3 : S Y~ FF~~L jj~ i ~~ F ii i ~l'; MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 53 of 160 De Weerd: Okay. Council, do you have questions? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: Just want to refine what we can track with that software on the specifics we are looking for, but we will talk with you later. Thank you. Coliainni: Mayor and Council Members, thank you again. And, Mayor, we will work with you off-line and the Council to tailor the case management system to meet your needs and the things you're looking for. It's a robust system. We don't even know what it can do yet, but we will certainly keep in communication with you, so we can get you the numbers that you're looking for. De Weerd: Thank you very much. Nary: That concludes our presentation. Any questions? De Weerd: Thank you. Council, questions for Bill and his -- and/or his staff? Bird: Madam Mayor, I'm sure they will be around when they get back to the 3:30 one, won't they? And we can go through some of that. I do have some questions on the IT and I'm sure Terry will be around. De Weerd: Mr. Bird, you're going to have to speak up. If I can't hear you -- Bird: I appreciate that, having to speak up. I can ask Terry one right now. Terry, you know, three or four years ago we was told that the wireless was the way to go and all this kind of stuff and now we are told that we need to invest 40 some thousand dollars to get fiber optics ten or -- connect our buildings. I have got the same problem with spending 800 -- over 800,000 dollars with a program that maybe in five years will be outdated or -- what do you think? What's your opinion? Patemoster: On which part, Councilman Bird? Bird: Well, you know, the wireless that we -- Paternoster: The wireless? Bird: -- isn't as dependable as we thought it would be four years ago. Paternoster: I don't think that it's really -- I think that it's time when we implemented the wireless solution, because the wireless won't completely go away. There is certain locations, like a wastewater treatment plant, fire station two, fire station three, that will continue to be on wireless. I mean we have also implemented wireless at the parks to manage the security system that are at the parks department. I think that when we look at the wireless is really what we have to ask ourselves -- because, really, what's the ~ ,i y, '°; ~} :1j ,~~ :. ~ . .' ~ -_ 'r.': .I °i i' i' ~:': s E!! ti ~.~ k. S MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 54 of 160 long-term plan of the city? I mean how important is it that if a disaster did happen that we can recover, how important is it that we have residual lines of communication, rather than just having one method. Right now we don't have a backup plan in the event that the wireless does go down. If we look at the consolidation of departments into City Hall, we say to ourselves -- we say, well, you know, where are the most -- where are the largest departments, once City Hall gets consolidated. And, really, the truth is it's the police department. The water department and the wastewater plant have really less than 30 people and they don't usually have more than ten people that are on a computer at a time anyway. And so it's aless -- much smaller impact to those locations if something went down. Plus the cost to get out to those locations through fiber would be very cost prohibited, since ACHD doesn't have fiber to those locations or even remotely. I think that. when we look at fiber what we have to say is that this is really a long-term plan. This is a vision. Ultimately I think that the IT department would like to see the entire city be connected completely through fiber. However, at this point we realize that it's very cost prohibitive to do such, thus, we are choosing to, you know, figure out what's the best cost effective way to do that, which is connecting to ACHD fiber. De Weerd:. See, we put IT under legal, because there is no short answer. Nary: That's right. De Weerd: I would say to Boise -- you know, Council, if there is no question for our prosecuting team, we will let them go. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Before they go I just want to -- probably the sentiments of all the Council, thank you for what you guys do. And in particular when you present today it seems like you're making great efforts to bring up enhancement in the service that we might not even ask for. It's really proactive and it's really appreciated. You guys do a good job. De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I would also comment while they are here -- it's not really directed at them, but just the concept of Boise being able to have probably a larger department than you would otherwise, with more expertise, because you subcontract to us and probably with some of the other cities, I think that's excellent for Boise, it's excellent for us, because you have greater resources by allowing us to participate with you. That I appreciate on your behalf. I just would throw out a thought to all of our directors in other departments, is there any area where Meridian could become the overall expert for a region on a similar plan and subcontract out to other cities some of our services that would allow us to have bigger and more expanded and more specialized service to offer, not only ourselves, but others. Thank you all. ~ ~ ~ ~ i ~ 7 ~ ~ ~ r~ K- ~! SSf # C ~ ~ a! ~ e i 1 ~c ~;' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ' 3 is ; ~i l~~ ~~ ~ i~ , k ~ i ii fe 7 y~ ¢ ~~ ~ ~ i ~ { 1 ~ I H t ~~ ~ ~ 3 I ! ~ ~{ 1 j a ~ ~ ~v I ~ 1 ~. tl-. ~ ~ ~ a STt ~ ~ i >~ d e^.: 1{ '~` - 1 ~ d ~ ~~ -f f f >> ; ~ ~. ~~ ~ 1 . ; ~ ~ ~ ~ ~j , :i 666 ~I ~ ~ t ~~1 ~ 1 ~ ~, ~ ~, ? a ~ S ~ ~ w ~ 2 v ~ ~ ~ 1 '' ' ,; ~ 1 r i ~ ~~ ~ ~ Y ~ ~ % x ~ ,~ z ~ k F , r ,~ ! ~ ~ li I 1 ~ ~ 1 ~~ ~~ 1 , i ~ yF~ c s ~. QY .. ~ ~ 1 ~ • ~ ~ F t i h Z a - 1 ~ fi ~ t ~ r c 1 f } 1 ' ~ , S Z , ~ 2 ~ ~ 1 !~Y"t j { ' i , t ' ~/ ~ . ~ 1 S'' -A .~ . I 7 F. 1 v ~ :~ ~. { ~ ~ ~ ~" t •~I I ~! .? t ~ ~ ! ~~ ~ q ' i ) LLt F v - 1 ~ 1 ~ FBI e ~ ~ ? " { ~ I ~` ~ ~ ' `t ~ 4 ~`~' ~ 1 r ~ ~ i x; ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 I ~ , + ~ s~ , ~; . , :f g ~ il:: 4 1 . L i ' L t~ ~ ~~ ~ : ~ 1 ~ i~ i ~e # {. ~ s t tj 1 ,~ . i. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 55 of 160 De Weerd: Thank you. Appreciate that partnership. Rountree: Bill, I -- on the contract extension and the amount, where do I find that? Nary: The amount? Rountree: I got the amount on an extension, but -- Bird: There was not any in the budget? Nary: It's in the finance. Rountree: It's in the finance? Nary: Finance. Actually -- is it in the police budget? You folks track that in the police budget? De Weerd: In the police budget, yes. Nary: Yeah. So, between Chief Lavey and myself, we are the ones that, basically, interact with Boise of whether there is information that's necessary, responses to citizen issues, response to officer issues, but it's tracked out of the police budget, not out of -- notout of the legal budget. Bird: And, of course, the revenue goes to the police department, too. Nary: Absolutely. Bird: Into the revenue -- De Weerd: Yes. And, sorry, Keith, did Terry answer your question? Bird: Yeah. I appreciate that. I do have a couple others, Terry, because I'm real -- you know, I'm real technology smart, so -- I got some questions. On the web consulting, 33,500 and web content engineer for 83,480, if we hire a -- if we hire afull-time guy just to work on the web -- is that what that guy is for? Patemoster: It's -- I guess it depends on which aspect you mean as far as working on the web. If you mean actually -- Bird: Your employee that you're hiring. Number three. Paternoster: Do you mean putting data on the web or do you actually mean developing tools for the website? j. t jj 'S~ • ~ E ii ~ '~ ll ~-i +~~ i R ik r,~ ~ , {' f z ~ t ' YY tF t+ F i ) ~ i Y 7 ~ ~ ~ , 1 ~ s ~ e7 i jj jj ' ~~ ~ ~ ' ~ f , ~ j ~ +. ~' c~ ~ i ~ ~ r .,t ~ r ~~_ ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~71 Y r q r ~ ~ . 7~ E .x ~ -..*~ b eo ~ ~~r ~ `~ ~~ ~{- k 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t ~l ' ~` Y ~~ t ~~ ~~~ 3 p E _ ". . i~ . ~ F ~ + ~~ ~. ~ i ~.fi1 ~~ ti ' ~ 6 ~ ~ ~. '{~ ~ j { (' i. ; ~ M ie~. ~ k e t $ ,'... SI ~ t ~ ~ i i t_z 1 I ~ i . ~ ~ 4 ? ~~. ' ~ ~- g E e '~ I i ~ ` t R i r - ~ ~~ . F 1 ~j ~ ~ a K y ti p ~ ~ _~ a { g ,t i ~ 8 ; } ;'' ~~~' ~, ~ ~ q ~ ~~ i S ~~ ~, ~' s •*~ W ~},~ n' ' ~~- ~ ~~ ~rtt:; ~;~; k'2 ~ ~ ~ L y i ~~~~ ~ { t ~~ 1' '~ ~~ , i ~ i ~` ff F 3 r~~~ f 1F1-~~ps'~ - ; di ~i ~. ~ ~F ~2 ~ tt iY rf ~~SSi k* t I ~ f j ;i 4 '' ir' I 1 S ~ T ~~~ ~ ~4 ~f ;~+' ~X 1 . _' # H F t ~~`~1 i ~I I ~ j #,,n ( ~ S l ~ t ~ I ' r i ~ih~ Ju ~ { t~~~ i '~ 1 MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 56 of 160 Bird: I'd say he would probably do everything. All of it, wouldn't he? Paternoster: That's not really our view. I think that our view is that this person's primary job is really more of one of communication where the position's really uploading information, making sure that information is easy to find. Although they may do some development, that wouldn't really be their core purpose. Bird: You don't think we could outsource that at a cheaper rate? There is people that put in -- do websites and -- Paternoster: That's what the 33,500 was for is actually to purchase a tool that would allow us to do that. Bird: Then, tell me where we need number three. I'm asking. Paternoster: Well, number three is -- even if you consult it out, like an actual tool, so you had the tool to improve the website, really, what we are talking about is communicating effectively to the public and one of the drawbacks of the current website is that each department basically manages their section and, therefore, there is inconsistency. So, if I'm a taxpayer and I'm trying to look for something and I go do the HR department, it might not be an intuitive location -- I might go to the fire department and say, oh, yeah, that's where it should be and it's really to try to enhance the way that the information is presented, so that it's easier for departments, it's easier for taxpayers, it's easier -- which does save taxpayer money, because we are reducing the amount of calls, potentially, that would be made to the city, because they would have better communication for the tool itself. Nary: Councilmember Bird, I can maybe supplement that, too. I mean, one, we did it before that way and when we first originally got this website up, basically, the whole tool of managing it was done by an outsource. What we found is when it doesn't work we are not always the first person they are going to fix. So, it's not the best method to maintain your website. The accountability, when the person works for us, is greater. The skill sets are a little different, because I asked Terry the same question, I mean why are these two different things, but the skill sets are different. I mean just like when we talked about Brianna working in IT and her expertise being in graphic design is significantly different than say Will's is in programming as an intern. And that's the reason why we -- when we made the decision to put these in as enhancements, we felt the accountability was critical for the person who is going to maintain the website to make sure it functions, make sure it interacts and works properly and it's consistent, but we could actually outsource the design, rather than hire a person just to maintain that part, but it would be -- we feel it would be very difficult to find someone who had both skill sets in the same person. That's not very common to find that and that's why we felt that getting the design on a contract basis would probably make the most sense and maintaining it would be best as an internal function. ' {~{~ ~~. ~ ~ i r t ~ E ~ , ~ ' ~' ~ f ~ I I { Y .~ ~. 1 I t. j, S ~F ~ t F ~ ~ r ~ a k t ~ ~ ~! 7 ?~b t t ~ . ` i ? I!~. ~. } ff~L 1 ~ ~ ; F 22~ i.~ ~ ` ~ ' ~ 1 ~~ ~i~ a ~; ~ f ~ $ f. fj 1 ~ t, . ~. a~f t ~y-~ ~.: ~ I f r f '~ € 1 t ~ ~ ~ .. k . ~ ! t ~ • i "J ~ij( ~ {-~# ~ ~ .~ f r { t '~ j fir. i I t ~ ~ ~ -: ~ ~ ~ # ~ 6 ~ ~~ ~ i ~ ; 1 ~; yii s ~ i I ~ ~ ~ ~ ` f ~` FL ~ 1 y 1 t ~ h 2 S Y 6 r ~ ~ ~ ` a yy 44 j~ ~ r } f. ~ ~ ~. t~ , ~ L ; - ~`' 3 }p j ~~ `rv S 1 `; ~ I ~ ! ~~ , `~ 118 ~ ~ i ~~ ~~~ ~ a_ , ~ ~ i ; 1 t 1 ~ ~ ~ r , ~ 1, 1 1 ~ ~ d t rx. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ E ~~ ~ -;~ 'y # i 7 `~ C i ~: ~ 6~ J ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ :1 1 ~~ f f , 1 r'~ ~.• i ,d' ~~ 4_. S ua A<'' ~ a t y y .~ 1 V I I' 1 ,c , a ~; ~~ 3- i f. $' ! ~ j s 4. 3 i ,1 .R: r f t :e 3 3 ~' ~ ~ 3 r i J' _. ~ . i~c 1 ' MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 57 of 160 Bird: The only-- the only question I got is on that number three enhancement is that a 40 hour a week job after we once get set up? I mean, geez, I -- I don't know. That's what -- I don't know. Nary: I think to expand the services to make it more usable for the public; you will find plenty of opportunities. Again, the website is not a static thing. You don't want it to just be a fixed thing daily. There is a lot of information we use our website for. There is a lot more we could use it for. So, I don't believe it would be money wasted -- I mean there is certainly other programming functions that a person may be able to do -- Bird: That's what I'm asking. Nary: -- as well. There may be some other areas they can assist in. I mean it may not be that just only web, but their primary responsibility will be dealing with the web page. Bird: Yeah. I mean he -- I would think that -- I don't know, but I would think he would have time to do other stuff that -- Nary: I would think so. Bird: Research and stuff like that. I mean once you get it set up and get it going. Paternoster: Well, we believe that, too, and I think that one of the things that kind of goes along with this position and one of the struggles that the IT department had is that -- Mike's our third programmer. Last year we had one programmer for four months, we had one for two months, now Mike's my third programmer, and each one of those guys left to make significantly more money. I think that part of the vision with this content engineer is in addition to taking care of content, and, hopefully, we can mentor them in development and to having tools and resources help out with the programming aspect. Now, we don't believe that that will be their core of duties, but over time I -- our hope is that if Mike, God forbid, did leave us at some point in time, that we would have somebody who would at least be able to help us get along and do some of those supplemental functions until that point. Bird: Okay. De Weerd: I thought we made them sign contracts in blood. Right, Mike? Nary: Courts have had such a hard time enforcing those. Bird: Anybody that can advance themselves, I think you're great. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree. ,: 1~~~~~ ~s 1= ~', :~ f± F. h,. r',', ,I Fi. ~~ 3~' li ~; ~',, tr ii. tf, '~ ~f '. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 58 of 160 Rountree: Same comment as previously. You know, I think as opposed to 23 percent, we are looking at 200 percent. But I -- I don't struggle with that, because I want to compliment the IT people for recognizing that we either do it now or we pay a whole lot more money in ten years to get an Enterprise system and I know it's a staggering number, but it's going to be much bigger if we get more than the 230 systems we might have now and it starts proliferating and it's 500 and 600 and pretty soon when I ask for information and get information and David asks for information and gets information and we sit down and talk about the information we have, we are not communicating, because the information is different. And that's already happening, I believe, and it's going to get worse. So, I support that and .have to support it, even though it's a tremendous increase in fees. About the position you were just talking about, one of the things that you're building your support for, it seems to me, is customer service and I guess I'm not aware that the customer service from our web from input and feedback from our customers is not good. Is that a true assumption on my part? Is there actually feedback that it -- that's not functioning and bad or is that just our preference? Nary: Well, I think the feedback -- we get internal feedback that it doesn't function as well as things that the departments think could be more of a benefit to the public. You know, whether it's access for bill paying, whether it's access for plan permits and other types of things, there isn't a way to do some of those things today. The public in general is kind of hit or miss. Some folks know where it is. Some folks use it. I don't think it's used as widely as it could be. I think there is a lot of tools, if you go in other city -- many other cities have a lot more access to information than we do. So, I think it can be enhanced. I mean I wouldn't say it's certainly a negative today. It's certainly -- but Ithink we have gone past -- you know, for a lot of -- for a couple of years what we have today was way better than what we had before it, but I think we have gone past that honeymoon period that that's good enough and I think Terry's -- Teny's staff and Terry and working with the other departments know there is much better tools and means for the public to access information and, again, we want to direct folks to the website. Everybody that uses the website, if they can get the right information and get it timely, is one less phone call, one less person to track down, one less phone -- phone barrage we have to go back and forth with, so we are trying to improve the quality of service. You know, I said to my staff through the whole process you all know which office car that I drive, so I have always said, you know, we can keep driving that Corsica until the wheels fall off or we can start getting better and so I think our enhancements, for the most part, are really attempts to get better. De Weerd: You know, I might say that probably our department gets a handful of those phone calls and people frustrated in trying to navigate the website and -- and primarily that's in the clerk's information and finance information and I guess from that consistency standpoint, better tools, greater access and transparency, that is the goal here and how we get information out to the citizens or at least that -- it's on there, it's sometimes not very easy to find and that's where most of the frustration and feedback that we get is regarding. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 59 of 160 Nary: If you have ever walked somebody through, saying you can find this here. Get to this page, click on this link, now you go to that link, click down to 2008, click down to that link and by. the time we walk them through five minutes of it they are frustrated. They can find it the next time and so that's helpful, but it is very difficult to keep doing that and it's not very intuitive to folks. De Weerd: Council, we are not quite an hour over our -- our schedule and what I will recommend is that maybe we continue this discussion at our discussion period when that comes up and that we work through lunch. We have a small break, so you can get your lunch and, then, continue on. Does that seem feasible? Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Our next item up is our police department and apologize for the delay. Thank you, HR, IT, and legal staff. Lavey: Okay. Madam Mayor and Council, thank you for the opportunity here today. It's always nice to actually be able to go before the fire department and Chief Ron Anderson, so -- Keith actually said that he thought this would be short, but those of you that know me, I do like to talk, so I will try to make this as brief as possible. I do believe that we need to set the tone for the day, though, and this was given to me by finance, but it basically says because of budget cuts we have to use the photocopier until we can get the mug shot camera repaired. This is a unique year for us in that we have had to change some things in how we have done business and how we kind of looked at things. I don't believe we are in the dire straits that some people think out there, but we do need to take a second and third look at how we do business. Of course, you all know me, I believe, and I'd like to take the opportunity to introduce the command staff. They are here today. You can see we do have a deputy chief position that still remains vacant. I believe in finding the right fit and we haven't got to that point yet, so that will remain vacant until such time. Lieutenant John Overton I believe is sitting over at the computer just in case the wireless fails, so he said he would volunteer to be my minion today and I said I will do the computer if you want to talk. So, he's doing the computer. John is in the community services division of the police department. Lieutenant Bob Stowe is sitting here -- De Weerd: We are glad you dressed up, Bob. Lavey: I did make a comment that he was sitting next to five attorneys, so beware. Bob is in the uniform patrol division. Lieutenant Tracy Basterrechea is in investigations. At least he did wear a tie. And Lieutenant Scott Coliainni. Scott Colliainni is our newest lieutenant and I was going to bring him to the workshop in -- in July and introduce him -- him to you and also our new K-9 partner, but we figured the K-9 partner would be more interesting than Scott, but -- so we sent the K-9 partner back to Holland and we will get to that later on. The first thing I'd like to do is -- is just kind of thank the men and women of the Meridian Police Department. We have had another great year and it's not about me, it's about them. They are the ones that do the job and I'd just like to publicly thank them. I just wish more of them were present for that today, but I believe that that word gets back to them quite often. Our team. We currently have 79 police officers in the Meridian Police Department. When I came on 12 years ago we had 34, which just kind MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 60 of 160 of gives you an idea of how far we have grown. We have 23 support members. We have four part-time members and a total of 106 employees. We are the largest department in the city. We are, basically, broke down into three divisions. A patrol division, a criminal investigative division, and a community services division. We partner with our citizens and so far in 2007 we have 6,710 volunteer hours. Those are free hours to the city. No cost to us, just the benefits. Some general information. We have experienced an increase in reported crimes and .that's often not something you want to hear, but I don't have a problem sharing that with you today, because as you can see our 2006 figure was 9,231 and in 2007 it's 9,232. We had one additional crime reported in 2007, coupled with about a 13,000 increase in population. So, basically, what that equates to is we have had a decrease of 13 percent per capita in our crime overall. And we still remain the second lowest per capita crime rate in the state of Idaho. We have not beat Rupert yet. We are currently getting ready to hire a Rupert officer, so maybe he can bring some things to us. De Weerd: And share the secrets, uh? Lavey: Here is a crime rate comparison. You might have seen these in the newspaper here recently. This is something that we are proud of. You can see Kuna has 45 crimes per thousand. Boise 75.1 per thousand. Nampa 75.4. Caldwell 92. Garden City 104.4 per thousand. No comment. And Meridian has a 40.8 per thousand. 'We have the lowest crime rate of all those cities listed. How do we keep our crime rate so low? Well, I think Councilman Zaremba saw this the other day and he made a comment, so this is for him. He made a comment about this would be a good tool to handle the crime area here in Meridian. That's about my entire budget to buy that and, then, to run that is even more than that. So, basically, how do we do it is through our mission statement of education, prevention, and enforcement. I already said it's to the work of the men and women of the police department and that's what it is, basically. Just in the last couple of days I have had to opportunity to hear that, boy, you guys sure are visible in town and that just makes me proud every time I hear that. Even if they are getting pulled over. General information. The number of calls for service in 2006 to 2007. 2006 figures, 51,578. 2007, 55,422. What this graph depicts is that our most busiest time in the city limits is from 10:00 to 11:00 p.m. for any day of the week. That is the time frame that we actually have shift overlap. For those of you that come out and have rode with us, we have swings and graves overlap every night between 9:00 and 2:00 a.m. 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. So, noteworthy accomplishments. Proud to say that we just graduated our fifth public safety academy class. We can't take all credit for this, because this is a joint venture with the fire department and I can tell you that when Chief Anderson and the Mayor and myself go to these graduations, everything we hear is positive, positive, positive, positive about our department. And I will say that when it was -- and I put this on the record before. The first time I was approached with, hey, let's put these two agencies together, I'm thinking what is the Mayor thinking. And have shared this with her. And I have to say that it was a darn good idea, because it surpassed anything that we were thinking and so on the record the Mayor was right. De Weerd: Oh, cool. You caught that, right, Dean? Would you highlight it forme? MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 61 of 160 Lavey: We actually had a town hall meeting for underage alcohol consumption. This was our first town hall meeting in regards to this topic and it was kind of -- kind of catered toward what we did with our last town hall meeting. We didn't have a great turnout, which was kind of sad, but with what we did put on and the people that were present it was a great, great program. And so, basically, we -- it just encouraged us to move on and do better and better and better. Why would I put together a neighborhood watch community luncheon together, but this is something that -- that our neighborhood -- our crime prevention people and our neighborhood watch kind of came together in partnership and it's kind of that same concept with taking the city out into the community and we took our department and the Mayor and myself out to our community with our neighborhood watch and kind of a recruiting adventure and we went out to Meadow Lake Village and it was a success and we hoped to change that location geographically among the city, but that's where we started. We reestablished the patrol bicycle program. I didn't tell the Mayor that we did this. She knew that we were thinking about it and she had the pleasure of -- of witnessing them here in the last couple of days, but positive, positive feedback. I got one that person called me on the phone, another person that came into the lobby just to tell us that they appreciate the bikes out there. Kind of has a secondary reason. We will get to that later on. And the other thing that we just did with them is the fireworks presentation at Storey Park, they actually worked that, along with foot patrols in the park. Participating in the first unified command for Dairy Days. This is one thing that we have talked about for a long, long time, but we put police and fire and EMS in the same room in a unified command and the amazing thing is we were all on the same radio frequency and actually could talk to each other and we had a successful Dairy Days this year and we will continue to work that sort of structure up with Dairy Days and any other special event -- large special event that we have in the city. I won't -- I will say there is a lot of opportunities for growth, but, you know, it needs improvement, but not because bad things happen, just because we have a chance to continue to get better and better and better at it, so -- establish the radio inter- operability with fire and EMS. We now have the ability to talk with each other out there. We are still working on some -- some protocols and some procedures to really make that happen, because one thing that Chief Anderson talked about was that we have this ability, yet we still don't use it and so trying to figure out how to change the way we do business. But operating under that unified command was the first start. The Governor's Idaho's Brightest Start Award for our MADC, Mayor's Anti-Drug Coalition. We actually had the pleasure of being -- receiving an award from Governor Otter for our efforts with MADC. I don't know if I can really take credit for it anymore, but I think the idea originated with us and we are still a strong participant. We just recently held the third annual downtown clean up in the City of Meridian. And that was, once again, a success this year, but there has been many, many partners that are involved in that. De Weerd: I think you underestimate the role that your staff plays in that. Melissa Delaney and -- Lavey: Code enforcement. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 62 of 160 De Weerd: -- Abe. They are tremendous. And that was -- that was amazing. It's amazing the difference it makes in the -- the three different sections of Old Town that they have been involved in. The response from the neighbors is just overwhelming and the amount of stuff we take out of those areas is enormous. I have never seen so much stuff. Lavey: Thank you for that. I just don't want to take away from all the other many volunteers, the Boys and Girls Club, SSC, and all those places that actually have a part in it as well De Weerd: Yeah. Lavey: We talked a little bit about this and I believe Councilman Bird has seen this one. We always talked -- I always put the dogs first, because the dogs are more popular and they are smarter than the handlers. But we just recently added a drug detection dog named Bowser. De Weerd: Bowser. Lavey: I wasn't really exited about the name and it really kind of reminded me of Super Nintendo, but -- Bird: He's a beautiful lab, though. Lavey: He's a beautiful lab. The nice thing I can say is we rescued him from the Idaho Humane Society and we paid 75 dollars for him. So, that's the nice thing about it. He just took fourth in the drug competition in a Pocatello K-9 trial here about two weeks ago. There was over 60 teams that were there at that conference. I'm not sure how many completed. In the past about 30 teams -- 25 to 30 teams have competed. This -- this handler has only been doing it for a couple of months. The dog himself is only about 14, 15 months old and they took fourth. So, he's working. They -- this team is currently working the streets here in Meridian. This is the handler from last year for a new patrol dog. This patrol dog came from Holland. His name was Kai and we assigned him to handler Jeremy Lindlay. And Kai didn't work out and so we shipped him back to Holland and I -- Zaremba: He didn't understand English. Lavey: Yeah. I am told. You know, there was a few zeros behind the 75 on this dog and so it was a lot more important that we get it right the first time, so we didn't take delivery of this dog. No cost to the city at all yet. The nice thing about it is the -- the vendor had actually brought the dog to the K-9 conference and he had about 60 other potential, you know, departments that he may do business with in the future and he wasn't about to give us a bad dog and so he shipped the dog back. The nice thing about it is we do have another dog that he's working with. It's in Alabama currently. But with the humidity and weather in Alabama and the weather we have had here lately, we I '. ~ j ~71' ~. ~ ~ ' 44 E ' !'~ I ~~~ ~~' ~ I I ~ ~i I x ~ .r3 1 ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ II ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ q~ -! ~ 6 ~I i I f < ! 7 ~I ~ ~~ ? fg. z ~ ~ { 1 ~ ~ ~z~ fi 4 i ~ i 11 f } c ~ ' ~ t' ~~ ~ I ' ~ ~ i ~ -~ ~ ~ - ~ - e !' ~ 4 ` :i i i i ~ ~ ! I , J ~7?, qy}Y.~ I ~~~ ~ ~ ~ I a ~~~ ~ ~ ~1~ V ~~~M1 = A ~ !' II~ ~ ' ~ s . fL 1 1(1 i d~~ S I~ ~~: _ ~ E ! ~ } ' ; Ij ; !~;{3 .~ ~ 7i ` I '.I~ ~ ~: ~ r ?~ , ~ ~1 ,. a 1L~ n i Ra r ~ l I t P I ~ . Iii . S ~° ` . ~ . . 35 ! ~ } , ~~,~ ~ ~ : 41 . e J , $: i y .1 }; ar ~ i e~~~ ~! i zl ~ ~ `~ ! f ; I I S I ~ jJJ j Y£ i t ~3 r , ~ ~~ ~~ ~ ! ~ ~ ~• . ! ~ ~~ ~ I 9 i ti `~ 1 q~, ~~ S~ I w E ! 1 ` li~ i- ! } I f l a 7 ~- k ( 111 ;i ' I ~~ t t i ~~ ~ r g ~I ~ 3 ~:~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ i) ~ I ~ ! ~ ~~ ~,~ i . is ~ ~ ' 1 ~ I ~ ~j ~ I ~ ~ 1 ~ E ~ t) ' a I I f I . t,r ~ , > ~ ~ ~~ II ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~; ,yy~ t i i ii ~ ~ f{ ! 1{ 1" ~~ ~ ! ~ ,qj~,~:, a ~f. el~.l ~~. ; ~' i I ~ ~ F. ~ r ... 1# ~ ' I E ! S I I 16 ~ I ~ ~ _ w:. ~ ~l ,~- r' I E... j{7 ~J gkj~y+. - iii ~'11{q J E :+ir - { .4 ~ ,7 MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 63 of 160 are trying to find a method to actually ship him here, because of the regulations on the airlines, because of heat and everything else. We might have to go to the city of Portland to pick the dog up, because it's cooler. Somewhere on the coast. And if that's the case we will do that. So, we will have him here shortly. Once they get here, I will bring both of those dogs to one of the Council meetings and you can meet the handlers and meet the dogs, if you so like. The other unique thing that we did this year was we actually had a partnership with the Mountain View High School media students to produce Meridian Police Department's first recruiting video. What we did is we had this group of students come out and actually film our officers in training situations and SWAT demonstrations, some traffic stops, a wide area of topics and we also did some testimonials with the officers and we are currently in the process of putting this all together to music and forming a recruiting video. Basically, my direction was let's get something together that we can use that's short, like two or three minutes, four minutes, but something that someone can look at it and go, okay, I like that, I want to ask more questions. Also, with any -- with any of the website upgrades -- and I don't really want to bring up the IT issues, but with that -- with the fiber and with the upgrade to the web software, would allow us to do streaming video and put that video on a website, which we currently cannot do. Then, to produce a 20 to 25 minute video, depending on the amount of footage we have and just put it on a continuous loop, so if we went to a recruiting event we can just put it there in a DVD player and just continue to play it over and over and over. And, then, like I said, the short video -- our debut target is for the police and fire games. We have an opportunity to have lots of certified police officers here in our city in about six weeks and we intend to recruit and that is on the record. Put this on here. It's really kind of hard to read, but this just kind of gives you an idea of one of our recruiting things that we are doing. It gives a picture up in the upper left- hand corner of a patrol team. You can actually see a dog over there on the left-hand comer. But it just gives a few facts about what are some of the benefits that the city offers, what are some of the pay ranges. A little bit about us. Our website. And who to contact. And this is what we are using as a recruiting flier right now. And so there will be plenty of these available to the police and fire games as well. Who knows, we might even be able to recruit a fireman. I knew you guys -- Bird: I'd say something, but Anderson isn't in here Lavey: Yeah. I did it for Bill and Mark. What I did is I put our enhancement just on one page here and it just gives me an idea of what's up here and it gives me a chance to talk about each -- each item. I know that I have heard some of the -- the percent figures. Twenty-three percent. Two hundred percent. And everything else. I believe -- could be wrong, but I believe our increase is only like .48 percent. Bird: That's right. Lavey: And so as you can see it's real real conservative. But I want to run down here, basically, what we are asking for. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 64 of 160 De Weerd: Hey, Jeff, before you get started, I'm just -- we are going to make it -- this a working lunch, but -- Lavey: Do you want -- this is a perfect time to pause, if you want to do that. De Weerd: Exactly. If you don't mind, you guys can all grab something, but while it's hot, let them go grab something and, then, we will continue. Lavey: Thank you. That's a perfect time. De Weerd: Okay. Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I would make one comment while we are breaking here. You should think about adding an enhancement for transportation where we can gather up some repeat offenders and take them over to Rupert and leave them there. De Weerd: We are on recess. (Recess.) 10:40 am Police Department De Weerd: Okay. We are back on the record. Thank you, Jeff. Lavey: Thank you, Mayor. Madam Mayor, Council, to pick up where we left off, this would be a good opportunity to tell you that our enhancements are about .48 percent increase over last year and I put all of them up here on the board, so we can just look at them and talk about them. If they raise questions, we can talk about them, great. If not, we can talk about them toward the end. First the one, the specialty pay. This is the second phase to the pay the consultant study that we did, oh, six or eight months ago. One of the areas that we looked at was comparing other agencies. The city did not offer any sort of pay incentives to those that go above and beyond what they do as far as instructors, FTOs, field training officers, and such and so what this is going to do is allow us to implement that second phase. I worked with HR on the figures -- actually, with Bill Nary personally and so that's pretty self-explanatory, but, basically, what it does is it gives increased pay incentives up to 50 cents an hour per specialty with a max of $1.50 an hour. And, then, there is a couple of areas where because of the way we have been doing business in the -- in the previous -- we had to kind of come up with a comparable way of giving an additional stipend that was similar to what they were already receiving in overtime. And second -- second enhancement, community services coordinator position. This is a position that is relying solely -- well, not solely, but relying on a grant. You probably saw this last year. Maybe you remember from last year. And this is something that was approved by the city last year and we were not successful in receiving that grant, yet we left that money in place. Due to federal changes, the amount of monies that we can request in the new grant is a little bit more and so you will see -- I believe there is only like an increase of 5,000 dollars and what was approved 1 f ~ '7 S~ 1 z ~~~ 1 ~ f ~ i+ ~ ~ E .F ~ i ~ ~ I ~ ~ y ~ ~ I j~ ~ I ~~~ ~ c ~ z p~ ~ ~~n. ~ ~YEI i I r { ? 7 t ~ zkp ~~' ° ~ ~ I t ~ 3 ~ ~ ~ A I ~ ~ ~ 1. .~ k J ) ., t ~1 I 3 R 1 i I f P 7y /, ~ ~ f k `~., l .! ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~; G ~, i t.: .~ _ r 7 ~~ .~Y y~ ~ 1"5, ~ x~t ~. } 7 f ~ , ~ , &i + ~~ . 1 ~ ~ ~ 3 1 7 ~ e j ~ ~ ~~ it { ~~~ 1 t ?- f Lx a ~ult ~- ) ~ ~ 1 i t ` ~j t ! ~i ~.' ~ " ~{ I L ~ ;1 ~~. ,. i: 5' ~ ~ ~ ~ . q ~ t it ~ k i t• ~ !~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ 2 L ~~'~ , ~ ~ a ~ i . . '~ ~ ~' f. ~ K ~ ~ ~ i i ~ F ~_ $ 1 ~ ~ 3' ~ ~ ~ f a f ~ { ~ } f y t15 ~ ~ .f ~~i l ~ ~r ~ ~ :~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~t~. a ~ 1 p f t ~ ' '; ~' ~ j r ~'. ~ ti I ~' ; ~ a ~ ~ ,~ 1 1 {1{ ~ ( ri ~ i '. ~ ~ ~ r 3 ~ r _~ ,5 11 g K 6 " ~ ~, ~ 1. t ~ ~ ~ ~ S ~ ~S ii ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t ~ '~ ~ ~ } S (i' i ~ ~ ~ ~~ t : .air _ ~ ~ , ~ ~ ~ ~ g3 ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ ~ a ~ i I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 4 ~ ~ ~ ~i 1 ~ , , ~, ~j ~,~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 65 of 160 last year versus what we are requesting this year, is about 5,000, 6,500 dollars increase, but let me stress that it's still dependent upon receiving the grant and we will not receive any -- we will not receive word until late August. I did receive a letter here recently saying that we made it to the next stage. So, late August. And that would be working with our anti-drug coalition on a full-time basis, whereas currently we have a part-time person. CID assistant. This is an executive assistant and this is something that we had in place awhile ago -- years ago. We kind of gave it up, because we didn't think we had a -- well, I'm not sure if it was -- it was before my -- before my tenure at the top. If there was a need for it. I can tell you right now that our detectives have about 400 active cases assigned to them each. And so if you go down to number ten, you will where I requested additional detectives. Well, I pulled that enhancement and I pulled it for a couple of reasons. One is because of the significant cost. It was over 200,000 dollars. Two is I'm still in the process of trying to attract qualified police officers and if I'm having difficulties with that, then, I can't really add more detectives until I add more police officers and so it would really be bad timing on my part. And so the other thing that I look at is if I could get an administrative assistant that could come in and do those tasks, such as transcription and paperwork and photocopies and the menial phone calls and that sort of thing, then, maybe I can alleviate some of the pressure that our detectives currently face and kind of felt that that was probably the appropriate action to take with our current economic status. The -- number four, weapons maintenance. This is one area that you never think about when you put something in place, but fortunate for us is that we don't have to use our service pistols often in the line of duty. But we do have to shoot three to four times a year. That amount of rounds actually, eventually, stresses the weapon and we have to look at replacing them. We are to a point where we have added so many weapons without a regular maintenance schedule that we have to start implementing a maintenance schedule. You can really see that the price is insignificant compared to the -- the outcome that we are going to receive, but there is a program where you can actually pay for an upgrade and you can get a brand new pistol for about 200 dollars apiece. Or we can buy brand new ones at 550 dollars apiece. So, that's what that money is -- and, basically, what we have established is a program where we will start rotating the oldest pistols through and so each year we'd propose a couple thousand dollars for weapons maintenance. The next one is police training software. You have seen a lot of software requests this year already. I have withdrawn this one for two reasons. One, we have an in-house program that was built by a volunteer and when we became large enough it started falling apart and it was doing some real funky things and kind of had -- like fhat picture that Bill Nary had up here with the guy yelling at the computer, I had my training coordinator yelling at the computer like that. Well, Teny Paternoster came in and we kind of fixed it and we do believe that although we need to look at the way we do business, not necessarily in just on a police training side, but on a city wide training side, but we believe that we can get by another year and so that's why that is withdrawn. Firearm safety equipment. This is a, you know, relatively small amount, but what this is is several years ago a company actually designed what we believe is the safest -- safest police holster around. Now, not every holster -- you can't claim as one hundred percent reliable, because the cons will always find a way to get a gun out of a holster and everything else, but this is probably the safest and easiest holster to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 66 of 160 manipulate and we have purchased those for all of our new officers and a lot of our older officers. Although right now we have several different holsters out there and we would like to be consistent and this amount of money would buy enough holsters so everybody would be consistent within the department. Everybody would be safe and the training would be much easier, because you're training all on one holster. That's what that's for. You know, seven and eight, indoor range and the station expansion, I'm going to skip right now, because I have a slide that goes more in depth in those and we can talk about those. Faces contract. You know, last year Greg Bower -- Attorney Greg Bower and Kevin McTeague from Faces, I believe, came in front of Council talking about asking for some money for their -- for their mission and what they do. Through our contacts with them, based on a population percentage and use percentage, that our contribution to Faces would be 9,872 dollars. Now, I'm not a strong supporter or a strong opponent of this, I merely put that in there, so if they do come before you and ask you for monies, we have already set the monies aside. I can go either way on that and I can explain that further if you have questions. We already talked about the detective position and, then, we finish up with the SRO position. Although it's not mentioned on this slide, this SRO position is currently going to be financed 50 percent by the Boise- -- orthe Meridian School District. It would be great if the Boise School District would do it. But that Meridian School District -- and I can't give you one hundred percent guarantee on that yet, because their budget process is later than ours. But they have committed toward that, but it may not survive a cut. And what this is going to do is it's going to put an SRO into all of the alternative schools that we have in the city. The two middle school alternative schools and the two high school alternative schools and if you recall, Central Academy has just been annexed this year into the city limits of Meridian. So, essentially, what they are doing is they are taking the monies that they were paying Ada county and now giving it to us. So, that's what that -- that enhancement is. Part of our enhancement -- or part of our request has to do with vehicle placement and this has always been a topic and you're going to see that's why are we replacing 2005's, why are we replacing 2007's, and I'm here to explain that and to answer questions -- additional questions as necessary. 2005 cars -- these are three year old cars. We have committed to once a car has reached 90,000 miles we start looking at replacement. I can tell you that each one of these cars will have an additional 25,000 to 35,000 miles on them before they are replaced. So, every car up there will be over a hundred thousand miles. These cars are what we refer to as a pursuit vehicle. These are vehicles that are, essentially, the office of the patrol car -- patrol. officers and they need to be safe cars, if -- although we don't drive at high speeds often, they do have that potential. Now, any of these cars may be available to -- usually we hit the attorney's office first, because he takes our junk cars, but they would be available to other cities. I don't believe that they are that critical in -- but the maintenance on them is tremendous. I will tell you that our maintenance budget is -- we are over already. We are over budget and we still have the summer to go and part of the fall. So, if we keep these cars another year, then, it's just going to seriously impact our -- our maintenance budget. The 2007 Crown Vic was one of our newest cars that was actually involved in a wreck on Ustick in the wintertime and it was a significant crash that resulted in totaling of the vehicle and the officer also received a citation for his lack of driving skill. One of the Dodge Intrepids up there is a detective vehicle and it has 105,000 miles on it. The MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 67 of 160 other one only has 74,000 miles on it, but the reason why it only has 74,000 miles on it is it has a blown engine. We are going to give that one to the attorney's office as well. One of the things that we also have done is in the past on the detective's rotation, we have rotated the cars at seven years and it's up for -- this Chrysler van is our crime scene van and this is a van that goes out on all our crime scenes and holds all our equipment and it would also be offered to the -- to someone else that wouldn't have to drive it as often, but it is in very poor condition, the maintenance on this is tremendous, but if somebody in the city wants to take over that maintenance nightmare, they can. And, then, the 2005 Honda motor, this one always makes me cringe when I read this, because Officer Will Stoy was on the motorcycle when he was struck from behind and the car was going 37 miles an hour at the time that it struck him and the only reason why Will Stoy is alive today is because the driver had the wheels turned to the left. And she was uninsured. And so the two things on this one is not only did the amount of monies we got from the insurance company cover the purchase of a new motor, you can't purchase new motors from Honda until late fall. So, it wouldn't have done us any good anyways. So, I believe the next slide goes into a little further in depth on that. Let's kind of talk a little bit about what I already mentioned; our vehicle replacement request is 22,500 less than last year. The blown engine, the totaled vehicle, the totaled motorcycle -- you now, one of the things that finance asked me is why do you come and get those vehicles replaced and there were so many other budget amendments going on this year and everything else, we decided to wait until next year, instead of coming in and asking Council for additional monies to purchase those vehicles. It didn't make any sense on the motorcycle, otherwise, I could have came to you and says, hey, can we go buy new -- or used motorcycles and we didn't do that as well. One of the things that we did recently come into a deal with ICRMP -- ICRMP kind of forgot that the motorcycle was at the Canyon Honda and it was incurring -- accruing ten dollars a day in storage fees and so we did a little bargain and we got Canyon Honda to forego those storage fees and in payment for that ICRMP donated us the police motorcycle. So, if we buy -- we already have one Honda at the same year and, then, we have a vehicle now that we can use parts off of it, so -- this figure here is -- is --originated with IT, but Teny does go over each of the -- each of the requests with the directors, but he's the one that, basically, identifies the need. I can tell you that the -- the first two are on that five year rotation. The other ones are computers that were slotted for replacement a long time ago, but we had a need for additional computers and so there is old computers in there and I asked Teny if we could get those replaced and -- and that's what you see right now. I believe the Mayor and a few Council Members have struggled through using some of the computers in the public meeting room and the training room and so that's -- the conference room and a public meeting room are the two -- two computers -- I do recall where the Mayor had sent someone down to find someone to work on the computers one time and I had come upstairs and I was working on it and she was -- couldn't believe that I was actually -- actually there at 7:00 o'clock at night working on computers. And, then, the other two things are printers and one of them is a backup printer and the other one is a color printer for crime scene photos. And the ones that we currently have in place, one does not work at all, one prints about a page every five minutes, and it's just time to get those replaced. So, that's those. As I mentioned before, last year's enhancement requests were 1.1 million dollars. This year we are at MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 68 of 160 340,000, which includes personnel operating capital and, then, I already mentioned each patrol car will have about 25,000 additional miles on it before they are replaced. This is -- this is a unique situation that we face ourself in now with the gas prices and -- and this is -- let me tell you that figure, that that's a very low figure, because if someone forgot to put their mileage on a log or didn't do a log that day, it's -- that would be omitted. Our supervisor and our investigators and support and our admin don't fill out logs that track these miles, but we put on 323,000 miles on our patrols cars. I can tell you that our gas for the month bill was 19,000 dollars, which is an increase from about 14,000 a year ago, per month. So, some of the things that we have been doing to try to help with that -- one is we have given additional staff the benefit of a 4/10 work week, where they can actually commute four days a week, instead of five. We have added the bicycles. We have increased foot patrols in downtown and in the areas of special events. We are -- you know, I put this up here on the fuel and we do double up officers and cars on overlapped shifts and that does save gas, but one of the other reasons I have to confess that we do that is we just don't have enough cars for -- to go around and no idling of cars unless emergency or our K-9 vehicle. We let the cars idle if they got a dog in. there so the dog doesn't die and, then, if you're on emergency we are actually drawing energy from the battery with the overhead lights, we leave the cars running as well and one of the things that we have done is we have converted over to the -- for the most part I believe there are six cars out there that have not converted over the LED, but an LED light bar, which draws about two amps versus the 35 amp on the battery and alternator. And, then, smaller vehicles, smaller engines. We have actually purchased smaller -- smaller trucks for code enforcement, smaller vehicles for detective vehicles. So, we are trying to do what we can. The one thing that I'm trying to get away from and I won't say I refuse to do it, but -- unless I absolutely have to, but you hear a lot on the news about, well, we are just going to have our officers park their cars and everything else. But, well, we are in public safety and our job is public safety. In order to insure the safety of those people, we have to be visible and we have to be driving around. It doesn't make any sense to me that we park our cars. That's just my -- my opinion on it. Additional items and notes. We talked about this. I know that this question is going to come up and I got a next slide that talks about it even more, but we hit on the two main capital items, the shooting range and the building and just let me tell you a little bit about the range. As can-ently designed, it's about six million dollars. We might be able to build it with say way the economy is right now for about five million dollars, but that's five million dollars and, then, we have no -- no monies in the Capital Improvement Fund and it just takes -- if we were to -- if we were to cut every enhancement out this year, there is still not enough money to build the thing. Building expansion. We need more room and we are 87 percent of capacity for our evidence room. We are crammed packed in our records and we do not have adequate space to actually write the police reports and this is impacting us in overtime costs and everything else trying to get the job done. And, then, in the women's locker room we actually have had to kick women out of lockers and only give the sworn officers lockers, so they can lock their duty weapons up and everything else and we are beyond capacity. So, we have to address that sometime in the future. Where do we go from here? This was mentioned about 8:15 this morning, 8:20 this morning, this first slide. Just some things to think about is moving some of our savings from our personnel costs MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 69 of 160 into the public safety reserve or like Stacy suggested, a certain percentage of operational savings be placed in this fund to be used at a later time. One thing to keep in mind is our final payment for the police department in 2011. What I would do is ask the Council to continue to place this amount of money into that reserve fund. You have already budgeted it, it's already there, let's continue paying it into that fund. One of the things we talked about on public safety reserve fund is not just police, it's fire as well. And one thing that I believe Chief Anderson is going to talk about is that although we have a fire truck fund, is what we call it now to purchase new fire trucks, we don't really have a plan in place to buy replacements trucks and this -- this reserve fund would also be allowed for that. De Weerd: Which is about a half a million dollars a year. Lavey: Yeah. We kind of -- we kind of battle over those monies, who gets them first and -- De Weerd: I mean the interest and the principal payment. Lavey: Yes. Yes. It's like four hundred and some thousand almost -- yeah. One of the things that the Mayor talked about and Bill Nary even talked about was just hiring somebody to get this -- the range project going. Instead of hiring someone, we talked about maybe promoting a lieutenant and assigning that lieutenant to this on a full-time basis to get this project up and running and, then, when that need is no longer there, either through attrition or I do have a need for another lieutenant in the patrol division, because currently we only have coverage for days and swing. There is no command staff covering grave. So, I have one lieutenant that covers -- and they are probably over there arguing right now. I have one lieutenant that covers two daytime shifts, plus the traffic shift and, then, I have another one that covers four evening shifts. So, if we are on the record, I don't really want to talk -- I don't really want to comment too much on the development, the business plan, but we actually had this promised to us and this has fell through. This person that was going to work on this has not produced one item on paper that I have been able to look at. We need to seek out potential financial partners and I know that with Councilman Rountree and Councilman Bird we have discussed this and I have discussed this also with the Mayor, but we need to at least discuss do we want to approach a private industry interest and see if there is someone that wants to build on our land. But if we do that, we need to make sure that we at least have some sort of control on that, because I don't want to build something and us not being able to use it and it's on our property. So, there are some of the tough questions that we need to discuss either today or later or for the next several years. That is the end of my presentation. I didn't time it, but hopefully I didn't go over too much and I am open for questions. De Weerd: Okay. Council, questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 70 of 160 De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Chief, is there some ability to do some remodel in the current station to maybe address some of your-space issues on an interim basis or have you just simply looked at a larger facility? Lavey: One of the things that Councilman Bird and I discussed today is just that. I would tell you that one of the areas that I would say that it's impossible is that -- the evidence vault. The evidence vault is brick and motor and it's alarmed and everything else and so we can't put additional evidence without jeopardizing a chain of custody. So, in that area we can't. When you look at records -- you know, I'm not the expert and we might be able to have an architect come in to do a needs assessment and make some suggestions and everything else, so in the -- in the expert eyes I'd have to defer to them. I would say it's possible. Probably not all that practical, but, you know, that's a lay person making that decision. I don't know. It's definitely something to look at. De Weerd: Councilman Rountree, I guess, too, we have been. in discussions with the county about shared space over there in building anew --anew addition. They have been giving -- given Chief Lavey's name, as well as Sergeant Parsons; correct? Lavey: Correct. De Weerd: As our people to be talking to. They are also in their budgeting session on what they might be able to fund for this upcoming year. They need 10,000 square feet with a separate entrance and there is perhaps an opportunity to even use some of that space interiorly until, you know, an addition one would be put in place, because they wouldn't need that whole 10,000 square feet right off the bat. So, those discussions will start happening once they set their budget and we can bring back more information as that unfolds. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Bird: To add to that, I think it's a great idea, but I don't think we want to -- I don't think we want to just do a 10,000 square foot addition, we want to do a 20, because we may as well go two and just leave the one shell and the core. That's my personal opinion. I have got a question. Out in the sally port, how often is that sally port really used? Lavey: It's actually used daily. We actually have an intox room and we actually bring in prisoners daily and process them through the intox room. There is a blood drying room off of that, too, for evidence, because, once again, evidence is full and we don't have a place to put certain items, so anything that comes in that's bloody is put into a locked room off the sally port and allowed to dry in there before it's moved into the actual evidence room. You know, it's one of those things that you could cut half of it off and pull in, back out, but, you know, then, you create other problems, you know, backing ,., ~ j ~ ~ ~~ ~; < i ~ ~~ ~ ~ ' F 4 ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ # ~~~6~i~ t ~ ~ 1 ~ ~~~. ~ 1 ~: ~ ~ h 1q ~ ~ p I + I ' ~ ~ ~il ~ j ~ t ~ .lf j! 1 I ~ ~~ ( 1 ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ 99A } '1 1. ~ ~ ~ ~ Y I '~. - ti _ ~~ ~ ~ ~ -~ ~ ,` ~~. h. ` ; ~ ~ 1~ ~ ~ 1 ~~i I LL F s ~ 1 ~ ~ pQ 'J -1. ~~ ~ (i ~c' i .~ f ~ ~ I ~`{ '~'' a ~ :g ~ to t ~ ~~ r ; V . ~ ~ ~ ~' ~ I } ~ ~ 1'+ ~ i ~ ~' ; c~~ '' "' ~ $ } Y ~ f Ll ~ ) ,~.., ~~ ~ F ~ ~. t = '~'. p ~ ~: S 1~; 3 M _ a f~ pt ~t ~. ty ~ y ~ j { ~ :•. } ~1 rt i 3 4 f i 3 j 7 ' . '3 ~ "' .i ~ i z , ~ i ttt f r i ~ I ~ ~ r ?~ : 7 , t 3 i ~ ' ~ ~. ; ' (i ~e.. I ~ ~' ~ ~j ± f { 3~ t ~jjjji ~ yY fit; ~ a~l is 3 } ~ `1 y~~ i tfE ~ x r y, ; I``I R ~ R,.. '1 ,r ~ t ri ~ t ~ ^~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ r t ~ ~A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ i ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 71 of 160 issues and everything else and so it's -- it's worth asking that question. I don't know if it makes the most sense, but I'm not here to tum it down. Bird: Anytime you back you cause safety problems. Lavey: Yes. Bird: I didn't realize it was used that much, chief. De Weerd: You know, chief, I guess I would also like to suggest that there is an enormous basement in the new City Hall and I don't know, you know, if old evidence or how you could utilize that. We could design in something that could be a safe facility with -- with access only to those that you designate, but it is an option. If that seems reasonable for you, we can explore it. Now would be the time to really take a look at that. .But if that helps you at least alleviate or free up some percentages of space in evidence, certainly that is available. Lavey: Thank you. Bird: Records could be there, to. De Weerd: Records, too. Lavey: Yeah. And that's what I was thinking. Records and archives. As far as those records that we don't have to access often, we could do that. One of the things that we try to do is keep a fair amount of records available downstairs for the public information requests and, then, anything else, once it reaches a certain date, is upstairs in an archive storage. But even that's become full. Part of the original plan when LCA designed the building, was not only to expand off both wings, but also build above the sally port and above the sally port is for archive storage and tasked -- or for record storage of about 2,500 feet and I told them that now is not the time to design that and so with the thoughts of using the basement downstairs, so -- one thing I will point out, too, and we talked about it, is that we did request through Kreizenbeck some price differences between building the entire shell and with only finishing downstairs and, then, finishing everything and it's sad to say that it's only about a 420,000 dollar savings, but that's 420,000 dollars, but it's not a significant amount of savings to actually build the shell and only finish part of it, but that is definitely an option that we were looking at. De Weerd: I guess, Council, bottom line on these two items that were withdrawn, certainly we are looking at how we can put money aside and any savings over this next budget year. Also looking forward to the future, we will be coming back with a Capital Improvement Plan and trying to put a financial strategy in place as far as what the impact fees are to pay for, what General Fund obligations are, and how we start setting aside for those various enhancements. On these particular two, we do have some work to do and creating those business plans and flushing out the partners and what capital " ;. };; ' ,~ ~; ' : fi j F{ I' . I x E ~ j+ 3 t F7. ~' 1 i , r C ~ t f ' ~1 h: i~ t f~' ~ ~' ~ ~ ~. '' 4 ~ `' k[ L 5k 3 ~ ~ M r ~ /{ 1 . ~ F, ` ~ r t ~ gg E' 4 f~ ' 1 ~ ;.. i s Y t ~'~, ~ t ~ ~' ~ r . 1.. , 1 t k, ~ ; ~ '` ~ ; ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 72 of 160 they are able to bring to the table, what kind of lease agreements we can also put into place, there is a lot of detail that remains to be done. With the staff that the police department has, you know,- I would think it would be prudent to consider seeing how we can really focus a person to be responsible for progressing this forward and addressing these training needs and the firing range needs. So, I guess with that we would seek your direction on -- and/or feedback. We definitely will have a plan in place for the next budget year. Lavey: Well, then, on the -- I just pitched that proposal. There is no financial figures to come along with that. That's just an idea. And if you want to discuss that more in depth at 3:30 I will be present for that and if it's something we want to talk about into the future, we can sure look at that as well. And there is one other thought that I had and kind of lost that one as well, so it must not have been that important. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: The main thing is I don't want this to get off the radar and if we should have someone fall on our head with about four or five million dollars, that we would -- I personally believe that the firing range is a priority over the expansion. Not that both of them aren't important, but I do believe the firing range is not only beneficial to our police department, I believe the firing range is beneficial to the whole, because the interaction it's going to have with the youth and the police officers, if nothing else, because all of us know the Optimists would like to be involved with it. I can't see of any better scenario of young kids out there shooting and stuff and being -- and interacting with our police officers and so I think it's something that we know we can't budget this year, but we can certainly keep it at the forefront and if we have something -- like I said, fall on our heads or something that's got a lot of money in it, we maybe could do it. That's my personal opinion. Lavey: I just -- I just remembered that other thought. Just to insure that Council knows or remembers that last year you earmarked 250,000 dollars towards the range project. Four thousand of that was spent for the conceptual design, so there is 246,000 dollars. There is an additional 204,000 dollars potential in impact fees, minus the -- the substation from the fire department and we haven't got the final bill on that yet, so depending on how much money they try to take from me on that one -- I'm sure I'm going to get the bill, but -- he gets to go last. But -- so, all I would ask is that if we find any monies floating around that we can earmark to that fund, we would greatly appreciate that, because any little bit will be a start. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Borton. ~ ' ~ ; ~` ~ ~ ~ I I,, n ; • 1 r ~ 1 e r_ ~,~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ , t ° ~ ~,' r ii ~ ~ ~~ 1 ~ ~, i, ~ ' I r; ~ ~ 1 ~ ~' ~ i E! d ~ e ~ d I ~ -~ ~ i ~ ~ `f ~ s ~ ~ k I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I it I ! . #_~ fi a4 3 ~' ni ~ ~ x ~ ~ ~' -`te ~ ~ ` ~ r I- r. t E~ ~ ~ ~~ w3 + ~ R 1 - i r e .l °~ - s 7 ~ ~j 1 ~ i.p ;_~ ,; ~~ g.; ~ ~ ~ ; ~ 1 ~ s ~ ~ ,, ~ f z ~ j H, ~i ~ ~ ~ ; i ~ , ~ ~ i 4 i ~~ ~ f ~ I .~ ~2. } qq -' ~.~ ; ~~ 1 ~ 8 ~ ~ ~~ / , ~ qq I ~ ~ RR ~ 1 ; yy 3~ .~ ~ . ~ ~r ~d ~~ ~~ 1 s' 4 -1 1 i ~ ~~ Rl~y X~ ~: i ~. i ~ 1 ~ 1 l ~ ~f ~ 1 I l ~ ~ ~ ~ s i '~ 1 t ~ ~ .; 2t ~ ~ i' ~ i ~~ ! i I I- ~ i~ ~;y i 1 -~ r- ~ ~:' ~ ~ 1 4~ 3 f a ~ i:} ~r~~~ ,, ~ i I 7 ~ 7 ~~. ( i & t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ } ~ ~i ~ S ~ 1 Z { f it p , ~ ~ ~ ~ I' ~ ~ ~ • ~ 1 ` ~ ~j ~ 'I ~` ~ ~ - c q a t ,~ , i ,,~ . ~ a ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ G } ~ ~ • ! i a ! s~~ ~ } t 5 `~ ~.r s ii ~, ,~~ i ~'- ~: ~ Jai MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 73 of 160 Borton: To sort of dovetail on those comments, when this is -- the process right now really is where it's at. At least the way I see it and I look at these enhancements and walk through the budget as a whole and try and prioritize what's important for the city and what we can fund and can't fund, that training range is extremely high and my thought right now -- and we will discuss it at 3:30, I would love to reallocate the current funds to make significant contributions, at least the range, maybe the building, utilizing Stacy's idea with the public safety reserve fund and additional savings in personnel that you mentioned and jump start it now. If it means we cut out 500,000, million five, and other stuff right now, that's fine. It's critically important. Otherwise, we are just going to sit here and talk about it and planning for it like in year '010, there is not going to be a bag of money fall from the sky. We are going to have to make tough choices, so I'm ready to make them now. So, when we talk about that at 3:30 -- and they are tough choices. Public safety is pretty dam high on the list, so -- Bird: I second that, Mr. Borton. De Weerd: Okay. Zaremba: The shooting training range is one of those things that I would think would be a candidate even for us making it available to other jurisdictions, along the lines of what I was talking about with what legal does. Boise supplies some of their expertise to us, but if we -- I certainly see the need for Meridian to have it, but I would think that maybe we need to think about could it be a little bigger than we need all by ourselves and sell space to other jurisdictions or whatever. Sell time or something. Lavey: I can -- Councilman Zaremba, I can kind of answer a little bit of what we have gone through and Councilman Rountree and Councilman Bird are kind of aware .of some of it, because they have been present for those meetings and I really haven't -- I didn't talk about it here today, because of kind of where I was going with things, but we have been in negotiations with several different departments and the sheriffs office has committed about one-third use of their -- of the facility as far as they got it broke down into they would like to use a firearm simulator that they were going to purchase down at their station for a third of their training, although that's 175,000 dollars. So, that's going to be certainly impacted, but, then, the National Guard range, which is about 45 minutes from downtown Boise, but they have issue cars and so they can go -- they can drive down there and in a third of the time with our range, because they currently use impact guns. They are not really prepared to offer any capital monies right now, it would be user fee based, but that's something that could be discussed with the elected county commissioners as well. The Boise police department -- and I have shared this with both Councilman Bird and Councilman Rountree, Boise decided that driving down to the National Guard range was going to cost them the equivalent of two full-time police officer positions for just in driving time. Windshield time. And so that's not cost effective for them. They have -- they are attempting to purchase the Boise Police Association range. It's a range owned by the association, not by the police department, and this range has been in place since the 1950s. They feel that with EPA and clean up and everything else that they are only looking at about 100,000 dollars, but I believe Council MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 74 of 160 has gone through those nightmares with city, that the City Council realized that those fees could be far greater and so I think they are getting themselves in a -- in a venture that they are not really prepared for yet financially and they have approached us on kind of sharing. It's like, you know, you can use this rage for rifles and we can use this range -- so, it's kind of a partnership deal where, yes, we have the ability to address our needs when our facility doesn't -- doesn't do that, yet it's not really bringing any monies back into us, it's just relieving what we currently pay in range use fees now. I asked Garden City what do they do and they pretty much just go with the flow and jump on whatever range they can jump on, but they are a lot smaller department, so they -- they don't need as big a space, but they really have no money to commit to this project. I believe in Canyon county we are going to see that need, but they haven't -- they currently have some ranges that they use that they are grandfathered, but every year Nampa keeps -- Nampa lost one range already and where they shoot now is -- they are about ready to lose it, too, because they keep fighting and fighting and fighting for it and they have about eight lanes that they can use for their department and their department is bigger than ours and so it takes us 45 minutes to get to Nampa's range and we can only run eight people through it at a time, it doesn't really make sense for us. But I do believe you're going to find that need is great for Canyon county as well, just maybe not right now. And, then, of course, they fall into that same thing, it's like we will provide user fees, because they don't want to put capital up, but -- so that puts us back into, yes, can it make money once it's -- you know, if you build it they will come. I believe that's the case. But you still got to have five million dollars to build .the shell and that's kind of where we are at. And, then, that's one of the things that we hope for, is that if we can get someone to concentrate on this on a full-time basis, maybe we can stop talking about it and maybe do something about it and maybe get those commitments from those people, so if you build this we will use it X number of weeks at a time at this number of dollars per person, which you would be able to bring in X number of dollars a year. And I think that's kind of what the Mayor's kind of looking for in a business plan. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Mr. Bird. Bird: Before we go get off this, for everybody to think about, chief, what does it cost -- what does it cost you, approximately, in labor costs right now to go shoot in a year's time? Lavey: Currently where we are -- I don't have the exact figures in my head, but -- Bird: You have a pretty good idea. Lavey: Currently where we are is we pay an hour and a half of overtime pay per person just to drive to the range and, then, that's a significant amount of time that is taken out of the actual training time. One of the things that we have concentrated on in the past is in the last couple of years it started with Chief Musser is scenario-based training and you just don't go shoot at paper targets anymore and you just don't go say, hey, stand here, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 75 of 160 do this. It's -- you actually get engaged and one of the things that I'm looking at is that's kind of the way we -- right now we have to get our return on investment, so if I go reserve a range for all day, I want to have people out there all day, but after about four hours you're not really training very productively, because your scores go down and you get tired, you got to deal with the weather conditions and everything else. And so we are looking at changing the way we do business and incorporating live fire into that scenario-based training. We are also looking at, okay, when a shift comes on and you're at an afternoon shift, four of you are going to go to the range, four of you are going to go hit the road, go handle calls and, then, in an hour and two hours flip. So, you might shoot just as many rounds in a year, but you're going to shoot ten or 12 times a year, instead of two or three and we believe we are going to have better trained officers because of that. So, those are some of the benefits that you can get out of that. But, essentially, it probably costs a -- a full-time police officer's salary in what we have to pay just in current travel costs per year. De Weerd: Which is 80,000? Lavey: When you put the benefits in, yes. Bird: And also when Councilman Rountree and I seen the video on the -- on the shooting range that's -- that's approximately this five million dollars, it covers about every training you -- you can even have an indoor Hogan's alley, as I recall, or sort of a Hogan's alley. So, basically, what would you say, chief, 85 percent of your firearms training can be done at this range? Lavey: Eighty-five is probably a low figure. The only real thing that the range cannot offer is a greater distance for precision rifle shooting. Although we put in a 50 yard rifle range for ten stations, there is going to be a need where we are going to have to shoot outside, because we shoot our rifles at a hundred plus yards and, then, for the precision shooters, for the SWAT snipers, they are several hundreds of yards and so those are the needs that we can't address in building. Everything else can be addressed in this building. We have designed it to the point where you can actually drive cars into it, you can build houses in it, and everything else. We also have set it up where you can actually do your own weather, we can make it rain, we can make it mist, we can make it fog. The nice thing about it is we can make it instantly dark by the flip of a switch and so we don't have to shoot at night and worry about violating noise ordinances, we can shoot during the day and still be in the dark, so -- Bird: And Council -- I believe Councilman Rountree and myself figured if we was going to build one, we wanted to build one that covered all these aspects of training, so that we weren't jumping around. I mean probably one of these long distance and this SWAT team and stuff, what are you talking about, ten to 15 officers at the most out of 76? Lavey: About six. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 76 of 160 Bird: About six, seven. So, you're not -- it's not costing you for them to go out like it would, you know, if the whole force was doing it. Lavey: Well, they currently train with -- we have a metro SWAT team and they actually train with Ada county and Garden City and so it's -- yeah, that whole group goes out and shoots at different paces, so -- Bird: I think it's something that, as the Mayor said, we need to keep it in front of us and, Joe, I appreciate your thoughts on it, too. It's something we have got to -- we have got to figure out somehow to get it, but -- De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. Lavey: Thank you. I will be here at 3:30 if you need me. 12:10 pm Fire Department De Weerd: Chief Anderson. Anderson: Well, Chief Lavey, I think you finally out did me on the speech out at the station five there. I appreciate that. Thanks. Madam Mayor and Council, thank you for your time today. I know this is just one of hundreds of .meetings that you guys sit through in the course of a year, but for the department heads, this is probably one of the most important meetings that we attend during the course of a year, because this meeting sets our course of direction and our agenda for the next year and the things that we are able to accomplish and those kind of things. So, I appreciate your time and diligence in listening to this and I know it's a monumental task to sort through, so -- I would point out right off the bat, though, that Meridian Fire Department is better than Rupert fire department. We have quicker response times. We have paramedics on our fire engines and Rupert had a very large dollar loss in their town square this year and so our dollars loss per capita is much, much lower. Bird: You didn't say it early enough. They are out. They -- Anderson: And Iwould -- I would also point out for Councilman Zaremba that a lot of the things that you're talking about with legal and that kind of stuff, I think the Meridian Fire Department is at the forefront of that. If you look at the award we just received at the AIC for our joint powers agreement, we are taking the leadership role in providing fire services to our rural fire district. We also take a lead role in some of the training issues throughout the state and our training tower that we built last year is now being used by a lot of departments throughout this valley and for firefighters that have to meet some of the requirements for the live fire training and some of those kinds of things. So, if we can just get past some of those other jurisdictional things with some of the other cities, I think Meridian could be at the lead there. Do we have a remote for this? So, just a little bit of background, trying to refresh your memories a little bit about the fire department. We now have 54 full time firefighters within the department and last year in ~ ~ 4 1 ~ t I ~ t~ ~ 1 ~ '' I Ir ~ ~ ~ t I ~ . + { . ~ ~ I 3 ~ K ~ ~ aik ~ ~ ~~i I i r ~ fir . I .. I , `` I r ,~ ~ ~ ~ ~ <. 1 ~ ~ } ~ ~f l s ~ r i R ~ rv ~ r : ~. ~ ~ 1 ~, ~ ~i k ~~ ~ ~ , ~* ~', ~~ , [ I ~ x ~ , 1 , ' ~ ~ " ~ + :i ; f ~' ~, iii ~ 1 ~ Yfi; ~ `~I ~ r c ~i ~yl t S ' 4 ~ ~~ ~ ~ 1 s yya ~ i j 5 ~_ ~'~ ~ ~ y I f~ ,~ i ~l e I ~ ~ ' 3 { 1 ,~ r, ~ ~ '~ K ~ i ~ ~ I ~ i ~~ 4 i S K a 1 q k•~ u ~ a $ 4 ~ €'{ ' f I It ~ ~' ~ ~ ~f;~ ~ ~ ~ x i 1. ~ ~ '~~ ~~ I ~ ~ w F. t } ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ ~ ~ ~ { ' I I :a ~ ~ e t~ 5 ~ I ~ ~ F ~~ ~ ~'-' A ~ . ~ ~ } ;i ' I _ ~ ~ ., -~ 4h d ~ ~ { 1 a y r I I ~ ~ I r . ~~ < ~ {i ' i 1 ~ ~ k ~ ~ . . "t " y v ~ ~~ I ~ ~ ~ 4 ~ ~ ' I '~- t + I. _ C ' ~ I ~Y ~ . i I ~ ,. ~ ~ ~ ~i ~ 1 iti s ~ '~ F i 1~. ~ it 1 I „ , j ` ~ { H i i + ; ~ # i s MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 77 of 160 October we added three additional personnel that we felt like we were paying so much in overtime costs that adding those three additional personnel would pay for itself in the savings that we were spending in overtime and, then, would give us additional personnel for shift coverage and for some of those operational things that we needed the staffing for. And, then, in February we ended up hiring the nine new firefighters that we ultimately trained up and, then, there was promotions involved and that's how we staffed station five, which just opened about three weeks ago. So, we now have 18 paramedics within the department. Last year we were sitting at about three part-time, on-call volunteer firefighters. We have increased that number up to 11 and we plan another class this winter. So, we are planning on increasing those numbers up even more, so for folks that live in the community that would like an opportunity to serve their city in the capacity of a firefighter, we are offering more opportunities there. We have seven administrative personnel actually on your sheet. It's 6.5, but we actually consider Christie a full person, so we will call her seven for this slide. And, then, we have our public education specialist Pam Moore. We now have five fire stations. We have a fire safety center and we have a training tower and as we go through the budget and you look at some of those numbers, when you think about that now, that's actually seven different facilities that we need to pay maintenance costs on and utility costs and repairs on and all those kind of things. So, the more facilities we have, obviously, the cost is correlating in the budget. In addition to that, the apparatus fleet that we have, the fire trucks that we use, we have five front line engines and I'm counting the new engine that will be delivered here in about two or three weeks in that count of five front line engines, so each of the five fire stations has a front line engine. That gives us two reserve engines. We have two brush plugs that are four wheel drive units. We have a water tender that in the rural applications where we don't have fire hydrants, the water tender, basically, is -- just carries a whole bunch of water to the fire for you. An air supply squat that we use for refilling our STBA bottles off of. One utility pickup that was purchased last year by the rural fire district and, then, we have six staff vehicles. And, again, it's important when we look at these, because these aren't your typical vehicle when it comes to maintenance costs. You don't just run down to Minute Lube and get the 39 dollar quick tube when these go in for service. When they are taken in for service it's an all day service, sometimes two days before we get them back and, typically, just a routine oil change, filter change, those kind of things, is in the neighborhood of about 500 dollars per trip and if you have any repairs done, it's unusual if you get out of the shop for less than a thousand or two thousand dollars and when you look at our line item for vehicle repairs, you. wi10 see that we are asking for considerable increase and that's because we went through our entire vehicle maintenance line item the first six months of this budget .year and most of the shops that we get those repairs done at you're looking at a minimum of about 80 dollars an hour shop time. A few statistics for you to look at. The fire and EMS responses for the '07 year was a little over 4,000 calls. Fire prevention and inspections I want you to pay particular note to that, because if you will remember two years ago we had a fire inspector position. Prior to that we were able to inspect about 500 businesses a year and we estimate that we have somewhere between 1,800 and 2,000 businesses in our community a year. So, combined with the fire inspector, the company -- the fire companies themselves doing the inspections, we are now hitting close to 1,500 business a year with inspections, but we are still not MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 78 of 160 hitting all the businesses. So, we still have a ways to go and as the number of businesses in our community increases, again, that is a challenge for us and we are continuing to find a way to get there on that. Bird: Mr. President? Before you move on, Ron, I have heard -- and I'm sure the other Council has, too that fire prevention officer that we put on strictly has been the best thing I think as far as -- one of the best things the fire department's done, next to the paramedics. But we have had nothing -- I have had nothing but compliments on what it does and everybody loves it. A couple insurance people I have talked to says, you know, it's great for them, too. Anderson: Thank you, Councilman Bird. I appreciate those comments and I know as a fire chief I feel a lot better knowing that we are getting into these businesses much more frequently and getting these inspections performed and there has been a number of life safety issues that have been found and fixed as a result of those. So, we appreciate your support. Public education classes. We perform all kinds of public education classes throughout the year from going and talking to Cub Scout groups to going into the schools and babysitting classes and CPR classes and all kinds of things that we teach relating to the job that we do and that's just an example there of some of the things that we are doing. In addition, 143 station tours. Some of those tours are as small as a mom bringing her couple of kids over to the station, some of them are as large as 75, 80 people when we have a school bring in two or three bus loads of kids at one time. Community events. Eighty-nine different community events and there is not a week that goes by that we don't have four or five community events that we are sending an engine company to or our public education gal or one of the deputy chiefs or myself are attending to participate in those and something else that is picking up greatly is the number of car seat safety inspections. There is a proper way to strap a child's car seat into a car and, then, there are a whole bunch of improper ways and, believe it or not, it's actually a four day class to team how to properly strap a -- one of those seats into a car with the number of different types of automobiles that are manufactured, the systems that the manufacturers put into those cars for securing those seats and, then, all the different types of seats that are manufactured. So, we now have -- I think it's 12 or 13 folks that have been through that class within. the fire department and we perform those on a weekly, daily basis, and most of the hospitals now require that new parents have some type of a certification that they can show that they have been through and had their car seat inspected by a certified technician before they will even allow you to bring your new born home from the hospital. So, of our accomplishments, some of the things that we are proud about that we have accomplished with the last year's budget is -- I know this is actually in fiscal year '07, but it, actually, got accomplished -- for us it was after we did our presentation last year for the budget. It was in September that we opened that new training tower that you see on the right-hand side there. And, like I said, this has been a wonderful asset. It is considered state of the art. The fact that we can perform live fire training in that facility sets us apart and, in fact, the new training requirements, the national standards that are coming down, actually require -- you used to be able to go to a class and you could sit through classroom and practice hands-on and you could watch videos and read books and listen to lectures and they would let MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 79 of 160 you be a firefighter. That's no longer the case. They require that you actually go through some type of live fire training and Meridian is one of the few departments in the state who has a facility where live fire training can be accomplished. So, when folks want to certify to firefighter one and two levels now, the state is actually coming to us saying, hey, can we get -- bring these guys over to your facility and run them through a live fire training scenario before we certify them and we say, sure, as long as you want to help us out with some of our operational costs. So, we are trying to figure out exactly what those -- those fees are going to be with those folks and, then, we will be charging them a fee to recoup our costs. We opened the fifth fire station as we talked about, about three weeks ago. It's a little early to tell what kind of an impact that will have. We will have to wait a couple months to see. I can tell you the station has been extremely busy since it has opened. July is always the fire department's busiest month of the year, I think due to the dry conditions and the Fourth of July combined, but the guys out there have not been lacking for calls and it should have a significant impact on, again, continuing to lower our response times, especially in that area to the north, the Lochsa Falls and Paramount and Kelly Creek and all these areas out there. We also hired and trained the four firefighter EMTs I talked about in October. We actually ended up -- we had a guy retire about the end of August last year, so we had four, even though we were only budgeted for three new ones, it was -- one was a replacement. Then, we hired the nine new firefighter paramedics and, then, we also trained ten new part-time, on-call personnel. So, we, actually, ended up holding three 14 week recruit academies and that's not a small task in itself. That's training eight hours a day with those new recruits and so that consumes a tremendous amount of time for our deputy chief of operations Bill Johnson, as well as all the on-duty shifts and captains, because they are all involved in that training. It also involves EMS training with Deputy Chief EMS Mark Niemeyer, as well as our medical director Dr. Ross and countless others. We also participated in and graduated the two citizen academies that Chief Lavey talked about, so I won't elaborate on that. And, then, we did ten new car seat technicians. Our '08 enhancements, I wanted to give you an update. As guys were talking about earlier with the ball fields and stuff like that, wanted to know the result. I'd like to come back and tell you what the results are of what the money is that you gave us last year and what we have done with that. Station five was completed on time and within budget. I can tell you it was actually in the neighborhood of about 20,000 under budget. So, we were happy for that to happen. We just have the traffic signal that we have to get completed still and that's our only other outstanding issue with that one. The new fire engine for station five is to be delivered the end of this month. We have two firefighters -- two of our captains are actually going back next week to do the final inspection on it before it's delivered out here. All the additional stafFng that was hired and trained, so we didn't just sit on our heels, we went out and got those folks recruited, hired, and trained, which is no small task. EMS mannequin was purchased and trained. All the personnel -- this is a -- kind of a unique mannequin. It's not just one that -- kind of like what we use for fire training, that's just a heavy dummy, basically, that you pick up and carry. This mannequin has all kinds of features that can give you pulses and respiratory rates and all those kind of things and it's used specifically in the area of EMS training and in with our EMTs and our paramedics, this is an invaluable tool for us to use for their training. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 80 of 160 Bird: Before you go, are there -- for the public, for how -- much did you save on that engine by going to a stock engine? Anderson: It's difficult to tell exactly, because we never went out for bid, but we bought a stock engine and so we are estimating that that saved us in the neighborhood of about 80,000 dollars by using a stock apparatus that is something that just -- they build for everybody, instead of having it custom built just for us. Bird: And the difference, as I understand, is about six inches in length in the back riding area, is that right? Anderson: Yeah. The cab length is about six inches shorter. You can't get some of the specialty features. I think the air -- air bottle holders that they put in the fender well, you can only slide one air bottle into it, instead of two. But very minor differences, so we hope you guys will be happy with it. I'm sure they will. Last year in the enhancements we had an MDT, amulti-data computer, basically, a laptop computer that goes in the deputy chief of EMS's vehicle. It was something that we had overlooked in the '07 budget. So, that was purchased and installed and I think he just has the -- a couple of features, the GPS and the automatic vehicle locator to get up and running still. New hydraulic rescue equipment was purchased for Engine 302. That arrived earlier -- actually, it was last month and has been put in service now. So, that standardizes all the extrication equipment that's used on all five of the fire engines and it gives us one reserve set, so if one of those breaks down we are not without extrication equipment. And, then, the medical cabinets to help standardized Engine 301 and 302 as purchased -- been purchased. They were just delivered about two weeks ago. We still have some hardware that needs to come in for those and they will be installed within the next couple weeks. We also ordered eight PC tablet computers and the software. Those have been received. The software has been loaded. The staff is currently writing some look up tables that need to be used in the software and, then, those will put into service. And, then, there is the N-First Five Alive software has been purchased and installed and that gives us the ability to generate all kinds of reports from our fire house data and I might point out that the fire department uses a software package called Firehouse and it's a unique application to fire departments and there are a number of things that we are able to do with that Firehouse software and that's why it's important that we continue to use that firehouse software. And I know the city is talking about an Enterprise system, but there are certain applications that I think that are used in finance in the police department and the fire department that even if you buy Enterprise software, it's not going to eliminate the need for the software that we use. When we fill out an incident report, for example, that information goes into Firehouse. Firehouse is compatible with the software that our state fire marshal uses. That information is downloaded to his files and, then, he can report statistics from fire departments all over the state on a statewide basis and, then, he sends that information on to the National Fire Academy and, then, they report those statistics nationally. In addition, all of our training records, our hose records, inventory, our inspections, all that kind of stuff, is done on that software and even -- it keeps track of even every individual firefighter. For example, I could print out -- if Councilman Borton was one of our firefighters, I could print out a list of every MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 81 of 160 incident that he's ever been on in his life since he's been with Meridian Fire Department and we can look at all the training records that he's had by topic and hours, all those kind of things. So, that is a software that we plan on continuing to use and you will see a request in our budget for Firehouse software support. The mobile command post trailer, we have set up a committee within the emergency management team with the city. We have some specs that we have put together. We have identified a source. We are now sitting down with that manufacturer and their design folks and, actually, doing the layout of that and we hope to have that purchased by the end of this year and, then, that will be used at community events, such as the Dairy Days and those kind of things when we do that unified command post, that can also be used citywide, whether it's fire, police, public works, whoever, for any large event or emergency that we may have citywide. And, then, also in our enhancements last year there was money in there for furniture for the admin for the new City Hall and we have given our list to the purchasing department and so you guys probably know more about where we are at on the process than I do. So, I wanted to give you a quick comparison between our 2008 and our 2009 budget and there is a couple of interesting things that when I put those numbers side by side that it pointed out for me. Our personnel costs, as you can see, were 5.6 million last year. This year they are 5.9 million and so about a 300,000 dollar increase. And most of that 300,000 dollars increase is those things like those additional promotions that we ended up doing with the opening of station five. We had to promote three new captains, six new drivers, those kind of things that are increases in salaries there. There is the cost of living and the merit increases. There is the increases in the benefits and those kind of things that are included in there. And so a very small portion of that, in the neighborhood of about 28, 30 thousand, is actually for a new position or increasing that half time position that we have into afull-time position. So, personnel costs, you can see where that money went. The operating costs -- this was very interesting to me. We actually are looking at about a 400 dollar decrease from where we were last year in our operating costs and, then, capital, last year we had about 550,000, that was primarily that new fire engine and the equipment that goes on it and this year that capital is the 1.4 million that you see there, about a million of that is the new aerial truck and about 450,000 of that is the reimbursement payment to the rural district for the 31 percent of the training tower and that's being paid out of impact fees. So, I know when you look on your summary sheet that you were given in your budget books, it's showing a 25.5 percent increase. You got to keep in mind that that 6.5 million dollar figure doesn't show our capital from last year, the 555,000 and if you were to take out capital and all that kind of stuff, it's really only a 4.9 percent increase in budget and, then, you can see the two major capital items, the fire truck and the payment to the rural fire district. And so as we move through the '09 enhancements I just wanted you to have a handle on those numbers and where they come from. So, these were our five requests for the '09 budget. Aerial truck. A training instructor position. To increase our part-time department specialist position from part time to full time. A small remodel project at fire station one and, then, some additional modules that we would add to our Firehouse software for doing staff scheduling. The aerial ladder truck. I don't know that I need to spend a lot of time convincing you. I think you're probably all convinced in the conversations that you have heard over the last couple of years from me, but just to summarize, that this apparatus is something that MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 82 of 160 Meridian is sorely lacking and the reason that that is so important to the fire department is because our community has grown up and we are not just a bedroom community to Boise anymore, we are not just made up of residential houses, and all it takes is a little drive down any one of our arterial streets and you can see the commercial buildings that are going up. Eagle Road and Franklin is a good example. Stand out on that comer and look at all the steel that's going up out there. The Survey and Rating Bureau, when they rate a fire department to determine insurance premiums for businesses and residents, they look at all the buildings in your community that are over 35 feet in height and if you don't have an aerial truck located within two and a half miles of where that building's being built, then, that building counts against you in your rating and so we have a number of buildings throughout our community now that are -- exceed that 35 feet in height and if you think about just in the last few years, all the motels that have been built down Eagle Road, for example, there is five hotels that are all three to four stories in height. Those all exceed that 35 feet, let alone all the other office buildings that have been approved that are over 35 feet in height. I can tell you that the tallest brown ladder we cant' on any of those front line pumpers is 24 foot long. That's a long ways from reaching the top of some of those buildings. We had a rescue situation just a couple weeks ago when the gentleman fell off of one of the buildings out there on Eagle Road. If he had fallen and hadn't fallen all the way down, a rescue situation in that scenario would have been very difficult without an aerial. We probably would have had to bring an aerial over from Boise to assist with that rescue. You can't carry somebody with back injuries and walk them down or pack them down a ladder that you had to throw up against the building. So, it will help to lower Meridian's insurance rating. It will enhance the fire department's operational capabilities. These aerial trucks are used a lot for doing ventilation on commercial buildings and the more of these buildings we get, the more that need increases. The training instructor position -- I'll start off with telling you that position has been withdrawn from the budget request, but I did want to leave it in there and talk a little about it, because I want to kind of prep you guys for next year, that you will probably see that same request come back next year. It was when we sat down as directors and we tried to work out something where we could present you guys with a balanced budget, that this was one of the things that we offered up and we have tried to come up with some contingency. We know that we have deficiencies in our training within the fire department and a lot of those deficiencies are because we don't have somebody who that's their sole focus and responsibility. So, we rely a lot on our .company officers and to -- after we have trained somebody and put them through a recruit academy, we rely on those company officers to maintain those individual skills and those skills that they have to maintain have to be repeated -- you know, it's repetitive type of training. If you're going to stay good at being a baseball player or a basketball player, you don't just do it one time and stop; it's something you have to do every day. And so that training needs to go on on a daily basis and what happens when you have five different fire stations, that's five different different captains. We got three different shifts. That increases the number to 15. If you don't have somebody coordinating all that and making sure and going out with them on a daily basis, it -- you get 15 different training classes, even though you get the -- you might all assign them the same topic. It doesn't tum out that way. And Councilman Zaremba happened to sit in on one of our staff meetings where we tried to address that issue. In the short term MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 83 of 160 for this year, we are going to rely heavily upon Deputy Chief Johnson to do that coordinating between those captains and make sure that that training does have some consistency. But I got to tell you it's difficult given all his other responsibilities. So, for example, today they are having a curriculum meeting on the firefighter one and firefighter two standards over at the state. It's a two day meeting and I have asked him to come back for this presentation, but, you know, when he needs to go attend meetings like that or he also represents us on a number of committees and things like that, then, the training suffers also. And so we really need to have afull-time training position, but we know it's not in the cards for this year, so we will try to get by without that and do the best we can to compensate for those deficiencies. Full time department specialist position. We have had one and a half secretarial support positions since I came to the department three years ago and I can tell you that we have increased our staffing by over 20 people -- I think in the neighborhood of about 22 people since I got there and just the workload that increased administratively with adding that fire inspector position and all those inspections that are being done right there justifies the increase in that position, but we have all the new staff and all the training records that have to be entered, the reports that have to be reviewed. We need to increase that position from a part-time position to a full-time position and so that's what you see in the budget request. I think it's 28,000 dollars or something in the salaries or something like that. But it will -- definitely pay -- take benefits for the fire department and our overall efficiency. Next enhancement request we have is for a model at station one. With the admin moving out of station one, that we are going to have some areas in station. one that are not going to be really efficient and we are going to have some space that's available. Originally when we talked about doing that, we were talking about a project where we would do a major remodel that would be in the neighborhood of about 300,000 dollars. I know that this is a tight budget year, I know it's a year when you're not looking at expanding, so what I'm proposing is that we do a very scaled down remodel and make that area more functional and I'm proposing that we do that with our own staff. We have a number of firefighters who have skills in carpentry and mechanical, ventilation work, and all those kind of things and so currently our station one captain operates out of a hallway in the back part of the living quarters. Well, that same captain is a person that we rely upon to do counseling and mentorirlg and be a supervisor to personnel. That's kind of hard for him to do if he has to counsel somebody in private when all he has is a hallway to do that in. So, what we'd like to do is take that front reception area and some of the offices that we have now and frame in some walls, move some walls, we will create a couple of offices, one for that captain, so that he can do his daily duties. The second office we would like to create and reserve for this training .officer position that you will probably see again next year in the budget and, then, the third area is that we would create a second breakout room that can be used for meetings and additional training. Quite often we have more than one training session or more than one meeting going on and when that happens, we clear off the dining room table and we go over there and we are sitting around the dining room table trying to do those meetings and so it's not a real conducive atmosphere. I'm proposing that we do that work ourselves. I have asked for 25,000 dollars in the budget to do that. That work would include repainting, carpeting, all that kind of stuff, to kind of give that area a spruce up. The station's about -- you know, it will be nine years old at that point, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 84 of 160 so it's needing a little sprucing up in that area, so that's what that request is for. And, then, the last enhancement request that we had was to purchase an additional module for that Firehouse software that I was telling you- about and this module will allow us to manage our overtime and call backs a little bit better, so that when we have a vacancy and we need to bring somebody in, it's not just a matter of picking up the phone and calling your buddy, it's -- we have to look at whether that person just came off of a 24 hour shift, we have to look at what training credentials they have, are they adriver -- are they driver qualified or captain qualified. Are they a paramedic. All these different things. And so this software will enable us to track that. The software itself is only a 3,500 dollar module, but we have also -- we. are told by IT that it would need its own server to support that, so that's an 8,000 dollar server in there and that's why the request is for 13, 14 thousand dollars. Future challenges for us. Obviously, the increases in population will continue to stretch our resources, they will increase response times, and they will add additional dollar losses as our community continues to grow. One of the things that we are constantly faced with is multiple incidents occumng at the same time. I can tell you I was down at the fire station on the evening of the Fourth of July and we were spread about as thin as we could get with everything from medical calls to dumpster fires to grass fires to helping. Star with a wild land fire with structures threatened up on the front up above Star. Our Firehouse software gives us the ability to track that and we know that about 30 percent of the time when we have one incident, we will have multiple incidents. So, it's very rare when there is only one of Meridian's five fire stations that are out and we are working on an emergency incident. Thirty percent of the time there is more than one incident going on in Meridian at the same time. So, that will continue to be a challenge for us and we will have to build contingencies in. That's part of the reason why we are trying to increase our core group of part-time on-call folks, as well as the additional stations will help, so that we can deal with those situations when we have multiple calls. We also have just a changing of character of our community and there is a picture I was telling you about, I just snapped that as I going down the road on Eagle Road there and that's not the same -- De Weerd: Were you driving with only one hand? Anderson: No. No, officer, I wasn't. No hands. Zaremba: He was using a cell phone on the other side. Anderson: I don't know. Something about the Mayor sending us out on this mission about pictures about likes and dislikes and -- I didn't think it would an efficient use of staff time to take somebody with me. So, here is what's happening. We are getting a lot more high rise structures -- we haven't even started construction on the, what, 110 foot building that's going to go on that corner yet. Bird: I think it just went up. Anderson: Did it go higher? i '1 ~ ~ , b~ ~~' ~ ~ 1 r ~ ~ J~ ~ a ~ ~ ~; ~ "s`a f ; ~~ t ~. 7 1 r f ,~. 1 ,. 1 7} ~ ~ ~ t 3 ~ i i ii ~ ~ j I ~~~, ~'- f a A _ r~~ ~ ~ :~ ~ ' ~ ~' r I 7 ~ k ~ ~ ~ ~- iy t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~Y ~ ~ Y 5 _ 1 ] ~, ~ ~ } Y ~ 1 1 ~~~ ~ i I C •i. 5 ~} ~ ,~ i_ ~ t y ;~ ~ 3 i ~ ~ ~ ~~ }~`' i ',~ ~ ~' ~ ~; .j F ~ ~ i ~ ~ 1 r~ ~~ ~ ~ } ~ 1 4 ~ t . ~ t. '. i . I , ~ I ; ~ ~{~ ky~ t q'., "h ! ~ ~ t tp yk ~~f. y~ { ~i ~ I j 1. ~ ~~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ,_. .$ ; ~ E; i ~~ ;~. ` 1k~ i ~ I I . 1 ~ ~ ' ~ ~ r C I ~ ~ 7 ~~ ~1 ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~' 1 ~ 5 F { . Ir t tt4 t..~ ~ f .~~'. ~b f 4 ~ # 1 ) 7 1~~ {C` A }' .. it ~ I' l ~ ~`; Ile 'y, ~'~ ~r ~ ~i~ f i ~ ~ F ~~ ~ ~. F t ~~ S i ~ i > ~~~1 . F . ~ { ~ I ~ y~~ F ~ ~ ~ j ; ~ ~ i 4S ` ~ . ~~ i i~' ~ ~ ~~ ~. , ifs it ; ¢~. I 2 . ~ ~ ,~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ f ~,. ~ ~. ' ~, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 85 of 160 Bird:. Higher. It could go a little higher. Anderson: Both Anna and the Mayor are dead set on increasing densities for the community, even against -- against my will. I'd like to have those one acre lots. De Weerd: I want one acre lots. Anderson: That's what I want. De Weerd: Okay. Anderson: But I know to make mass transit work and those kind of things you got to have the greater densities, so I don't -- in the interest of compromise, I know that that's going to be a challenge for us in the fire department and how do we deal with setbacks and the fire protection issues and those kind of things. The transportation system -- I don't have to tell you guys. You guys probably get the phone calls more than I do. But it couldn't happen soon enough. And, then, we are going to have other issues, like mass transit, that are going to become more and more prevalent with the cost of fuel and we are going to see more car pooling, we are going to see more buses on the road, all those kind of things. So, instead of one or two car vehicle accidents that has one or two passengers, we are going to have those vehicle accidents where we are going to be dealing with ten passengers and a lot more injuries. And so that will continue to tax us. And, then, as has been touched on already by finance and the police department is funding for capital replacement. I think we have a pretty good handle with our impact fees on sources of funding to look for future fire stations and the apparatus that is going to be needed to go in those. Where I think we are lacking is we need to have a good Capital Improvement Plan city wide, because when I go back to that second or third slide that I showed you with our current inventory of fire apparatus and now when you add the aerial truck to it, we are sitting on about four million dollars worth of resources there that are going to wear out and some of those engines that are the front line engines are now in excess of ten or 12 years old and they are going to need to be replaced and so I started that conversation with Stacy several months ago when we were working on our base budget about possibly establishing a fee, similar to the fire truck -- or a fund similar to the fire truck fund where we could allocate money and build that up, so that it could be used for public safety or whatever we decide there. But we need to start with I think a good Capital Improvement Plan to know what it is that we have for assets, what are going to need to be replaced and, then, start putting in the appropriate amount of money. I mean we are talking about right now a million dollars. Do we know that a half million dollars is adequate or should that number be a million and a half at this point. We don't know without a good Capital Improvement Plan that's laid out there. But I can give you numerous examples. It's not just the fire apparatus, I mean the air packs that we use, for example, we have 300,000 dollars in air packs. If a new standard comes out and if we are mandated by OSHA or somebody else to replace all of our air packs in a year, we need to have a fund available that we come to you folks and say we need to upgrade these. So, those are some of the challenges that I know that you guys face and, hopefully, we can come up with a solution for those together. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 86 of 160 And with that I would stand for any questions you guys have on the fire department's budget request enhancements. De Weerd: Council, questions? Bird: I have none. Rountree: No. Just a comment. The big ticket items are items that we really are either permitted to or have or have to have. I don't see any way to reduce that increase in your budget amount for this year. Anderson: I will tell you that I have put in I guess kind of like finance was talking about when you don't really know what you'll end up having to get, but I will tell you that we will do everything within our power that once the budget is approved, occasionally you can find a buy on what they call a demo aerial truck and they may have built one that is out there that they are taking around to shows that we may be able to find and that could save us a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So, we will look at that option, if that's available. That will just be money that can go back into the fund reserve at the end or could be put into this fund or whatever. So, what l have given you in the budget is kind of the worst case scenario of what that would cost us, so -- Rountree: Better than the other way. Anderson: Yeah. De Weerd: Oh, yeah. You already see how they eat you up on that. Anderson: Yeah. I don't want to go the other way. Yes, Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I was just going to comment that in addition to this, our partnership with the rural fire district benefits the city greatly as well. I mean they are covering some capital budget items that we would have to otherwise and that's very much appreciated. Anderson: Oh, yeah. They spend -- they usually spend about a million dollars a year. Last year they spent about 1.9 million in assisting the fire department. So, they have been a great asset. Thank you. De Weerd: Thanks. Okay. Five minute break. (Recess.) 1:10 pm Mayor's Office De Weerd: Okay. We are going to go ahead and go back on the record. Our next presentation is Robert with the Mayor's office. 7 ~ I , # t` ~ ` ~ t ~ ~ `.i ,i ~»~ ? } ^ i a ~ I; t ddt : ~ { . r; y 9 .i ; ~ 1J ~ ~ ~ 3 , r,. 4 i } ~ '7 ' , r' ~ ) 'f i ~ I ! I t ~. F , ~ ~ ~ t ,. ~ I f - ~ i i ~ ` g 1 fL r ~ ~ , ~ Y i , I I `` i 1. ~ i ~ pp )t ~ j ~ ~ ~ ~ i ;~ ~ .t ~ f i ~ ~, c ~ . , ~. ~a s i} _ .e 3 13 e~ f ~ ~ . I ,~ ~ ~ I f ~ r ~ ~ ~ F 1 # ~ ~ i ~ t ~ . „ ~' ~ + t ~ ~ r ~ is ~ ~ ~~ a t ~~ ~~ ~ i ;~ S t ~ ~ ~Y~ ~ 3 ?~ ~ ~ ,~ : ~ I~~ t #~ p~ t : I ~' ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~' ~ ~ ~ '' ~ ~ ~ : , a t ~ _ ~ ~ ~ ~ _~. ~~ ~ I ~ t ~~,. ~ ~~I ~ ~ I t ' ~(! I S 1 {{{ ~ t 1. {~f {g ~ ~ t ~ ~ I ~ {f ~ ~`~ ~ I i ~ 1 ~~ ~~ t I s ~ @ r ~' 3 ~ , i t t~ I a ~ ~ p ~ R. g ~ ~ .2 a ., 1 o f ~~ Y r ~ y}}} n ~~ i r ~'i ..I .:..~ ~ 5] i E .. ?.. ?::?$t'~ I~'~ -.:~_ G ~.~i~ 's ~ c.. I tt # I:_ I3` G ,~."~::~ x,;.t. :~.' .. t ,~'. ~~ -~~ 1 ,.;w:.~;..~~ +:e -.~~- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 87 of 160 Simmons: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, first of all, let me just say I just had my one year anniversary with the city about four or five days ago. It's been a whirlwind. got a nice letter with the Mayor's initial with her signature. De Weerd: And a smiley face. Simmons: And a smiley face. For that one year. But it has been a whirlwind and just want to say it's been a pleasure to stay here over at the City Council meetings and watch and team and, hopefully, be able to provide more value to the job I'm asked to do here at the city. For the Mayor's office, we sat down after we did our reorganization with all the members of our team, including the Mayor, and really sat down to look at what our goals and objectives were for the office about what we wanted to try to accomplish. As a group we came up with the following: We want to be the customer service leaders here for the city. One of the things that we are doing as part of that is creating ahow- are-we-doing card that will help track not just us, that we will be the first people and the clerk's office to implement this card, but to really see how the city -- the city employees interact with the citizens and try to help identify some of those trends. We also want to engage the community and proactively to tell the story. That's -- part of that that came out of that was in setting the town hall meeting, which was recently held, doing those on a quarterly basis. As well as continuing other events that we do, such as Coffee with the Mayor. Another aspect of this was largely placed into the community liaison position, is establishing relationships with other districts in the city, such as the school district, for example. I know that he started attending those -- their school board meetings on a regular basis, as well as we want to extend that into other districts, including the library district. We are partner with them on a couple of different programs. Also we want to connect the community with access communication tools. That included the city news that we have -- that comes out of the Mayor's office, doing that in a timely fashion, as well as, you know, having a calendar of events, which are up to date, not just for, you know, city events, but community events, as well as our faith community. And that's been something that's been ongoing over the last few months. In our office we have -- you know, I would argue probably the most contact with any other groups in the city and they are varied in all different sorts. This past year our office was involved in 46 ribbon cuttings and 29 visits to local businesses. We received over 2,800 phone calls that were routed to us through the switch board. That's not through, you know, of people that have our direct numbers, or extensions, for phone calls we did or even cell phone phone calls, which seem to have been increasing quite a bit of late and -- but from those phone calls we also -- e-mails, the number right here is just for the Mayor, but she had over 1,100 meetings this last year, including 29 special events and approximately 1,900 letters were generated from our office for various purposes. So, we are talking to a lot of people in many different ways, whether it's over the phone, through e-mails, through letters, or in person, we are connecting with the community. When you connect with the community that means you typically have an opportunity to resolve their concerns and that is a major time commitment on behalf of our office, not just because they come to us, but because we want to provide the best customer service possible to get their answers. We may not be the ones who are ultimately able to help them, but it's through our office that they typically come to get the MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 88 of 160 assistance they need. At any given time we typically have one what we will call a significant issue, which is being addressed in our office, sometimes more. You see some of the examples of what those might entail up on the screen, but these are really the issues that more than likely the community liaison is going to be involved with. They tend to involve a larger time commitment that involves more meeting with individuals and groups to try to help get resolution to an issue. You know, some of the things -- you know, I think some of you are familiar with some of the issues that was with McDonald's earlier this year. Those are the type things that we are really talking about. The community issues. In addition, we get two or three roughly, what we call -- not insignificant, but they do require some significant staff time, you know, in our behalf or on another department's behalf within the city, whether it's a code enforcement issue or the one this week that I just received was we have a woman who has got an issue with her mail not being delivered and we are trying to help get that resolved with the post office, because of an error in the addressing system. So, these are the type of things which just take time to figure out who is responsible to help get it resolved, so one of our citizens can get their mail delivered, even though that's not a primary city function, but they come to us for the help and that's what we do. Then, we also just receive the daily inquiries with people that might just have simple questions about what -- why has the city done something or why is the city not doing something. A good example of this recently has been our transition home. We have gotten a fair amount of inquiries about are they legal, if they are what can we do about it if they are not -- you know, what's the reason behind it and it's just answering those type of concerns, which, again, just take some time to respond in letter or another fashion, but does involve time to do that. In addition to our addressing citizen concerns, one of our big things in our office is building partners. These are the partners --and this is just some of them that we have dealt with within the last year in various parts -- through our programs, events, and projects. These are groups that have given financial contributions to the city to put on some of these events or they have given their time to the city to help make an event possible. But these are our partners and these are the people that are making sure that the work that we do through our office and through other city partners are supported, run well, and have a good end result. When you really start putting it down, it's a nice list of good people. Some of our accomplishments during this past year that -- when we sat down and looked at it as a team and working with our community, regional, and sometimes state partners, we have had a number of successes. In our youth we were successful in two separate fund raisers and awareness events, which altogether raised nearly 10,000 for Habitat for Humanity and the Idaho Meth Project. We nearly doubled our participation in the Mayor and CEO's Book Club with each week having over 40 kids in attendance and that's even -- well, often there was more than that if you include the other little ones that come who may not have received a book for that week. Working with Treasure Valley partnership, we were able, with Council's guidance and assistance, to get a covered load ordinance in place. Also worked a lot with the city attorney's office to make that a reality. The State of the City address and the Taste of Meridian were very well attended and successful this year, not just in the black, but a lot more attendees, over a hundred more tickets were distributed to the community for that event. We were successful in working with the Association of Idaho Cities and ACHD to have impact fee legislation enacted, which was a significant savings to the new City Hall MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 89 of 160 project. The Ten Mile overpass remains on schedule and we like to say that a large part of the work that we did out of our office in mobilizing citizens both show up at the ITD board meeting and get comments into COMPASS and ITD and to the area legislators helped in that process. In addition, our community liaison has let us expand outreach into the community with the -- maybe I didn't have this on the slide, but with the work with the town hall meetings, that's a start, but that's been something that's been very nice. Just the work on the new City Hall has taken a lot of staff time from our office, you know, being the contact in our office through LCA with the community liaison, has taken a significant amount of time, especially as we keep getting more and more into the internal design issues on the building. We worked to implement a new logo, including a manual to go with that logo that allows if you -- someone wants to use a logo we say here you go, you can use it, here is the way it needs to be used, so there are standards of consistency. We put a hot news section on the website, so when someone comes to the front page they can see the most -- things of the day. that might be of greatest interest and we have also been able to get video clips of our community on the website, working through a company called CGI that has some nice community videos showing Meridian, some of our downtown businesses and other parts and that was a free service that was provided to us and we worked with them and I think that it adds a nice touch to the website. In addition, we also worked with the help desk at this creation to try to get the casework for really tracking the citizens and will recall the large citizen issues, whether it was a letter, whether it was an issue that had to be resolved by code enforcement, but we use that case management tool that was developed for by IT for our office to help keep track of some these issues, so we don't have things that get, you know, left behind on a customer service issue. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Shelly Houston, and, then, Will will follow her up. Houston: Thank you, Robert. Hello, Mayor, hello, Council, how are you? I'm Shelly Houston. I have been community communication coordinator in the past and just recently a transition into more of an event coordination type position. So, I have been enjoying that immensely and one of my new responsibilities has been relating to administrative support for Meridian's Promise. Ten years ago the remaining living presidents, along with Mrs. Reagan, gathered in Philadelphia for America's summit on the future and as a group they determined that all children in America needed five essential promises to be fulfilled by others in order to assure them a confident, successful future. Those promises were caring adults, safe places, a healthy start, marketable skills and opportunity to serve. So, our Mayor, fortunately, back in 2004/5 had the foresight to understand that Meridian could greatly participate in this alliance and initiative as well and have the foresight to have us establish as a community of promise. And so now exists Meridian's Promise and now in 2008 Meridian's Promise is growing and healthy. We have approximately 40 promise partners who are individual and group members here in the community that have promised to do what they can directly or indirectly to fulfill one or more of the five promises to youth and we have everything from churches, schools, corporate partners, centers, individuals, every type of entity you can think of has joined us as Promise partners and we are still doing more to recruit. You might ask why is it important that we call attention to youth and their needs. Research has shown that youth that receive four or five of the five promises MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SflECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 90 of 160 attain higher academic achievement, are 40 percent times more likely to volunteer in their community. Are more likely to refrain from using violence and just have greater overall social competence. By that I mean being respectful, empathetic, able to solve conflicts calmly. And it's also very important for business. I don't know if you realize, but now-a-days 1.2 million youth drop out of school each year and high school dropouts earn a million dollars less over their lifetime than graduates do once they enter the workforce, if they enter the workforce. In addition, dropouts are eight times more likely to be incarcerated, to live in poverty, to be in poor health or require public assistance. So, it's really to our advantage to do what we can to fulfill the five promises to youth to improve a child's likelihood of graduating, attending secondary -- or advanced education and having the core values that they will need to grow up and be successful, to live fulfilling lives. And so we feel good about what we are doing. We have five events that we support slash participate in each year. The community health and safety fair is a temfic one. That's held each. -- each spring at the elementary school over here. Meridian Elementary. And we had about 250 students attend this year. There were informational displays promoting good nutrition, fitness, health, exercise, and other things like that. In addition, the Elk's brought their mobile hearing and vision and dental screening truck. So, that even though it was the coldest day of -the year, by my recollection, except for the topping out ceremony, which was even colder, it was a great event. Another event that we support is the Youth Job Fair. That offers marketable skills. We get with Idaho Department of Labor and in March we go out to Centennial High School and there is literally a job fair with 30 employers that tend to use very young employees, whether it's fast food or groceries looking for bag people or Wild Waters looking for the ride operators. What was incredible that this year there is a 15 percent increase in attendance. Seven hundred sixty-five kids attended. Two hundred sixty actually were dressed up and had their resumes and interviewed for work that day and 110 got jobs on the spot. Those are 111 dirty thugs off our streets. Aren't we relieved. Anyhow, those are nice kids and it's really hard, because now-a-days jobs are intended for the very young, sometimes they are going to folks like us who have to supplement our incomes or haven't been able to maintain their usual jobs and their -- customary profession. So, anyway, we should really feel good about that. The Old Town community clean-up happened on June 15th or 1-4th, I believe, and, again, 50 or more community volunteers came together and they tackled a four or five block area behind the new City Hall and it was not pretty. It was not pretty. They collected over 9,000 pounds of scrap metal, 120 yards of yard waste and miscellaneous debris. A lot of that will be recycled or be chipped into mulch or something, but -- and what was recycled was turned into cash, which was turned over to the Boys and Girls Club and this year it was over 700 dollars. So, that's always a fantastic project. Meridian's Promise also supports Youth Fest, which is an anti-drug celebration, spearheaded by Drug Free Idaho. The last several years it's been in September at Boondocks Fun Center. This year there is a little transition, since Boondocks and Roaring Springs joined up. So, I'm not sure if that's going to happen this fall necessarily. But last year it attracted 2,700 students, ages five to 17 were admitted for free and they got to visit 25 or more vendor booths where they had to answer health and safety and anti-drug-type questions before they were able to go and take part in the fun and games. And the one that's coming up soon here in October 18th, again, we will be coming up on the second MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 91 of 160 annual Meridian Classic Kids Fun Run. This is literally a fun run and walk for kids ages like five to 17 and it's with the Y and they raised from -- the parking lot at Treasure Valley Worship Center over on Meridian Road, along the canal bank pathway -- is that the Bud Porter pathway? Yeah. Bud Porter Pathway. And they end up in Tully Park where there is a, you know, healthy snack and popsicles and every child receives a medal and a T-shirt and someone there to give them a high five. So, that had maybe between 80 and a hundred participants last year and this year we think it will even be better. So, those are some of the projects we support with both funds and participation and volunteerism. We also in the fall at the Meridian chamber luncheon, we have a Meridian business supporting youth award where a number of individuals and groups are recognized for their service to children and so that will be coming up I think on November 18th. Terry at the chamber reserved the date for us, so we planned a ceremony for that, so that we can do nominations and thinking who has really gone out of their way to help support children in our community. Meridian's Promise is improving some of its printed information and marketing materials and we are going to make a nice handy dandy little Navy blue folder with the little red wagon sticker on the front of it, so that literally there is a nice little presentation that we can leave with different businesses as we try to recnait them as Promise. partners. Maybe last year you remember seeing the banners that were hung from the downtown light poles, each depicted a different promise to youth and so those -- those didn't take the weather so well, so I think they are being retooled a little with a nicer material, so I think those will make a come back. And, then, we are pleased that even though it's the summer season, we are just now starting with new -- new officers and our co-chairs -- Mark Bennett is a local realtor and, then, he's also the current president of -- or incoming president of Meridian Kiwanis, which would be kind of a good partnership there and, then, automatically the new chairman of the youth council becomes the Meridian Promise co-chair and that's a nice young lady from Centennial High School named Nichole Foster. So, between Nichole and Mark and the Shelster, I think we have a pretty good leadership team and we meet monthly and have good attendance, so we are feeling very good about Meridian's Promise. Organizations or individuals that have joined are thanked for pulling their weight by receiving a plague and, then, a little red wagon -- I know you have seen the little red -- the Red Flyer wagon. So, we will still continue to present those to our new partners and, hopefully, they will chose to renew their membership year after year. Bird: How much do they cost? Houston: How much do they cost? More than you have. Bird: I knew that. De Weerd: Fifty dollars. Bird: How much? De Weerd: The promise partners are 50 dollars. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 92 of 160 Bird: That's what I thought. I didn't know if it was -- Houston: Memberships are 50 dollars. And we were fortunate to receive some other donations. The bank when they opened their Silverstone office, wanted to gift a few local charities and we received I think a 500 dollar check. So, occasionally, we are able to do some nice things like this and still be frugal. De Weerd: Frugal is good. Houston: Okay. So, anyhow that's Meridian's Promise. It's going very well. Next I want to talk to you quickly about the Mayor's Anti-drug Coalition and -- oh, I forgot to bring the -- these people are awesome. This group won the Idaho Brightest Start Award this year and that is no small potatoes for a community award. They were up against the competition of the caliber -- the entire Idaho military was honored, as was the people -- yes. Thank you, Keith. There is the red wagon. We all know the red wagon. Here is the Brightest Star award. Another nominee of this caliber of what we want were the folks that fought that Castle Rock fire and helped save Sun Valley and Ketchum and Warm Springs going up in flames. When Bald Mountain caught fire -- I mean so we are not talking small potatoes. They had some great competition and some of the projects to help them earn that distinction -- one was Project Seventh Grade, the program in which home drug test kits are distributed at back to school night for parents, along with the anti-drug education. Parents are taught how the presence of these home drug test kits in their home, whether the parents intend to use them or not can serve as a real deterrent for youngster who might be tempted to fiddle with drugs. I think about 600 drug tests were handed out this year and even more the previous year. There was also the anti-drug theater performance put together by New Heritage Theater Company. We were able to present that at a couple of high schools, as well as a couple night time performances. I think in all maybe this year probably between 900 and 1,000 people were able to participate in this interactive theater. It covered the issues of meth, marijuana abuse, pharm parties, binge drinking and what is called DSM, it's the abuse of cough syrup for adrug-like -- what do you call it? After-effects. Anyhow. So, people were educated that way. Also, the anti-drug coalition partnered with the police department to give breathalyzer tests to bar patrons on some busy weekend evenings. I think set out possibly in Generations Plaza, as they had done before, and so they were able to deter some otherwise intoxicated people from using their motor vehicles. De Weerd: They were already intoxicated. Houston: Oh, yes. Thank you. What she said. Okay. Like we talked about -- we talked about the Idaho Brightest Start Award, which was an incredible achievement and they were honored at the Egyptian Theater by Governor and Mrs. Otter and a full house for that. Very proud day for them. In all we are thinking our programs touched 1,600. That's probably a very conservative number, but that's what we came up with. And we are very excited for the future, because we remain strong with our existing programs, plus Leadership Meridian's graduating class as a -- I think they team up with the Boise i 1 ' 1' 1 ° j g 4 g N~, t ~ ~'~ ' i~ ! ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ F ~ ~ ~+ i ;. , ro. i ~.' ~. ~, f I ~ ~ t ~ f !i I I 1 ~ t ~ , ~ ~~~ ~ ~ ~ ` ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ i yf. t ,, ~ , ~ F ~ ` ~ .~ ~~ i- x ~ R M ~ s t~~F 1 ~ ~ i i } Y d ~ r } i t ~ F ~ ~ x ~ ~ t f f' F a ~ + f ~k: 1 a ~' ~ ~ i ~ ` ~ R f ~ X , ~ ~ a ~ 3 ~ ~~ ~ f I 1I t' i 1 ~Xir ~ - 3 l` ~~ ` .fie ' r~ ' ~ i~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ ,s` ; ~~ i ;' f ~~ ;~ ~ ; f { ~ y, ~ ~ ~ ~ ., ~ I ~ ~ ~ i x ~ ~ I ~ r { I . ~ ~~ ~ a ~ p , ~ i b ~ e~ i 1 ~ 9 i }~ ~- e - ~ ~ < 7 ~ ~ .Y' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I ~ ! ' s 1 +9'` . ~ , ~ ' ~ ~ S~ ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ k ~ I if s ~ ~ i i ~ t ~, ~ { ~ ~ .. 5 s,~ ~ 1. ~.' 7 ~ { 1 ~ '} ~.' ~ : ~ ~ ' ~ ~p ; ~ ~ 7:1 ~ iii, j ~ ~~~ .'i ?~~ r~ i; ~ ~: ~ } ~ ~!= ~! i_ ~ I ~ ~... ~ - , ~; i ~ ~- ~ {. ; .3~ - ~~ ?I ~,~ I~ :° ~ # {{~ f ' . ~ a !, ~ ~ r ~ j ~ ~ ~ I ~ 1. i -.i 4 ~~ ...~ F.I i:', MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 93 of 160 Leadership Meridian -- oh, just Leadership Meridian. Scratch that. They decide on a community project they'd like to contribute to and so they fund raised and did what had to be done to have alarge -- Diterally a trailer -- think of a horse trailer, utility trailer of some sort, that will be decorated in anti-drug motif that will be able to go from event to event, school to school with anti-drug education information and so that's great like at health fairs and other community events. So, that's -- I heard it's in process of getting -- getting all dutied up, so that's almost ready to hit the road for the new school year. When it's done it's going to look good. I heard it's very snazzy. It's great. So, those are some of the things the anti-drug coalition -- I personally have to say that group is one of the most enthusiastic, well attended, well rounded commissions or boards or committees we have. Very impressive. And thanks also the Brenda Murdock and Melissa Delaney over at the police department and Chief Lavey and Overton -- Lieutenant Overton for the support they give -- give them, so -- Communication we are going to talk a little bit about really quickly. We still continue to do the City News newsletter quarterly. It's an online publication, so we don't have to chop down many trees, but we are still expanding that and growing the list of people we send it to and other organizations that share it with others. I think we will be going with a more consistent color scheme with our new -- now that we have our new blue and gold color scheme, so that might be one slight change, but the content will still remain similar. Annual reports. We have been putting out a piece around the time of the State of the City address, so we will see what format it takes this year. Community presentation. Those could range from anything from presentations we make to civic clubs. It could be tours of the City Hall. Career Day. We often get invited to Career Day to tell what it's like to work in city government. So, lots of presentations. We work hard to maintain the intemet web content and the especially the hot list on the front page. We think we are doing a better job of changing it daily to try to keep it snappy and up to date. Maintaining the community calendar. Again, almost a daily endeavor. And we are finally training more and more Meridian groups to let us know of their events, so we can help them publicize. News releases go out on a regular basis, both on hard news and event announcements, as well as if we have personnel announcements or something to make. So, we are working on ®ur media relations. Local magazines, as you will recall. This year we have seen the advent of Meridian in the Middle magazine, there is Meridian Magazine, Treasure Valley Journal is hanging in there. We have got Valley Times. They do look to us quite heavily to suggest story ideas, submit photographs, because they can't be in all places at once. So, we really make a concerted effort to point out what we think is newsworthy in our community. Let's talk traffic. We make a point to attend our different traffic and transportation related events and are capable of putting up our lift top traffic display. And there are traffic and transportation articles in every issue of City-News and a special section on the internet website. With that there is a transportation database. We have been gathering a-mail addresses of people that have expressed an interest of being kept abreast of communication -- of transportation and traffic related type communications, public meetings, and that sort of thing. So, we continue to grow that database. And, then, a speakers bureau. We do have a brochure that's inviting homeowners groups, clubs, schools, churches, anyone who might like to have a guest speaker come and speak to their group from our city, we have suggested some topics and said, gosh, what would you like to team about, let us know. And so if MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 94 of 160 anyone were to approach us for that, we are in a good position to provide speakers to them. So, that's what we are looking at on the communication front. And, then, again, just like Robert kind of, you know, reiterated, really successful events, we are really proud of how the State of the City addresses have been coming off the last couple of years and we have even got some ideas for this coming session. The town hall meetings format and concept, we brainstormed a few things we might keep with that, but we plan to grow that. Coffee with the Mayor, I think our last one was at Meadow Lake Village and they were just delightful. It was a beautiful setting. And so we are going to be experimenting with some other locations like that that have some built in Audiences. Faith Leaders Luncheon will be coming up in the fall. We just need to find our location. Our little float -- again, using the term loosely -- in the parade, I thought that was nice we were able to do that. You folks are usually out of town during Dairy Days with the AIC conference, so it was a treat to have you here and to be able to do a conveyance with which to convey you down the street. The Topping Out ceremony. Again, the coldest day of the year, but I thought very nice and I think it's good to know that your signed beam is up at the top of our building. That's fun. Mayor arld CEO's Book Club is going like a house on fire. It has -- shows no signs of slowing down and we just got our book list for the coming year and even us grown-ups were all very excited. So, Sherry Ewing has worked very hard on that and so -- and so has Robert. So, that's been exciting or that's flourishing. And we even did a ribbon cutting event for an intersection, which proved we can throw a party at the drop of a hat. So, we don't need much of an excuse. That's it for the few things I was going to talk about. I'm going to tum it over to Will Berg, your community liaison, and he has a few things he's going to touch 'on. Thank you for your attention. Berg: Thank you, Mayor and Council. It's -- I don't know if it's an honor or a pleasure to be in front of you, because I haven't got a budget to present, but I will have my three slides. Stacy said that I would have a bonus if I went through really fast. So, the three slides, do you have any questions, let me know. I'll go over it briefly really fast, so that we don't get too far behind, because I know how grouchy Stacy gets, so -- the new position that you created, community liaison, I have a few things that I do throughout the day, week, month and there a few of them and I'll just kind of go over them. Basically, I'm responsible and accountable for some of these items. The Idaho state legislature. Meridian Senior Center, which is the senior center advisory board. I attend the senior citizen board meetings. I work on the Idaho committee development block grant that they have right now, which is not mixed up with the city grants to deal with the state. I attend the school board meetings for the Joint School District No. 2 and deal with issues and joint partnerships, some of the community affairs with them. I attend and participate in the Meridian Downtown Business Association. The Meridian Chamber of Commerce, with the ribbon cuttings. Government Affairs Committee. Economic Development Committee. Ada County Highway District. With the Neighborhood Advisory Committee and community projects and a few other things as you noticed Monday that kind of get thrown in and directed for me to participate in. We are developing and creating relationships with the homeowners associations, the neighborhood associations, hopefully, to try to get more involved with that before problems arise that we become involved with, rather than the other side. Being MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 95 of 160 proactive in getting some issues out to their neighborhoods, which the town hall meetings was one of those things to try and get some of the issues out to them before they became a problem. 0'm involved with the Meridian Historic Preservation Commission as a staff representative. The Meridian Development Corporation. The Mayor's Faith Ambassador's Council. The Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. Association of Idaho Cities. And Lake View Golf Course. I get to create the relationship with them. We have developed the town hall meetings, which will be an ongoing event. This is an outreach into the community trying to bring the city out to the people, so they would become more involved with the city government. Conflict resolutions. A few things from the neighborhood parking issues. The downtown parking issues. Street, sidewalk projects. Thank you, Councilman Bird, for helping us out with that. Some ordinance issues and citizen inquiries. Am I going through this pretty fast? And, then, the other thing I'm involved with is the building of the new City Hall, with the liaison between LCA Architects, the LEED certification, topping out ceremony, and maybe, hopefully, getting to that ribbon cutting ceremony in October. The next slide we have -- I'm going through here pretty fast so I can -- I got to -- next slide is the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council, which is gained as a representative from the Mayor's staff and their council. We bring together some of the youth of the community into a council that advises the Mayor on issues and has some pretty healthy goals that they want to attend throughout the school year. We have approximately 1,500 volunteer hours. They have raised funds and awareness through events. We have the dinner and auction that benefit the Idaho Meth Project and the Boise Valley Habitat for Humanity. They received over 3,500 hundred dollars each for that dinner auction and we thank you for your participation. We provide input on the city commission and committees, Meridian Arts Commission, Parks and Recreation Commission, Solid Waste Advisory Committee and the Traffic Safety Commission. And, like I said, I will have any questions that you want for that, but we are gearing up for that, preparing for new members with the start of the new school year and we will be getting together with elected officers and creating our agenda for this upcoming year. Next. Mayor's Faith Ambassador's Council. This is a council of the faith community. It brings together the faith communities to discuss common goals and ideas from other faith organizations. We have collaborated on joint events from different churches to make it more of a community, rather than just a sole church event. And I think that's kind of been our primary goal is just to communicate, you know, with what those events are, because there is a lot of times we don't know what the car wash is or what special speaker or what kind of event they have. It's on me. Collaboration was a volunteer thing that they are -- the youth of a church is willing to do some work, such as cleaning up a yard or mowing a yard or doing some other things and it's on them. No cost, no -- no burden to the property owners. So, that's kind of -- should I say recognizing program that many of us didn't know about or many of the other churches didn't know about. We collaborate ideas and events with each other. We try to support each other on their projects and partnership with some of these events. We also are creating a faith community calendar so that we are trying to get some of those events in a section in our -- on our website that they can look -- and other churches can look through that calendar to see what the upcoming events are. They network with other organizations and really trying to make more community out reach. The idea is to bring a youth member, as well as an adult member to these advisory or MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 96 of 160 Faith Ambassador Council meetings, so that we have both perspectives of the youth and an adult. So, with that -- and there is several things that we have done -- you can see the slide. But with that if you have any questions concerning any of those, if I can't answer them, I'm sure somebody from our department can. De Weerd: Thank you. Simmons: We will try to speed up, so Stacy doesn't throw darts. So, what does this mean? I mean what's the point? Well, it means that we are servicing the community by addressing their issues and dedicating our staff time to answer their questions, attend their events, listen to their proposals and mediate their issues that they have. It means that through the events that we put together we are engaging like 2,000 people to tell the city's story and to hear their story about these issues and how they affect them. We are communicating the actions and activities to the citizens using whatever mediums are available at our disposal, with an established list of over 1,000 people that receive the City News on a quarterly basis. We have volunteers from each of our programs to dedicate time to insure the program and has the greatest impact, but, more importantly, provide a service to the city and the community and are partners and citizens engaged on issues that are critical to the success of the city. They have specifically been helpful on transportation issues, such as the Ten Mile interchange. It also means that our partners and volunteers give to help insure success financially. The State of the City is a good example. This is a community event that has been in the black to my knowledge the last two years and this past year we have a 55 -- 58 hundred dollars in excess revenue, which helped support this -- the revenue for these scholarships for the city. In addition, so far this year Meridian's Promise has received over 4,000 dollars in donations, which helped support the five primary events and a majority of their expenses. And that includes the Zion's check at this point in time. Excuse me. The work that MYAC has done is they have raised money to support projects for Habitat for Humanity and the Idaho Meth Project through individual events and as was already mentioned, over 3,500 dollars was given -- raised at that event to each of those entities. The No Place Like No Place event held this last September while, again, in last year's budget year, was -- since this last time they raised over 21,000 dollars for Habitat, with a two year total of 145,000 dollars for the Habitat for Humanity that Meridian bills through donations that they were able to help secure. Just some basic line item adjustments that have taken place in our budget that you can take a look at. I know it wasn't from us, necessarily, but gas, obviously, is in a small increase we did during the realignment we did transfer over the car that was in the clerk's office to our office and that has adjusted our overall fuel and maintenance items that were in the Mayor's office. Telecommunications needs. This is one that does continue to grow again with the realignment, bring it over. We had additional Blackbeny and cell phone expenses with the realignment that came over into our department. As far as the State of the City spending authority, last year it was 10,000 dollars. Our actual expenses are probably closer to 12,000, so we have asked for an increase of 2,000 dollars in that item, but that's offset by funds that are raised for that event. What we have also done is in the MYAC travel item there was a confusion with finance at one point in time over how that was being funded there. There was some concern that we were trying to double MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 97 of 160 account the money for the State of the City funds to the scholarship and potentially to their travel, so we wanted to make sure that that was not clear, that this -- so, what we did was we reduced the travel budget thaf they had by 3,500 dollars down to a base of 1,800 dollars and, then, we were asking for an enhancement to you, that we will get to in a second, to bring it back up to 3,500 dollars. So, you know, that's just a way to try to make accounting happy and everybody else happy to show that this is actually money that's in the base budget, not contingent upon any other funds coming in from another location. That's the end result that we are trying to accomplish through that process. But in the end it is a -- even if the enhancement is approved, it would be a 2,000 dollar overall reduction in that. In addition, obviously, the big thing was the transfer of funds related to the community liaison position from the city clerk budget, such as personnel expenses, car, cell phone, employee incentives, all those items. So, this year, these are the enhancements that we are requesting from the Mayor's office. We have withdrawn the 1,000 Rocky Mountain High School scholarship. Part of that is based upon discussions that have been going on in regard to a separate committee that's been looking at the scholarship issue and one of the things they have discussed is not having them be contingent upon any physical entity, meaning there won't be one for each high school, so we thought we would just try to leave that at four, rather than increasing it to five for the future needs of -- it's based upon individual school, which is one way just to leave it as is without needing additional funds for that. As I just explained, on the MYAC travel budget, we did decrease it. It was 5,500 dollars in FY- 08. Working with finance we decreased it down to 1,800 dollars in the base budget. That's what should be in there. And we are asking for an enhancement of 1,700 dollars to that account to bring it back up to 3,500 dollars, which is a net decrease of 2,000 dollars in that specific line item, but, as I said, to try to make finance and the accounting process know that this is the intention that's in the base budget. This is the process that we use to do that. Additionally, we are asking for a laptop computer for the Mayor, a smaller one that is more mobile, as she's spending more time out of the office, we are requesting one that she will be able to take with her -- not just while she travels out of town, but when she travels to meetings at COMPASS or other locations, which would get her out of the office for a couple of hours. A smaller more mobile computer will allow her to have access to our network using the VPN from these meetings and give her access to information that might be more pertinent at those meetings that she can pull up immediately. It's really being able to get into our system and get the information that's been prepared, either for her or that she has received, whether it's a letter or other information to be more timely, as well as to take notes of when she's at that, which will alleviate staff time that sometimes is spent typing up notes from the meeting and getting them out to either yourselves or the directors or other people in the office. And, finally, we are requesting the increase in our professional services account of 12,000 dollars. This is to allow for a contract, potentially, of up to 1,000 dollars a month for professional multi-media services. As we are the central point of contact for services not related to emergency services, but all the inquiries that come into our office or are directed to our office, when they do come in does create a fair amount of work and while we are able to respond to those and -- with the resources that we have in our office between myself, between Shelly, between the Mayor, it doesn't allow us to really do any of the proactive work that we all talk about doing with the city in trying to tell the city's story. This is MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 98 of 160 really to have someone who is out there, you know, advocating on the city's behalf to help with, you know, telling the city's story in the manner in which we want it to be told. And (will -- just to give you an example, I did receive just the other day a list of regional publications that we should really be targeting going out and trying to get Meridian's story into these magazines and it may not be about the city itself, you know, about Meridian, this is a great place, but it could be about one of our local businesses or one of our local employers, about some of the things they want to do. Art is really a big one in these regional magazines and so with the work that we are doing with the Meridian Arts Commission and the new City Hall and other places, there is some real opportunity to try to get out there and tell people what we are doing. As an office it's really difficult for us to try to dedicate any staff time to be doing those type of works and tf~is contract would allow us to do that. It would also allow us to have additional professional services help, which we don't have the expertise in our office. So, that's the intention for that professional services contract, which would potentially alleviate the need to go -- for the city to go and seek outside help in a crunch -- in a -- when you need it, it's not always there necessarily. Someone may not be able to take up your cause if you need assistance. This would help make these people available for that need without being charged a premium. That's it. And, lastly, just on the city clerk alignment, overall we went from 11 FTEs to ten and a half FTEs, including the Mayor. We reallocated the dollars for the community liaison position and the employees' duties were streamlined in both offices. The base budget that you have between the two offices, it left a combined increase of one percent in the base budget that you have before. And with that I will stand for any questions before turning it over to Phil on economic excellence or wait until later if you prefer. De Weerd: Yeah. Let's just get Phil up for his abbreviated report. I didn't say that before the other department reports. Stiffler: Madam Mayor and Council, very glad to be here today and, actually, glad to listen to a lot of the other presentations, too, for a variety of reasons and the first thing that I must say is that when we talk about Meridian we continue to tell the story -- I 'get that opportunity to tell that story -- is the one thing that I keep wanting to say to the economic excellence team of Meridian is sitting in this room, includes Council, staff, and all the directors and people here, because the reason we have a story to tell and proud to be the person that gets a chance to go do that, is the fact that we are continuing to do what's needed, to continue to make Meridian what it really is today and what it will be in the future. As all the Council is well aware of, just a little over a month ago tactually -- close to a month ago, I actually gave a detailed update on the strategic plan, including the strategic focus areas for economic development, including the strategies, the objectives, and also the metrics that we put in place. So, I'm not going to repeat those today, but I would want to emphasize one element of that, that we discussed at that time and with the Council basically goes back to a little over a year ago and that has to do with Meridian's ongoing economic excellence will grow and prosper through and we identified those five areas of diversified and targeted business industry growth, the value added jobs in Meridian, the infrastructure planning, strategic resource planning, and the necessary execution to make that continue. The continuing commitment to the MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 99 of 160 quality of life, which relates to part of what we actually have to sell. The expansion of an educated workforce and lastly -- and we heard today from Chief Lavey and from Ron -- is the fact the commitment to the public safety and the welfare of the citizens. Those all are part of economic excellence. And I would say that every day is kind of nice -- I get a compliment about the staff and sometimes maybe I'm the guy that used to talk about making sure you tell people all the good things and a lot of the people in this room have heard that, sometimes I don't do it enough, but it's kind of nice to go to a meeting and when you talk to somebody and they are complimenting something that Bruce Freckleton did or from Anna's staff or from somebody in the city and that's a reflection upon the Council and everybody here. So, I -- what I have done here is this is an update of some items that I would like to share that are more than what we talked about a month ago when I kind of gave all the metrics and the executive summary in the context of being a little bit brief. What I would like to do is reiterate a little bit about what we are really seeing and one of those comments I would say is I'm very pleasantly able to say that there is more businesses moving out of Boise, coming to Meridian than there are businesses moving out of Meridian and going to Boise. And that is reflected by the numbers and what's actually there. I would also say that it was very interesting this moming, Thad -- last night I had a gentleman here for dinner, he's a former director of a publicly traded company. I met him at 7:15 over at the Marriott this moming and Andy Wilk from Center Cal was there and, actually, Scott Teny, the manager of the hotel, was telling me thank you and all this stuff and had the gentleman staying there and Andy and Center Cal had 15 people staying at the hotel and if you think they weren't excited, it was kind of like a group gathering. Two of them were from Singapore. He says that those of you who know -- Anna and I were talking about it a few minutes ago -- that Center Cal has been taking that actual model of the total project, they have been taking it around the country and they had it at the big convention down in Las Vegas. Unfortunately, in the move of the model -- it's as big as the -- as wide as the platform here. The model actually got broken up and the model was made in Singapore, Andy proceeded to introduce me to two of the gentlemen that had been flown in from Singapore to actually -- actually make all the corrections and to repair the damage that had been done on that. And as I indicated, I will say this to Council, at least without all further detail, 'it's all steps forward with regard to that project and you're going to hear a lot in the next -- actually, by the end of this month and Andy actually ended up with a briefing for about 45 minutes and he was as excited as I have seen him with regard to that and I know Anna will speak a little bit about-that and some of the impacts. So, one of the things -- and, actually, there was a couple of individual discussions that I had had with a couple of Councilmen and, actually, Joe and I actually talked, too. There is one of the things we have been very active looking at. Sometimes it's good our story is nice if everybody has some facts, other than just me or the Mayor or we are talking about them -- almost call them brag sheets and we are working on that from a marketing standpoint, but we are also going to try to make sure and update to the Council that you get a chance to have that information to help us tell the story continuously. I would mention that in some cases when the Mayor and I go on site visits for businesses that I'm engaged in, I am asked in some cases -- I mean we had a situation of a privately held company that actually pulled out and showed us financial statements. I have to say that we are very -- from the professionalism, integrity standpoint, it's one thing for MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 100 of 160 me to talk about MWI as being a publicly traded company and there is information and I can say certain things, but I believe out of the integrity, if they would like to -- if we could refer them to a publication or a media thing where they want to share their information, I think that's appropriate. But in the discussions we have had with them, they haven't shared that information with us to the point to say, here, you can go share that with everyone. And it's not that we take it away, but a lot of times they verbally bring that up to us. So, I am going to share a little bit. MWI actually has increased 60 employees over the last 12 months. As you may know, they are one of the -- that's corporate headquarters employees. That's not in warehouses in other areas. My recent meeting with Jim Clary, he's actually -- he wants -- he's very interested in being more involved. It's kind of like I was saying sometimes people want to get on the bus and I will say that they want to get on the bus, because they see -- they see the leadership from the Council and for the leadership here that this is a community they want to be part of. And I can tell you from .every presentation I have made in the last two months, that's an exciting part to have that kind of excitement with the people that are coming there. The Mayor and I recently were at a company and some of you may not know, it is privately held, which is called Pentry. I would say to you that surprisingly you will see in excess of a hundred employees related at that firm. I won't give a definite number. It's privately held and I think you would be shocked to understand what that company is really doing here in Meridian and continuing to grow. The Blackhawk manufacturing I had mentioned once before, but I would say that continues at the pace of the eight to 85 employees and with the distribution center, their goal was still to be at that 200. At the same token, bodybuilding.com and some of the economic excellence series had a chance to listen to Ryan Diluca and what's going on. One thing I would want to put out, they are also a catalyst for everything to do with what we refer to the health sciences and technology corridor, they are now atech -- when we think about it, they are not only in the products they sell, they are a technology company and they are a technology company that means something with a comparison of us being able to use them as an example. So, those are just a group, what you really look at as true related to the kind of employers and what's happening in the ones we know, then, that's when I say I'm recently announcing the moves to Meridian. As some of you are aware, Power Engineers is moving out to Silverstone. They also -- they also have purchased Visual Genesis, another technology company, another kind to continuity that's really there. And those people are communicating on that basis. One exciting thing -- and I would invite any you if you can next Thursday -- next Thursday evening from 5:30 to 7:30 is the open house at Venga Works. Actually, the Mayor is back Ithink -- I think -- I would say to the Mayor I think we actually -- the first contact when we heard about these people was last November. That's when I started working with them for the first time. This company is two -- this is privately held. They are the same gentleman that owns Freedom Storage Units. They are two silicon -- two southern California engineers, decided they wanted a better lifestyle, moved up here, and I will say when they opened Meridian will not have a water cooler, they will not have an incubator, they are going to have one of the most. state of the state of the art emerging business centers of anyplace in probably the northwest. In addition, it will be totally green. You guys have seen the project. You have had it come in front of you. I can say I did a hard hat tour with them about a week ago. They are sharp, exciting individuals and the thing I would want to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 101 of 160 mention to you -- the Mayor and I had a meeting with another software company here just last week. I can tell you I have already connected them and they are already looking at the meeting and potentially they may end up being one of their first tenants, although they had already got tenants lined up. But that entity ends up becoming an emerging business center that we can see 25 to 50 times the entities, that may either move out of their house or the new entities who can walk in and have state of the art technology in a different way than we have seen in this valley. And it's exciting. I'd say next Thursday, if you could, if you can it's 5:30 to 7:30, that's the open house at the chamber -- it came out in the chamber notice. And the principals will be there. Both gentlemen -- one gentleman lives up in Sun Valley. The economic excellence breakfast series is continuing and going forward. The part I would want to mention out of that, at the suggested and thanks to the support from the Mayor and the Mayor's office, we have the last breakfast videotaped. And we are now in the process of, like I say, editing that tape, we are trying to shorten it down, so we can use it for multiple purposes. Andy Wilcaff, before today, he wants to give it to his people, Porter Nievelli out of BVEP wants that. I have been requested of it by an investing group out of Arizona and it can be a tool for us and we are able to -- and most of you were there. We couldn't have it any better than having some of the spokesmen like we had with Dennis Johnson and some of the people and the ideas were not -- we are not trying to edit it -- we are editing it, we are editing only to shorten it. Maybe some of the comments that we think are appropriate, if you really put the concise thing where it's consistent with our scoring. I would also tell you that -- which is very exciting, is next Friday -- that Friday is the next president -- the president's advisory council from ISU, we have part of a presentation There that Scott Perrin and Associates was going to be making that I have been working on with them and they are now going to go into afund -- actually fundraising campaign, they have outlined it. The fundraising campaign is all titled around the Meridian Health Sciences and Technology Corridor. They want to cooperate and be collaborative with regard to the public relations side, so we can continue to leverage off of telling our story. And so you have all 16 board members, in addition to the alumni association, and everyone going forward in that. And so the timing on this is -- since I talked to Council last time, I met with Don Detriech, the head of the Department of Commerce, in addition to the fact we have now had discussions through the governor's actual task force on health care, of which Robin Dodkin from ISU is the sole actual educational representative. And three of the speakers that we are talking about potentially as a key note speaker for that presentation, which we think would be perfect timing, because it's related to the launch of more of a concise overall marketing campaign to the health sciences technology comdor, because what the Mayor -- it's been suggested. She hasn't heard this yet. We want to ask the governor first, because he was coming -- the recent speaking -- the recent speech to IACI and talking about the health sciences corridor. We are going to ask the governor first. If the governor says no, we are going to ask him for the chair who is on their task force on health care throughout the state, Robin has already talked with him. And a third to that we are going to ask for Don Detriech, because I went to Don Detriech at the Mayor's direction and Don Detriech has now been presented everything on the health sciences technology corridor and I say our enthusiasm and excitement about it is a little bit different in a way that that's kind of recognizing that, you know, Meridian is here, it's not MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 102 of 160 just Boise. So, I mention the thing on joint marketing and planning. I only would say I touched on the part with ISU and what Scott Parrin as been doing, but that's no different than whether it's -- it's Portico, it doesn't matter whether it's Pinebridge; the point is all those people are talking in the right way and the good part about it it's talking about we. It's not about they or -- it's looking at it's their part of the same team that they see us being on. On the reworking of the -- excuse me. On the ISU advisory council, when I sat in, I just put up -- they are integrating the state -- you know integrating the stakeholders. It's so exciting. Actually, Jim Schmidt is actually doing a presentation on technology. I mentioned to Council back in our meeting about a month ago. And I do talk about it, potential technology for the distance learning side of that. He has a 20 minute presentation tied into that advisory board that's meeting this Friday. And so it's exciting, because part of the initiative and things that have been brought up are the people are taking it for it's action. The other part I would mention is that advisory council and part of what Scott Perrin has actually pro Bono did with regard to putting together that strategic plan with our assistance, is what he's actually done is he has -- there actually are outlined in the campaign to go to the legislature ahead of time, they want to be able to start promoting to the state board of education to understand what ISU represents and the first line of it as it represents economic develop of not only Meridian, but Boise valley and of the state and of the welfare to the system. The reworking of the economic excellence website. We are going to -- we continue -- and think Terry's still here. Is that Terry, as he said, we are continuing. Josh has been doing -- we are trying to look at, in addition to the work we have been able get some assistance, just as an example, that new video that we get it edited, we are trying to still look at that. We are developing -- actually, if you can go to the next one. Thank you. On the continuing branding identify for Meridian, I would say that what we are looking at is when we talk about brag sheets, we have a new one that the Council should be able to see once -- we just got the other draft. We are developing, at the Mayor's direction, we have got kind of a quick stock sheet. It's more of a quick fact sheet. It's not something that somebody that can go research and see other further data. What we are wanting to do is have those tools to tell the story that are easy -- easily accessible and with one thing -- and Ithink -- and I would say this -- the Mayor made the comment the other day, it's like in our discussions we've even had with the state Department of Labor and with Don Detriech. As you well know, sometimes when it comes to economic data, I have to tell you when it comes to finding it specifically on Meridian, it's not easy. It takes -- it's delayed or we only get part of that data, in a way where Boise or if we talk about the total -- if we talk about the county or we talk about the MSA or the whole thing. Ithink I'd say is that as we grow and everything, there is more recognition and have to say we have -- we have, with some cooperative help from the state, we are getting a lot better information with regard to that. On the positive PR for Meridian, I will say this, I just participated two weeks ago -- BVEP actually -- actually invited in and they had site consultants and as they call it their familiarization tour to here. On some of those familiarization tours I'd have to say the first round -- the first round we were not as active and the participation was kind of an interesting mix. It was a little bit what I would say more convention oriented to Coronet and some other entities. This time we were able to attract 12 site consultants from all over the United States. We also were successful, if any of you see Dale Newberry, please, thank him, because we are not MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 103 of 160 only in the fact of bringing him around, we had a chance to show him Meridian, we had a chance to talk to him about the business enterprise corridors. We had a chance to have that direct dialogue, they got a chance to see what was going on. We also had a Micro 100 tour. They are at Plexis out in Nampa. They actually rotated, but we made sure -- and I can tell you Dale did an unbelievable job to the point that the people were going wild. They could not -- they could not believe -- and as you know, even in that brag sheet -- and maybe you don't know this, Dale's now distributing his product in 50 countries globally and when they look at -- looking through a drill bit that's being used for the I phone in China that you can't even see through a microscope, they kind of got with it. So, I guess -- the Mayor's telling me -- I'll move on. Is that the -- the pro active engagements that's existing in emerging businesses -- I only want to say this as a representative to what happens every day with regard to that pro active engagement. Many times on communication it means we know what the businesses want, we continue to ask them what can we do to support you and you know what is really interesting, we are getting a lot of businesses saying to the Mayor and they will say what can we do to support you. And that's exciting. And so the new business outreach, when you say -- I guess my final comment would be there is we must be aggressive and pro active with all our overall efforts. We can't sit and wait for them to come to us and would say that's part of the identity that really looks at it. So, from the budgetary standpoint, there are no requests for any enhancements from the economic development budget. You know, we -- and I guess part of that is I think it's acredit -- I guess you are -- you are supporting it by the budget things you're doing with, whether -- Ron .and I were just talking about the ladder truck, because it's real tough for me to tell a developer, yeah, you ought to be doing this, or whether it's Anna's staff and planning for whether it's -- whether it's the police department, because that's all part of the city of excellence for what it is. So, we are not asking for any enhancements at this time. I hope that -- I will be glad to answer any other questions. As you do know, the plan that I submitted to you about a month ago has matrix in it, has the objectives, and the things that we discussed at that time. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Borton. Borton: One quick question. Stiffler: Sure. Borton: When I looked at the budget there was a -- the last couple of years there was a 40,000 dollar dues, license, and publications line item that -- Stiffler: I'm sorry, for how much, Joe? Borton: Forty thousand. It's at zero this year. Stiffler: That's BVEP. That was -- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 104 of 160 De Weerd: It's transferred from -- Stiffler: It's transferred over. It was in economic development and I actually think it's -- did it go to 45? De Weerd: It's in Other Government. Stiffler: It's in Other Govemment. Borton: Okay. Thanks. Stiffler: Any questions? Thank you very much. CLERK'S OFFICE De Weerd: Thank you. And last, but not least, the clerk's office. Holman: I'd like to say I won't hung, because Stacy's not the boss of me anymore, but will. Okay. Okay. Since my background is finance is actually what I got my degree in and I ended up a clerk, I'm not sure how that happened, but I'm enjoying it. I decided to start with statistics. Just decided to gather some information on what our department handles. I did it on an annual basis. As you can see, roughly around 22,000 phone calls come through our office on an annual basis that we route to other departments or just a lot of them are answering questions, sometimes we are looking up things in the phone book for people. The number of agendas and notices that we have sent out, we have posted over 200 agendas or notices, which usually it's both. And we have done over 80 additional notices for special meetings and precouncil meetings. I went through LaserFiche to try to look into the number of documents that we have scanned into the permanent record and we have done a total of 28,000 documents, for the total of 440,000 pages that's a drop in the bucket of what we actually need to do, but it's still think a pretty decent accomplishment. The number of permits we issued, you can see -- you know, the liquor, catering permits, beer and wine liquor licenses. The fireworks permits we have 16 this year. I worked on setting up a little bit different process for that this year to make it flow more smoothly. I hope that it did, but, hopefully, I can reconvene with everybody and find out what worked, what didn't, and try to streamline that process for the next year. We also do massage licenses. Mobile sales unit licenses. Those are our -- you know what those are, ice cream vendors or people that are going door to door. Private security licenses. The new temporary use -- citizen's use permits, while the number says only 19, that is hours and hours. and hours of work on those 19. So, they are quite complicated and a lot of different people involved in that. And, then, we also processed some of the dog licenses for the police departments, ones that people mail in with their utility bills or simply walk in and want processing, then, we forward those onto the police. I tried to do a fee comparison with Idaho cites. It was a lot comparing apples to oranges, because some people don't have a fee or a license or a permit in place for some of these things. Right now under the ,~ ([ i I1 I I ~~ ~ kaY ~ I.^ ~ 3}~ ! I J , F S~ L, ! S 1~ 3 ~ ~s y k f ~ ~ ~ .~ a ~ F ; ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ .: C. l' f C ,. 6 ~ ~ 1 r t ~ j 1 ~ ~; I x 3: S t _ i ' ~ ~ _I ~ ,I fff , , ~ ~~ ~ ~ i. ti ~ - d 5 4 ~ ^ 1 7 ,~, s I ~p QC ~ 9 ~ h. I I F~ ff 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 1 - `~ ~I ~ i ~ a ~ -0 K y F 3 t ~ ' . . }j ~ ~ 5 p ~ ~ ~, ~~ ~ i?E ~ s. ? ~ f ~', e ,s ~~ ~ ~ r ~ t f Y f~ ~ ~ 1 ~-~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I d ~ y ~i ~f ~ ? t; ~ i ! ~ } ~ ~t ~ i .r, ~ ~ I~, ~ r 4;. y~., ~t ~ f ~ ~. ~ ~ [ t~- f ~ ~ . of - I,- G i~i ~ ~ ~ i z ( i~ ~' ~ ~ ' ~ ~ $ ~ I ~ ~ ~8 F ~~ Y~ ~ ~. i ~ 1 a ! fi ~ ; _ 7 . . , - J ~, ,f ~ k { ~~" :; ~ ~ 1 ~ a q r ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ _ ~ . '~ z 5 ° ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ it p 1 ,~ ~ . ~7 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ y , , ~ ~ ~~ ~ y ~ ~ i k, ~ _ j, Y } , : r ~ F~ ~ 1Q, ~ ~t ~ . L, f~~ '~ d JJ. ~ ~ ~ y Q k Ll i t I I ~ ~ ¢ ~ f t ~T~ i . `} ; 1 Y ~ ~ I ~~ ~ S rf~ d ~ ~ }' ~ .~ S :~i i E ,~ ; MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 105 of 160 local sales units on the left, we charge $29.25, that's simply the background check fee. We don't currently have a fee in place for that. I'm working with Emily Kane in setting up the clerk's fee schedule, so we can charge for that. The massage licenses the same for an individual masseuse or someone who is -- I guess a massage vendor. It's ten dollars, plus the $29.25 for the actual permit -- I'm song, the background check. And the same with the security -- the private security services. Part of that fee is the background check fee. And, of course, the temporary use and the citizen's use permits right now, we are not doing a CS, like a pilot program over the next year, which we talked about in our Council meeting. Some of these other cities they don't charge -- they don't have a massage or security -- they don't permit it, so -- I realize this really isn't very good information, because it's really hard to compare. Accomplishments. I have only been over there for five months, so this is just kind of what I'm proud of us doing in the last five months. I reorganized the office. I was fortunate to inherit a very good staff from Will and we were also fortunate to be able to get Sheree Finch to come back on board full time. So, there is myself and four people. We -- one of the other things we did is purged the documents in the basement that had already been passed by resolution and for us to get rid of and we had already gotten permission from the state archivist to get rid of. That was over a hundred boxes. We worked together with' accounting and now there is one more aisle you can walk down in the basement. It looks like a drop in the bucket, but we will get there. We are in the process of sorting and moving and organizing to try to either -- once we have scanned in a record and we have it permanently in a digital format, to be able to either pass a resolution to destroy the records permanently or send those records to the state archivist that they can store if we actually ever needed the original documents, we can get it from them usually within a two day turnaround. We have about 30 boxes downstairs right now of old minute books from City Council meetings, Planning and Zoning meetings, that's our first step is to get a resolution before you all in the next couple of months, hopefully able to send those to the state archivist. We worked with Sheree -- Sheree has been just excellent at working with Microsoft Access. She helped us put together a permits database, which allows us to actually have some history on the different permits, how many we have done, who we have sent them to, when they renewed. She's been a very very valuable tool with her skills of just putting together -- she helped me put together my portion of this presentation, because Powerpoint's not my strong point. We migrated from a tape system from audio recording to -- from cassette tapes to digital audio, which is going to help us long term to be able to store them permanently. We are getting ready to send a bunch of the tapes, once we have passed a resolution, to be able to send those to the archivist, but for a long term solution, talking 30 years down the road, we are hoping that the digital will be more of a -- a permanent record a better way of I guess storing our audio of our meetings. It also helps us to be just a little bit more mobile when we have meetings in different places and if things aren't held in the Council chambers, it's just a little digital recorder that we are checking out and getting a lot more use from --from the different committees. Working on redoing the filing system to a date driven filing system, rather than by title, like for a project, instead of doing it by title, it will have a project number, which is easier for researching and looking for stuff in LaserFiche later on down the road. We worked with Dean, our transcriptionist, to come up with some guidelines on just little small things here and there that we were proofing MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 106 of 160 minutes for. He said he'd do it any way we wanted him to do our minutes and so we came up with a couple of different things we wanted him to change and that's saved us considerable time in proofing the minutes. We do still look them over when we get them back from Dean, but nowhere near the hours we were putting into that. And we are. reorganizing files in LaserFiche to try to make it more consistent, so, eventually, when we spread into all the other departments in managing their documents, too, it will all merge together easier and just easier for us to research things. Originally, when I put these two enhancements together, one is for records retention -- or records management software. One is for agenda manager software. This was fairly soon after I took over in the clerk's office and I -- my main focus was everything that's going on in the basement and organizing that and getting all that together. Both of these enhancements are an additional module to LaserFiche, which is a major base program that we have for our document management right now. Having been at it a little bit longer, I think that it's premature right now to do the records management software, just because that's really going to become more of an issue when I start having to manage other departments records to retain those and come up with a schedule in which we either purge them, send them to the state archivist, or whatever. There is a little bit in that records management enhancement that's very important to us and it was just 2,700 dollars for two new scanners and these were specific scanners that will scan directly into LaserFiche. It's vital that we get those. Right now we -- Tara has the one good scanner in our office and, then, Machelle and I both have scanners that are on their last leg that we have to manually feed in a page at a time and we are talking thousands and thousands of records in the basement. We definitely need to get the two scanners, so we can have people scanning at their desks on a daily basis and getting us caught up on the basement. My last item is -- which is the one I'm very much hoping for is the agenda manager software. Currently we get approximately -- and this is just an average -- of 3,500 a-mails per year that specifically have to do with our planning and zoning and our City Council agendas. Right now you guys get an agenda every week and I don't know if you understand how much goes into that process of getting that together, getting that accurate, all of it is done through thousands of a-mails and a white board on the wall in the clerk's office, which the fact that we don't miss more things is just a testament to the fact of how much Tara handles and really does a good job of making sure that she gets everything on the agenda and she's tracking all these projects and having to go back through a-mails to find the project to make sure they get onto the correct agenda or they are -- if they are continued to another agenda. It's just all a cut and paste process through e-mails. The new agenda manager software, what I'm hoping -- and Ithink -- I really feel we need to migrate to, is software that people -- the individual departments and probably starting with the department heads or whoever they decide within each of their departments should have access to' it. They would initiate their request to put something on the agenda. Instead of sending Tara an e- mail, they would initiate it -- they may have, depending on the type of item it is, it will have different sign-off people along the line. And so when they initiate say a contract, there will be a designated set of users that get that ID -- or get that job ID. It sends out to them, it has to have their approval before it can be submitted to say Tara or I to be put on the agenda and, then, the Mayor or Charlie would be the final sign off on whether something gets on the agenda. What's nice about this is right now the way that it works MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 107 of 160 right now is it's -- Tara and I are kind of the keeper of what's going on until we send out that draft agenda, we get requests from Planning and Zoning, you know, checking out to see where the projects are, are we getting it on this agenda -- they really have no way to access the agenda until they get a draft to find out where something's at. With this software it's constantly a work in process that people can log into, they can see, okay, I submitted this request, it went to Keith Watts on this date, has he looked at it, has he made comments. Keith could make a comment on that item, say, no, it's missing this, need more detail, you need this, and it would send that person an a-mail back saying he has seen it. It's just a checks and balances process through the whole system, so things don't get missed, things don't get -- they have all the proper sign-offs before they actually get on the agenda in front you at a Council meeting. It allows us to track something that's been on the agenda all the way back through our Planning and Zoning -- the inception of it in -- on a Planning and Zoning agenda. I think that right now would be a great time to do it if we were to convert over from a totally manual process to an automated process where we could have some history and tracking and accountability before we speed up again, before the projects start coming in hot and heavy. I know that I have support from finance on this and I don't know if Stacy wants to say anything about it or not, but I know that they are in support of this, too, from their end of things and how things get on the agenda, especially regarding contracts and stuff like that, so -- have I said it all? Okay. So, the one time cost is the 18,000 dollars and that's the additional module that's added onto our base system that we already have and, then, the annual maintenance of 3,000 dollars. And with that I am finished, unless anybody would like to ask some questions. De Weerd: Okay. Council, any questions regarding this section on our agenda? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: I understand the need to have good scanners and that should happen at some point, I agree with that, but have you explored -- back up. Okay. As we keep producing more and more records, the current and new records should be scanned in. But you're also talking about going back and doing, what, 50 years of stuff that's in the basement? Holman: I'm talking about doing 40 four drawer file cabinets of records that are in the basement and in other places throughout the city and that's just our records. Zaremba: Is that. something that we could contract out to somebody to come do? Holman: Yes, it is. But it's very expensive. They charge an hourly rate. They charge you more if they have to take it off site. No. They charge you more if they have to do it on site. I'm sorry. So, there is a -- a process that we would have to go through in organizing all of these records, putting them into like an Excel spreadsheet or some sort of a list, because you have to create a chain of custody, because you're dealing with MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 108 of 160 original records. So, there is all of that staff time, which that's half of the time that we are going to spend right now to scan them ourselves. Then, they charge you a per page fee, an hourly fee -- it's very expensive and it would be a great big enhancement. Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. Holman: Uh-huh. I checked into that, because that was the first attractive option to me. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree. Rountree: A question for Teny as it relates to the Agenda Manager. Is that a system that would integrate into an Enterprise wide system? It seems to me that there is -- be a lot of use of those records. Paternoster: With the different systems we evaluated, some of them could have documents management integration. The thing about the LaserFiche system, which is really what we are talking about, Agenda Manger is something to add onto LaserFiche. The LaserFiche system is a sequel server database, which is the standard that the city uses and so we would have as much access to that as any other system, so it's actually a good selection. Rountree: So, your Enterprise database that you're looking at is the sequel? Paternoster: Absolutely. Rountree: Okay. Holman: Is there anything else? De Weerd: Anything else? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Borton. Borton. Real quick. In that budget item you have got contracted labor at 20,000, which looks unusually high. I don't know what that applies to. Holman: Contracted labor is sitting right over there. Dean is who we contract -- he does our transcription. Borton: It actually didn't look high enough. Holman: And whoever thought of that, thank you and bless you. 31 Y, ~ ' ~ ~ r 1 'f 'pK~ i ss { ~ 4` 1 5f ~3 ~ ~ ~ 3i 1 ~ . 1 ~ i ~ 7r~'~ 4 ~ F r ~ 3 5.x,1 ~ ~ ~ ~~ g, tl ~ I '~~ 1 ~. 1 '~ ~ ~ ~ } d~ ~. ~ ~~ I 1 ~ . } ~ i { 51 ti 4~~ 7 ~, { r , . ` i ~7 r ~ ~ ~. ~ 1 { ~I}~ ~ i ~ L! ~~ ii a. T ~C- ;~ f..;? pp~ $ ~ ? ~ '.~ I ~ I ~ ~ t , ~ a 3 j ~ i' ' ~ ~` ~ ` ° ~ ~ ~ ~ _ y ~~ ~ ~ I~ 4 ~ ~ ,e d . f~ ~ ~ fff , . . . ~ ra I ~ i i ~ ; ' t ~ ~ ~ ; ~ ~ t~ , ) ~ ~ ~ _ '~ i _. 1 f t, ~ f. €s '1 ' "JJC1 ~ y ~ k '' t 1 - -,~ G' ~ ~ r ~ ~ ; , i~ i ~ti 4 y - 1 ~ ~ ~~ ~ L111 F+++ t I ~ {r j 3 ~ HH+ [ ~ 1 ' ..i `.I 1 ~ s { y: ~ y '..~.{G~1.fY4.'~ ~e.' 1 i~, F: r. t i S ~ '.,,i;: ~..i 3 , ~~ ~,~ 1 I. ~, k! ~ j{ ~ 4 q. ~ ~~. i .J ~ " ~ ~` ;;.- f ~f~ ~~ 3 ,01 i ~ ` 1 3 ;! 4~t ~.'..:2, ~' ~iI ,:: MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 109 of 160 2:10 am Stacy Developmental Services Presentation De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions, Council, for Jaycee, Phil, or Robert? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Finance. Stacy. Development Services presentation. Are you presenting for Building and Planning? Oh. You're the preamble. Kilchenmann: The preamble. Yes. I did most of it. She just wanted me to add some extra detail. Zaremba: While things are being organized, Stacy, can I ask you a sideways question? Kilchenmann: Sure. Zaremba: Is there a point at which -- let me back up. We had a couple of departments talk about their vehicle fleet and the maintenance on them as they age and stuff like that. And maybe this is a question for Public Works at some point, too, because they probably would end up with it, but is there a point at which it makes sense for us to go through a motor pool or a fleet department that would not only use fleet purchase ability, but also do the routine maintenance -- maybe not major crash reconstruction, but -- Kilchenmann: You mean like hire maintenance? Hire a department or like -- Zaremba: Just a single department that -- I mean I -- do we anywhere know how many vehicles the city owns? Each department knows how many they own, but does anybody know -- Kilchenmann: We do. We do know how many vehicles the city owns. We track that in the system. Zaremba: And do we know the combined -- Kilchenmann: And if Keith Watts were here he would be doing cartwheels because you asked that. And, actually, it probably -- I don't think from my experience with the state and the city that it ever makes sense to actually run a garage yourself, but it probably does make sense to have some kind of tracking of the whole fleet in one place, because I think the state found -- and they, actually, did -- they had a performance audit department and they spent a year looking at vehicles and what they found was the state collecting this -- this fleet of ancient vehicles and their maintenance costs was just accelerating and accelerating and so that's when they came up with the -- and the fleet -- cars are being replaced, but the old cars just go to somebody else, so the fleet wasn't staying the same, it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but it was full of crap, you know, it was getting full of -- so that probably is something that we could actually do now. De Weerd: Is that a technical team? MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 110 of 160 Kilchenmann: Yes. It's a technical accounting term. As soon as Keith gets done with the City Hall project, that probably is something he could at least gather that information in one spot and we could easily gather maintenance costs and look at managing our fleet from a global perspective, instead of just department to department. Did that answer your question? Zaremba: Mr. Barry appears to have something he might want to add. Kilchenmann: Oh, he wants to have awhole -- Zaremba: So, at least it's being thought about and -- Kilchenmann: It is being thought about and discussed and I'm more conservative than Keith and Tom, but it's definitely being discussed. Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. Bany: One of the -- Council Members, one of the things we were looking at was we have a -- at least in Public Works we have one of the largest fleets, except for the police, and we were going to try to track this year our fleet maintenance cost, as well as our coordination of fleet vehicles and one of the things we noticed that we have a -- a major challenge with is insuring that our vehicle fleet is maintained in a properly fashioned order. We have vehicles that, you know, it's really up to the person who is driving the vehicle to remember that at, you know, 3,000 or 5,000 miles to take it in or that the tires really do need to be rotated or what washer fluid is out or, you know, that our vehicle fleet looks really bad, because of dust and debris and other sorts of things. Are there windows that you can't see out of or those sorts of things. So, we were going to try to track that and we are doing a realignment, as you know, in Public Works and one of the things we have been discussing was having a coordinator type of activity associated with the coordination and scheduling of fleet vehicles and also tracking of those costs and attributing those city wide to see if there is -- it does make financial sense -- if there is a case for us taking on the fleet -- those services. So, we are sort of looking into that for Public Works, so -- Zaremba: Great. Thank you. Thank you both. Kilchenmann: Okay. Anna had asked me to just go over a couple more facts or items that probably need to be explained on the Development Services budget. The one thing I do want to point out -- in Anna's budget in the past -- or in the planning budget, there has been a lot of clutter. In other words, there have been items that she had no control over, like city wide dues and so forth and as you know we have also in the past had streetlights and code enforcement have -- have been moved from the General Fund and have been in that Development Services Fund. We moved all the -- the functions that we felt were city-wide functions out of Development Services. In other words, those are functions that the city is going to do no matter what. I mean we are going to pay for ~ F i ~ 9 " ~ ~ ,, I t I ~ s rt ' : rt Tr 1 ~ ' ~ yp' ~ 3. 3 ~: ~ y = i ~ '~y t ~~ 6 ~ r a;e~ ~, ~ . I ~ ;j { { ~ i ~ ~ {~ 1 S i ~ j .~ 2 1 ~~ ~ ! ~~. '.~ 1'~'i ~ r ~ 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~ ~ , i ~, ~. ~ ~ ~ ~ a1r ~. i ~ I ~ I ! ~ . ~ ~ ~ ~, M ~ ~ , ~ ttt '~' ~ s ` ~+ ti i ~ z ~ i ~~ x i ~ i , ~ s ..~ ~ ~ +~~ f , r ' ~~~ ~ ! :1 i l ~ ~ ~ I !i# tic ~. ,I ,, _ ~ , '~ ~ ~ ~_ E i , i a ~ ~ ~~ s j I ~ 1 ' ! ~ ~ ! ~ ~ i I ~ it ~ ~ d+ ~. F i :S ! ` 3~ ~ ~~ , I g }{t ~~ . , ' r ~ a ~ ~ ~ 9.. ~... 1 r y ~ , a ~ ~ 2 t R ~ a ~ Y' ~.. 8 ~ ~3 ~ ~ ~' ~ 1 J ~; ~' t , € ~ ~ ~ I ~ f t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ € ~ ~ , ~ y ~'! ~ ~~ ` f ~ , , r ',4 ~: i'~f~ 3 € ~ ~ I ~ t° ~ ~~ t, r E ;~ ' 4i ,I ~ !' ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ! c ~ ~ E 1 '.~. ~ ~. ,' ~ i ~ 3 ,~ a ~ t' ~ ~ ~l: ~. t 4~ ~ ., MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 111 of 160 street lights until we go bankrupt like Orange county and, then, we will probably still pay for them and we are going to -- we are going to be in -- we are going to join Valley Ride, that's a commitment we have made, as a part of general government, so we have, cleaned all that out of that fund and so the fund can focus on its primary function. Another thing -- I know you on the monthly financial statements I gave you this moming we talked about just the overall -- looked at the overall fund, where it would end up, and I wanted to remind you in this year's budget there is a capital piece of 200,000 dollars. And I can't remember exactly which project it's for. I think it's for the Heritage ball field or that lighting project and so that -- those projections take into account spending that. If you look at their -- if we look at the monthly financial statements and look at just the base budget, they are -- they are staying on track like I said, they are -- the fund is breaking even. We did in the budget for '09, we are showing on the very top part of your General Fund summary -- and you will see that again when Todd puts the summary up. We have moved about 440,000 dollars worth of expenses for the Development Services Fund. We are making a transfer from the General Fund. I'm fairly optimistic we won't have to miss that transfer, that they will continue to break even, but, again, we want to be very conservative, we want to make sure we have that operating reserve in there for them, so we are showing the transfer in this budget. A good likelihood you can take that money -- and, again, we have talked about building up a Capital Improvement Fund again and building a public safety fund, but we want to take a conservative approach. Also, in Anna's budget, in her summary, there is the 237,000 dollar grant and we don't show the revenue on that page for summary that is offset by revenue. But the grant -- her department -- Sara Wheeler, I believe, is managing that grant,. so that's where we put it in her -- in her department. Again, it's a hundred percent offset by revenue. So, that's just kind of some basic little facts about that fund I wanted to add before she goes ahead with her presentation. Are there any questions about that piece or the piece I did this moming? Okay. 2:25 pm Planning /Building Department Canning: So, before we get started, we have these Development Services Fund ducks put up here, so that you know we all have our ducks in a row. De Weerd: They look like Elvis. Canning: Yes, they are. They are Elvis ducks. And also ducks aren't just a noun, they are also a verb, so it's to remind me to duck if I get it coming, too, so -- De Weerd: You're the only one that throws things. Canning: Well, you have got them to throw towards me, I suppose. Bruce and I are going to start off this presentation together and, then, I'll do my portion and Bruce will follow up with the building department. But we wanted to do it together as the Development Services Fund. And also before I start, I did want to remind you that Stacy told you this moming that the Development Services Fund has paid 8.2 million dollars for the CIP fund from fiscal year '03 to fiscal year '07. So, we just wanted to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 112 of 160 remind you all of that. Since we are on a little bit a low here this year. So, this is our Development Services Fund budget presentation and we wanted to start off by each one of us will talk about our functions by department, so that will be some general information. Our fiscal year'08 accomplishments. And, then, our fiscal year'09 budget. And, then, we will get back together to go over future challenges and opportunities and summarize and answer any questions. So, the first one is the function. So, from the planning department we have the comprehensive planning, community development, a court of three half time positions, current planning, and, then, design review. Also in the Development Services Fund is the economic development contract that was spoken -- that was in the Mayor's presentation. Freckleton: In the building department we have permitting as a function, building inspection function, building and plan review is a function, and our customer service counter and over the phone. Canning: Okay. And now we are going into the planning department. So, the Planning Department has 12 full-time people, that includes me, two division managers, four associates, three assistants, one administrative assistant, and another half time GIS person. Our fiscal year '08 accomplishments, I'm going to go through by kind of division, so can-ent planning, which also includes ICDBG grant administrator and the comprehensive planning and GIS. So, on the cunent planning we have seven full-time employees. One of our big accomplishments this year was the switch to the new online database and in just a second I'm going to go show you that, because I think that is something that you need to know that's out there. We also improved our first enforcement coordination and you heard about that earlier from the police department. It really is a much better system that we have these days and coordination and the comradery, actually, is quite good and we have even pulled the fire department into the loop recently and I think that they will be joining us on those enforcement meetings. We have also improved the temporary use standards and processes. You heard the clerk speak about that, as well as -- somebody else brought up -- I forgot to mark down who that was. But the temporary uses have their big enforcement issue for us over the years and we think we really improved that process. And we have absorbed responsibility for the community development block grant administration and, then, of course, we have the application process. But before we get to that, I do want to show you that online database. This online -- the online database is available to anyone that wants to go look at it. We have a link in our website page currently, but I think that this is one of those areas where if we did hire a website designer to manage the content, this is one thing we could really play up. All you need to do is view the applications and it's the name -- they are done by date, so the most recent ones come up, so say we want to look at the Kerwin shop and it's failed on me. May not be a good sign. Here we go. So, here is the zoning certificate of compliance for the Kerwin shop and this is the owner information, contact information, the general description. There is no hearing dates on this one, so it won't have that information listed. We will go down to a hearing item. Let's pick -- you can run searches on this. So, if you know it's an annexation and zoning from this year, it will tell you all the -- it will quickly find all the annexation and zonings for this year. So, let's look at Regency. So, this is Regency at River Valley. It MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 113 of 160 shows you all the concurrent applications. It gives you all the owner information. Oops. Maybe not. All the contact information. The applicant. The hearing dates. As you see it was numerous hearing dates. And, then, whether or not it's been approved. So, that needs to be updated. But that -- the search capability is quite good on this as well. So, we are still working out some of the bugs as you can see. Kind of emban'assing. But it really is a tremendous tool and what we'd like to get done is have this linked to agendas and so that they can see what the applicant submitted. Also, the next step that this -- the reason we started this online database is for the staff report function. As staff we can go in there and it will take that information that we put into the database and begin a staff report for us. Then, that staff report will also be available for people to view from the front page, as well as an uploaded copy of the site plan or preliminary plat or final plat, whatever that application is. So, we really want to work on developing this and make this a tool for people to really understand a project, rather than having to come into the office. Okay. So, now we are going to talk about our applications. So, we have had 102 hearing applications thus far, including 72 -- and we have also had 72 certificate's of zoning compliance. We have had an average of eight items per Planning and Zoning Commission hearing and an average 15 -- call them official preapplication meetings with clients per month. There really are more, because a lot of times they squeeze in a second one whenever they come in for the first, but we have had 15 official ones. And this is just to show you the hearing applications. It's been kind of interesting. We had a lot of new applications during the winter and a lot of continued ones as well. And, then, April definitely was a unique month for us in that we had no continued or new hearing items, but as you can see it picked-right back up again and, actually, for the month of August we have 11 new hearing items. This is our applications by type and I wanted to show you this to show you that most of what we do is stuff you all never see. Sign permits, temporary sign permits, certificates of zoning compliance, Conditional Use Permits, and design review are the top five and they are ones that you don't see. Alternative compliance was another big one we do that you all don't see. So, a lot of our applications are items that they are admittedly smaller, but they do take up time -- staff time and resources. When I asked you for two new planners several years ago, one of the -- one of the statistics I gave you was current planners versus applications, how many were they doing per planner. This graph, basically, depicts that as well. So, you can see in 2003 we were about even on the applications versus planners. We were really struggling to keep up with stuff in 2005. You gave us the two new planners in 2006 and we have come down slightly for 2008, that's the half time position for Sara Wheeler, we moved that to the Community Development Block Grant Administration. So, 2008 is just about half the year, it's not the full year, so if you double that it does show it's decreasing, but we have decreased the number of staff iri currently planning as well. There are other graphs that I think are more telling with regard to the current planning staff and I will get to those in a moment and it related to customer service. Our customer service is our pre-application meetings, as well as our public assistance. So, for public assistance we averaged 31 calls per day. So, if I take that down to an annual, that's close to 6,200 calls per year. That's a significant amount of calls for just ten people or just seven people if you're talking about the current planning staff. We get an average of eight front counter customers per day. This was -- we took statistics for a month. It was a pretty much MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 114 of 160 typical month. It wasn't particularly busy, it's the summer, so it was a pretty even month. We get an average of 15 zoning phone inquiries per day. Those inquiries -- they can be citizen inquiries on development projects, calls trying to resolve problems, or general questions about what they can do with their property. This is our preapplication meetings. As you can see throughout last summer and into the winter it was pretty sporadic, we'd get up and down peaks, but since the winter it has been steadily increasing again. And we do -- it seems like we get about half of our pre-apps tum out being applications for the next month. This one is interesting. It's the activity by day and type, so it shows our office calls, our phone inquiries, and our front counter customers. And the thing that's interesting is the peaks. If we were to lose someone in the front counter staff, those three assistants or the administrative assistant, to lose one of those really affects that customer service at those peak times is what it affects, because, then, you have got people waiting around for quite awhile to try and get help. There is enough folks there that they can scurry around and help .everybody at the same time and that front lobby of ours gets quite busy at times. So, I wanted to show that. This is just our office calls and this is the 31 calls per day. And, again, you can see there is real peak days where everybody in the world seems to call us and the next day nobody calls, so it's accommodating those peaks that's difficult. And this is the counter and phone assistance and just, again, it shows that peaking pattern. It's not a particular day of the week. I did look at that. It just happens. This is the one that I think really shows the correlation between the rise in the planning staff and the need for customer service, it's just as we get more people, more people walk in that door of ours. In 2003 when I got there I was amazed that there was no one assigned to the front counter to handle the walk-in customers, because I knew it was an overwhelming task at Ada county, I have been stuck on the front counter for years up there, and I couldn't believe we didn't have anyone and I kept on asking staff if we needed one and they said nobody comes in. One or two people came in per day and it wasn't a big deal to help them. But now we have got eight to 15 people coming in per day and they -- it takes a long time to help those folks out. So, as you see, the planning staff has increased, but it's very commensurate with the population increase of the city. In the comprehensive planning division we have three full-time employees. They have had a number of accomplishments for the year. Under land use and community development we had the south Meridian plan adoption, the design review draft guidelines, which I have a little update for you, too. The landscape of the Waltman's Road -- Waltman Road retention pond and we. are making headway on the area of city impact expansion. It seems like we make headway and, then, get thrown backwards again and I -- I think we may have some news to that effect, but we still -- I think we are pushing forward at every opportunity that we can. This is the timeline for the completion of the design review guidelines. We should get a document out -- a draft document out at the beginning of the September and we are looking forward to getting that out to the architects and the developer's council and, then, for adoption by the City Council in October or November, around that date. So, we have been doing a lot of work on that. Council Member Rountree has been an active member of that group and we are really looking forward to getting those guidelines on the books. Also in the comprehensive planning we have worked on a number of transportation projects and study coordination for the split corridor, the south Meridian transportation study, the Fairview concept design corridor, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 115 of 160 Ustick Road concept design, the Ten Mile interchange, the McMillan -Locust Grove intersection, 8th Street sidewalk, the Highway 16 alignment study, and very active participation in development monitoring of the ACRD five year work program and you have seen all of those, so I'm not spending time on it, it's just to remind you that Matt is out there every day advocating for the best interest of the City of Meridian and it's not an easy job. We also staff or are members of a number of committees, including the Transportation Task Force, COMPASS -- Matt is actually the chair of the regional technical committee this year, cell phone and demographic advisory committee, the transportation modeling committee and the -- we have the demographic advisory committee twice. Look at that. He's only there once. There is also the neighborhood advisory committee with ACRD, although I think Will is -- that function recently transferred to Will. We are also on the Meridian Traffic Safety Committee and the Blueprint for Good Growth Steering Committee. And we have also prepared a successful application the AIC award for the pathways plan and Steve talked about that. We also received an award or a plaque for the south Meridian transportation study and it was recognized by the ACEC, which is the consulting -- association of consulting engineers of Idaho in their award to Washington Group in preparation of that study. And set up and maintain traffc websites on the city website and we are an active community outreach on planning and transportation issues and have done presentations to the Chamber of Commerce, participation in public workshops and other civic groups. With regard to the GIS, this is one -- our half full-time employee. One of the great things that I think they have done for us is they have added a layer on the GIS that shows all of the development agreements that we have done and when you click on that link it will take you directly to the clerk's record and show you exactly what document is associated with that development agreement. Wanted to show you that one, too, but I will have to wait until we are all in one building, so I will do that next year, so -- but it is really neat and I think it will just improve our ability to give accurate information with regard to development agreements. We have got the pathways data and map updates. They also have worked on the online application and it extracts information in the development services update report for enhanced communication. They continually update our zoning maps for us, as well as take care of any of our Comprehensive Plan map updates. They have been working at getting the historic site inventory onto our GIS and they have also -- you may remember Caleb came to you with a number of annexations that we had missed the opportunity when they hooked up -- well, it was our GIS folks that noticed those originally and brought those to our attention. We were asked to do a presentation on our fees and I just recently did a fee update, so I'm just going to flash this at you more than anything else, so when you see it remember that green means that the other jurisdiction is always less. Red means that the other jurisdiction is always more. So, if the whole thing was green, that would be we are not charging enough for -- or that we were charging too much, because everybody was always less and if it was all red that would mean that we are not charging enough. So, as you see it's a mix. The blue means it's unclear whether we are more or less, but it's a good mix. I think we are right there in the middle. We, I think, do way more review than a lot of the other communities do as far as their development projects, so -- okay. Going on to our'09 budget. This is our year-to-year budget within enhancements. The 2006 and -- or 2007 and 2008 peaks were related to a lot of studies that I had asked to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 116 of 160 be funded, including the Ten Mile specific area plan, which was a fairly expensive plan. So, you will see that there is quite a reduction this year. It's actually 14 -- the base is reduced 14 percent or more than 14 percent. The enhancement that is shown there is really just CDBG block grant that shows up as an enhancement and, then, it -- as Stacy mentioned earlier, it doesn't really show up as revenue anywhere in the budget, it is revenue, so it's not really an enhancement. We did have -- oh, the 2008 base budget was 1.4 million -- or close to 1.6. 2009 is around 1.3. So, it is 14.57 percent decrease in the base budget. A lot of that is as Stacy mentioned, they moved items to the appropriate areas of other government and that includes BVEP, COMPASS, and AIC. But lalso -- I worked with Todd to trim the base where I felt it was appropriate to really trim that base back and I removed all the studies. There are some professional services money in there that I typically use to -- if something comes up where I need to use it, is the best I could say. This year I anticipate we will use it for our four mile projects out on our western edge and I will talk about that in a little bit. We did have some very minor enhancements. We are replacing the four antiquated desk jet printers with one new laser printer for 3,200. We asked for a computer for the front counter service area. We designed that area so that we can work with walk-in customers and stand with them at the counter and I needed a computer for that. And, then, five additional GIS -- they call them receipts for the GIS for citric service and I just know when we get to City Hall I'm going to have a lot of people that want to make use of that GIS and I wanted to make sure that those were available. Quite frankly, I will probably have enough receipts for myself right now, but I really think that once people see the value of that GIS, they are going to want to get on there and I wanted to have those. So, the total is for 6,330 dollars. The others =- there are some other enhancements. They are transfers to the clerk for funding a portion of their position, since they do so much for us with regard to noticing and likewise to legal for our development processing. And, then, the big one is the CDBG. I just wanted to remind you the value of planning. It's not just accommodating the development requests, it really is proactively anticipating and guiding growth, which includes new grow and in-fill redevelopment and it's about improved standards and processes for the city and we are really working on that with the design review and I think you're going to see a big difference. So, what we are about is creating lasting quality developments that will sustain the city for decades to come. And, you know, one of the things we pride ourselves is customer service, so Barb a-mails me at about 11:30 and she said Winston Moore sent over these great sandwiches and, you know, I was like, well, great, what did we do for Winston, so I e-mailed back and said what did we do and she.e-mail back and she says, well -- when I e-mailed her I said I'll find out and, then, I can tell Council what a great job we are doing in our customer service. So, she a-mails me back and she goes, well, the building department just came upstairs looking for their sandwiches. Apparently, they got to the wrong office. So, I guess the building department does great customer service as well. And with that I will hand it over to Bruce. De Weerd: What a great segway. Did you set her up for that? Freckleton: No. I didn't know anything about it. Honestly. Well, good afternoon. We need to switch to the -- to the next one. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 117 of 160 Canning: Pete's good at many things, I teased him, because he's not my technical guru. Freckleton: Okay. Well, thank you for your time. I know you guys are -- this is pretty brutal on you being up here all day long, so I'll try and be very concise and get through this really quickly. This first slide we wanted to, basically, give you a snap shot of the makeup of the building department. Our current contract personnel staff -- as you know, we have five contracts that we let. We have plumbing, mechanical, electrical and fire -- mechanical, electrical, fire and structural. Each one of those contracts have subcontractors that they have. Our current level of all personnel under those contracts is 13 at this point in time. We are -- we are showing five FTEs for building department staff. You can see there on the left the makeup of how we arrive at that five. This next slide, building staff versus total permits. As you know, I think you have seen the new graph today in your budget manuals that Todd produced that -- a brand new slide that maybe shows a little bit different permit level. What we wanted to represent here -- Todd's slide only included new residential. What we want to represent is that it's not just new residential. We have commercial. We have -- we have tenant improvements. We have patio covers, the works. De Weerd: Actually, I think I combined the two and I don't know which is the right one, because they are not dated. So, I don't know which one I'm supposed to have versus the other. I started putting them in my book and, then, I started getting them confused with what I just took out and I didn't know which was the updated one. Freckleton: While he's looking at that I'll continue on here. What we have shown in our slide is total permits. So, we have included -- we have included -- this one is my slide. The one that's on the screen is my slide. De Weerd: Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Freckleton: That's fine. That's fine. I want to make sure we are all tracking here. Bird: We have got to date these, Todd, as they come out, you know. Like revised on -- at 1:00 p.m., 7/8/08. Zaremba: Time/date stamp. Freckleton: Okay. So, what my slide represents is all permits that are issued through the building department, with the exception of mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire. And if we include those, of course, we would see higher permit levels, but what we wanted to show is -- you know, works with our permit staff and our building staff that we are tracking pretty well with the trend. Of course, we have not finished out 2008 yet, so we anticipate it's going to be higher here. Borton: Madam Mayor? s ~ 3 } ~ t~~ 'a a ` ~ ~ ~ i it t~~ ~~ f' .~ 4 ? + r~i~ 3 ~~ t , i 4 .F-t tt f 1'" _ ~~~ X I f i ~ ~ 1~ ~ y~ t,l Y MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 118 of 160 De Weerd: Yes. Borton: This might be a picky question -- if you can go back to that other slide. Freckleton: Sure. Borton: This could be for you or maybe to Todd or Stacy. Freckleton: Okay. Borton: Or these slide confuse me that the initial point on the XX is hitting zero. See on the right-hand side it starts at 4.5? Freckleton: Uh-huh. Rountree: So you can get it on the page. Borton: It changes the location of the scatter point, if you start at a lower -- at a number higher than zero. Five would be a lot higher relative to six, unless there is some graphic or accounting principle I'm missing. Rountree: The green line's going down to zero -- Freckleton: We hope not. Okay. Moving along. We are good with that. Bird: Bruce, on your - on your employee comparison, you're not -- you're not using a contracted one. Freckleton: No. Bird: Because, you know, if there is no work, they don't get paid. Freckleton: Correct. That's a very good point. Bird: So, we are just -- you're just using the -- Freckleton: Just the five. Bird: -- the five people. Freckleton: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. On our fiscal year '08 accomplishments, I'll just fly through these here pretty quickly. We have done some database and tracking system maintenance. Parcel numbering has been added to the database for address. We have been doing cross-training internally with Public Works staff, so that we can do -- you know, we can fill positions when people are sick and that sort of thing. It's just to i , ,~~ ~ , f J -~ i z .~I ~- ~ , ~ ~' ~ , ! ;fa j~ f ~ { i ` r `t'~ j e ~ E ~ '~ ~ i ~ . `~~3 i, ~ ~ ~ t~ ~ ~~ i ~ tir~l • ~ s t ,~ ~, i ~' ! ,,, ~I f ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~F:~ } ~ ~ ~ 'f' ~` ~' ~` ?~ ` r- I, i~' a ,~ ,~ ~ ~ ~ ~,~ ~ a~:~ ~ ; 1 ~. 1 f ~,~ ~ 7 Iyr, t'_ ~ ~ i~ c ~ 0 , i t( b 1( ~~ ~~~I ~ ~ ~ Is~~{ ~ ti~ ~ t~ ~ ~ , .'~ ` I z ~ ~ wi a~ ~ * ~ ~ I ~ r ~ ti ~ ~ 4 ~ ~ ~~ ' ~ ~ ,3 ~~ ~, ~ ~ ~ . ~` ~ f - ~ i.~ ,., yy, I i ~ ( t ,` ~ v 3 ~ ~ S 2~ i ~ t ~' k i ~. ~° t f 1 ~ _ ~ g l~.~ ' ~' ~. ~ i is u. 1 a ~' i `{ ~~ (1 F 4 1 ~ FJ i 't ]n '~- ~. j 1 ~ ~{ r !~ S .t 4 MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 119 of 160 try and get better coverage. Plans retention. We have been exploring new innovative ways for plan retention and document archiving. As you can imagine, the amount of paperwork that comes into a building department, the rolls of plans, all the documents and everything. So, some of the things that we have been looking at is getting electronic -- Bird: I was going to say, most plans nowadays, even though they do come out in paper, are electronically made and I would think -- if we could get them and keep a set of them. Freckleton: Absolutely. One thing that we are looking at doing is requiring that all new applications, when they are submitted for the permit -- or when we issue the permit, I should say, after corrections have been made, is that they also submit a disk with electronic files on it. So, we would get pdf files of the construction plans and reconstruction documents that were attached. And, then, what we will do is similar to what we have done in Public Works upstairs is be able to use our GIS system for access and retrieval of those documents, basically by clicking on a parcel you can pull up a building permit for that parcel. So, those are the types of things we are looking at there for -- for that system. Bird: You don't have the system in place right now, is that -- Freckleton: We have components of it, yes. We have the GIS systems in place and currently you might remember we -- we bought a large format copier scanner printer. We have taken all of the Pubic Works documents, all the plans- for subdivision development, all the sewer and water design plans, those have all been scanned now. I have got five racks of plans upstairs that, basically, we will be able to send to storage prior to moving into the new quarters and everything can now be retrieved through the GIS system. So, we have gone to try and -- you know, trying to be more electronic, paperless, for lack of a better term. Bird: For records that would be great. Freckleton: Yeah. We have been conducting monthly inspector meetings. A lot of times we do more than monthly inspector meetings, in an effort to try and make sure that we are promoting better communication between our contracted inspection staff and our office personnel. Just, you know, eliminate questions, make sure we are all on the same page moving forward. Also I think it goes a long ways to -- it gives us more opportunity to communicate expectations as well. In addition, we also -- we have also kicked off a project evaluation analysis and this one's a really, really cool deal. Brent Bjornson has been on top of this. For lack of a better term, I call it loss prevention efforts. Basically, what we are doing is we are scrutinizing more closely the project scopes of work when they come in with permit apps. We are also looking at new permit request forms, making sure that they are accurate when contractors are submitting them to us. Basically, it's a competency tracking and monitoring has produced additional revenue. We have literally been able to recover through this effort tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees, basically by contractors misstating values, we are MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 120 of 160 holding them more accountable, making sure that you have given us values, you know, we are looking at them. We are scrutinizing them. And if we don't think it's accurate, we are going to question you on them and we are -- like I said, tens of thousands of dollars we have been able to -- to recover. We have also added a lot more informative language on our website that reflects the most common inspection related code compliance issues. Our gals downstairs have created a lot of standard reports that aid management, so that we are not having to go and search and -- search and destroy missions trying to find information that we need. Now it's provided to us in standard report form. De Weerd: You still have the search and destroy. Freckleton: Do you? De Weerd: Waiting for our new report. Freckleton: We need to talk, find out what you need. De Weerd: Okay. Freckleton: We started this, you know, when Brent was hired in '05. We have been doing field surveys. We go out, we talk to -- I told him I want a minimum of five contacts with each trade. I want structural. I want mechanical, electrical, plumbing, fire. We are trying to stay in touch with our customers needs, find out what they need from us, how we can provide better service. Also it's an effort to find out if they have any problems with our service. Any inspections in the field. Any of those sort of things. So, I got to say we really have gotten good results. We have had a few things that have cropped up. We have been able to jump on them and address them I feel before they become big issues. And so this has been a very valuable tool. We have been working on updating our permit request forms, handouts for the public, and other documents. Just, again, trying to provide better levels of customer service. The department web page has been improved. We have taken a lot of our application forms that we have had on our web page and we have converted them to electronically Tillable forms, so applicants can pull up the application right on the web site, electronically fill it in, and hit the print button and they can walk right into the office with an electronically filled out form and that's -- that's a pretty cool feature. We continue to enhance and evaluate our process for plan in-take meetings and our early foundation permits. The early foundation permits is something that we implemented following the last process improvement group that we went through. This has been hugely valuable to the construction community, being able to get started within a two week period of time of submitting their applications, because they are out there working on underslab utilities and foundation work, while we continue to finish reviewing the complete permit for issuance. So, it's getting them -- it's getting them in the ground quicker and time is money. Next few slides I just wanted to give you kind of just a sample representation of some of the projects that we have done in 2008. This is Jim Baker's new world headquarters, I think is what he likes to call it. Just to give you an idea, there is 17 separate permits that ;f; i~ t MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 121 of 160 have been issued on this building. Thirty-four inspections were conducted, three applications, and plan in-take meetings. De Weerd: For the one building? Freckleton: For the one building. Because they had a tenant improvement. Bird: That 17 permits, that included tenant improvements. Freckleton: Correct. Correct. Bird: Only 34 inspections. Freckleton: This building has not even received it's C of O yet. Bird: Okay. Because that's -- for 17 permits, I don't care if they are El's or what they are, for 34 inspections is awful low. Freckleton: Yeah. Yeah. You will see a more representative example coming up. None of the projects I'm going to show you have received their C of O's yet, so they are still -- Bird: Oh. Okay. Freckleton: -- in some phase of construction. Next project is the L shaped multi-tenant building out at Portico. You may have seen the octagonal comer to that building. Bird: See, that is -- there you go, there is 11 permits with 30 inspections and they are farther along than Dennis' is. Freckleton: It think Dennis is a little further along. Bird: Is Dennis a little further along? Freckleton: Yeah. Yeah. Bird: That one's about ready to move into it. Freckleton: Yeah. That one's really close. But, again, that's a shell. There is TI on one yet. That's just a shell. This is the Norco building that's currently under construction up at the Marketplace up at Eagle and Ustick. Thirteen permits, 25 inspections so far. You can see it's, basically, a cold shell. One application. One plan in-take meeting. This one is more representative, Keith, of where you're talking. C&A Elementary. Thirteen permits, 97 inspections so far. It still has not received C of O either. One application. One plan intake meeting. ,~ ~~ f ~;%. ~ E ~ ~ ~ r ' i ; ~; ~ t i r ~ ~:; o~ _t ~ ;. , ~'~~{ ~: Y ,!\ k ~' ~ ~ ;, i p . ~$ 4 ~p t , ~; P '. E MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 122 of 160 De Weerd: I think Mountain View High School was -- Freckleton: Oh, Mountain View was huge. It was huge. Bird: Yeah. Mountain View and Rocky Mountain both. Freckleton: Yeah. Bird: You get in there and you have got a lot of safety stuff you needed, too. Freckleton: Well, yeah, there is a lot of mechanical stuff that they did more than once. Bird: We are talking about Mountain View now. Freckleton: Okay. This graphic -- you guys have seen this over the years. I bring it to you every time we do one of these things. Basically, this is what you probably already know from the market. The thing that's interesting about this particular slide is look at the percentages of the commercial, how they continue to increase. You know, we had, you know, seven -- we have 12.2 percent of all of the volume that we did was commercial. So, far as of the end of June 7.4 percent of our volume was commercial. I anticipate that we are going to see a number, you know, 13, 14 percent by the end of the fiscal year, which is -- you know, it's pretty common that you see the cyclical trend of whenever you see residential start dropping off your commercial picks up somewhat and it's just a cycle and this kind of proves that out. This wasn't -- another representative, this one's in dollars, though. Again, you can see that trend of the commercial starting to pick up. Commercial construction values are going up. Cost of construction is going way up, so -- De Weerd: Personally I like that trend. Freckleton: I do, too. I do, too. Especially since, you know, we were last year in front of you with a permit fee increase and we hadn't had the increase for 13 years. We go that increase in place, the numbers we are seeing now are based on our new permit fee, so -- which is a good segway into what we are doing here. Residential permit fee comparison across the valley. Permit fee based on 160,000 dollar construction value, which is -- you know, it's pretty low for residential, but it's agood -- a good comparison across the board. Average permit fee across the board is 1,620 dollars. Meridian is 15 percent lower than the average, which equates to -- on that 160,000 dollar value permit is 255. It's not a whole lot. Commercial permit fee comparison is based on a 6,500 square foot building, which is roughly equivalent to say the Ram Pub over on Eagle Road. Average permit fee across the valley, 11,168.64. We -- right now we are expecting 3.7 percent above the average. We are not the highest in the valley, we are 3.7 percent above the average, which equates to $409.86. And, again, you know, going back to those permit fees that we -- we put in place last year. You know, we were told our commercial -- they are not paying their way, you know, and so we had to intentionally try to get our permits on commercial up a little, so -- okay. This slide -- 4 i 9 1 ( ~ r t '~ ., I ~ ,~'. r -~ ~r , I I ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ' ~ i i ~ i~ ~ ~ ~ Iaa .. ;; j i _ ~ ~ ~ ~ ; ~ ~ ~ ~ .] , ~ 4~ ~ jj ~ I.1 .~ F ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 7~ I ~ K~ I { S ~., ~{ ~+h i A ~ ' ~ M ` ~ ~ `1,F ~ 'e F 1 f 3 z ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~ ~ ~ s: ~ ~ ~ ~i ~ i ~ s ~ ~` ~ ~ ~ I ty < . i ~ I t ,I I i < ~ ~ I ~ I ~~ ~ p, ~I ~ , I. f ~ ~ r ; I ~ ~~ } i ~ ~ ° ~ F ' ~ f~ I ~ ~ ;~ ! ~~ } ~ I I ~ ~ y.~ } ; i ; 4 .A ~ - ~ ' c ` ~ II ~ ~. 3 S y@} , r i ` 1 ~ t ~ , Ise ~~: _ ''~ ~ ~ 4 ~ ~~ ~. ~~ , I g '~~~ ` ( , ( MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 123 of 160 Anna kind of hammered in on this number again just a minute ago and I will hammer again on it, too. This is our building department revenue versus expenses over the years. You know, the -- during peak times our staff -- you know, I feel like our staff spend less quality time, because they were so busy. You know, we are spending more quality time now. The important thing to point out is that revenues still are out pacing expenses and, you know, again, over the six year period we have transferred 270,000 dollars -- or 270,083 dollars to the General Fund capital improvement fund on to budget. Base budget, reduction following market trend. Second year in a row that we have reduced our base budget, kind of trying to tighten the belt in response to the market. Four percent reduction overall in the base going into fiscal year'09. I will show you here in just a minute on that 17 percent reduction in staff, where we are going there. Basically, a hundred percent reduction in enhancements. I'm not asking for any enhancements this year. So, building base budget, there is fiscal year'08 versus fiscal year '09. Overall the decrease is four percent. We did this by trimming items, working with Todd, sitting down, going through, trimming items that we could. Also from -- you know, one of the things that we cut out that I think is a great accomplishment is we don't do hardly any outside printing anymore. We used to have all of our forms sent out to be printed and that sort of thing. We are now producing all of our documents in house. So, all of the inspection cards that we are doing, they are coming off our laser printers. We set them up to be able to do it in house. So, we are saving a bunch of money there. We have also -- you know, working with finance, a lot of items got moved to appropriate areas with the consolidation for City Hall and that sort of thing. Reduced enhancements from '08 as I mentioned. I'm not asking for anything. We had one position on the books, it was a funded position, for a permit tech that we are losing. We are eliminating that. No enhancements requested, as I said. Going to the future challenges and opportunities. Planning and building -- this is where we are going to tag team again. Canning: It's a problem when you have got such different heights between you. There is a couple of things we wanted to do together. We talked a little bit about this idea of a project sponsor or manager or advocate -- we don't know what we'd call it, but some way to have a selection criteria for certain projects where they would be based on the fact that they are bringing family wage jobs or something like that, but having those projects have a sponsor that makes sure they get through all the loops -- or all the hoops without any loops, perhaps that's the way to say it. So, that's one idea that we want to work on this upcoming year and see if we can implement and it sounds as if Tom Barry has worked with that kind of situation before and so I'm sure he will provide us wonderful insights on the matter. Another one that we'd like to do is within the Planning Department it does require building department assistance as well, but a step guide for applicants and I did one of these when Oracle was looking at coming to town and it's a fairly complicated process, they had three or four things they needed to do, so just sat down and figured out, okay, you need to do this first, then, you need to do this and I think it would be a real great service to folks that aren't familiar with the area. You know, it's not for the Brighton Corporation that's got it down pat, it's for the lady that needs a variance for her fence. You know, just the -- this is what -- when you need to contact the sign company to post your property kind of stuff. Really basic step by step. So, we'd like to add those as well. We'd like to expand the pre-application presence to MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9,2008 Page 124 of 160 include building and the fire department, so that we get those issues worked out prior to them submitting their application or at least -- not worked out, but at least out in the open. And, then, I'd like to work together to come up with some low impact development or green building standards. We'd also like to work -- enhance our comments meeting participation, really work out the conditions of approval as to where we come up with the conditions of approval, we'd like to focus in on those and make sure we are seeing who is responsible for what at what time and right now some of them aren't as clear as they could be and I really just want to go through all the planning department comments, all the public works, all of fire, and the SSC, all the police department ones, and really work with those organizations to come up with very clear conditions of approval. It would be wonderful to get ACHD participation and ITD participation at those comments meetings as well. I will have to move to a different day to get ACHD, but I think that that's worthwhile if we can get them to attend. And the planning and GIS we'd like to work together to -- on a layer that shows the outstanding violations, so if somebody calls and says they want to do a conditional use here and we see that there is an outstanding violation we say, oh, that's fine, you can submit your application, but we are not going to process this until that outstanding violation is cleared and that is a code requirement that we can hold those things up if there is an outstanding violation. With Planning and the Police Department, we have been talking about this for awhile and I think, you know, now that we are not all frantically rushing around it really is time to sit down and look at some of those crime prevention through environmental design standards that we can incorporate into .the zoning ordinance or the Unified Development Code and make those -- make it a safe community and, then, also we'd like #o get a code enforcement tracking system. We talked about the improvements we have made in the enforcement and one of the tools that we feel we need is a way to track it, so that they are not playing us against one another and that happens a lot. They will call the Building Department and ask an ambiguous question and get an answer for it and, then, they will call the Planning Department and give kind of a somewhat different ambiguous question and they will get a different answer and, then, they come back and they say, well, you gave us two different answers, you know. So, we just want to make sure that they are not playing us against each other and we'd like to come up with a tracking system so that we can work on that. With Parks we would like to work on their implementation for the pathways. Pete Friedman is working with the Parks Commission to identify specific routes that they would like to prioritize in the pathways construction and acquisition -- easement acquisition. With regard to the planning process, we are going to work on implementing design review and, then, assessing other necessary tools for the downtown area. We are going to work on that online database that I showed you as far as the staff report function and also application submittal with that. And, then, as always we are working on the area of city impact, the Title 9 agreement, and we seem to be moving forward on that issue for right now. As far as zoning amendments, we need to work on the private streets and gates. The industrial parking lot screening. We had talked at one point about some property maintenance provisions that's probably a lesser priority. We are looking at having the city do the property posting and we will bring that to you for your consideration. Generally as well about half the time that things get continued is because the applicant didn't post properly. So, that would make the agendas go faster and smoother, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 125 of 160 suppose. We also need to look at electronic billboards and our sign code, the proliferation of new electronics with regard to signs has made our sign ordinance outdated quickly, unfortunately, so we need to look at that. And, then, also looking at some xeriscape options for landscaping and we have worked with the building department and I guess more appropriately the Public Works. With regard to the Comprehensive Plan, we don't have any major changes that we anticipate this year. We would like to reformat it, just to kind of pull out the clutter and just get to the pithy the stuff, make it -- reformat it for ease of use and implementation. Also I'd like to add transit corridors and mobility discussion. And, then, one project we are working on -- talked to the Mayor about this, the University of Idaho students in the urban design lab will be looking at the four square mile area on our western edge bounded by Can-Ada, Ustick, McDermott, and Chinden, and they are going to use that as a study project to look at urban design and comp plan issues and they will be working with our staff. It's, basically, a no cost to the city -- minimal cost. I think we are going to -pay for their supplies. And it just gives us an opportunity to start looking at the area and start discussing it with those residents and start coming up with some ideas of how to fold that into the city. It's a very distinct and set apart area, especially as the Highway 16 extension goes down it could be bounded by two state facilities, so just looking at planning for that area. Bird: We did that once before. They did it on another part. Bruce, you probably remember this. One of the University of Idaho students did that and did a beautiful job. Canning: Yeah. And it's Sheree McKibben again, she's working with her students, and she's very excited and I think it will be a great -- great project. Freckleton: Another future challenge and opportunity is abatement of dangerous buildings. Over the last couple of years I have worked pretty closely with Deputy Chief Silva, we have identified several buildings that we have been working on trying to get abated. We do have one that we are going to see some closure on this year. It's going to be be nice to see. We do have several dilapidated buildings in town that do pose a danger, so -- next is Building and Police. Through the Building Department we have teamed up on several zoning code violations. A good example would be our patio cover stuff that we have been dealing with. Illegal patio covers. And so we got -- developed some great working relationships with these -- these different departments. Building Department technology I see as another future challenge. We need to be able to -- to be able to provide remote access to the permitting system for our field personnel. One of the things that I routinely hear is you need a system like they have in Nampa and Boise, you know, where their inspectors in the field can be able to pull up realtime information on the permits, be able to write correction notices in the field, print them on a mobile printer right in the field, the information is uploaded instantaneously to the office. So, I think that that would be a wondertul addition. Ability to accept credit and debit card transactions, another thing that we hear a lot of; so -- ability to share information with the entire enterprise, which allows our customers to have 24-7 access to the building information when they submit applications and when they want to find out the status of inspections and permits, they have that available to them. Interaction of MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 126 of 160 Building with all other departments. You know, just additional coordination, communication, with regard to temporary use permits. Fireworks sales tents, Christmas tree lots, area day events, Scarecrow Festival, just to name a few where we have had to come together trying to find good ways of dealing with these in an efficient manner. So, our summary. Canning: Our summary is we have told you who we are and, basically, what we do, the customers we serve and, then, what we have done, our accomplishments for fiscal year '08. Where we are and where we have been. And a little bit of our history. And what we need and, basically, we are not really asking for enhancements this year, we are asking to just continue on. Kilchenmann: Mayor and Council, I do want to -- I'm sorry, you guys, I have to add this footnote. You really are asking for an enhancement in the Enterprise software, which a great deal of that is for the Building Department and Planning, but it's being asked from the General Fund, because you don't have -- we are not budgeting funds to cover it. Canning: Stacy .Kill Joy over there. We will answer any questions. De Weerd: Stacy Kill Joy. Freckleton: This is where we duck. Bird: I was going to say, Stacy, why did you have to -- Freckleton: Rain on the parade. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Bird: I got a comment or two. Bruce, I know we have changed our policy that only one person writes building permits. We have more than one now. Freckleton: Writes permits? Bird: Daunt is the only one -- Daunt is the only one that issues permits now? Daunt. Thank you. You did a great job on it. I appreciate what you did forme. I appreciate the nine million dollars that we have put in from that -- to the departments since '03, but if you look on your fees and stuff, I think a lot of those fees are -- cover the parks, fire, and police and administration. So, while we appreciate it, it's still just part of the fees. Canning: I don't think we -- I don't think Bruce includes the impact fees in his calculation. ~ ~ I t, a ~ ° ~ , ~ ~<<= ~ ~ ; ~ ~ ~~ « ~~ ~ ~ ,~ r ! r b a ~ i i,f ~ s ;~ ~ , i ~.f ~, .x ~ i~~ ~ i ~ ~; r.; ~ 3 y. ~ r ~ ~ ~ ~4 ~ ~ n -~~ I ~ ' j ~ t' ~~ ~, t ~3;~ u "Viii ~ ~3 ; } :j;: ~ t ~ ~ j f ~I r! ~ 3 ~ f,~ i 3 r ~ f ~ ~ ~ ;j ' : ~ ~ ~. J~j 4 ~S l .~I Ali ~ii { ~ r ~ ~ 3 ~ i ~ ~,,,. ~ , ~ p , p ~ w ff ~ ~~~ ~1 ~ ~ y t , ~. y~ r. i j i ~ i ~' ~ s ' I s ~ 'i ~ # ~ '~ c I ~ iI ~ L~ S t :. .. 1 i C ( ~ It s ~r ~. j '1 I I ~ I Ii ~' ~~ ~ ' ~' I ~ , ~ ~ _t G ~ ~ ~ _~ i~ t ~ ', t j i ~~ a . S 1 ~ i ~ ,~f ~ s` ~ ~ -~ ' 2 I 4 S " ~~ ~ r ~~ I i X777 - sk 5 p " i ~ ~ - c t ~~ I ' ~ i ~ ~ e ~~~ ~ ~ ~. I ~ ~ sh ~i ~~~ Y ~ r ~ ; t r , 4 ~:: ~ 3 ~~. ~. ~ f ~ ~ •' ~~ ~ I s, { ~ I ~ ~ ~~ r I 1 tn5 ~ r ~~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ b c {~ ~ ~ ~~ d ~~ ~ e ~ I S i , f ~ 2 r. A 1 ~ ~ _ . _ a 1 ' I ~` p ~ ~ ri ;~ ,, i,I t }; F f tl ¢ ~ I ~ 3 , ~ ~ t - ~ ~ 1 rl MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 127 of 160 Bird: You collect them and that's part of the -- that's part of your profit that you turn back and I appreciate that, don't get me wrong, I'm just -- I'm just stating that there is stuff in there that -- Zaremba: Madam Mayor, is that just a pass through, you go -- Freckleton: Yeah. I don't believe that those fees were reflected -- Bird: Well, you wouldn't have any safety until last year or the year before. Kilchenmann: What's the question? Canning: The question is are the impact fees included on the Building Department revenue. Kilchenmann: No. Bird: They are not? Oh. Okay. Kilchenmann: They go -- when we record the revenue, they go straight to the impact fee fund. Bird: Okay. Kilchenmann: And they show up in their respective parts, fire and police departments, as revenue. Bird: Okay. Freckleton: The way that we code it when it's sent over to finance. Bird: I still appreciate the nine million dollars. Kilchenmann: 8.2. Bird: I just rounded it up to make them feel good. De Weerd: Any other questions from Council or Anna or Bruce? Rountree: I have none. Bird: I have none. 3:25 pm Other Government f ~~ F 'E I~. ~ ~ ~~ ~ .I ~ ,~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ +` ~:- t, s r, } ~ .i zl;s ~`' ~ ~ t, ~ , ~~~ ~ ~ 1 i ~ ~4iti i ~ t ~* to ,~ ~. ~ 1 } :i j~ ~ F: .~ r a3; _ ~ e ~~ G ~~~ ~ F. 4 ~ iF; S~; ~ -,~; ~. ~ ~t. '~ !~ ~t~ s ~ t+~ i ~, I !i #}rt ~ : ~~ ~ ~ S. I h ; }E ~ ., ~: F~ T J I q1 $ # t ~7, ~~~ ~ ~ } i ~~i~jj1 ~ ,~ ~ ~l' ~~,~~' 't' ~~ a ~~ '~ ~ ~} ~ x~ fi ;E 11t. ~' ~ . C ^A . ~!' ~~' ~ ~~ .~ ~ ~ ~~~~ ~ s }~ ~~~~c ~: ~~ I`. ~~ ~ ~ ~~: -, ~~~ ~:~ `l' ~ ~. ' s ~` ~ ~~ ~ ~ , ~ i a r a E { ~'~ f ~~ ~ t ~~~~~~ d~ ~ y 4t ~ i~ ~ ~ y~ Y. ,1 ~r ~ ~ n ~ t 1 ~, t ,- ,~~1 ~~~~ ~ pp - ~.~~~~ 7 y' 1 '~f~"s ~~ tip ~ k. zE ~.~~~ ;I,;~ ~I ~~~: F ~ ~, k ~ ~~~ s k: 1 ~+~` ~~~E t ~~i ~ i s-; -t }} , 5 ~f tt~, s j {E` ~ t ~ } X~~ 7 22 ~ ~ ( { ~ f i~~ ~f ~ ~ ~,° 3 - ~ ~ ._2 ~'ai ~ : ~'` ~, ~~ ~ ~ F ~~ ' x ,~,~ ~ ~ ~ I. 33 i r * t, ~ {' ~ S .. t ~~~i tr~ ~• ~i i ~ ,. „ ~ t ~ ~ (2{{ , j~ s ~ ~ _ ~ * ~ i ~ ~ A 1 11+ `. i ra~~ ,.~ #k~ I! i i {f~ i , q] k }p 3e ]j( MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 128 of 160 De Weerd: Okay. One last presentation on Other Govemment, which should be short and I think Todd -- Todd is doing that? He looks excited about it, too. It will first be 01 and, then, 05. Lavoie: Mayor, Members of the Council, it's been long. We will make this quick for you. New for this year -- I do have aslide -- it's on the computer, but I will make it quick for you. New for '09 in the way of accounting City Hall expenses, you will notice that there is three tabs in your book called Other Government, 01, 15, 16. You have always had the 01 fund, which is your General Fund Other Government. It's always existed. We are introducing the Development Services Other Govemment and we are also introducing the Enterprise Fund Other Government. And the reason we are doing this is -- in FY-09. De Weerd: Enterprise Fund. Lavoie: Yeah. Enterprise will be in a separate book. I apologize. You will see that on Monday. The reason we did this with the new City Hall and the consolidation of many of the city departments, we felt that we could consolidate a lot of these expenses, as you have heard from the other directors, stating that some of their decreases were associated with telephones, electricity. We pulled all the expenses into Other Government. We have also pulled in other city type dues that the city is responsible for that we used to actually keep track in Anna's department, the Planning Department. We also used to keep track in Public Works. The reason we did that was we wanted to represent the expenses on the actual fund, but now we have created two new departments, Other Govemment, and we can now put the expenses in the Other Govemment fund and when you now look at Planning, Planning represents Planning. It does not have any other City Hall expenses. When you look at Public Works, Public Works represents Public Works. The Other Govemment is -- our goal is represent the city. It could be like a -- like I said, electricity, gas, dues -- the city has numerous dues. I think some where brought up. BVEP. There is other dues. COMPASS dues. Transportation dues. Those are all going to be associated inside the Other Govemment. I don't think I gave you a dues and -- a dues worksheet. I can give you that just so you can see the breakdown where monies go and where they are sitting. I can easily print that out for you. And so that's new for'09 is the Other Govemment and, like I said, you have heard a number of directors state that we did kind of play with their budget and move some money around. And you will see that's going to be represented in the Other Government line items. And how we came up with it, you know, like I said, the examples are gas, postage, you know, janitorial, building maintenance -- we did the best estimate that we could coming into a brand new building. A lot of us have never built a new building, especially a hundred thousand square foot green building, and trying to figure out the expenses that we are going to have for this new City Hall -- we did our best. We know we are not a hundred percent perfect and we are going to hopefully be -- Bird: I can't believe that an accountant would say that. I i l`< '~ ~ ~ to ~ ; ;,~ i i < 7 .i ~ ( i ~~. I ! 4 ~ I 1 1 'F 4~ ~ ~ ~., ~ y I .afYl, r ~ 4 ` ~ ~ r~ ? ~~ ~' ~~ I e 9 ~~ f { ~ ` # ~ y H 1 ~ , ~, f 7 y ~ ~r 2 I C u ~ ~' I ~~ ~ tl f~ ~ a' ~ ~ ' ~ I ~ ~~ ~_ 4 ~` I ~ ~ I ~ ~, ~ i ~, ~; 1 !' f d ~, k ! ~~ F i +~ 1, pr kE # ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ s ! ~. ~. ~. ii ~ ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~~. ~ t l l ~ ~ I } ~;, f t r MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 129 of 160 Lavoie: Yeah. Bird: Did you say that you're not a hundred percent right? De Weerd: No, she wouldn't say it, but -- Lavoie: There you go. So, we did our best guess on the expenses, you know. After two or three years when we are moved into the City Hall and after a few hot and cold summers and hot and cold winters, we will be able to give you a good analysis on what the building costs us compared to our old existing expenses and until then it's just all guesswork. A lot of it is just our best guess that we can do. That's -- I mean, yeah, that's the best -- after three years after another analysis we can give you agood -- good hard number. So, that would represent the Other Government, the three new funds. can stand here for any questions. Well, actually, I apologize. I do have one enhancement. That is for the Arts Commission and Robert will present that to you. Simmons: I have a couple slides on this one, but the Arts Commission came up with a proposal for this upcoming year about what they truly think that they are going to need in spending authority to do some new art projects for the City Hall. I think the key thing to recognize from this is they have a ten thousand dollar budget, which is given to them annually. They seem to remember a Council decision on January 22nd of 2008 when they were offered 5,000 additional dollars from Council, that they -- De Weerd: They seem to remember that? Simmons: They seem to remember -- yeah. The money was never actually -- no budget amendment was done, but they would like to have it included in this upcoming year as part of that proposal. The remaining 25,850 dollars would be from money from their grant. Monies that they have already received from donations so far, as well as future donations for that spending authority. So, the real impact of the 15,000 dollars for their budget from the General f=und, 10,000, which they annually get and 5,000 from which Council already said that they would do. So, if you have any specific questions, would be happy to answer them. De Weerd: Okay. Council, any questions on this item? Bird: Yeah. Robert, you're telling -- they are going to raise the 15,850 and we are just putting in ten and five or are we putting another ten in? Simmons: You're putting in 15 total. Bird: Okay. Simmons: And they are putting in -- Bird: They are going to raise that -- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 130 of 160 5 1 ~ a , Simmons: Correct. They have already raised 5,000 of it and 9,600 is from a grant. So, really, they are -- Bird: So, actually, we are just actually getting 15,000 right now. Simmons: Correct. Bird: And anything that they don't pick up. Simmons: Correct. Bird: They want to make extra and I'm okay with it, but we are actually giving them 30,850 dollars. That's what we are giving them out of this budget. De Weerd: Spending authority. Bird: And we hope that they return 15,850 by -- through donations. If they can't -- Simmons: We will have Todd keep an eye on -- Bird: Then, Todd will -- De Weerd: Rita will go out. Bird: Todd will donate it out of his paycheck. Simmons: I think that that's what he agreed to, yes. Bird: Is your wife okay with that, Todd? Simmons: It's something that we will work with Finance to keep on eye on. Bird: No, I'm not worried about that, I just want to ma~Ce it clear to the public that, actually, we are budgeting 30,850 dollars. Simmons: Well, total budget is 40,850, is the total number that they will -- Bird: Yeah. But we don't -- the 10,000 of it was already budgeted. Simmons: Correct. But the enhancement is -- Bird: Yeah. But this year we are doing 30. De Weerd: They are asking for an additional five to this next year's enhancement? 1 t ~ }t{ f r//. ~ `{ 3 ySR E t ` ~ .~ 4 q !{ ~ ; I I It G , ~. " ~ r, i9i '~ I }I ~ ~ , ~ 1 # w ~ ~ ~ t . 1 ~ ~ ~`~- ! ~ X17 ~ i~,di ~f ~ ! ; ~ ~ i -~ ' ~' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r: 3t ~ r ~ z" ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i '~ a ) 3 ~~ ~ t`, ~ ~ r is Y ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~r 1 iii: ~. ii j ~ ~.. ~- R ~ 7'r .;. ~ I ~ ~ ~ f"' ~. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 131 of 160 Simmons: Well, they are asking for five to be covered through the General Fund. So, 6,000 from Council that they had already discussed. Bird: That's part of this, isn't it? De Weerd: No. Simmons: Yes, it is. Bird: Yes, it is. Simmons: It's in this number that they have prepared. De Weerd: Oh. Okay. Bird: They had ten from last year and it's already been budgeted and taken care of. We promised them five in May, but we did not put in the budget. Simmons: Correct. Bird: And, then, we got ten for this year, but they need 30 -- 50 and they are going to raise the other, we hope. Simmons: Yes. Bird: If not, we got the 3,850. Okay. I agree. De Weerd: Okay. And where is Bill Nary? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: I have a question for Todd. As I look through the Other Govemment and what is included in there, they are not all governments, some of them are utilities and stuff like that, which brings me to the question couldn't we wrap the street lighting -- instead of it being a separate line item, shouldn't it just be wrapped into this new group? Lavoie: Well, historically, street lighting has always been its own department, so guess that would be our chief, she would have to answer the question whether or not we want to eliminate a department and consolidate. So, they would like to know why and if we can put street lights into what is known as Other Govemment. Kilchenmann: You probably could -- Zaremba: I'm not hearing you. ~~ t $ ti, 1 r. ~ ~t i '.t ~ i i i ,t. 'S s ~ I ~Ti~: ~ $. ~ ~ ~ p ~ i ! ~ tl} ~I ~~ I I i ~ f '~ l 9 ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ 5 ~~ t i yS ` k p . 1 y., i 3 . ~3r_ .~~ 3 5 ,'yaAF {;G l , ii l _~ i ~ ~ 4 ~ !~ ~ 1 r ~ i .1! ~ k l ~~ R ~ t ~ ~~ ~~~ ~ 3 ti "~ ~~.f ~~ 4 ~~ 1 ~~~ V z} - I ~ ~ . s r ,, ~ ~E ,. 7.~ lF #1c ~~- 1 ~f ~ dr 1 S ; i Y k ~, ~ I i { ~ ~ p[ ~ I 11 YY vs 1 : , F, r v .t ~ j S ~ ~ ~ ~ k F yn S~ 1 ~ .~.w a ~ ~'~ ~ ~ ~. ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ {~y~ ~~ E ~ ~§ ~~ ~ ~~33 ~ z Y~ 3 I' i.. ,j 1 i , ~ . ~ ~ Mti ~ . I a ~ ~ '. r ~ k ~ ~ I g. ~ ~ - * 1 ~ j, ~ ,f 1 l~ EE t j ~ ( ii s ~~~ ~` 4i ~ t {~ F E ~ ~1' : ~ 7yg ~ ~~ ~ ~ tk' f' ~ d~ R} N E ~ p !F ~ F T I ~ ff ~ i f a ~~ ~ ~ : ~ ; ~ ~ . s ,# . ~ a ~ 3 1 ~ ~~ 7 - 1 ~ f ~C . t '?~ '.7 ~/- ~, 1 l _c.~~;~ ~ ~ ~ q .-~:L ~: !~,.. P _ ~ ~ ~, 7f-. ~n F r ~ '~ 3i , 9 ~:ii;. r + w ~ .5~i +. ~ t~ .~~ry i ~ ~} ! r~~i~~ ;{ F='~ 1 - _ i~~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 132 of 160 Kilchenmann: You could. I think you would always want to keep it a line item, so you knew how much street lights cost. Zaremba: Yeah. I would keep it separate, but I don't see why it needs to be a whole separate department. A separate line item within Other Governments. Bird: We went through street lights every year in some department or something else. Now we got it by itself, so thank God it's there and it's a line item and will never change. Kilchenmann: There. There is your answer. Bird: Would you start -- every year you go through as to which department is it in, but now you got it by yourself. Zaremba: But the idea behind creating the Other Govemments department was to do the same thing with several others that have the same problem. They don't really belong anywhere. I mean I don't have a problem with leaving it separate, but it just seems to me if you're creating this other basket for things that don't belong anywhere else, street lighting would fit in that basket I would think. Kilchenmann: I don't know the history of why it stands alone, but it is sort of a function in and of itself. Zaremba: Okay. Bird: It always has. Zaremba: It's not a problem. Just asking a question. ®e Weerd: Well, we did ask a question on this one, on -- to seek Council's direction before we expend more staff time on trying to figure out the street light dilemma. It continues to increase in cost and as people want street lights put in that in parts of town that weren't, is this a utility that Council desires information to come back to them and -- on afee type of basis? And I know that was asked in Stacy's presentation, but before we expend the necessary staff time to expand our research on that, we would rather have direction on as Council wants that kind of analysis done. Because we keep trying to figure out what to do with street lights and who is responsible when a new street light needs to be put in, we don't budget for that kind of stuff, but if it is a fee based thing, you would have capital that could put in lights where safety lighting is needed or on citizen request, those kind of things. Bird: Madam Mayor, my question and the reason that I have had no problem with the street lights is because we required it and, basically, every street light is a safety feature and we are going to see more and more of it downtown, I hope, as downtown starts developing. So, I'd love to see it be able to put the cost off onto somebody else, but, ~ ~ ~ ~" ~ ~ i I i ~ ~ ; r 't ~ ~ ~ r ~ ,~ :~ ~ ~ ~ F } ~ ~ t .~ ~ ~ ~ ~ a ~ I ~~ll ~ ~ z ~ ~ ~ ~ f ' f t~ r a t "I ~ ~ ~ s t 'F ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ ~ - ~ a ~ ~ t~ ~ 6' ~ I ' ~ ,; i i , ~ ~= ~° ~~~ F r 3 ~ ~ ' ' ~t i ~ _ f ` ~ I ~ ~ - .~ - ~ ~. . ~ tt . ~ ~ ~ i i ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ C i, ~ . {~ f I ~ F ~ t1 ~y t ~ ~ 1~4 ~ r ~ 1 , 3 ~ ~ 4: R ~,. 4_ F 4 ~ S r y e I 14 '' R t ~ tie ~. i -il ii t 1 t t~ `` y f •~ ~ ~ N ~ i ~ ~ t it ~ , ' ,z ~ ~ ~:., ~ ', t ` ~ i..~l ~, s r~ -~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , ', r 1. f ~ ~ ,' ~ , ~ ~; . ~ ~ ~. ~ ~ z ~ ~~ I ~ J ~ r ~ ~ ~ , ~ ~ ' ~ },z y ~ ~ ~, ~ ., , , Y ~ i ~ 1 ~ # .~ S ', fl !' ~ ± t j ¢f. r ~ i . ! :~~ ~~- ~ r ~. 4 ~. ~' s ~ F ~•. i ~' - . r. s ~ ~ 'k ~. i ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 133 of 160 actually, if we are requiring it and stuff -- and you have got to have somebody that will maintain and take care of it. And I guess that is -- I don't like to. I guess that's our responsibility I feel. We are requiring it. I don't have any problem -- I mean I do -- I wish we could get somebody to take it over, but we require it for safety. De Weerd: And, then, new developments -- the developments put them in, we maintain them. It's where new lights are needed, who is responsible for putting those in. We assume the responsibility for maintaining those. And those are the questions we -- Bird: And I agree with you, but not every location has a homeowners association or something that could -- .would be able to take that maintenance -- or that replacement cost. De Weerd: Well, give it some thought and, you know, we can ask the question again, but -- unless you want to just say forget it, we will just keep it as it is. And, then, that's how we will do it. But you want to remember, it's going to get -- as we develop it's going to get larger. De Weerd: And that's the conundrum. Rountree: So, the question in terms of expanding budget is the installation or the expanding cost of power and maintenance? De Weerd: Both. I mean there is -- Rountree: Well, it seems to me that installation of a new street light, whether it's in a new development or an old development, is the responsibility of whoever determines the need. We don't have a criteria that would establish any need in Old Town. If somebody wants to put a street light in Old Town or in their neighborhood in Old Town, then, they fund it. If it's put in appropriately and consistent with the rest of our facilities, then, we maintain it. My question is who in the city is responsible for it? Is it Public Works? Is it Parks and Rec? De Weerd: It has been Public Works. Carrie has been doing it. Rountree: Came has been doing it. De Weerd: Uh-huh. Bird: Charlie, what -- now, this -- I thought we were talking about replacing one. I think the cost is up to the developer or whoever is putting in the thing to put the original one in, but I thought, Mayor, you said who. is responsible for replacing it. De Weerd: The developer is long gone by the time we need to replace a light. Bird: But he's responsible for putting up the original. ~ ~ ~~ ,{~ ?,e; k t ~ r t~ ;zLY v, ~;~'J 4 'p: ~. 3~.~- + F; is t- i~ T i .,~ 1~ `~~~' MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 134 of 160 De Weerd: Uh-huh. Bird: To our specifications. That's the way I understood it. Rountree: Per our requirement. Bird: Per our requirement. Rountree: And if they get run over and we can catch who did it, their insurance company will pay for it, otherwise, we pay for it. Because we required it in the first place. De Weerd: So -- but the question asked to keep it the way it is by covering it in general funds. Bird: Yeah. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: General Fund. De Weerd: And not refer to the fee to be assessed. Rountree: I don't know how you would establish it. Bird: They are not cheap. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions for Todd? Zaremba: I wouldn't dare. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Todd. Okay. Council, it's 3:30. Do you want to launch right into discussion? Let's take a quick break. , (Recess.) 3:45 pm City Council Budget Decisions Sj ,~ De Weerd: Okay. We will go ahead and, hopefully, get through this and have discussion. I do know that Steve has broughten back -- broughten back -- wow. Rountree: English is your second language. De Weerd: It is my second language. ~., ~ y ~-€ ~I a~~', i ~ i ~ ~~ ~ ~ s, ~` `~ =. i `s ~~ ~~ a { ~~~ ~~ ~~ l ~ I: i~ ~';j ~ 's ~: 1 i = Ii ~~' ' ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ y i f ~. i ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ,. ~ ' ~~ $ , { E ~ ~~~ ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 135 of 160 Bird: Did you go to Moscow High? De Weerd: Yes, I did, and I'm proud of it. Bird: Are you sure the Vandals didn't rub off on you? Siddoway: Good evening, Mayor and Council, I did take your comments to heart and -- the name is -- it says FY-09 budget revision. I took the challenge and I went back -- I took the comments and I went back and sharpened the pencil. I've actually taken a cue from police and fire. I don't think I did as good a job of telling some of the story of some of the other enhancements that we thought we needed, but already from -- from our proposed budget and I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it, because they are not in it, but we did have an enhancement that's been withdrawn for a parks and pathways planner. We do feel we will need that position, but right now, as Anna mentioned in her presentation, for this year we are teaming up with the Planning Department to try and fill that need, but we do want to significantly move forward our pathway plan implementation and, then, Settlers Village Square phase two, I had originally hoped to include that in next year's budget allocation, but at 1.2 million dollars that did not seem likely. So, we have withdrawn that enhancement for next year as well. So, in terms of some hard numbers, I have come up with about 217 -- almost 218 thousand dollars of actual hard money that we could cut. So, I don't know if we have a clicker or -- we .can just go to the next slide. On Heroes Park, one of our line items in that is construction management and with the recent approval of that new contract manager position that we are going to share with Public Works, we can cut that line item I believe to about 72,000 dollars. I have also been talking this moming, since our meeting with Tom Bany and we are accepting reclaimed water -- or we are going to be accepting reclaimed water from the wastewater treatment plant into Heroes Park. As part of that we have the ability to fund a portion of our improvements with the Enterprise Fund through that reclaimed water and also, Tom, would you like to just come up and say a word about that. What I would point out, though, is that 78,000 dollars would be dependent on approving that -- that project, which I know is not being heard until Monday. But let me let Tom talk about that for just a minute. Bany: Thank you, Steve. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Mr. Siddoway and I got together this moming after we -- we took on the challenge of trying to find partnership opportunities with regard to this particular project. One of the things I think that we can do, since we are trying to utilize our reclaim -- our reclaimed water resources for a number of different reasons. One, to lower the demand on domestic or potable water, which affects the water utility. Also, to find a useful medium by which we can distribute our reclaimed water or reused water. As you know, we have infrastructure in place that will be serving Heroes Park grassland areas with our reclaimed water. We feel that we can also use that reclaimed water to a couple of other advantages. One, utilizing the reclaimed water on the parks site, as well as any other site that we can find that we can put the reclaimed water on will help us to reduce our phosphorus loading, because as you know on a presentation that was given several months ago, we are under a heightened sense of regulatory urgency in need as it MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 136 of 160 relates to the phosphorus nutrients at the wastewater treatment plant. You heard that the estimate for our particular plant, based on consultants working with the lower Boise River watershed group, is on the order of about 35 million dollars to attain 98 percent phosphorus removal, of which we have zero requirement -- zero percentage requirement removal currently. So, if we can reduce the loadings in phosphorus by diverting our effluent as a treated resource and using it for irrigation sources, we could significantly, we believe, reduce our costs for the improvements to the wastewater treatment plant. What better way to do this than to find partnership with golf courses, parks departments, other places, and utilize that reclaimed water, not just for irrigation, but also for use in toilets, for use in urinals, for use in other sources where that product could be very useful. So, we feel that we could work with the Parks Department on not only finding a source or a -- what do I say, a user for that product, but more importantly - - and this is very important to our ability to be successful with our efforts to move forward on reclaimed water, and that is we need to prepare ourselves to educate our public as it relates to the utilization of reclaimed or reused water. As many of you know, there may and often is an unfavorable perception as it relates to the utilization of reclaimed water. One of the things that Steve and I talked about was utilizing Heroes Park and several components of the park itself, whether it be the pond that we are going to be storing the reclaimed water in and creating water features from that or in the restroom facility with signage that states that this is for flushing toilets and urinals with reclaimed water, recycled water, or it would be the irrigation of the park land itself. There are opportunities here to use Heroes Park as a showcase for the community, an educational piece, if you will, to demonstrate how we can utilize that resource, instead of wasting it to Five Mile Creek. So, for this reason we believe it's a great partnership and we would love to work with the Parks Department on bringing about the educational opportunities and the visibility that we know we are going to need in order to find appropriate places for us to utilize this resource. So, for that reason we think that we can share some of the costs at Heroes Park. The construction documentation for a portion of the restroom facility, we could bear some of those costs. You have got the full description as it relates to cost for Heroes Park. We would be -- we would be in a position, since we would have to plumb the building two ways, one with purple pipes for reclaimed water. We wouldn't recommend plumbing the sink, for example, with reclaimed water, just in the event somebody went to fill up a cup or something from the sink, it's not suitable for drinking, but it's suitable for -- it is highly treated class A reclaimed water, so it's suitable for many other needs. The restroom building itself contributing a cost of 50,000 of the original 210,000, I believe. And so it's a small portion, but on utilizing that as an opportunity. The irrigation costs originally 10,000 dollars. We might be able to bear a small portion, maybe three to five thousand dollars of that. The signage, we believe that we want to put up additional signs and also we could help partner with the signage required at Heroes Park to help bring about an educational opportunity for the folks who will be utilizing the park. We talked also about utilizing some of those funds for the installation of water or drought tolerant needed plants, for example, that also might lead into another project which we would really like to consider at some point in the future and that is something like a water wise garden, something that we can go and plant a bunch of water tolerant or drought tolerant plants and showcase the types of plants as an educational piece, so we can get people MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 137 of 160 moving towards xeriscaping or towards not so much xeriscaping, but, essentially, towards plants that are suited to the environment with which we live. And, then, of course, because some of the costs are bome or would be bome presumably if Council approves this idea, we would take on some of the contingency associated with the cost related to the utilization of the reclaimed water. So, we believe with the construction management savings that Public Works would take on, which was one of the reasons we justified that position was recently approved. In addition to the reclaimed water partnership, we can take off almost 150,000 dollars off that project, which is about a 15 percent savings. I'll let Steve talk to the rest of the other parts here that he'd got, but, essentially, I do want to mention that if we move down this track and we partner with the Parks Department, and you have got the little note at the bottom here, it would be contingent upon Council approving an enhancement in the Enterprise Fund or by Public Works for that difference in cost, which would not be the 149, but it, actually, would 78,000. So, if that's not approved and you approved this as it is, keep in mind that this project will be compromised and you're going to need to approve -- if you're going to move the project forward and if it's conceived, you need to -- you need to keep in' mind where the dollars are going, because we don't want to half fund it, if you will. So, with that I will Steve continue. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: There is probably no data on this, but just by instinct I would think that the reclaimed water is even safer than the current irrigation water. Barry: We have been told that by people, but I don't have any data on it yet. But, yeah, there are many claims out there that the class A reclaimed water that we will be producing at the plant is going to be at or better than the water quality coming from the imgation ditches. I don't have hard facts on that yet, though. So, we are not able to -- I'm not able justify that. But it is a claim that's out there. Zaremba: Thank you. De Weerd: And, Steve, in light of the time constraints right now, Council does have this in front of them. Do you want him to go through slide by slide or -- Siddoway: Do you want me to just jump to the summary at the end? De Weerd: Yeah. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. ~~, ~ f l r ~ 1 :° , Y ~ :, ~' ~~ 3 r r I~ '; f a . ~ k~-' : t t ~ . ~~ ~i L Ek; .~ ~i L It I~ `~ I ~ s I }~ ~ ~ -F ~~ , i) ', }. f , ` Ll ~ ~ I1 Z ~ rl_.. # 1~ i ~ ~ YYY ~ ^ . F ~' ~ ` ~ t ~ ..: P r, . .i y { , i{ p~' ~ s.x ~} ~? }, ~ ! . , ' ~h. ~ `` F ~ i{ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 138 of 160 Borton: I will interject really quick on another topic that there is absolutely no data on, but probably one of the coolest things that I have just seen is to watch Public Works and Parks trying to create a solution to share resources, you know, help buddy up, so to speak, and it's just awesome to watch you guys try and do that and Tom talks about i1 being a positive information opportunity for the community, so -- Siddoway: Thank you. If we could go to the very last slide, then. What I did was go through each of the enhancements and look for cost savings. But in the summary, the Heroes Park project we can save 149,884 dollars. For Settlers Square, phase one, while I do believe we will need the full amount, so I don't have a negative number over there, we can recover those fees back into the General Fund and make them reimbursed with impact fees that come in at a future date and/or transfer that amount to and eligible impact fee -- impact fee eligible park. The truck -- we did some additional work with Chief Lavey in looking at state bids. I think we can cut about 4,600 dollars off of that and still get a truck that will work for us. Heritage Middle School fencing, we can take the 20,000 dollars off that was offered by the school district. For the tree inventory software, I'm proposing that we take off the 7,600 dollars associated that with Tree Works software and the software maintenance, keep the rest of that enhancement intact and we will begin by doing infield locations using the GPS unit and the software itself. And the Christmas decorations we can take off 35,700 on the original request, for a total reduction of 217,000 dollars and with that I will stand for any questions. De Weerd: Okay. Council, any questions? Bird: Yeah, Madam Mayor, I have got one question. Siddoway: You bet. Bird: My big concern in Heroes is -- is the restroom. I mean I think we can go a year without the playground and stuff like that, you know, but I hate to see anything go without at least a restroom and I take it you got a maintenance and concession building all in one. Siddoway: It's all in one structure, yes. Bird: And you -- on this one deal you're showing -- here you're showing 208,000 dollars for that building -- Siddoway: For that building. Yes. Bird: -- there, .plus whatever the architectural plans would cost for the building. The playground, I think you -- I know there is recycled stuff for that. I have a feeling the shelters and stuff, I'd like to see -- take an application to SWAC for fees on that, but -- Siddoway: We certainly can for the playground. ^ SS ~. j - ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ t I ~ ~ :i 1 j~ I ~ ~ f . S f tw ~ ~ S ~ ~.{ 1 (E { i• ~ ~ ~~' ~ ~ 1 ~ ; ~ ^i J f ~ , f ~ ~ I ~ ~, ~ ~ k 1 ' 1 s iYS : ! }j 41 ~ t '1 j ~ } ~~ ~ ;.; ~ ~ ~ f ~ yq k ~ , ~ ~~ ,I ' Y "7 ,~~ I ix '' 'i 'r f~ ~ r~ ~ ~ f a . ~ ,I. ~i~ a ,f~ r' s , ~ ~ ~ y < < ~ i ~ .'4 s 'F y •~ i ~ ~ ~~~, ~' f j f ~ ~ ~., ~ f ~}~~ ~ r{~ ; 1 D Y ~ ~ } y $ ~I1 S ~~ ' ! a ~ I I i F ~ f f ~ J I ~ 1~ X ~ h r~ 1 t i ~ ' 'i f ~ I ~ h_ ~ n r ~ ~ S 3 t r ( F {G ~ v S ~ i ~_ i ~ 5 ~ ~. ` ~ ~ y ry ,& 9 i "s, ~ a + . J { It 11 F 7 .~ i 1 ]rb.~' 1' { 1 5 ~{ t I, ~ 7 14 -1. ~~ ~ 'I ) ((( FFF .4 i r' ~ ~1 y1 ~ ~ ~ _ F: ! 1 it a r ~ ~ } ~ ` l h i ~ 1 I '. f xr.~ i , f ~ ~ ~' i '.l ~ ~ f, '~ .~ il ~ 1, ~ f ~ t G x r. ~ , f 1 , t ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 139 of 160 Bird: One thing I -- I -- the other stuff don'f bother me. I just want to -- but I think we got to have that restroom maintenance and -- Siddoway: Yeah. And I would propose, just from what I know about the park and commitment to the neighborhood, that I think we need that playground this coming year also. De Weerd: We'll just give them Councilman Bird's number and address. Bird: Yeah. Give it to them. Siddoway: But we can look at partnerships with SWAC to help fund that. You know, believe that Councilman Zaremba made a great point this morning that I believe we are already seeing this year, that people are staying home to recreate with the gas prices and things, that the people are not driving as far and the increases in hour usage on both the parks and recreation side is just growing. We are not in a down turn at all, we are -- we are seeing growth on all sides, both in parks use and recreation participation. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: If I may, I would also add to that -- and I'm not sure what page it is. Of the revised pages it was the second one. Where it is in all of them I don't know, but there is a chart titled General Fund total budget by department with Capital Improvement Fund and enhancements, even though it may seem startling for the Parks Department to be asking fora 22 percent increase this year, they have grown the least of all of those that are compared -- even though I know we are budget tightening, they need to catch up, the Parks Department in particular. You know, not to put department against each other, but the Police Department and the Fire Department have all grown. I consider Parks to be part of the safety services as well. My instinct is every dollar we don't spend on parks we will need to spend on police. Parks and Recreation I mean. But just looking at -- if I'm interpreting the green square here on this chart, the '08 budget and the '09 budget for Parks and Recreation are about equivalent to their 2001 budget and if it needs to be 22 percent more, I'm in favor of that. I think it's catch up, because there have not been increases over the years and we've had the same thing with -- over the last year when we have increased certain fees, it's been because -- it sounded like a large increase in fees, but it's because we hadn't increased them for ten years before and I feel like the Parks Department is -- is in the same situation. So, I would like to support -- I appreciate what's been cut out here and I think that's some excellent work and the cooperation between departments is wonderful to see, but I would support the rest of what you're asking for. Siddoway: Thank you. And I think through those efforts we can -- you know, we have come up with that 217, almost 218 dollars, that we feel like we can cut and would propose that at least for your consideration. Any other questions. Thank you. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 140 of 160 De Weerd: Thanks, Steve. Okay. Council, do you want to go through it fund by fund? Bird: Let's do her. De Weerd: Okay. Borten: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Procedurally are we -- is the point right now to make general comment and this establishes the maximum potential budget. It can't go up and it could go down, so -- Kilchenmann: Well, actually, it -- when we come to the point where it can't go down is when we first notice it, so what this does is give us the material to prepare the one that will be noticed. So, it's -- it might go up a little bit -- up or down a little bit from this point when we actually go through the detail, like Steve just said, et cetera, and make sure all the transfers, balance between the funds and so forth, and which we can't do that like we -- we still have to do Enterprise Monday, but, basically, you are sitting pretty close to what it will be and what we will give you for your final approval. Did that answer your question? Borton: Somewhat. So, we are not precluded from making a reduction if it's warranted in ten days. Kilchenmann: Well, kind of -- yeah. Because Todd needs time -- he has to have the time -- there is a gazillion lines of detail to back this up and so he -- he needs the time to get it ready for the notice. Right? He says, oh, yeah. Borton: The only reason I asked is because at the public hearing. -- let's say you go to the public hearing and -- Kilchenmann: Then you can move it down. Borton: Okay. Kilchenmann: But you can't move it up. Borton: Okay. Kilchenmann: You can always go down. Borton: Okay. Right. ~~. { t , ` ~ 33Y ~ i t e ~ ~ ~ ,~ i ~ ~ ! d ~ 1 '; '~ , as ~ ~ ~ ~~ i ! ~ ~ " ~ + n~ 1 q ~ ft~ Eif ,, j . ~ ~ i~ ~ ~ i cc. ~ i ~ ~ ~ 9i ~ M ' 1- q ' { ~ I, p' ~ g3 ; 1 w.~ ~ j k ~ ~ P ~T ~ I ~ i J r f ~ f € ~ I it_ ~~~ 2 ~ @ f 3 i ~ ~ j l i G 'i1 ~. ~ ~, ~ ~ 1 9t-. f e '~ r ~ +~ i i~ ~ ~~ . ~ t ~ ~ ~1~ ~ " I ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 3 t.~ ~~~ 1 ~ ~ ~ t ~ n '~ f f i ~ ~ ~ ~ F = ~ ~` ' ' t ~ " ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ 1~ ~ st ~ ~ i s ~ ~~ : ~i x ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ '~ ~ {{O( 3 . 1 I f j ~ {{ y} ~` [ ~ i i , f ~ Yk i~ ; 3yj i ff ~ + {~. t 1 ', fl ~ ~~ ; 1 i. 4 ~ ? 4 ' } ~ I y5 ~ I ( h j ' , ~~'T 1 f ,; 1 a :. j f j f 1 1~ f 1 I ~ i k~ ~x ~:~_ j.. Y x } K11, I`+ ~ { j~ k j', ~y . ~ ; 1 ~ C ~ ~ JJJ7 6t. f ;1 -~ ~ ~ ~ 5 y ; ~ ~ _' r F[ r , ~ i _,f 1 a~ a i 3 f pp MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 141 of 160 Nary: I was just going to supplement that. Really, other than simply accounting for the dollars and cents, it may fluctuate in accounting, at the public hearing, yes, you can make it less, but you can't make it more. Not until the next year. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? Okay. So, I guess Todd, go ahead and start at the beginning, which -- on the capital replacements. Any questions, concerns in the capital replacement list? Well, you have your capital replacement list and, then, we can go into the enhancements. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Bird: Steve, I don't know if you can answer this. Elroy isn't here still. - And I know it isn't a big item, but every penny counts. That '88 Kawasaki Mule, does that run at all or -- and what park have we got it at? Siddoway: On the '88 Kawasaki Mule, it runs barely, but it's requiring a lot of maintenance. It's about 13 years old now. Purchased in '95 it's got almost 10,000 mile -- Bird: If it's '88 it's 20 years old. Siddoway: The Kawasaki Mule is '95, I believe. Bird: It says '88 here. 1988. Siddoway: Well, we have -- yeah.- But we got it used in '95. It was an '88. We got it in '95. Bird: Is this the one we have got out at Settlers that -- Siddoway: I can't say for sure which park it's at. It is costing us more in maintenance than it's worth. Bird: That's all I needed to know. Siddoway: Yeah. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions in the replacement list? Okay. Hearing none, we will get into is the enhancements. Okay. The first set in Administration. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. 1 Fr f T 0 h-i ``C:~ ~t ~ , s '`~ ~~% ~ ~{ i , i '~, ~~ a ~ c. i; ~~ ~ r ~' ~~ ~,. ; s ;: }; n~ ra s' a r ~' i C i M ~ I ~ ~ ~ i k~ ~~f' I.1. ~ . i ss t : ~ k,~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 142 of 160 Borton: I think the first item was withdrawn by -the City Clerk, the record benefit software. De Weerd: She changed that. She wanted to keep the scanners, which was 2,700; is that correct? Bird: No. She wanted to keep it 21,000. Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, what I wanted to keep out of that one was two scanners for a total of 2,700 dollars. De Weerd: And that was out of the 9,800, to change to 2,700. Bird: I misunderstood you. I'm sorry. De Weerd: Two thousand seven hundred. Lavoie: Jaycee, the slide that you had, it was noted 1,200 in ongoing and 11,700 in one time? Holman: That 11,700, 2,700 of that is a one time cost, which is a scanner. So, the one time cost includes the purchase of the software and the two scanners. De Weerd: And, then, there would be no ongoing cost. Holman: That's correct. De Weerd: Okay. Any -- Council what would be your next item of discussion? Lavoie: Human resources would be the next selection available. De Weerd: Yeah. I just -- I thought it would be easier for them to just say what is the item they would have questions on, concerns, et cetera. Okay. We will go through it. HR. Okay. Nothing in HR? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: I'll just make general comments. It's not necessarily something to add or cut. At least not at this point. I'm throwing out an idea that's been tossed around of whether or not there is some ability -- and I have talked to Mr. Nary about it, about a -- the HR position and the roll of the contract and whether or not the 72 from consulting, which is Aspiron, and the HR analysis position, perhaps those could be blended as an HR director perhaps. I don't necessarily think it's -- I just throw it out for discussion. It was an HR item that -- just been thinking about whether or not that makes sense for the long I I ~ ~ i ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t; ti 3 ~ ~ ~ l 7 ? ~~' t ~ a~ r 11 66 FFt ~ 1 ~ F ~ .j #~ , ~! I a#> I' ! ~ 4 ~ ~ I ~ !.1 j ~1 ~: ~I 7. ~ i ~ ~ ' ' ~ f a ~ ~ i t ~' I ~, ~ H $ }a ~ f I k ~ i ~ ~ f~ ~' j '' 1 ~ ~ ~ .. ~ ~r, i ~ 77 , 7 ,,i~ ,~ 4 ~ ~~x' ~~ e ~ ~' ~ 5 t - I ~ i~ Y ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~~ ~ I _ x ~ ~ r t 1~: t d 3 I E~ ! ~ '<< ~ +I ~ ~ ~ I , .. ~ 7 ~~ f ss yi Y GG4 a , .,r _ ~ ~ ~ , 8 ~ 1C1¢~ ~ ~ '. a i p 0 ~ 7G '~ r "~ 1 ~ ! F , $ 6 'I~' ~ ~ e. .~; ~ ~ t ~ t , ~ g ~ T ~ ~ I Y q3 lI ~ ~ 's ~; 1 2 ' i { ~ '~ ~ i ;~ ~ ~ ~ N x ~ ~ k !I ~ ~ ~ ~ J a E~, ~ ~i ~ ~ ~ !_ ~= i i ~Y ~ ' ~~ ~ ~~;? ~i r ~ I : ' i ~ ~ '. ~ ~' r'~ ~~, , ', f ~ ~ ~~ is ~' ~' ~ : ?:~j ~ ~ ~ .~f MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 143 of 160 term. So, I don't think you necessarily delete it, but I wanted to -- just to make it known that was a thought. De Weerd: Okay. Well, I know that thought has come up before and it wasn't something that the director or myself brought forward, so -- Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I think I'm one of those that has mentioned it. I don't see that as being immediate or imminent, but I do feel that sometime in the future we should split those two pieces, two separate directors. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Bird: And I'd go along with Joe. I think that's something that we need to really -- look into real hard and I don't think it's something you do down the line. And it's certainly against nobody in either position right now and I think he knows that -- or I hope he knows it. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we have had this discussion before and that's fine. Part of what -- as I talked to you in the presentation this morning is my intent -- one, we need training dollars. We need to make sure that our city is compliant. From a risk management- standpoint, from a legal standpoint, we have to make sure we are compliant with harassment laws and a variety of different things. We need to have expertise to do that. I would like that to be internal, because I would think in the long run that will benefit us if we have our own trainers. Now, the city of Boise -- similar discussion with their legal department of the city of Boise. I had lunch with them last week with their human resources. They are looking to outsource some of their training and if it's affordable, I'm fine with that. The trainer that they have is excellent. I have done a lot of training with him, so I was very comfortable with him doing some training, but I don't have a cost figure yet. As I told you in the HR analyst position, part of my long term intent -- and I think I have discussed it with all of you at different points -- I can see long term that the HR department may function like the IT does now, with a separate -- with a separate HR manager that would have the responsibilities of oversight, but we don't have the staff to do that today. We don't have any real means to do that. So, although it might seem inviting to simply put all of those eggs in one basket and hire one person, in reality Idon't -- I don't think that's in the best interest of the city. We need the training for our personnel and we need to develop somebody to be able to take on that role and responsibility. We designed the new office in City Hall to be able to make that change if it was necessary. We have divided as where the offices are laid out and where the conference rooms are laid out. We even -- we even built -- had one of the main -- the main large conference room built with two entry doors to it, so if we MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 144 of 160 needed to, we could split it into two offices or split it into two conference rooms. So, we did look at those for long term solutions. So, I don't -- I'm not opposed to any of that, I just don't think today the city's best interest is to hire a director, you're still going to have the director coming back and saying I need money for training. I need a person to do it or I have to hire someone else to do it. I don't have the bodies to do all of those things. We have a staff really right now of three and a half people to handle -- well, that's about three full-time people to handle everything that comes in. So, my goal is to hire an analyst. The reason the directors had proposed that we move it up to a higher position -- as you know it was originally a generalist, which was a lower position, basically a person with maybe a limited amount of experience in the HR arena, to really get a lot of basic work done. The directors felt it was more important to have one with more experience and to pay more to get a person with more skill and more experience, so that we could maybe groom somebody for a job like that in the next budget year or the year after that. Somewhere within the next couple years that would be my objective to get the city on a better footing with that, because as we know some of the departments, because building may be a little slower, we are not. We certainly aren't any slower. We certainly have a lot of people that have a lot of legal issues with the city. That hasn't gone away just because they are not building many houses. So, we haven't gotten any slower, but that's the long term objective. So, that's why I'd like you to leave them the way they are, because that's the direction we are trying to get to, if that helps. Bird: Madam Mayor, I want to -- I want to give you my view point. You want to hire another legal person and I always been -- part time. Nary: Right. That's already in this budget. Bird: Ithink your expertise to the city is good in HR, but I think it's -- your legal mind is more important to me in the city and you hit it right on the head. We have helped get you a lot of work in the legal department. We have given you a lot of work. I would like -- I would like your full time in legal side of it. That is where I'm coming from. Nary: And I don't disagree with that and I'd like to be able to get that time on the HR side that only issues -- predominately today the only issues I deal with are what are to me legal issues anyway, which Ithink -- whether you had an HR director or an HR manager, that's what they would be dealing with, they would be dealing with things that are liability issues for the city. I would like to get to the point that that's all I have to wont' about with HR is that. The HR division would be able to handle itself, would be able to manage all the other HR functions without me having to do any of that. And the only thing that we would deal with on the legal side are legal concerns. So, I don't disagree with you. Long term I think that's where we need to be. Ithink realistically that's where we are going to have to be. Bird: Well, Ijust -- I just want your legal mind full time, in my opinion. And I know you have to give at least half, if not more, to HR. I know that, because you -- you know. And I'm not -- I'm not changing anybody's wages, I'm not doing anything like that, but if you take -- and I don't have any problem getting an analyst, but if you get a director and, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 145 of 160 then, could you get alower -- with a 72,000 and the 80 some thousand, could we get a director and an analyst? Nary: No. Bird: Okay. Nary: I don't think so. I think with an analyst -- I think with the analyst we can get a person that has the skills and in a year or two we could look at that person to being at least an HR manager at the least. Because I don't really think realistically you would find a person to manage a department by combining all those monies together, because you're still going to be lacking training. You're still going to be lacking a lot of other needs and I appreciate your sentiments, Mr. Bird. Trust me, I have great staff. I don't spend more than half of my time on HR. I do spend more than half of my time on legal .issues. But I appreciate what you're saying, but the staff I have really make the engine work every day on the HR side and I deal with -- other than the compensation issues that we have seen and we have discussed, the policies which you -- which if you -- you recall, because you were on the Council when we passed the policy handbook. Did the HR manager write the current policy handbook? No. The lawyer from White Peterson did. So, the legal issues I deal with on the policy, I deal with termination issues. Those are the issues you have counsel dealing with anyway. So, I think-- I appreciate your sentiment and we are trying to make sure we give the city enough value for what they get. Bird: I've had my two cents. Nary: Thank you. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions in the HR? Okay. IT. Rountree: The MS Office upgrade is out. It's already withdrawn, okay? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Not necessarily -- and I guess to back up, when I made reference earlier on priority lists and they were items which weren't included, which could have been included, made reference to the firing range, for example, that -- you know, I look through the list and comment an items that at least I have a question on and I'm not necessarily a hundred percent sold have to be included. I'm sure they are -- anything I make reference to is of great value in light of the limited resources. The web content engineer. One that gave me a little concern. Bird: I would second that. I agree. I also -- Madam Mayor, if I may? I have a concern on that expensive -- ~ >: z, a ~ ~ ~: ,; ~ L z, Ef, ~ r ~' k.r ~ ~ ~ t {i 1 j' ~ r ~ fi r , ~ r, E, tc ~ , ~b~ t ~ I` t 4~~ ~ ~ { r} ~ ~ ~ S7 ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ t.. ' :~ i ~~ r If 4, F7 : k' E y ~` r ~, C, ~ t ~ ; . ~ i_; i.; ~" ~~~~ I ~ _ ~, MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 146 of 160 Borton: Enterprise software. Bird: Enterprise -- well, Enterprise -- it's under IT. The deal Idon't -- I was told that -- that it would be efficient and stuff. Well, anything that makes something efficient should eliminate cost and cost is employees. We have -- we haven't got to the Enterprise yet, but, you know -- and I haven't been sold that -- for 800 -- over 800,000 dollars that we are getting a piece of gold that's going to do the job. No, that's -- Terry, I'm not -- you can answer this. You don't have to have Bill -- I mean I just -- I'm having a hard time getting my arms around it for that kind of price. I really am. And, then, we got building fund needs something that -- that to me sounded very practical and very efficient and -- but, yet, we are still pending this on this. So, I don't know, I have got -- I have got a real concern on it. I'm not a hundred percent against it, don't get me wrong there, but anytime you spend that kind of money you have got to see results and I know five years from now I don't want to see you come in here and tell the Council that it's outdated. Paternoster: Well, if I can answer, Councilman Bird, I think you can make a lot of legitimate points. I think that anytime you do spend this type of money that it shouldn't be approached without a lot of care. I think that this committee that's done the evaluation and analysis for this particular software has been in place for over two years. We have hired outside consultants to look at it and say that the city needs a system that will allow us to enhance our communications. I think Anna made very good points about it, that there are challenges. When you have code enforcement telling citizens different things than what the Planning Department is and so you have this different information. I think that if you instantly want to see an RLI that's going to justify 875,000 dollars next year -- it's not going to happen. I think that this is a type of software that over time will produce benefit and reduce overall operating costs, because you're going to have less staff time spent on it. In addition, the systems that we looked at have web components to them that will enhance the website so that citizens can do their website. So, they can go in and they can access their own information. Information will be much more accessible than what it is currently today to the citizens and I think that to not recognize those points might be premature on our part. I think that it is very important for us to think what's this software going to provide long term. One of the things that we did during this analysis proper was to specifically target software packages that were mature, not software packages where these people have four people with the building permit software or maybe they said, yeah, we are in the process of developing a GIS integration, we targeted systems that looked like that they were going to be premier systems, not systems that we are going to spend five years and say, oh, man, boy, did we make the wrong choice. When -- after doing our next evaluation of ten different systems we only came back with two that we really thought were viable. Now, the difference between the two systems is about 250,000. We are not sure which one's the best. Now, the difference is is that, you know, one of the questions that Tom's brought up in the past .is with the wastewater treatment plant's recent investigation, you know, that there is a need for the city to have an asset management piece to track the different assets that the city owns and if the city goes with a more census solution, there is integration that can take place between an asset management piece, because the MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 147 of 160 vender sells an asset management piece, plus a land management piece. If we go with the less expense solution, which very well may work, it's about 250,000 dollars less. I think that what we are asking for here is enough money that we can get the city the best solution that will provide the most bang for the buck, while doing the most -- providing the best information to citizens. De Weerd: Well, Terry, you mentioned a gap analysis that is needed and I don't know if you mentioned that this could be phased in, but once a gap analysis is done is there a phase in that is possible? Patemoster: Madam Mayor, to answer that question, I think anytime that you approach a project of this magnitude, it's going to be really more likely amulti-year project. We are not going to go implement this starting October, especially with the new City Hall coming on line and think that it's going to be done by June. The reality is this really is more of a multi-year project that we are going to probably start with the building permits software, since it is the biggest pain point for the city and, then, move forward. I think it is possible for us to reduce the amount of money if we choose to do it as a multi-year project, recognizing that we are not going to get the full .benefit of the software until we implement all the extra pieces. But we can at least make that first in road to really just say, you know what, we are moving forward, we are committed, we are not going to step back from this, we believe this is an issue. One of the things that I am apprehensive about is if we do reduce this budget enhancement and choose to do it in a multi-year project, I firmly believe that we still need to approve the position. The cost to implement this type of system is a type of cost that to me its huge. The quote that I got from the vendor was 75 percent of the total implementation -- of cost was implementation and 25 percent was actually cost of software and so by implementing a project manager or hiring a project manager on our side, we are potentially reducing the amount of cost that we are going to incur over the long run, because we will have somebody who can write reports, we will have somebody who can do some of the implementation, we will have somebody who can modify the code and design it the way that the city needs it done and so if we do choose to do this over a multi year, please, recognize that, you know, the position really is required. I don't really think it would be wise on our part to do it without that position. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would never suggest that we do something like this over the years. I mean you either buy it all up front or buy none of it. The whole program. You know what I mean? In my opinion. Paternoster: Sure. And to address that, Councilman Bird, I think that that is a good point, but this type of system really is a modular system and so if -- if it was an issue of all or nothing, I mean I'd take all, obviously, but if it was something that we choose to do it multi year, I think that it's better to get started than to continue to wait. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 148 of 160 Bird: If you need 75 percent up front, why not fund the other 25 and be done with it? If you come back next year, we are going to be -- I'm usually a big optimist, but I'm telling you with this economy on you're not a big optimist. I think we are another 18 months away from starting back. So, I'd just as soon fund it this year if we decide to fund it. Paternoster: And to address -- just to go along with that, I do think that you make a valid point. When I did talk to the different vendors about implementation, if you choose to do a multi year implementation, the cost of implementation does go up, because now you're flying their consultants back and forth more often, because you're bringing them back on this project and, then, bringing them back on that project. So, that is a good point, Councilman Bird. Nary: And Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, to address the issue on the web -- the web content engineer, as well as the web -- the web - oh, what's it called? What do you call it? Web consultant. And Terry certainly can chime in. We talked about it on a break and, you know, I guess the best way I can put it to you -- and Council Member Rountree did ask the question this morning, is how much of a problem or concern or complaints we have about the website and what I told you is I think we are trying to make it better. We have won about 20 awards from the Association of Idaho Cities in the last three years. We won the award for the most awards every year. We haven't won any awards for our website. Our website works, it's functional, it meets a bare minimum need. What Terry and I talked about and I will turn it over to Teny here in a second, but I think we have got to take a step forward in some fashion and we can do it in either one or the other. I mean we can either hire the person to approve the quality of what we have today to make it better, to make it react better and respond better and be consistent across the board and, then, develop in the next budget year and using a consultant or someone else to help improve the quality of the look and the other functionality things that we think are really important, or we can do it the other way. mean we can certainly do the consulting now and get the look at the appearance and those things done that a web consultant designer would do and, then, improve the functionality internally. If that's your desire, that's a way you can do it and still get us at least moving down the road. I mean it doesn't have to be all or nothing on that, but don't think -- I don't -- I know for most of you and your use of it and the people that interact with. you they are probably fine, but I do believe as Bruce said and as Terry has gotten and others, there is a lot better -- there is a lot better example of how websites can be usable and they are right here in this valley and people look it up and say why can't you have this, why can't you do this, why can't I access it this way, and we -- you know, and I don't think we really want to keep saying that just because we don't do it that way, you know. So, I think -- I understand your reason for wrestling with that. Teny and I did try to figure out a way that, you know, we could at least keep moving along in the right direction and if Terry has a different perspective or prefers one over the other, that's certainly his call, so -- Rountree: Madam Mayor? q ~ ~ ~ G ~ ~ ~ - ~ E j t ~ ~ y.~ i 1 f t ' K ~ ~ 7 ~~[ to ~s j ~ ` ~ ~ II 1 ~ ~ ,i ~ 7 ~- ~ t L gg ~ \' .. { . t ~, i° ' ~~ ~ ~ } I y 7 i M ~, ~ ~i z ' ~ ~ i ^ ~~ ~ ~ ' I I ~ ~ ~; :~ I j ~, ) ~_ l I`( ~ S ~~ ~ ~, ~ I } 1 ~e g ~ ~ i r~~l ~ z ~ ~ r _ # - ~~ a t • ~ - ~ ' CC ~ t~ .. ~~ C t ~ , ~ 4~?i - ~~ fit, '~, ! - ~i ` ~ j ~`~ ~' ~ 'r" f~ 5. 1 ~ S f , 1 3 _ _ ~ f MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 149 of 160 De Weerd: Yes. Rountree: I personally don't have a problem being the scapegoat that the -- you know, the Council has not chosen to make that a priority at this point in time, if, in fact, that's what we choose to do. I, too, have some concerns about that particular position at this point and it's been my experience that there is not synergism when you have a web creator or a web engineer and try to start an Enterprise program. It just seems like they don't get along for some reason and Iwould -- I am a hundred percent supportive of the Enterprise effort. We have got to do it and we have got to get it done and, then, it will never get any less expensive than what you're showing here. And I firmly believe that there is no way you're going to be able to spend that kind of money in the next fiscal year, because you're going to start looking at packages and there is going to be issues and there is going to be consultants and there is going to be staff time trying to make some of these things do what it is we want them to do. If you do, you need to get an award, but I would like to see the Enterprise system get in place and, then, that's the tool that's available for this new visionary, want-to-do-everything-on-the-web person, if you understand what I'm saying. Been through it. It wasn't pretty. De Weerd: So, it sounds like the web content engineer is removed? Rountree: Iwould say keep it in for now and let people think about it some more, but that's my position right now. Iwould be inclined to -- probably when we get to the final budget, unless something changes my mind and the reading I do, that's probably where I will end up. Kilchenmann: Councilman Rountree, how long did you need to think about it? Rountree: Well -- Bird: About five minutes. Rountree: I mean there is four of us that can vote on this. That's my opinion on it. I just -- Kilchenmann: But you mean today? Rountree: Well, if there is unanimous support to take it off, fine. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? Rountree: If there is confusion about it, we might want to think about it. De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I realize that this is a startling amount of money and to put all that in one place is a little bit scary of a decision for me, but I will have to say businesses for at ~ k, ' i i f, ~~ k~ ~~ ~ e. a f~ f ~ _ E .} ' j i _~ x ~ } <i t ~, x j ~ tide, ~r 1 ~ F t 4 1 ~r 2 g /~ 2~ a } ~ ; j { ~~ ~ f ~ .. _ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 150 of 160 least 15 and possibly 20 years have been needing this kind of software. When they have a situation where one department needs to use similar data to what another department has, the issue of having to re-key each department or to pass hard copies around from department to department causes errors, causes extra employee time, causes loss -- the data is wrong in one of the bases, can cause loss to the business and in our case could cause failure to comply with some regulations and is this not a cutting edge technology, it is now a mature technology that has been worked on for 15 or 20 years. We are certainly not taking the lead in trying to make it so that data is entered once into one database and everybody can access it. I'm not even concerned about the public, I'm concerned about our own departments being able to get the same -- know that what they are getting when they pull something up is the same thing that source put in and it seems to me that as startling as this figure is, we need to do it and we need to do it pretty quick, because there are hidden costs in not doing it, not only in time, but in inaccurate data and for our own use, let alone for regulatory compliance and for contacting the citizens, not just us. So, we are overdue to do it and it won't ever get cheaper. Bird: Are you talking about the -- the Enterprise system or the -- or the web -- Zaremba: The Enterprise system to begin with, but I think there is a link between having somebody on staff who, even if you call it a web designer or whatever he's called, probably will be on this project first and, then, develop into -- De Weerd: Well, I think there is two different positions. Yeah. Bird: That 847, as I understand it, included an employee to take care of that. Paternoster: That's correct. Rountree: Project manager. Bird: The project manager to take care of that 847. I agree with Councilman Rountree, wouldn't -- the engineer -- the web content engineer I don't think we need right now. The Enterprise software, leave it in. De Weerd: Okay. So, is there consensus on that? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: At least three to one or -- how do you do it? Borton: I mean this probably frustrates accounting, but if the process is set up and we have to tell -- decide right now that a particular item is in or out, then, our process is fatally flawed, in effect, but -- i ~ . i ~~ Y If I k ~ ~ ~ ~ t r'P ~ ~ t ~ a ~ 3 4 ~ ~ ~n ~ ~~ i X~ 1 T 3 :i } . - 4 fff ~ , ' ` d T ~~ ` ~ t t ~ t i ~ I r ~ t ; I r 1 { s ~ ' . Y-t + J / ~ fi u ~ 1 z '~ t i ~ ~ ~ 4 ~~ ~~ ~~ ~ d { ~ 1 ~ ~.~ f ~ ` ~ X 1 h ~ foal i ~~ _ ~ ~ .. ~ r ~ ~ r- ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I t 1 ~ , ~ j ~ ~~~ ~ t- a ~ ~. ; , ~~ ~ ~ ,~, ~. t , a { ~ ~: ~ 3 .) ~ t ,I ~ l ~ ~ , ~ ' ~ ' a ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~ , ;, , S- r ~ ~~. t~ , a 2 ~ t ~ 1~ ; ~ Iy ~'' ~ ~ ~ y~ 9 ~~~;~ 1 . .' ~y ~ ~ n 1. ~ ,, 1 ~ ~ ~ i r .~ ~ ~ ~ ' d ~ ' a ~ t~ i , ~' Y k, ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ I k ' , ~ i i t~ ~ d ( ' ~ ~ ~ ~ + 5~ ., j MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 151 of 160 De Weerd: I guess -- Councilman Borton, I guess what they would like is right now, as you suggested earlier, let's just leave it in. If during the public process that changes that is what the public process is for. But we have to set something that you want at least to be published for public comment and that's -- that's what they are trying to get. So, the things that you can all agree on that should be taken out, we can -- we can work on that and let's leave this -- the Enterprise software in and let it be vetted through the public process. Is that what you're suggesting as well? Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, at this point we have removed the web content engineer and the MS Office upgrade, which was withdrawn. Bird: And we left the Enterprise software in. Rountree: Yes. De Weerd: Yes. Bird: Okay. I might change my mind by Monday, but -- De Weerd: Okay. Well, That's your prerogative. Okay. We are in legal now. Bird: Oh, boy. He's only got two enhancements. Which one do we give him? De Weerd: Okay. Mayor's office. Bird: Oh, yeah. Rountree: Is the scholarship gone? Bird: Yeah. Scholarship's gone. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Zaremba: Back on legal, I was just looking for the paperwork. Wasn't the professional services contract with Boise -- weren't they asking for a little bit more? Bird: That's adifferent -- that's not legal. Kilchenmann: And that is actually built into the base, so it doesn't show up as an enhancement. Zaremba: Okay. All right. Never mind. De Weerd: Okay. So, there was nothing in legal. Okay. In the Mayor's office we did remove the thousand dollars -- x y .; tr }~~ jr '.G f ~ ~ "* 7 a 0g ~. ~ r ~ ~ ~ c ~ t iF '{ a {e } L { t J ° ° ~ ,~1 i ~ I " I ~I~ 1 ~ _I j j -.~ ~ Y'1 ~1 t- ~ ~ .V` ~ ~Sii~ .~ i '{}X4 ~J.~ ~ ~ f ~.1 ; ~ _ ' ~ I ( t { { ~ ; L _.,i ~~ Y .~ t _.; . ~~ I,, k r ~ S f. ~ ' ~ `cf ' h '~ a ~; k > f ~ ~ 1 1 r _ f . x , y Y a :-- '~ ~. r , , ~ (~ ~ ' 1 { t, ) '.~. ~1 ~ ~ ~ ,, . a ~ ~ ~ ~ ' - ~~ ~ ~ a i y~ K ~a ~~: , 4 r ,{~r . .il r Y- ~ 1. ~ f 1 .~; t; 1 T t~ ~a~ ~ - I I o°' ~' ~ ~ 7 ~ f ..1 r ' i ~ ~ 1 5 z~~ ~a ~~ i3 _ ~ ~~ ~ , : a d ' sr f ~ ~~ q a .i ;~ ; r ' ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~' t i i ~ << ~ + ~ ' I~ l k ~ i € ~ i # 4 S ~~~ ~( ~ ~ , r f t ~ ' ~ u ' ,~9 11 ~ 1. f , ~ ~ t,~~ ~S~t f' as ~~ ~ , y ~ " ~~~ ~ ~ r~ ~ E S 7S~ y i{ } .; ~ ~ ~~ S t~.~~ H i i~... I S ~ ~ ty ~~ ~. ~ St i } ~~i?[,~ t3 ~Y ~ 3 ~~k ~ ,l I ~ ~1 ~~~ ' ~~ I _ I f7~~ a MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 152 of 160 Rountree: Should we check with the Statesman? Borton: Madam Mayor? Bird: Somebody else can go for the interview. Borton: The professional services contract I'm not -- I'm sold on. We can leave in now. I'm not everybody, but I have a concern with that, even though it's relatively small. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: I guess to that point, Joe, I would just say last year we spent significantly more in that particular item with needing help in public relations and that sort of thing and public -- getting information out. Just to give you something to think about. We will leave it in for now. Bird: I vote take it out. Have we taken the Rocky Mountain out? De Weerd: Yes. Okay. And Other Government. Okay. Fire Department? Rountree: Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. De Weerd: I'm sorry. Rountree: Which Other Government? De Weerd: Other Government 01. The only thing under Other Government was the Meridian Arts Commission, so if there were no issues on that -- Rountree: That's fine. De Weerd: Okay. The Fire Department, then, would be -- Rountree: Madam Mayor, I had a question on the remodel for Chief Anderson. De Weerd: Okay. Rountree: Does the amount that you have got in there just cover materials or are you talking about some kind of compensation for -- or is it -- or is the help from firemen volunteer? I don't understand what all is included in that. I know you said it can be done by staff. Is that with volunteer time or -- Anderson: Yeah. That's what we would be looking at. Rountree: Okay. ~ ~ s' ~ i' ~ ' ~ ~ ~ 4~ 3 ~ i E ~ 1 ~ ~' a i y '# a I , ~ S { ~~~ ~~~ i , ,~_ F ~ ~ ~ t1 ~ i _ ,' `17 #.. _ ~ . _ r ' ~.:_ 1 V, k ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 S j ` j 1 5 ] ~y( 1 ~{ ) (( 3 f '~ j ~ ~, i t ~ x 5 ~ l Si jy 1 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 7 r a . ~ ~ ~ F ~ ~ ~ p - , ~ ~x! ~ ~ , jy 4 ;{ ~, 1 {' S a .~ g x7 a 7 * 9 s~ 3 I ~ a ' t I rk j~ i,•' f ~l~ ~ 1~~ ~ }~ ~ E ~ ~~ ' i ~` ~ d 1 ~ ~ ~- ; ~• ~~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ + ,~1~~ ~Z Ct ~ ~~ ~ ~ j ~ ~ ~ i i ~ ~ ~ ~ e s " ~ i ~. r 2 ~ ~ - ~ ~ t ~ rl ~ } ~ ' a ~ ~ ~~ ~' 1 , e a. ~ ~ 9 ~~ ~ . pi ~` ~ ~. ~ ~ 1 ~ I ~ ~ : ~ ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ Y ~ ;~ .~ i ~. R i~ ~ ~ ~ f ~ ~' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ _ ~ < '~ f k ~ ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ I '" I ~ ~ ~ , _ ~ 3 ~~s , ~ q n ~ ' ~ y ~ I 3 ~ " ~ ~ - i 9 ~ s ~ ' ~ 1 ~ j ~ ', 1 1 ~ 1 . [ - ~ 4 k ~ . r , ~ ~ ~ ~ , D +. ' j I ? kl s I 3 k ~ ~: F ~ _ 1 ~ G Fl 1~1 ~'.t ` ~ I ~ ,~7 I < ~ < 1 _ i ~ ~: ~. ~ ., V i N ~ e ~ .i, ~ , ~ ~ ~ _ fit: i !~ ! '. . ~ j ~I MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 153 of 160 Anderson: Give them some time on duty or volunteer. There may be some stuff, if we can't handle ~it, if we have to have a licensed electrician, for example, move something, then, there may be a little bit of contract stuff in there, but -- Rountree: I'm just concerned about liability issues. I mean there are saws and hammers and nail guns and if they are doing it on a volunteer basis are we still covered under workmen's comp and the city's insurance? Anderson: Well, that's a Bill Nary question. Rountree: Yeah. Nary: Actually, when the chief brought it up this morning I did have Audi, since she manages our work comp program, check with the State Insurance Fund. I don't think it would be covered. We may need to contract with those -- since they are not doing employee duties -- it's not like having the -- it's not like having a parks person build something that's related to their duties. We may need to contract with those employees. It's a completely different job function. So that way we can cover that. I will speak with our insurer on what liability issues we might have, but it appears the State Insurance Fund may not cover that as a work comp related injury, because it's not related to their job. Rountree: Something to think about. Nary: Yeah. I think we can do it. I think we will have to just figure out a way to do that. It just won't fit the -- it doesn't fit in the box that we normally have, but we will figure it out. Rountree: Okay. Anderson: I don't know, I mean a lot of what they do is running chain saws and axes and all those kind of things, so -- and we board up houses sometimes when there is a fire and we busted out the windows, so I guess -- I don't see it as a whole lot different. You tum firemen loose and let them tear up stuff and it's kind of the same. Rountree: But there is still a potential of harm. De Weerd: Okay. Anything further on the fire. Okay. Oh, Steve is back. Okay. We are now in Parks. Rountree: I would suggest we make those changes that Steve brought back to us and move on. ~ ~f~ ~"- ~ i ~~ ~ x F ~~~ e I~~' = ~` ~, ~ ~' i ~' 1' :~ ,> F~ { ~ }~ , ~ P R ' ~ ~ k ~~ ~ ~ f~ kk Lr .~:. # l : ' ~. i 3 ~ F r t ~l ~ LAI~ ~ ~ {; i ~ , ~ ~ e E ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ f' ~ ~ C ~ }} S } C i ~ ~. ~ ~` t 1 ~ . ~i ' ~ ; ~ ~~ ~ : ` I ' ,; ~ ~ e ~~ (~. ~~ ~. i. ~ 1 MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 154 of 160 De Weerd: Okay. In front of you, then, if you refer to the summary that Steve had at the end of his presentation and I guess Todd will go through these -- do you have that presentation? Okay. We had a reduction in Heroes Park of 149,894. Barry: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Assuming -- yes. Yeah. I recognize the wild look there for a minute. On the premise --okay. You're going through them. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: I don't know if it matters at this point, but was some of the cost savings of Heroes parks personnel or parks capital? It was all capital? Okay. De Weerd: Okay. You did Heroes Park. You have the new truck. A reduced price of 4,675. Had you already done that? Lavoie: Yes, Madam Mayor, I have adjusted all the numbers according to the summary sheet that was provided to me by Steve. Now, I will have to work with Steve to get the exact coding, but for now the negative 217 dollars -- 217 has been reduced in the Park's budget as you see on the screen. De Weerd: Okay. And so -- Steve? Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: Just for a comment to Council, one of the suggestions that -- and perhaps it applies to Settlers buildings phase one of removing available funds in the lay purchase account to apply towards that 150, to get that done immediately, another option, has some appeal. De Weerd: And, Council, perhaps we can put that on the workshop agenda next week. Rountree: Yeah. De Weerd: To have discussion. That money would need to be in this budget regardless, because it's reimbursed, but we can make sure that that's on the agenda next week. Bird: And, Mayor, I'd also like to know -- which I think we can, but what we are going to bring on -- bring it on what we -- for phase one we budgeted some money in fiscal year .,~ ~ , , } a I i '! ~ i~ ff ,~L f ~ tr' i 5 : ,I i4 r r' f ~ ,. f } Y.. f ~~, ~ ,~ ~ ~1 i r$ N 1 i~ ^ ~ ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~~ y r:f y ~ ~F ~~ ~ ~ ~ d ~~ ~ i ~ I ~ ~ E~~: , 1 ~. ~ 1 } E, t~ ~ f d ~E ~ ~ j 1 1 , y~~ F I, ~ ro . ~ } i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Y a ~ ~ ~ I i ~ n . ( ~ E y ~ { 4 Ill k 1 i ~ 4 ' h ? I ..' 1 ~ i 1 ~ Y): ~ 5 i = d ~ i 1 t{ y ~ 1 ~ , ~ { 1 1 ~1 ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 E } r 7 ~ ~ ~ x yry y I ~ , { ~ ~ ~ ~ r +' ~ r , ~ ~ j ~ ~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~. s ~ ~ ~ h ~ ~' ~ ~ ~ ~ (Y . ~ ~ . , II 9 ~ ;~ i 3 1: ~ ~* ~ ' _ ~ ' ~ 1 i f ` d f S ` ~ , 5 1 ~ ~ t xJ $ ' ~ ~ +d 11 a; t 5 I I' ~ ` 1 e, ~ l 1 i i ; . `t r" ~ ~ ~j~ F 1 ' ~ ~ ~ ! I _ ~, S ~ 7 1 ' ~ L 1 1 ~ ~ ~ `4Y ~~ ~r f ~ ~' ,a s ~ I F " ~ # [ ~ , 1 ~' t ~ r ~.. ti ## I ~ t t . I ~ ' MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 155 of 160 '08 -- to see where that went. I know we have done some budget adjustments, but where did it go? De Weerd: Okay. We did bring that to you, Council, a month or two ago. We will do that all next week, okay? We will bring an update. Bird: I don't know how the rest of you feel, but I -- but I -- that Heritage is a thorn in my side and we are still giving it 19 five. I got a problem with it. I have got a problem with it. I mean why do we have to redo that? That was all part of the thing. When we give the 210,000 or whatever we give, we said that was it. Now we are back -- now they are back wanting 19,500 more for it. It's not even our fields. De Weerd: It is through the agreement, because we do have the scheduling and the -- and (believe that's what the agreement did. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I think our agreement as per scheduling, from what lunderstood -- I mean Mr. Siddoway, I think the enhancement of safety is our request and they are ponying up half of the cost of it. It was our need, not their need. They -- I think for their need they didn't care. It was our need of our concern about the public and other patrons using the field for our games that we scheduled that somebody could get injured. That's what I understood. De Weerd: There was a safety issue. Nary: Right. And -- De Weerd: Because you could not sit along the side line, Mr. Bird, without the threat of being hit by a ball. Nary: Maybe I misunderstood, but that's what I would say, it was our -- Bird: I was going to say, I have sat behind a lot of four foot fences at ball parks and played on it. Who give the specs on the original fencing? Nary: That I don't know. Rountree: The school district. Borton: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Borton: This is one probably we can talk about some more. We can leave it in for right now. I think one thing we talked about was giving us an update on what it might be and anything beyond, (guess -- we can talk about it. ~ , a ~ ~ t k e ~ it < < ~ r f 3 d i 1" =t yJ ~ ~ ~ 'i ri c ~. r, ~ ~ `; pp I~ C~' ~' $ ~ n i ? ~ ~ 7 ~ ~ ~ c E' ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ ~ r b : ~~I r a t ~i v is Et ~ i i t ~~; 3 k ~ ~ iF ' ~~ ii i ~~ t MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 156 of 160 Rountree: I agree. De Weerd: You're good to go. Not right now. But, Steve, you were talking to Todd that came up is we would like 150,000 from the land account, so these improvements immediately and would like an accounting on any budgeted one and what it's been spent on, et cetera. Siddoway: Sure. De Weerd: Okay. Siddoway: Okay. I think one of the things that a discussion on using the in phase one can be done amount for that -- for phase De Weerd: Okay. So, we will move onto the police. Any discussion items in the Police Department? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Like I said earlier, I would still hope that we keep this year looking -- the fiscal year '09 to finance that firing range. De Weerd: Okay. Todd, what is the amount that is -- that we are under budget? So, Council, you want to move that up into the public safety reserve fund? It's a half million dollars at this point. Bird: Right now I would. Rountree: Yes. De Weerd: Okay. Let's go ahead and do that. I would note that anything that remains from this year's budget will be forwarded into that as well and, Council, Iguess -- maybe -- maybe let's just leave that in the reserve and at our workshop next week we could talk about how we can move forward on a plan to progress that item. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: Is there any way, Council, that we could agree to get that lieutenant moved that Chief Lavey wanted, so we can have somebody working on this, meeting with outside sources, seeing what kind of -- we probably won't get other entities to help finance the building of it, but it will help with renting it for maintenance will be a big help, so year to ~ q ~ i ={ k ) I1 , ( s j d r 1 -~. 3 4 ,J. F . T t i ~ :4 i '~ a t~ ~ i I a ' ~ 1 ' }j ~*s ~ I ,; ' it ~~ ~ , , f ~ ~, i E ~ 1r e. ~ I ~ ~ ' i 1 . ~~ e'~ 55 I 3 S '- ~} ~ 2 A ~ i ~ ; ~ ~ t ~ ~.. { Il. ~, ,~ ( ,y , ; ,f E ,, G. ~ 4 ~ 885~~~ ~ , i , " € ~ ; ~ ` "' ~' ~ ~ i e ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ s ' ~ ~ ~, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ II t, ~ ~ ~ s ~ i{t 3 t ff ~ i '' 1 1 ~ 1 l ~~ ~ ~` # k . 5 ~ ~ ~ , J, ~ x~ ~~ i ~ I } ~ ~1 ~ t ' ~ ~~ f '~ l 1 I ~ ! ~ ~ ~ { ~ 7 ~ ~ ~ ~ . ~ ' i ( J ~ ~ ~ ~ h i ~ 1 ~~' 4~ ~ I I ' t ~ ~~ ~ ~' ' I J ~ ~ ~ ~I ! ~ }} s ~ _ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~t i` ~~~ ~~ ~ ' ~ 3 ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ P I I ~ ~ ~ I ,! i 1 I ~ ~i + ! - '; l ' 7 1~ ,~ ~ r ~: ~ ~ , i n I j ~ q' { {~ ~ J ~ I~, ~~ fl f I t ~~,'i ~ I .i: I.~~i%z ~,~.f? i 1 r` I k 1 ~~.~.~~i'.I •t k~. ~I '~ t ~~?4;tc^I ~-. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 157 of 160 year maintenance is -- do you have any problems with that on that end -- and what was the amount on that, chief? Rountree: The chiefs not here. Bird: Yeah, he is. Rountree: Okay. Lavey: Councilman -- or Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, I didn't provide those figures, because it was just a fleeting idea that we had. We looked at maybe out sourcing it first and, then, we made that proposal yesterday, but with the staffing the way it is, I was looking at adding a whole new position, not just taking a person and making them -- promoting them. So, we are talking close to one hundred thousand dollars. Bird: Does it have to be a sworn officer? Lavey: It wouldn't have to be a sworn office, but, then, the question is what do you do with them after the project is over with and my current plan, after the project is over with, would, through attrition is bring them into the sworn staff. Bird: I have got a question for you. If we get this accomplished and this person was to get it accomplished from ground floor, why could he not be the manager of the firing range? You don't need a sworn officer for that, do you? Lavey: You may have different qualifications that you're looking for for those two separate positions. So, it's possible, but if I was to put out a request for proposal, I would look at two different sort of job set skills and so it could be done, but I probably wouldn't do it. And I believe Mr. Nary has a comment as well: Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I haven't even talked to the chief, but they do have that vacant deputy chief position. So, you have the personnel dollars available and when he does -- if he wants to go forward, if that is your direction, he has the funding to do it and when you actually fund the deputy chief that's been fulfilled that he wants, he can always come back at that juncture and ask you for an amendment. So, you have the available funding now if that's the chiefs desire. Again, last time I talked with him, but I know there is money available for that. Bird: What's your desire, Jeff? Lavey: Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, I don't have any issues with that. I have got finance over here whispering in my ear and she has some -- she has some opinions on that, but I think it might be doable. Bird: Okay. So, we don't need to put that in the budget right now. ~ ~ _; . ,~ ~ ,; ,~~ ~: ~ ~~ ~- ~ i' ~~ `.k, ~. s ~ ~ F: x ~ l; 'v ~ ~r y ~ r *: s j' ~-, K " a~ r; ` < t ' ~';' ~~ >:; Y 1 ~ ~ tt~ ~ ~, t: 3 f ~ ~ ~- . f a ~ .~ , MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 158 of 160 Lavey: I don't believe so. Bird: Okay. Thank you. De Weerd: Okay. It's good enough to give direction to the -- Council, it's good enough to give direction to the finance staff. We can up -- we can ask for an update next week, Jeff, in a workshop item what -- if the preference changes, but -- Bird: We will need to go over this whole thing Monday after we get our Enterprise done anyway, too. We are doing that Monday aftemoon. De Weerd: Yeah. You have a starting point, finance. Kilchenmann: You don't need to go over the General Fund again. Monday will. just be devoted to the Enterprise Fund, because now we have all the transfers that we will make to the Enterprise Fund. There are two -- there will be two separate -- General Fund had -- has to be done to do the Enterprise, because of the transfer. They don't have to be exact, though. I mean it can be off a few dollars. We have to balance them. Bird: But we can -- we can take a half hour and run through this Monday if we need to. Kilchenmann: You certainly can, because you're the City Council and Todd and I quit and -- Bird: I can't hear you. Speak up. Kilchenmann: You certainly can do that, because you're the City Council, but Todd and I quit and -- see, the problem is these dates kept getting moved -- Bird: Well, what do you mean Todd -- Todd likes it here. Kilchenmann: Does Todd look happy right now? Bird: Heck yes. Kilchenmann: Todd looks stressed. Bird: He don't get off until 6:00 anyway. He comes in at -- we made adeal -- we didn't make him come in early. I think that's his problem. Kilchenmann: It's just really hard to get that notice done if we keep changing it. Bird: See, he won't have to come in early Monday, because we don't meet until in the aftemoon. Kilchenmann: He has to come in Sunday. No. ` I I 1 { r ~ ~~ ~~qq B ~ {' 1 ~ ~ . d FI ~ ~ ,~. 1 ~ nh 3 ~ f H c . 3 ~ S i 1 ~ , ) 1 ~ ~ 3 d ~i. ' t 1117 . I EE4 i r , ~} ~ ~r 4 ~ ` ~ c 3 , L rs- a ~, ' ~ d I ~ a: ~ ~ ~ k 3 s- ~ ~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ } 1. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 22 ( ~ ~ : ~ ~ ~ ' L ~ a ~ e I ~ ~ r _~ _ ~ 4 ~ ' , 1 I ~ . z f ~ ' ~ ~ ~ 1, ~ t 7 ~' i 6 ~ t i ~ ~ 3 ~ # ~ ,~ ~ ~ ~ . MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 159 of 160 Bird: Sunday? I said Monday. And it's in the afternoon, so he can sleep in. De Weerd: Okay. We have a Parks Commission meeting in five minutes, so is there anything further? Borton: Yeah. Quick question again on the -- what we just did in public safety reserve fund, can that go up after a certain day? Kilchenr'nann: ~ Pardon? Borton: The public safety reserve fund that was just created about ten minutes ago. Kilchenmann: What we will do is when we get it balanced, whatever is the excess we will put into the public~:safety fund. Borton: So, at the public hearing if item X is cut for whatever reason, that -- Kilchenmann: That number will change. Borton: And that's okay? Kilchenmann: Yeah, because the total will be the same. Borton: Okay. Kilchenmann: So yes. Borton: Okay. De Weerd: Okay. Council, if there is no further comment or change, I would entertain a motion to adjourn. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Borton: Second. Zaremba: Second. De Weerd: All those in favor? MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. De Weerd: Thank you. ~~~ ' ,, . ~; ,. ' ..:~ : ti j t :' ;. .;~ ,; ,y MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 160 of 160 MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:55 P.M. 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