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Home My WebLink About2008-07-090 REVISED 7-3-08 E IIAN~-- MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING /WORKSHOP AGENDA Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 8:00 a.m. City Council Chambers 33 East Idaho Avenue, Meridian, Idaho "Although the City of Meridian no longer requires sworn testimony, all presentations before the Mayor and City Council are expected to be truthful and honest to best of the ability of the presenter." 1. Roll-call Attendance: °~ David Zaremba / Joe Borton ~ Charlie Rountree / Keith Bird ,/Mayor Tammy de Weerd 2. Adoption of the Agenda: ~°-- 3. Presentations and Discussions of the Proposed City Department Budgets (approximate times): /8:00 am /8:15 am ~~ ~ `~/ 8:30 am 9:30 am O~;t~ 9:40 am ~p,°~ 10:40 am 11:40 pm ~d'.~12:10 pm p°,y5 1:10 pm ~'• ~5 2:10 am ~ yp g 2:25 pm ~ 3:25 pm 3:45 pm ' ~ P~ Meridian City Council Special Meeting /Workshop Agenda -July 9, 2008 Page 1 of 1 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's OfFce at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. ~ ~ ~ a~ s i f ~ ` .~ ~ 'S , ~ 1 - =, ~ ;: ~3 :. Vii: g ~ ~~' .: .i,. i :'. s :: ~~~ ;~~~ :. i: ~ ! .. ~.~ ~.~ F' ~ ~ ~ .. °~ { ~ i .S~a s ; ~`~~ ~` jt ~p ~ ; } : # ~ F: . ~ ~ ..r f 's 3 : .. .• .:3 ~~':. ~: . . j I ~ j] ~(. !! ..rjlS:~. • i.r.~' M I5` t + ~ 1':. ~' 1~~. ~~ '~'. sst:: ~ ~ f ,~ . ij j:. .: ~ j `~t iY F f,. ~ ~ i•Z ?.+ rii : ~ ~ ~ ~:µ i~~' P~ ~ ; 3 .4 ; , ~ s s .,f ~ . . Yi. .,Z ~'~ p. ~ !i §g ~~ ~ s .;&~. a F'~: .~ ~ 1 Introduction /Preparations Revenue Presentation /Finance Department Parks Department Break Legal, HR, IT Departments (Boise Prosecution) Police Department Lunch -Working Fire Department Mayor's Office Stacy Developmental Services Presentation Planning /Building Department Other Government City Council Budget Decisions MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING /WORKSHOP AGENDA Wednesday, July 9, 2008 at 8:30 a.m. City Council Chambers 33 East Idaho Avenue, Meridian, Idaho `Although the City of Meridian no longer requires sworn testimony, all presentations before the Mayor and City Council are expected to be truthful and honest to best of the ability of the presenter." 1. Roll-call Attendance: David Zaremba Joe Borton Charlie Rountree Keith Bird Mayor Tammy de Weerd 2. Adoption of the Agenda: 3. Presentations and Discussions of the Proposed City Department Budgets (approximate times): 8:00 am Introduction /Preparations 8:15 am Revenue Presentation /Finance Department 8:30 am Parks Department 9:30 am Break 9:40 am Legal, HR, IT Departments (Boise Prosecution) 10:40 am Police Department 11:40 pm Lunch -Working 12:10 pm Fire Department 1:10 pm Mayor's Office 2:10 am Stacy Developmental Services Presentation 2:25 pm Planning /Building Department 3:25 pm Other Government 3:45 pm City Council Budget Decisions Meridian City Council Special Meeting /Workshop Agenda -July 9, 2008 Page 1 of 1 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. ~ ~ $ < j( ! r i ~ ~ t, ~' ~ ~ 1~~~ ~ ~.~fs ft ~ ~ ~ p ,~ 9~ ~ ` ii ~ ~~ ~ ~ 5 ~~• t ' ~ J ~ ~ ix ~' f ! ~ E ~;t~ Y ~ ; t 1~ 4 r F: 1 1 ~ I ~ l ip [+y 'sty - ~ r L F EF ~ t. '~ ~ ~ ~~ '; I 1 ~ j i ~ ,' t E.i: , tA,;E i ~t~s ~" ; ~tV ~ 11 ~ , 1 ~ (t~' . ~ t~ ~ i I j ~ ~ ~ ! ~ ~ f I ~ '~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ i 1 t 7 t i i F z ~ I S~iifc 3 ~ ;i { r ~ g $$} F f ~ i i ~~ it l ~ ~ ~' ! i f }il{ i gar S ~ t 1 6 ~' ~ ~ 1- ~' ~~ r ~ } q _~ Ez i li t.: I ~ I.1 I k ~'; ~ ~~~_ t ~ f ~ ~ 5 i I i~ ; i ~~ ~ I i e i i ~ e ~ y i '~t < . ~ ~ D t,i: d }~~t ~ i ~_ ~ k { ~ ~ i i i ~ i '~~ 'i 77 ~irE IDIAN~-- • NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL Mayor Tammy de Weerd City Council Members: Keith Bird Joe Borton Charles Rountree David Zaremba NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the City Council of the City of Meridian will hold a Special Meeting /Workshop in the City Council Chambers at Meridian City Hall, 33 East Idaho Avenue, Meridian, Idaho, on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 8:00 am. The Meridian City Council will be receiving and discussing preliminary budgets and presentations from each specific department of the City of Meridian towards approving a tentative budget. DATED this 3rd day of July, 2008. JAYCE ttV` ti 1 ~ 1 7 ~{ }( G f ~', t` k'i ,`\\1111111111f///f//, \~~```' ~ /'''~~i .~ r Ro - BaAL = - CITY CLEF~C,y~ T tst •, Pip```,,; ~VT't ~ Meridian City Council Special Meeting -July 9, 2008 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearings, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. ~ '~ ~ .. f ~ F ~.. p , 11 I L ' ~ p i f ' 1. ;~ ~~ I, r ~' f .;~ ~; -~~~ -~~ .~ vi t f fi f ~~ I~ ~ ~-~ a ~~~ ti~ =~ 3 .. ~' ~ ,~. ; ~ , ~ I ~;.` ;' ~? F ~" 3 ~ ~ +' F' I << c,~~' ~~ s i; ,f. E _' 5 ~ , F C ~~ I :. , ! :11 ~ ~ I i r t. i~ { `~ ~I' r: '! '~ ~~ I ~ s' ,t~~ tr , g ,t ~ ~ ~~, ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ =~ ~: i ~~ "~~ , ~ 1 S I t 7~ 1¢ ` ~ ~ ; ~ ~ I ~ S , ~ ;~ , ~, ~ ~ 1. , ~ f 1Q S S; ~ ~ f3 ~ f ( 1 ! ~ s ~ ~ ~i City of Meridian Budget Hearing Presentation Schedule FY2009 Budget July 14, 2008 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm Start End Minutes Department 1:00 - 1:15 0:15 Council assemble, review any additional materials 1:15 - 5:00 3:45 Enterprise Fund 5:00 - 6:00 1:00 Council budget decisions July 9, 2008 8:00 am to 5:00 pm Start End Minutes Department 8:00 - 8:15 0:15 Council assemble, review any additional materials 8:15 - 8:30 0:15 Revenue Presentation/Finance Department 8:30 - 9:30 1:00 Parks Department 9:30 - 9:40 0:10 BREAK 9:40 - 10:40 1:00 Legal, HR, IT (Boise Prosecution included) 10:40 - 11:40 1:00 Police Department 11:40 - 12:10 0:30 LUNCH -working 12:10 - 1:10 1:00 Fire Department 1:10 - 2:'10 1:00 Mayor's Office 2:10 - 2:25 0:15 Stacy Development Services Presentation 2:25 - 3:25 1:00 Planning/Building Department 3:25 - 3:45 0:20 Other Government 3:45 - 5:00 1:15 Council budget decisions I TTTT t ~ ~" ~ t ~ ° t ,, ~~ , 1 ! R , k ~ 1 ~ ~ {. r ~. ~i ~ ~ ~ I f_ ~ ~ f -', ;~ ~,~ ~ ~ 3~,~ ~ r ; ~> ~ ~~ '~ ,~ ~ ~ ., sib` ~ _~ ~a~~ ~ i ~ ~ ; a ,~ ' ~',1 ? , ~ F .E r ~ ` ~' ~ ~ ff ~ ~ ~, s x i , <a a i f 7i < i e e Meridian City 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 Borton, and Charlie Rountree. Others Present: Directors -Staff. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Joe Borton 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. Borton: 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 e 8 ~ ~ tr 1 s'. i~ f ~ ~ ; I f ,~ , _ , w ~a~ ~ s ~~ ~ , i =~ . ~ f ~ ~ ~ ~i ~~' ~ ,i ~~ ,~ s ~ ~ ~~ # ' ~ f' l ~y Y a hh5 i ~'. 4~ I ~ f ~ ~ ~ r ~ ~ ~F ~ ~~ t ~ i i~~ ~ ~ f L~ ~ ~~ a~ _ E I ~_ i .~g} 3. ~ t ~~ ~ ~ ~ ^ ~ ~~ 1 ~ ~ !i ~ '-C ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ E t. : ~ r.i r i s ( 1 ~ _ I 1 ~ 'W > ~ a ~ iY ~ ~7,. :~ t ~ 511E F I~f l~ * Y ' ~ _ F~ ~.~ f Y • • 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 current 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 currently 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 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 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 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 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. ti ;r,~ t' ~ ~, E j ~~. r ~ ~~ ' ~t~ '. t} ~ ~ ~ ~+~` # ' a~. -`, j ~k } ~3'. x ~ ~. ~ a~~ ~~; t ~_ ~ ~' ,., ~~> x } ~? -, ~_ ,; 4 ~ ~~, I I( e. 9 ~tt i ~, 4~ ~, ~< ~~: s '' It F ,~ ,~ ~~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MES G e 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, those before. I think it might be possible. It's a rea~ maneuverability with that in some of the situations we was part of why the enhancement is the way it is. trucks I see locally that are plowing are four by fours. you put enough weight in your one ton you can -- you you get it distributed right. have never put one on one of long truck. We look for some have to get into, so I think that have seen some -- most of the I think in a one ton situation, if can probably make that work if 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 comers 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. • • 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 #o 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 -- had aconversation 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 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 field 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? Borton: 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: ,. i ~~ ~~~ '~ ~ ,~; ,, ~.t ~_ ~~~ ' t`f ~~ ~ ~: ~~. ~ rh; I ~~~ ~ ~li ~ g' ~~ ~~ i t f, 3 o • 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. t;'~!{s '2 ': ~~ f , ,i ~. ~~ i : :'. j~ f! . i f ~~ ~~ ;; ~, , Y l1 I~ F i i • 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 -- C i% ~ ~ ~~1 ~ ~ { t `~~ ~ ~ ~ ;Sr , t 4 ,~ ~ ~ ~ _ r i ~*~ r ~ I 1 1 ~ { l c k S. ~ ~ I ` I ~ ° s i * a , y ti. ~ ~ 1: ~ ~, , ~ , PJ ~ € t s ~ :~, ~ i i ~ i~,; i ~ i~ ;~- ~ t! ~ $~ ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~. ~ ~ ~ i ~ ~ f~ ~t ' 5.~~~r ~ i. ~ L I 4' ~7 f :~ ~ f l f~~l, F ~ ' ~, ~ } i i~ ~~ ~ 1 ~j) ~ ~ ~ h 1flf l 1 i . ~ r ~ ~ F .l li. ~- 1r1~ 0 3 ~~ '. f l r. ~ ~ ~ ~{ i I ' k r ' 7I: I L ~ r f,t~ y ~ _ Y ~ fi . C p P . I 34 ~ ~~p~ ~ YSSi } ~ f~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 9 ~ . ~; . ~' ,~ ~ ~~ i ~f .~ ~ f I ~~ I fi I, ~ 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 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. ~~' ~ 4 ~ ~ , a s i i ~ ri{ r } p~ ~ ' K ~ . f ~~~ ' ~ , ~~~ ~, ~t, ~M i ,' I 1 ;r ,,~ i ~~ t nl i n f ~~ ~ ~ `[F Q '£ ?n ,: ~ ~~ s ~; ~ ~ ~ , ~,,R ~ I ~ ~: j f [ 777 ~ ~ ~ Y i ~ ~ Q ~~ i , ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ C 6j ,. . ` ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ r { ~ ~ J C ;~ ~ f ~ , ~, ~ ~' ~ i t " ~ I ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ri : li d E ~ ( "~ ~ ~ ~ { 1 ~ E ' ~ ,, 1~ I' V $$ gyp} ~+ ~r ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ 1 gK, . ' ~ ~ ~ I , ~ f ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ~~~ ~ Y ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i~ ~ « ~ I i . , .t ~ ~ ~ 1 1. •. ~ ~ k 1 7 ~ ~~6 , , t i 2t ~ ' .f ~ F~ ~ ~ f { ~~ 3 1 i K ~ s ..~. F $~ I t: ~ ~ 3 ~ j t y! , ~ i ~ ~~ R ~ t ~ ~z ~ , y S: 9.~g. n$s { 1 _ ~ ~ ~ 3 ~ ~. Y i r 4 ~ 5 i { i ~ ~ i ,~:: ( F ! 1 i~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ t ~ ~: I (( ~~ I 1 ' ' ,. i ~ .~ Y ~ C ~ ' ~~ ~ I ~ ~ ~ I R I ~ F • 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. Sony. 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 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. ACRD, 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 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 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 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 ACRD 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 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 error 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 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 e ~- 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 all 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 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 ~i ~.~~ ~ ~ I ~ , ~ ~ ; _ 1 ~ ~ ~ r t~ ` , ~ ~ I ~P ~ ~ t( ~t, ~ ~~i v f ;~ I ~ r F~f ~ ~ ~ i ~ $ ~ ~ F ~ ~ ~ F ~' j tgt Y -. S . + ~-- P ' I - : 1f.p~ } j ~ ~' ~~ ~ > ~~ t , x k S r y t i ~ ! s. X }} fl ~ _ ~. ~ h 1 i ~ ~ ~~ 1~~ ~ I - ~ ~ S ~ ~ i ; ~ k ~ ~~ ~ ~ ['~ i ~ - ~ ' f ~' ~ -~ C _ ~ ! 'A t ~ ~~ i si~~ ~ t. • ~ f a ~ G ~ I ~ i ~ ` y ` t ~~ ~ ~ ' E t ~ ~ F y ~ ' i ~ ~' a ~, ~ '~ ~ , ~ { ~ I Iia ~ » C E z i ti4 ~ {' i y • 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 moming. De Weerd: Good moming. 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, I 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 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 ` z ~ ~' IEj ` ~~x=~ ~ x 1 s ~ # I ` ~ i J ~ ~ ~,~ ~ ~ s`, ~ ~ i.. ~ ~ , ~ , f 1 ~ ~' t ~ I ~i~ i P, I I ; ~ ~ ~ ' a ~ , ~ ~ ~ r . ~ ~ ~. ' ~ C ~ ; ± ~s S t I g t ,.~ ~3 i i t '. i e, i I ~ tr ~ ~ ~ ~ I E ~ ~~~ ~" ~ ; fa ~~., ' ~ ~ i, c ~ k ' i a. ' ~ ~ c F ~ e ~ ~i, 4 r F :~ f FI ~ ~ ! I ~ ~ ~ (iii i , t 1 # i ~ # S _ ~ ? r { ~ ~~` i E ~ ( j ~ ~ :~ ~ ~I IE~ ~ ~ ~ j ~C t ~~ ~ ~ ' ~ i p ~~ Y ~ f f 1 c n R ~ ~ . ~ 1 ~ ~ p ~ 1 ~;~, 3 i,' 1 fhi; ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ i ~F~ 1 f ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ ' j ~ `~ s. ;=i~ 1. ~ ~ ° i v ~ ~'t ' ; - i )ff ~ i{~' g~g k t ~ I ~ i 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 f ( ~' y ~'I i t ~ I ~~S x ~ 4 I ~ j ~ ~ ~ j t+I~ ~, ~~ ~ t1 c F.1; E j ~~~ (~ i ~ ~~ r (~` t; t ~ ~ {.; ~ ~? : n ~ it {, ~ ~ Fy t ~ t ~' s- ~ ~ 1 ~I ~I el ~ i !! ' 1 ~ I [ ' ~ ~ , ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ +yFS[~ f f5 )~ ; i t i ~~ S ~ iii I { i , ~ i ~ ~q! ,i , t ] $ r i~ - -~~ i p { ~- s ! f{ 3 _ i g ~ jp iV t~ ' i ~ ~ A I x ~ I S t Fl ~ ~ } t~ z .~ ~ ~E t r 1 ' 4 I ~r~ } ~ s f g , ' s I 1 ~I ! k s it I ~ I ~ y t ~%$ , @ 1 ~ F t i ~ ~ £1 1jil 1 ~LLL{ 'V 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? ~_ r r~ ~ - k1 ~, ~+ €_i ~ ; ~j ~~i ~'! ~,1 E ~~ 3 ~~ a 1~ ' i ~ , ? ~ ` r ,~ ~' ~ ~. 't t 4 t i r ~' r'~ , ~~ ~~ ' t~ i ~ 4 4 H~ ~ ~ f~~ ~~ I rr ,~{}F ~ F ~ ,~ ~~~ f •' r f s` ~ ail F " ~~ #' ~ i ~ ter; l s ~ ~ '!~ I 'g ; 1i ~ ~ to ~_' f 3, .~~ 4 > ~' f ~ { ~ i j 4. S ~.~. 'f i~ i A ~ t i ,~~ if Y f ~ ~~ I~ , S. ~ t ~ } ~ 7 .q ~o- ~~ ~ NC. ~ 11 ~ _ - z ~~.~ a; '~ ~ [ ~ ~: z i 444 ~. 55 ',' ~ r. ~ t , ~~ ~ s ~ ;~ i y a ~~ ~~ s • 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. ,s; ~ ~l' ~ ; i r . s , . ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 r 0 ~ ~~ ,' 4 ~ ' ~ °~ ~ ~ ~ I~. N i ° ( k ~ t ~~ tt ;. ~ f ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~ , t ~ j i ~ t . i ~ j ; ~ ' # c5~~ i' ~ $ ~"~ ~ ~ 1 I ~ ~ ~ a r ~ i BSI }-I `i; I _ 4 ~ ~ ~ 3i! } x ~~ ~ ~ f 1 E { T ~ ~ e ( ~ ` ~ ~ I ~ h l a ; , ; ~ { ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ t{~, ~ i r; '~ ~ ~~' ~ ~ f~ ~el i. ~~. ( 1' ' ' 1 ? p ~~ ~. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~; ~ i 1 2. L. {~ ~ ~~ 1 . ,I1 i ~ ~I; ( ~ ~ ( y t , ' 5 fig( q ! f i;i ~ r ! i ~ ~ } S y #~' , t . ~ ~ t t i F~ 11 ~ s I~ ~ ; { ` ' F" 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 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 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 comer of a patrol team. You can actually see a dog over there on the left-hand corner. 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 -- Icould 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 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 1 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, Terry 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 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 incumng -- accnaing 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 Terry 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 Terry 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 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? e MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL ME• G 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 ' ;` i i~ ~i~. .i r' j ~~, ~) ~~ 1 gl-~; t~~ t' 6 ~~13 ~~:~'~~~ i ~.'- I ° :'y ~~ ~ E ~ ~t t } 2 ~ ~3 ! ~~~ i 4 Y ~ P ,> ~r ,, v g~ ~~ j ~ ~~ ' } '1 e ~ ~; 9 ~ , ;- , to .i tc ~ ; ~ ~ - n r ~ t, ;~ , } ~ t 7 ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ iF I ~~ ~~ i } S 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 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 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. will 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 ME• G 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 staffing 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 cant'. 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 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 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 mentoring 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 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 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 learn 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 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 SPECIAL ME•NG • 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. Teny 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 recruit 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 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 -- literally atrailer -- 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 our 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 learn about, let us know. And so if ! • 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. I'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 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 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, Ihad -- 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 Terry, 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 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. 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 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 corridor, 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 e • MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 103 of 160 i. '. I3 i; 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 forme 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 -- ~I ~~' ~ ~ ~ , a ~~~ 6 1 fG ~1 Y{ ~ { # i r 4t ~~ i ~al~ S f ` j ~ `~ I ,, r i ~~ ~ F ~ 1 3 I ' ~ ~ pis ) ~~ i 1 ~ t ~ ' ~~~ ~ ~ 1 ~ I ~ ' ' ( ~4 ~~ .~ 1 ' ' ~ ` I • ~ 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 sorry, 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. 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 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 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 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 term? "fir ' ~ i ~( ~~~ ~}' ~~ ~4 i .l • _ ~ :ij :~l r ~~, S .~. ~.. I C 1 C' ¢1 ~. ,}t q ~!~ { 7171' Y`} ~+jj ~ .ili '~'' ~ r1~. Fc ~ :.~ . ~ Y:s F ~ i ~` •?P ~ tl +. ~t ~} t t :~ F;s .1 I { r ~ s ~ ~ 1 1 ~ 4 i y S r n " k ' a n ~4 y 3 :~ ~ I . ~~ S 1 I -~ .+ t ~! j / Y~# , , ~ '{ 1 1 c { 4 i i c ~ ~ r i I Z I T S ~ ~ h I E Yt ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~ e kLrc ~T I ~ ; ~ ~ c~ ~ ~ ~~ I ~ . 3 ~ ~ f I ~~ F +S +~' ~r ~ ~ ;~ r E 1 `~ ~ L ! FS '. ~ r ' } I a S 1 ~ t C ~~ i~ I ~ _E i : ~ ~j 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 morning we talked about just the overall -- looked at the overall fund, where it would end up, and 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 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 embarrassing. 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 ME'EfING • 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 ACHD 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 ACHD, 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 traffic 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 ME~ G 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? ~ ~+5 l ~ S? ~~~ ~r ~! ~ ii ~ ~ ~ ~ `i ~ ~~ - ~ ;, ~ ,: ~ ;i ~3 E ~ ~: ~ j t~ z ~ ' I ii ~ ~ } ~ I ~ ! r k ~ ` i e> 5 t 3 T i I 3 ~ ~ dd r sj t t t ~ ~ I , k ' Fif s ~ r ~ X s I ~~ ~ , • 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 121 of 160 have been issued on this building. applications, and plan in-take meetings. De Weerd: For the one building? C~ J Thirty-four inspections were conducted, three 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. i ~ ; ~hj 1 ~ i ' Y S I ~ ` ~Y ~ 1 ~ ~ f k i } ~ #~ ~~ I ~ F~ I ~ ~,.~ 1~ ~ l i~ ~ ~ ' ~ dJr ,{~ ~ ~ . ~ ~ ~ .,} + . ~ # . -j ~ ~ I ~ t ~ ddd ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ' ,h ~ s i ~ i t ~ i _~~~ Y. ~ ~. ~ ~° ~ ~ I I ~t , 3I`~ !!Y ' :~ ~ s~ 3 I i '~ ' ~~~ ~ ~ yy,, li' 6 g. ~~~ ~ ~` ~ ~ , ~. ~~ ~' , ~. ~ I ~~ ~yr ~ _~ i ~ , 1.. - 7p t . ~ ' ~ i ~~ . y r 5~ 3L~ i ~. ~ ~ E s F i ~ 1 { f 1 N 6 }~ ~ ~ ~. A~ f f , ~ ' ~ . .,y~ - ! F ` _ (. :13 G}'i #. ~ ~ ~ 1 ~3, 111 is ~! r ~~_ ' ~ ~' ~ ` i ; ~ I e t~t ~" - _ II + ~1 ~ ~ ~ ~yJj,~, , ~ ~ ~; ~ } ~ i .. v I ; - • 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 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 -- I 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. Dllegal 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 wonderful 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 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 w~~~niFle ~~ ~ ~^ ~ ~~ ~ , ! ~ i ~ ~_ t R ~ r ~ ~ { t i ~ - ~ E z ~; { ~~ ~ zt ~ t ~ ~~ ~, ~ ~ ~~ y ~ ~ ~'1 ~r ~ , 7. I I t3 :~ ~ f i t f , Sf' fi c k' 1 ~ ~ 3 . ~ r 1 ~~. ~ l { ~ t ~ ' > ' ~ , ~ ~ ~ ij ~ j . ~ #~ ~ ~ s ; ~ 2 ! f ~ , ~ ~i ~ ~ ; his 3i ~ i~ ~ ~ ~;. f , ~ ~ 4 ~ ~ ~ i c ~ e I a; i ; ~ ~ ~~ !. ~1 ~ ~ ~ ~~,. ~ ~f 1 { 4q r'~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r i ¢ I - ~ 1 ;..~ ~ ~ ~ ~ r t ~ ~7 i s ~ 1 ~ I t ~ ,~~ ~I E 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 Fund, 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 -- ' - i ~ ~ ' f s 6 ~ ~ .' ', I ~ ~ ~~ I ~ I 1 . iii,,, , ~ ?- 9 t~+ ~ ~ ~ t . ~ 'h,i" ~ ~: ~ r I ~ ~ s i ~ ' ~ ~d ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ ~~ ~I ~ ~' f i ~ ~ ~ , v .9~~ rl ~~ P 1 ~ 1 I ~ ~ ~pi i ~i~ I ` ~ !i ~ ~ I ~ ~ ; s { ~ (~ ~ ~ ~~s ~ ~+ .~ I 1' ~~ t I ~ ~ i t ~ II ~, ~ ii K ~ tC~F ~ " V 3 z j ~P ~{ i , " z I . ~ ~~'~ t , t i 1 ~ j ,j7ar X14• ~- ~ ., ~; i d ;ic itfs; ? ~ , ;lil ~ ti } ~ ~~ ~ ~ i i } + '~~ i . ~ , ~ ~. ': ~ ~ i~. S 8: ~Ja ~i t~ . -~ ~ ~ ~5 t +I G i , ~ ~ ~~ i Y ~ ~ ~ I ~ i ~ . 5a ~ i ~ I ~ ~ }' i 777 {, ; i i ~ ! i ~ ~~i. i ~ ~ ~ ~ I f ~' ~ 4 ! I i1 i ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~i' fla ~ S a ~ ~ , r y I o i ;~ i ~ • ~ °~ ~ r ~ ~ {1 ~, I. ~~ {. I ii t~ I 1 ~_~ f i 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 5,000 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. So, 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. 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: Carrie 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. ~ „ {yr f 3 ~ y~pi a-. ~ A I ~ t , '~ 7 I ~ . ~ ~ ~~ p ` q I 6 ,~ , j I ~s , .; ~ ` ~ f { T c ~ yk h + 5 t ~ tt 2 z I. r -~ ~ a I i ~F. ~~ .~ !~ ~f S ~ t~ ~ x4. ~ ~ e ~ ~ ~ if ~ ~ R -. ~4 k c ~ s~ ~ s • 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 Barry 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. Barry: 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 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 borne or would be borne 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. Bany: 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. 4' I i{j ~i EEEEEEI i ~. ! t ~ ~z 1 i ~ ~~ -~ ~ t -~ ' , ` F I '~ ^ ~ t ' I~ t i ~ t~ iii ~ ~ ~ ~ ' 1 t f ~ ' i ~• ~ i ~~ ~ ;~ ' tr • v I ~ ~ j ~ { i ~ I ~~ ~ 't f 7 ~ F £~ t I 1 6 ~ r ~ ~ $ Y ~ ~ ~ k. {, E T ~ ~e ~ ~i a t ~ ~ y ~P -1 ~ I s t ! ~~ ;~ r ~ ~~ 3 ~. Y 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, I 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 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. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL M~NG 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 :~rq~ } ~ l~! ~ S ill 7'lt!, j ~~ ~ .~~` ~.'~ PLC. II ~!`j~i~ 1 ~t ~ ;~ , Y ` 1 I ~ '~ r ` ; ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 1 i ~~ ~ ~ ~ 1 y 1 A ' i ~? S ~ i ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~s ~~ ~~ ~ i C 1 I ~ ; ~ _ a ~ ~ i ; 3 ~, s ~ yj e f i ~ ~ F~ ~ ~ 3 i ~ I ~ ~ { i ' l p ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL M~ING • 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 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 -- ,. ~ ! X16 ~ ' ~ i E ~ ' ~ 3 c ~; ~ ~ '. ~ ~~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ (t Sf i .~ {{ ~ 7? ~tj~n ~ y I ~ Y ~ ~~i+ ~ ~ ! , ~ ~ v. ~ i ~ ~ ,I , ~ ' 4 <F ¢ I I ~ L i i 'ja' ~~ rr ~ Y ~1d. ( U ~ t f~ ' ~ ~ Y f {{11jj~~~~~~ ~~~ 4 ~ ~ 'f C ~ l A ~ ( ~ ~ '. - ~ ' l , t } ~ K~ ~ i S ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ ~ ~ii ~ ~ 5 '~~ i h ~ ~ .; L 1 1 I y ~e~ ` ~~ [ i ~ ,~~ ~ ~ z i ~~. ~ ~ .t i ~ r ~ ~ I 3 ~r ~ f ~ % ~ , t ~ ,~ ~t ~ ~ 111 s y R ~ ' ~~, r ~ t t ~ . ~ . f ~f ~ i ~ t+i~ ~ ~ F~~~ ~ , I r ~ ; i ~ + r .s t ~ i ~ 1 ~ ` 4 I ± F ~ ~ t, ~. . 1 t ' 4 ~ ~ 1 ~ 444 1~ : ~ ~Y ~ ;;ii S ' ~ ! ~ 1 ; ; S t i ;. ~ F ' ~ ~ ; n r ~ ~ ,lli '; t ~ j ~ ~ ', :s i~ t 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? Paternoster: 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 upfront 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 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. 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 ' h~= I ~t ~ ~ I s ~. 3 ~ 11 } ~ ~~ jjjj ~~ ~ {{ ~ N ! ~ ~ ~ II I; ~~ ~ ~ C 6~= 1 ' ~~ t' Sj'; ~ ~ ;i t ~' ~~ ]7I 7t 7777 ~: ~ fi.~j ~ ' ~~ ~ k f ~ ~SI ~ ~ ~ ~. ~ I jj(( tPr ~ ~ ~ ~ 1 ~ s' . ~ k I ~ ~ ~ )_~ ~ , I i ~ ~ ~ t 7 c ~ ~ i I ~ f i~ c ' i ~ fqj. ~ ` ~ { ~' ' I, i ~' 1 ~~ x ~ ! ~ p S ~ i ~ `~ n ' _ I ~1 ~i~ ~ " f' S N k, E s k 1 ~, F~ i ~~ I S' , _ ~ .~ ~ X 3 t ~ `i i l ~ .t 9 : ~ t , o ~, ~ e ~ ~ ~i r ; ; S { }~ ~ j 7 ttr s 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 -- ~ ~ ~ ~:, ~ f ~ I ~ ~ ~ - ~ ~~ ~ I ~, ~ . ~ ; i ~I ~ 1 _ ~ ~ ~ r ~~ ~~ ~ 1 ~ . - " : ~ t ~ ~ ~~_ ~ -t ~ t ~~ .e 1 ~ ~ j ; i ~ i ~ ;,: 37f } ~ , 2 f ~ ~ ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ' , ' ~ ~ q ~ > ~ F ~ ~f 3 ~~ ~ ~ ~' ~ :1 I i t ~ $7 l ~ ~ ~. t s 1 ~ 3~• i V ~ 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. ~ ~ ~ I ~' t 1 {~ i ~ l I i 1 ~ ~ 4~ ~ [: r ' ~ 1~ ~ j ~ ~; i ~' ~ ~ ~~, , i ~ ' ~~' I ~~ ~, , ~ ~ ~' , f ~ 4f ( ~ ~ ~ x 3 ' a ~ V # : i i ! i ~ t -~ ~~ ~ '.. ~~ t F ~ ~. ~ Y I '. y s Y ~ 1 + 1 E 1 i I F ~1 ~fi ?~I ~ ~ i t: q e ~ 't 1 t MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING July 9, 2008 Page 155 of 160 '08 -- to see where that went where did it go? I know we have done some budget adjustments, but 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. MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL M~ING 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 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. ' ~ ': ~: ~ 1~ I-. } ` i 1 t f 7'~ : ' ~'. ky CCg `.Y.. ,~ ~5. ! ~;:~ jj ~ S . t . ~ E 9 $<} a f 5 I ` ~ . 1.' . {: ~ i f T : . _ ~.'j ~ d;~~'! Y n ~~ '1' . ; f e.-t' '-$ %, I ` ~ 2 ` : ' d _ . ~~ ~ '.. ffi "£ ;' . +..., ..t '~ ~'Y { i ~ , ~: ~.• •4 :... ss`s .~ : - a. a a t S' ~ : '~ . ~ ; . ,; x _ r: ~ ~ d i. i' ^3 ~t~. i~ I 'x9 ~ ~ s . i . ~ I .~ l { . ' ~,~. ~~~~ ~ K 1 I ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ MERIDIAN CITY COUNCIL SPECIAL ME ING 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~iann; ~ 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 pit 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. t ~~ r ~ ~ f ~ ~~t ~ ~. ~; F ~ ,< r <, x ~ ~s ~ ~ ~~ - ~ ~ i;' ~ iC- > ` ; ~ 2 ,~ ~ 1 ~~ ~ i f ~ ` ~ ~ ,> ; 1~ ' 6 ; ~ k , ~ # i ~ ' F +I ~~' Z~ 1 3 G C IS i, ~ ~' ~ ~ E ~ CC i s. 3 ~ ~ ' ~~ r ' ~ 4 ~a 1 ~ k _ ~ ,~ . ~..° i$ , ~~ ~r ~ R t;, ~ ,- L ~,. ~t ~ ~ i ~ ~" ~7 111 ~ ~ ~~' ~ 'l i~ ;~ 1~ j~ fit i ~ F ~ 3 4 ~ f i ~ ,~ ~ it4~ ~ ~ S i a ~ , ~ ~, S d,it I~ k ~ t ~` t v _ t ~ `a. k: _.~ 'I E ~ : ~ ~i ~ 1 }} ~i d, ' i ' ~ y I ~ . ~>~