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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009 04-21 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, March 17, 2009, by Council President Charlie Rountree. Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, David Zaremba and Brad Hoaglun. Others Present: Jaycee Holman, Bill Nary, Anna Canning, Pete Friedman, Steve Siddoway, Matt Ellsworth, Bob Stowe, Ron Anderson, Tom Barry, Rich Dees, and Dean Willis. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd Rountree: Good evening. I'll call the City Council Special Workshop of April 21st in session at 6:02. Roll call attendance, please. Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda: Rountree: Next item is the adoption of the agenda. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: On the agenda a couple of modifications. Under the Consent Agenda there has been a request to discuss Item 3-C, so we will move that off of the Consent Agenda and put it after 5-O and before six. Then, under four, Community Presentations, 4-B has been rescheduled to happen next week, not this week. Under Department Reports, Item 5-C will be rescheduled at a later time as well. And as I mentioned just before Item 6 we will add 3-C from the Consent Agenda for discussion. Under Item 7-A, the ordinance number is 09-1404. And with that I move we adopt the agenda as amended. Hoaglun: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda. All those in favor say aye. Opposed? Motion passes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 3: Consent Agenda: Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 2 of 59 A. Beer, Wind & Liquor License Renewals: Ram Rest. 8< Brewhouse 3272 E. Pine Ave. Beer & Liquor Albertsons #164 20 E. Fairview Beer 8~ Wine ~Albertsons #180 3301 W. Cherry Lane Beer & Wine Bill & Lynns BB 229 W. Franklin Beer 8< Liquor Bulls Head Station 1441 N. Eagle Rd. Beer & Liquor Corkscrews 729 N. Main St. Beer 8< Wine ~Ginos Italian Ristorante 3015 W. McMillan Beer & Liquor Baja Fresh 1440 N. Eagle Rd. Beer B. Beer 8~ Liquor License Owner Transfer from Blue Ribbon Artisan Bistro to Bull's Head Station at 1441 N. Eagle Rd. Rountree: Next item is the Consent Agenda. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Having noted that Item C is being removed from the Consent Agenda, I move that we adopt the other two Items A and B and for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. Hoaglun: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to adopt the Consent Agenda. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion passes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 4: Community Items/Presentations: A. Community Liaison Update. Rountree: Next item, Community Items, 4-A. Luke. De Weerd: He's walking in the door. Zaremba: He was here a minute ago. Rountree: There he is. You're up to bat, Luke. Cavener: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. My apologies for my brief tardiness. I was just gathering some additional information, because it's been awhile since we last had the opportunity to talk and our -- my office has accomplished a Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 3 of 59 lot of things that I'm really proud about, things that I will share with you. Now, the last time we spoke I lined out my three large goals were to be moving forward on in the months ahead. Most importantly it was getting out from behind the desk. I don't think that I can interact with the community while sitting behind a desk and while communicating with people on the phone is nice, I'm all about interacting with people on a one-on-one level. Another goal that I lined out was to make City Hall more available to the public and we had talked about a lot of different ways for that to occur from using electronic measures, like our website, as well as addressing different community civic organizations and homeowners associations. The other goal that I talked about was working with some of our faith based communities, our homeowners association, and our citizens, to identify proper uses for the CDBG money that was going to be made available. I'm excited to share with you some updates on each of those, as well as some other accomplishments that have happened since the last time we spoke. The big thing that I have done as far as getting out from behind the desk since the last time we spoke is we have done some town hall meetings where we were able to talk to our community about potential utility rating increases. I have been addressing a variety of different homeowners associations on a variety of different subjects and for me that's one of the really unique facets of my job and one that I really really enjoy is that I have the opportunity to really talk to people about things that are on their mind. Most are good. Some are bad. But what's unique is that when we come to our citizens and we are able to have a dialogue with them, we are able to address those concerns before they really get blown out of proportion and I have been really fortunate that we have been able to do that. Some of the things that we have talked about in different HOA meetings with anything from installing a crosswalk, problems with parking, speeders in their neighborhoods. I have also been fortunate to be in a lot of HOA meetings at the same time that SSC has been presenting their information about automated clean up. So, I have received a lot of questions about the automated clean up process and have been able to provide some responses and at a later point in time if you'd like, I'd be more than happy to pass the citizen comments that I have received on to you. In making City Hall more accessible to the public -- and I can't stress enough that this is something that I try and do every day, whether it's -- it's just talking to a citizen on the street or talking to a youth organization or a faith based community. I'm happy to announce that our IT department has been working very diligently on expanding our website and making it more available to our citizens. What I mean by more available is that we are going to be able to provide more information to them in a more convenient manner making information accessible to -- to the needs of citizens, whether that's going to be agendas for City Council meeting, whether that's minutes from a particular meeting that they were unable to attend. Perhaps they are just looking for city news information on different events that are occumng. We are working to design our website to provide that information to our citizens, while at the same time providing a real personal touch. We have looked at bringing in blogs or polls to find personal ways to be able to interact with our citizens who -- who don't pick up their news information from the Statesman or from the television news. I'm hoping as we progress with that I will be able to continue to give you more reports on that as well. I also continue to serve on a variety of different volunteer committees. I have worked very diligently to build a strong relationship with our chamber office and I'm happy to report that at every Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 4 of 59 chamber meeting I'm able to stand up in front of all of our chamber meetings and share city news to our chamber members, something that hasn't been done before and I'd like to have that opportunity to present again different events. We have got a lot of great events that are coming up in the month of April and May and I have the opportunity to share that. In addition, I have been able to provide them information on the state of the city on different organizations that perhaps our chamber members might enjoy. I have been working with our faith ambassadors to identify some possible uses of the CDBG money. I know testimony on that's going to open tonight and they have been just a fantastic resource to focus on what they think are the needs for different people throughout our community. I'm very fortunate that I'm able to interact with them on at least a weekly level to hear what their concerns are and just have a diverse faith community in Meridian you have the ability to hear so many different perspectives on so many different issues and to be able to take those and provide them to our Mayor and to you has been something that I have really really enjoyed. Some successes that we have had since the last time we spoke. The City Hall had our Backpack for Kids food drive that was put on by our Mayor's Youth Council. We raised over 6,000 items to needy children to teens and tweens in Meridian and Tom Posey of Valley Shepherd just was amazed at the amount of an impact that our employees here at City Hall was able to do. I have been working with Matt Ellsworth to establish the complete count committee for the 2010 census. What this committee is designed to do is to promote the census in Meridian, in addition to help different members of our community to identify those who aren't going to be counted in traditional means, whether they are very quickly relocated to Meridian, perhaps they are immigrants. They oftentimes are people that just for a number of different reasons don't want to be counted. Myself and Matt Ellsworth and a variety of different members from our community, the chamber will be involved, members of our media. I know Frank will be participating in that as well and that will be a program that will begin meeting here next month, abimonthly -- in 2000 -- I know we will be meeting monthly in 2010 and that's a program that I'm really excited about, because it's important for Meridian that we count every citizen that's in our community. Let's see. I have been working with our Meridian Senior Center as they get ready to proceed with their capital campaign. I have been serving kind of an advisory role. They bounce different things off me and my background is media advertising and promotion. I have been able to provide them with a read unique, you know, perspective on how to market and how to get prepared and I will be participating with them in not only their fundraising abilities, but I have put them in place with a production company that will be producing some video work for them at a great discount that our senior centers have the ability to do more with less dollars. You know, and at the end of the day I continue to promote our city in every way that I can, whether it's our community fishing day -- we have the Inclusion Revolution Earth Day event that is going to be coming up this Saturday and that's areal -- real unique event in that we do a Paint The Town or Rack Up Boise, you build your team, and, then, as a team -- typically it's your church or your coworkers, you go out and do a civic activity, but you're interacting with the people that you interact with on a daily basis and the Inclusion Revolution event seeks to mix that up. So, you're going to have different members from different high schools, different communities of faith, different service clubs and different businesses working together to clean up Meridian and we are going to be focusing on the road -- on Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 5 of 59 Meridian Road from Franklin to Cherry Lane and from Pine in between Linder and Locust Grove and there is going to be a really fun activity that I think is something that we will continue to do year after year. The Mayor's Youth Advisory Council is hosting their dinner auction next Wednesday night. It's going to be benefiting the Idaho Meth project. That's an event that I have been real proud to watch our Youth Council work so hard on and to be able to raise money for a special cause and where it's an event that's planned, put on, and ran by them, I just put them in the right place, so that they can be successful. It's been a great experience for me. And with that I guess I would open it for questions, clarifications, information specific that I can provide to you guys. Rountree: Any questions, comments for Luke? Hoaglun: Just a quick question, Luke. For Inclusion Revolution, I mean taking kids and groups out of their comfort zone -- how are you going to make that happen and do it successfully? Cavener: It's a great question and we are fortunate in that this -- the Inclusion Revolution has come out of our -- our of Meridian High School and it's your student leaders and your students that really want to participate in the community that make this happen and they are the ones that actually brought up the idea of wouldn't it~ be great if I go to Meridian High, there is probably two or three people that I don't know that go to Rocky Mountain or to Mountain View that at the end of the day we are probably all really great people. So, they are the ones that have spurred this idea of bringing them all altogether. I think that we are real unique in that our -- our youth in this community are so open to many different things and different backgrounds and cultures that, to be honest, Councilmen, it hadn't occurred to me that it would be an issue, because they are the ones that are so excited about having the opportunity to work together. And in addition to that, our faith community, the idea that you can have people from different churches working together to clean up our community is really really fantastic. Hoaglun: Thank you. Cavener: Uh-huh. Rountree: Luke -- oh, go ahead, Mayor. De Weerd: No. Go ahead. Rountree: You mentioned you working with or being available during SSC's outreach and our workshops. I believe we are going to try to schedule something at our next Council workshop on the 19th and I would hope that you would coordinate with SSC, so what they present and, then, you can -- you can bring your perspective to the same topic. Cavener: Excellent. That sounds great. I know they are also having an open house tomorrow evening. I'm planning to attend that as well and see what the public has to Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 6 of 59 say at that event and be more than willing to provide that feedback to you as well, Mr. President. Rountree: Very good. Mayor. De Weerd: Mr. Chair. I guess Luke spends a lot of evenings doing his job, so do want to make sure you are cognizant of his evening activities as well. But I guess, you know, the communications plan that Robert and Luke have been working on are really centered around to, again, how we can bring the city beyond the walls of City Hall and be more accessible to our citizens and businesses and faith members and just our communities within our community. Coffee with the Mayor was a great example. I think we had well over a hundred people attend and we have never had that kind of participation before and got a lot of very positive comments and feedback on just having our directors present. It was pretty cool when a citizen comes up to you and talks about a particular issue and you walk him over to the police chief and he can just have face- to-face dialogue with that particular director and the appreciation was acknowledged. So, it's -- it's going to be really building greater awareness of what events we do provide those opportunities and just being accessible to our citizens. It's really rewarding to see that those efforts are -- are starting to work. In fact, now homeowners associations are reaching out to the city saying would you like to be involved, instead of us begging them to involve us. Paramont is going to be having a big summer wingding in June that they would like the city to be involved in and help them get the word out. So, those -- those kind of opportunities seem to be finding us, as well as us trying to find them. Rountree: Very good. Thank you, Luke. Cavener: Thank you. C. Discussion of Washington Street Sidewalks. Rountree: Next item on the agenda is the Washington Street sidewalks. Matt, are you -- yeah. Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm having some brief technical difficulties getting things to project up on to the monitors out here for the audience, as well as to you, but, yeah, the general direction that things are going in here is that ACHD is moving forward constructing two separate but very closely related sidewalk projects in downtown Meridian. This is good news since before I came on with the city the city's been encouraging ACHD to take a look at downtown Meridian, especially in the immediate vicinity of Meridian Elementary School, to take a look at how they can make safer connections off streets for folks coming into and out of -- in particular Meridian Elementary, but there are a lot of -- a lot of areas over there where some sidewalks could go a long way. So, yeah, the two projects that are currently under consideration are Carlton from West 1st to Main Street and Washington from West 4th Street to Main Street as well. ACHD and city staff went out and sort of drove both of those corridors a couple of weeks back to take a look at possible adjacent Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 7 of 59 property owner impacts and just to generally start scoping and gauge the feasibility of these two projects. So, we will come back to that in a moment. Yeah. The schedules for these two projects are going to move forward concurrently and they are also going to coincide ultimately with the phase two of the split comdor project. They are set for design -- this in next year, 2009 and 2010. There are not any outstanding right of way issues, which should be minimal due to the existing right of way up and down those streets in 2011 and to move forward with construction in 2012. Now, going back to the appropriate placement of sidewalks up and down those two roadways, what ACHD identified and what they propose moving forward for us were these projects is along Washington up north of Meridian Elementary School from West 4th to West 1st Street, that sidewalk will run along the north side of Washington only. The reason that they are only going to go on one side of the road as opposed to both sides is really two fold, both comes back to impacts to adjacent properties. On the one hand there are additional landscaping impacts to the south and the driveway on the south side of Washington though that area are narrow enough for -- they are not really deep enough for the five foot sidewalk to still allow room for cars to park without creating an additional barrier in there. So, again, from West 4th Street to West 1st Street ACRD currently proposes running along the north side of Washington. At that point it will drop down to the south side of Washington where it will continue along to Main Street. And, again, same thing, different side of the street. They are doing that to minimize the impact to the landscaping and also to -- to avoid other potential impacts to adjacent properties. Now, taking a look over to Carlton, which, again, is going to go from West 1st Street right by the elementary school over east to Main Street, that sidewalk will also only be along the south side of the roadway. And that's going to tie together fairly nicely with the improvements that ACHD constructed several years ago. Along West 1st Street on the west side of the roadway, school side of the road, so that's, essentially, the same side of the street, it will translate into the south side, continuing further to the east over there. The main reasons that I wanted to bring this to you this evening is kind of a heads up just to let you know that that project made it on to ACHD's radar. They are, in fact, moving forward with those improvements now. To let you know that in the preliminary scoping we did identify some impacts to adjacent properties, all of which will be within the existing ACHD road right of way, but it's going to be things like a tree removal here. There is a possibility that a fence will need to be relocated over on Carlton and to sort of give you as a heads up in case you receive any phone calls to let you know where the project came from, where it's going to. A brief little bit of background on it again. The way that ACHD is now is a position to move forward with that is with the vehicle registration fees increase that occurred last year. The majority -- well, not a majority, but a fairly substantial amount of those funds will go toward community program projects, to schools and that sort of thing. So, that's -- that's a brief overview of those two related projects and with that I'd stand for any questions. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 8 of 59 Zaremba: I would just comment that it would be nice to convey to ACHD our appreciation that this is moving forward. I'm certain that most of what they hear from people is complaints and I think we should acknowledge when we appreciate something they are doing. Ellsworth: Okay. Mr. President, Members of Council, Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, that's -- that's an excellent point and already right out of the starting block ACRD staff has -- has started out right as far as I'm concerned. They called the city very early on, they invited city staff to come out with ACHD staff the first time we set foot up and down the corridor to take a look at what's going to make the most sense, so echo that on the staff side, in addition to the program side, I agree. Zaremba: Thanks. D. Route 42, Route 40 and Ustick Bus Route Discussions. Rountree: Any other comments? Questions? Thank you, Matt. Next item, Caleb, routes 42, 40, and Ustick bus discussion. Hood: Thank you, Mr. President, Members of the Council. VRT staff are here this evening, Mary Barker and Margaret Havey are in the audience and a majority of the discussion time I'll turn over to them. I do want to introduce not only them, but also the few items that are under the same agenda topic this evening. The first one being route 42, it's a limited stop service between Nampa, Meridian, and Boise. They don't want to discuss with you the route and stop alternatives. It has been discussed before with the Council. It was discussed at our transportation task force meeting earlier this month and the main impetus for bringing it before you tonight is to discuss a few of those options to allow route alternatives to pick up more riders, hopefully at employment centers and destinations, such as ISU or City Hall or Joint School District No. 2's admin offices. The second topic of discussion tonight is the route 40 express service. It's the bus service that stops at the Gold's Park and Ride Overland and Meridian Road and the interstate. That route is overcrowded, so VRT is looking to add an additional a.m. and p.m. trip to that. They will be asking to split the cost on that additional route with Boise and Nampa. Our share appears to be around 7,400 dollars a year for that additional service. Again, I'll let -- let Mary go into a little more detail on that. And the third topic is -- is a Ustick route service -- potential Ustick route service. VRT identified the need for an east-west bus route between Meridian and Boise along the Ustick corridor. The Ustick comdor was identified as having the largest residential densities in the City of Meridian, as well as hitting some pretty high density nodes in Boise as well. However, there is currently no bus service along that corridor. So, the route would be a partnership between the City of Meridian and the city of Boise, each funding half the cost of the service contracted through VRT to operate. So, there would be 2:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. express limited stop trips per day. The route would begin near Cheny - Ten Mile and make stops at -- at or around the Meridian -Ustick, Eagle -Ustick, Five Mile -Ustick, Maple Grove -Ustick, Cole -Ustick and, then, terminate downtown Boise. There is a slide that shows that, so don't try to in your minds figure out where all the Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 9 of 59 stops are, there is a slide in the presentation that Mary has that I'll go through, but I just wanted to mention the stops briefly. The stops in Meridian haven't been identified, other than the general location of them. So, that negotiations about if they could be park and ride lots with some of the bigger boxes and whatnot -- those details haven't been ironed out yet, but conceptually those are where those stops would occur. So, at the transportation task force meeting this potential route was discussed with those committee members at the direction of those members I am asking for the Council's initial take on potentially funding this Ustick route. A lot of work does have to go into planning and implementing -- even this one route and the transportation task force wanted to know if this was a nonstarter before we spend more time and energy and resources and -- in this endeavor. If funded, this would likely begin in the spring of next year. In the event that the Council did want to hear more about this potential route, I have already compiled an enhancement request to finance, so it could be discussed through the budget process so we wouldn't have to do it as a budget amendment. So, it's a place holder right now. It is there just so, you know, depending on the discussion tonight, that may or may not be proceeding forward, but I wanted to let you know that I have ,applied for an enhancement at this point. Some of the questions that have come up -- and I don't know if VRT's had a chance yet to answer all of them or any of them, but staff and the task force would like to know if Boise has committed yet or not to this route. Again, it being a joint 50-50 partnership. If Boise is a no go, it would beano go for Meridian. So, we both have to agree to funding this thing. And if they haven't said yes yet or no when they anticipate hearing from their city council on their plans. Second question is what was the commitment level expectation of the city, meaning is it a year- to-year commitment, is it a two or three year contract, because there is some infrastructure and things that have to be put in place, bus stops, ADA compliance, contracts probably with potential park and ride sites and things like that. So, some of those details we still would like to see the answers to before we get on or off the band wagon, depending on how you look at it, to support this thing. And, then, third -- the third question that has some up already is if the funds are given to VRT in fiscal year'10 and it's probably not up and running until next spring, how are we -- does the city pay a pro-rated share for that first year -- that calendars just don't coincide with our fiscal year, so that is it a monthly service fee that we pay, is it quarterly and -- or does that lag over into calendar year '11, even though our fiscal year -- so just some of those things still have to be worked out. So, again, I don't know if Mary can answer those and certainly any other questions that you may have tonight. But those are some of the questions that have already come up and some of the unknowns to, again, determine if this route makes sense or not. But, again, city staff, VRT, and the task force members would like to know if you would even consider this option, realizing that in this fiscal climate asking for additional funds for enhancement is somewhat iffy, but we did think that it was at least conceptually a pretty good idea and wanted to get some feedback from the Council on it and, if so, we will look into the details and bring back a more in depth proposal and start planning for it, so -- now I think I'll tum it over the Mary and she's going to talk to you about these topics and maybe follow up a little bit on the tool kit issue as well. So, with that I'll yield the floor, unless you have any questions for me at this time. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 10 of 59 Rountree: Question for Caleb? Bird: I have none. De Weerd: Mr. Chairman? Rountree: Mayor. De Weerd: Did we hear an amount? What is your enhancement? What is the amount for? Hood: That's the punch line. I was going to save it for Mary. The enhancement is about 63,000 dollars a year. That's what I have put into financing for that the -- the guesstimate at this point for what it would cause, half of the service for one year and I'll let Mary -- she may have more improved numbers than that. That was two and a half weeks ago that I put that enhancement request in, but it's into finance right now for 63,000. De Weerd: That's funny. I hadn't seen anything up that one. Rountree: Welcome, Mary. Barker: Thank you, Caleb. Thank you, Mr. President and Madam Mayor and board members. I'm glad to be back with you again. I'll see if I can make this fancy Powerpoint work here. As Caleb mentioned just a few of the items that we'd like to go over today and get some input from you. Oops. First of all, on the route 42, Mayor, you had asked us to look at those stops along the -- within the City of Meridian and how effective they are and what we might do to make them more effective. We did do on-off boarding counts on all stops in Meridian on the route 42. The area is highlighted in green -- are the particular stops along the business park in Meridian and I know without looking at typical on-off boarding count numbers it's hard to judge whether those fit in the ballpark, but those are pretty low numbers. So, we looked at some other options where new businesses are coming in, where new schools are coming that we might make some adjustments to make that service more effective in the City of Meridian. The service once it hits that St. Luke Park and Ride and goes down by Silverstone, is very well used. So, that part of the route is -- is a very effective segment of the route. This is the -- the current routing and stops. It gets off the highway at Meridian, goes through the Corporate Park, and it goes up to Fairview and over to the St. Luke's park and ride. Just as a matter of background -- and I think I have mentioned it the last time we were here, but the route 42 has strong enough ridership that we had recently moved from a 24 passenger bus to a 40 passenger bus during peak periods. So, it is a heavily used route. It also is kind of a life line route during the day. So, it's kind of serving two purposes. One alignment that we looked at was rather than cutting north on Stratford is to continue along Central, which would reach the new Meridian school building and the new college facility that's going in that area and, then, jogging north and back around to the St. Luke's park and ride. So, that was one option that we looked at. Another option Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 11 of 59 which shows downtown Meridian a little more extensively is to come north all the way to Pine and across Pine. The nice thing about this is it does provide service through the Main Street area of -- of Meridian, but it does not -- there is not a lot of development along Pine right at the moment and so whether that would be the right thing to do right now or whether to wait until there is a little bit more development along Pine is something we need to explore a little further. Another option we looked at is kind of trying to serve both worlds, which would be to loop it up through the downtown area and across Fairview to the park and ride -- to the park and ride at St. Luke's. We looked at going all the way north to -- I'm sorry, all the way north to Fairview, but given the time -- timing of the route that would add significant time to the route, which would add cost and so we kind of crossed that option off the list at this point, because it would require some additional funding and additional time on the route. The route right now is -- is a very long route in terms of time and so we were trying to not add any -- any significant minutes to the trips and the different options that we looked at. So, those are the options that we are exploring on the route 42. On the route 40, as Caleb mentioned, when we did on-off counts on the route 40 the Meridian stop at the park and ride along the highway is the highest use stop on that route. That route has experienced significant overcrowding and is, basically, limiting most of the rest of our system. We are not able to market much the rest of our system, because that route is so crowded that we can't risk driving more passengers to that route, because we don't want to leave people standing behind if we don't even have a place to have them stand on the bus. So, this is an issue that we are looking at considerably. We are in the budget process right now with the city of Boise on their 2010 budget and adding an additional one or two trips to this route is still on Boise's list of options to consider, so it's something they are considering. We have not started discussions with Nampa yet and the funding on that. Hoaglun: Mr. President, may I ask a question of Mary? When you say Meridian stop, you mean the multiple stops in Meridian, not just a single Meridian stop? Barker: On the route 40 express it actually is just one stop. The route 40 has a stop in Nampa -- Hoaglun: Right. Barker: Then, it gets on the highway and comes directly to Meridian at the Gold's Gym, picks up there and goes all the way into downtown on the highway. So it truly is an express -- express route. Hoaglun: Okay. So, the Meridian stop is downtown Meridian, then? Barker: It's -- well, it's at the Gold's Gym just south of the highway. Hoaglun: Or Gold's Gym. That's the Meridian -- when you refer to Meridian stop. Barker: Yes. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 12 of 59 Hoaglun: Okay. Gold's Gym. Okay. Thank you. Barker: Yes. And I believe in the packet that I provided to you the boarding on-off boarding counts for the route 40 are in your packet. So, this is one that is of high interest to us, because it is such high demand. We have actually seen ridership on this route drop a little bit, where all of our other ridership is climbing significantly. The reason being is because people can't find seats and it's a long ride to go without a seat. And as Caleb mentioned when we were working with the city of Boise and we were -- and Margaret and I were looking at employment density and residential density maps, it became really obvious to us that there was a corridor beginning in Meridian going all the way into Boise along -- along Ustick in that -- in that kind of swash where we had significant high density residential areas that had no east-west service whatsoever and so for these folks to use service at all they would have to go all the way north to Highway 44 or all the way down to the highway and try and get on the route 40, which is already standing room only. So, we proposed to the city of Boise a possible route along Ustick. We started out with six variations that we proposed to the city of Boise. We are down to two and this route is still on their list to consider and so one of the things that they asked us to do is to begin discussions with Meridian to see if it would be something that Meridian would be interested in. I am -- I have met with the Boise city council once and we are meeting with them again on Tuesday as a follow-up meeting. So, the answer to Caleb's question whether the city of Boise has a hundred percent committed to this route, they have not a hundred percent committed to it, but it's still on their list for consideration and wanted to find out whether partnership possibilities were there to flush it out further. The long range plans, all three of them, actually call for -- there is your cost, by the way, Mayor, and the long range plans actually called for significant service along Ustick all day long, but given the fact that budgets are limited, starting out at that level is just not realistic. So, what we looked at doing is trying to find a way to provide some peak service in the morning and the evenings that could get people along that east-west comdor and start the process and kind of gauge the demand for that service along that comdor. This route would be able to connect in with route eight, which goes down Chinden and Five Mile. The route ten, which serves the Cole Road area. It would connect in with route seven and, then, it would also allow passengers to transfer to all the routes in the downtown Boise area. And as Caleb mentioned, we have not flushed it out in significant detail. What we need to kind of get a feel for is whether that's something that the City of Meridian and the city of Boise would like us to flush out in more detail at this point or whether it's something we look at in a more long range plan. But given the go ahead we'd certainly do much more significant planning and stop analysis and that type of thing before we made a final decision to go ahead. But if it wasn't something that would be on the table at all for 2010, then, we will put it on the longer range planning list and look at it in that time frame. Again, all three Communities in Motion, Valley Regional Transit's long range plan and our five year plan all call for service along Ustick. And, then, lastly, I think I mentioned the last time we were here we are developing a long range planning tool kit. We are asking the City of Meridian, the city of Eagle, and the city of Boise to participate with us in using this tool kit as we get started with it to help us flush out what service would look like in the City of Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 13 of 59 Meridian in the long term and this dove tails very closely with what Caleb and the Meridian transportation task force is looking at trying to figure out what transit should look like in the City of Meridian. So, we are very happy if Meridian would like to work with us in using this tool kit to help us plan what that service four, five, ten years out would look like with these three cities, because they kind of range from the small to the very large and have a number of different components that would let us make sure that tool kit is doing all that we need it to do to do our -- to do our planning well. So, I guess in conclusion, what I'm looking for at some point is whether or not the Council would like anymore specific input on the route 42 on whether we should continue exploring the route 40 and the Ustick route in this budget cycle or whether we put them in the longer range budget cycles. I know that most city services are in the same situation that we are, that when economic times get tough the demand for our services go up and our ridership has certainly shown that and so it's kind of the Catch 22 of balancing budget and demand, so -- but we'd like to put it out there on the table and see whether it's something we should continue to explore. And with that I would be happy to respond to any questions. Rountree: Questions for Mary? Comments? Bird: I have none. Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: It's not a question, it's just a measure of support from one councilman. I don't know the -- our budget availability yet, but I think this would be an excellent way for Meridian to start -- when I say getting its foot in the door on the transit options to partner with Boise on the Ustick route, I, for one, would like to see that happen. I think it's going to be quite awhile before Meridian could fund a full bus service, although the transportation task force is going to begin to look into that as a way of using this tool to see what full service in Meridian would be, but even when that's decided it's probably several years off and I would like to encourage us to consider this as a way to get the foot in the door and to partner with Boise and service our citizens. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I guess I wanted to find out what kind of market study do you do prior to identifying new routes to get citizen feedback on what interest or ridership or that kind of thing would be. Hoaglun: And, Mr. President, if I might piggyback on that question, I'd also like Mary to go into what type of marketing do you do if a route is established, if you could answer that, too, as part of that. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 14 of 59 Barker: Thank you. First to address the citizen input component. What we have to do is put together a full input plan. It would include at the beginning of the process working with community groups, the homeowner associations along that area that would feed into those park and ride locations to gauge what their interest would be. One of the things we talked about in the transportation task force was maybe doing a survey of the citizens either in the entire city or in that targeted area, depending on the way we distribute the survey, the survey distribution method. And, then, once we plan a route in a little bit more detail, that triggers a process of public involvement and input that is much more formal and scripted where we go and hold community meetings where the plans are detailed and there for citizens to comment and, then, those comments are all compiled and brought back to either the councils or the work teams to make sure that -- that those comments are taken into consideration. So, it's a two phase process. And, then, in terms of how we market, we do marketing in two different ways. One at the residential end we would do marketing through the homeowners associations, through the businesses where the park and ride lots would be located and we do a significant amount of marketing at the destination end of where people are going. In this case it would be primarily a work commute route, so we would work very heavily with the businesses both along the Ustick corridor and in downtown Boise where the riders would be -- their destinations would be. The reason we do that, Council Member, is because it's a very easy way to specifically target who we are reaching, as opposed to broad, like radio or television marketing that reaches a much bigger market than would possibly use the route. Rountree: Other comments? Mary, to get specific to your questions, I'd like to do some things on the routes that are working and in terms of 42, without a bit of data, other than having written 42, I think we do need to change the route and of the options you presented I would favor option three. It seems to go into at least some residential area in not necessarily the core of Meridian, but a little closer than the current route. When I did ride it there were some residents -- actually, only two that got on and they got on on Corporate, but they walked and they had to have come from the west side of Meridian to get there to catch the bus. In terms of 40, I don't know where the rest of the Council is and I know it would -- there is dollars involved, but I would like to see that route continued and expanded, whether it's another route or -- or another bus or what it takes to accommodate the folks that want to utilize that. We have all watched the slow insidious increase in fuel cost this last few months. It got us again. It went down to $1.50, $1.60 a gallon and now it's over two dollars again. So, I think people are going to get real tired of that and they are going to try to find some options. That route's working. It's working so well people are not using it, because it's too crowded and I think we need to do something there. As far as the Ustick, I think we stick with a long range plan on that. I do not believe we have the funds in our budget to -- to co-venture that with Boise, even though I think that's the right thing to do. I think we need to continue to study it. I think we need to look at and develop some potential ridership numbers and look at it as we move through the current economic situation we are in. But I think it has the making of a good corridor for us, as well as residents in our suburban neighbor to the east. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 15 of 59 Barker: In terms of ridership numbers, Council Member, we did ask COMPASS to apply their model to look at what potential ridership numbers along that Ustick route would look like and they did do that. It's the first time they have really used their model on that level of detail. Usually it's at a broader level. But their prediction was that the ridership would be similar to the route 43, which is an express trip that comes in from Caldwell, which is also a fairly full route. But there is certainly a lot that we can do to -- to flush that out, especially looking at some different routing options. And one point that I forgot to mention, we did see a spike in the ridership when gas prices went up and we did a comparison and a number of other similar cities to us have seen a drop in ridership since gas prices went back down. Our ridership pattern has been different. It's continued to climb even though the gas prices have dropped back down. Hoaglun: Mr. President? Rountree: Brad. Hoaglun: My comments on the plans and whatnot, we do need to take care of what we have and make sure there are seats available for people who want to use them. That's -- that's important. The new routing, you know, I could go with what the Council President recommended. I see the validity with that. My preference for Ustick is if there is a way to find the money -- and I know that's going to be tough -- is when you look at the lead time to get that established to start that route, if -- if the economic recovery starts to come along, once we start recovery prices are going back up for gasoline and diesel and it's just the way it is. And we are going to be back up there and timing-wise we will be a lot closer to having that established. But that being said, because we are in a tough economic situation, I don't know if the funds could be found. But if we could find them, it's something I would like to kind of plan for down the road, because from a timing perspective I think we will be right on to pick up as people start looking at alternatives to filling up with expensive gasoline once again. So, that's my two cents. Rountree: Any other comments? Disagreement with the direction that we have provided Mary? You need some additional help or are you further confused or do you have an idea where we are coming from? Barker: If I go back to the city of Boise council on Tuesday and say that you're interested in the route, but probably not for the 2010 budget cycle, would that be a fair assessment? Rountree: I believe you have got that, yes. Barker: But I will keep the route 40 on the list as something you would be interested in? Bird: Yeah. Barker: Thank you. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 16 of 59 Item 5: Department Reports: A. Budget Amendment for Utility Billing for Meridian Cares Funding for $20,000. B. Professional Services Agreement with EI Ada Community Action Agency for the Meridian Cares Program Management Rountree: Thanks, Mary. Any other comments? Okay. Next item is Department Reports. Shellie. Gallagher: Madam Mayor, City Council, we have a budget amendment for the Meridian's Care funding program of 20,000 dollars and this funding will also include an admin fee of 1,800 dollars -- 1,813 dollars and it's a seven dollar application fee and -- for EI-Ada, so -- and I also have the scope of work and I don't know if you guys -- if everybody got this already. Did you get the scope of work? Is it okay if I pass it out to you? Rountree: Please. De Weerd: You can't talk unless you're on the record. Gallagher: Just to give a little overview on this, EI-Ada will actually manage the program in their office and our citizens will have to go to the Garden City office to -- by appointment only to fill out an application and the financial criteria, which is the second bullet point, I have inserted in your packet. It's the very last page. And the -- that's, actually on their gross income and as you can see it's not very -- very high income. So, I did a little analysis just to see how many people it would actually help and it's 259 citizens that we would be able to help pay their bills with the 70 dollar one time credit per year upon approval and EI-Ada would manage all that for us. It's pretty basic. We mirrored United Water's program that they have and the Mayor requested that we take a look at it. The only difference in our program is that United Water actually lets the customers contribute a dollar if they like to in paying their bill. So, we don't have that set up right now, but when we get our new software system we think we are going to be able to do that, too. Rountree: Any questions for Shellie? Hoaglun: A quick question. So, is the fee about the same that Boise water incorporates as well? Gallagher: Exactly the same. Bird: It's equal to their program, isn't it, Shellie? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 17 of 59 Gallagher: Excuse me? Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: And equal to United Water's -- Gallagher: Except for they let -- except for they let customers contribute. Bird: Yeah. Gallagher: But they also fund it with 20,000 dollars. Bird: You plan on doing that when we get new software or something? Gallagher: I'm hoping that you're going to allow us to do, yes. Bird: Okay. Gallagher: We will be able to help a lot more citizens that way. Rountree: Any other questions? Sheltie, I have a question for item B. I assume a professional service agreement is in the amount of 1,813. Gallagher: Yes. Rountree: Not to exceed that amount and that's for EI-Ada? Gallagher: That's correct. Rountree: Okay. If there are no other questions or comments, I need a motion on the budget amendment and, Bill, will you see the professional agreement if we move forward and make sure that it's consistent with our needs? Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council and Madam Mayor that is our standard agreement. Rountree: Okay. Nary: That we have prepared. Rountree: All right. So, I'd need a motion for both of those items. Hoaglun: Mr. President, you need a motion for the budget amendment and what was the other? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 18 of 59 Rountree: The item B, a professional agreement with EI-Ada. Hoaglun: Okay. Got it. Rountree: Not to exceed 1,813 dollars. Hoaglun: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I will move that we approve the budget amendment for utility billing for Meridian Cares funding for 20,000 dollars, as well as the professional services agreement with EI-Ada Community Action Agency for the Meridian Cares program management. Bird: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the budget -- budget amendment and enter into the management agreement with EI-Ada. Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. D. Recommended Use of Idaho Power Donated Money. Rountree: Thank you. Next item Department Reports Item D. Recommended use of Idaho Power donated money. Anna, are you going to do that one? Or Pete? Anna. Okay. Canning: I'm sorry, sir, I got engrossed in reviewing scholarship applications. Just a second. Again, I apologize. The discussion I'm having tonight with you is related to the fact that we are sitting in a nice LEED City Hall and to remind you LEED does stand for Leadership and Energy and Environmental Design and not only was it important to City Council, but it was important to other organizations as well. One of them being Idaho Power. In recognition of the fact that we constructed a LEED building, Idaho Power gave us 100,000 dollars and that money has been deposited in the general fund. The desire of the Mayor was to -- she asked me to look at how we can reinvest that back into the community and that's what I'm presenting to you tonight. At the end of this I'm going to be asking you to approve a proposal I'm going to put forward to spend those funds. The criteria I used in -- in developing these programs -- and, again, they are just kind of -- you're going to get a lot of energy stuff tonight and this is some of the softer projects. So, the criteria I was looking for was that the project was related to the goals of energy conservation or kind of green or sustainable community. But it represented an investment in the community of Meridian and that the projects or programs were Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 19 of 59 going to be visible to the public and to perhaps give priority to projects that might not be eligible for energy block grant funding. And, again, you will get more on that block grant funding on the next agenda item. So, the three projects I'm proposing is to help start up the McFadden Co-op Farmers Market and the relationship there to energy is that it reduces the energy used to get food on the table and there is a huge amount of energy spent trucking food across the nation. So, that's the relationship there. The next one would be public art with a green theme and the idea was to make this more visible with wind or solar power and also provide a public art project. And, then, the third is a green business scholarship fund to promote new green business ventures or new green jobs if there is an existing business, so -- and I'll go into a little more detail on those. The McFadden Co-op Farmers Market is going to be in downtown Meridian. In fact, it's going to be in our east parking lot here. The expenses that they have identified for up until the end of December would be some equipment and supplies, some helps with the permits and insurance. Advertising is the largest cost. Entertainment -- and I do want to explain there the entertainment is a small amount of money that would go to those people that are, basically, donating the entertainment. So, it might be like a jazz club from one of the high schools and they give them 35 dollars to go toward their club finances or they might repay them for some of their travel costs. So, it's not like one person's getting the 700, it would be distributed to over 20 individuals. And, then, money toward education. So, the total that they have come up with for the year would be just 8,000. The second project is the public art with a green theme and that should say Meridian Arts Commission. Sony about that. And what they are looking for expenses to cover -- again, the city would be purchasing the -- the art, but it would be through the arts commission and they would use that money to hire coordinators, select a site, have a selection committee, develop proposals from the artists and have a public comment period, commission the artwork and, then, install it and, then, have a dedication ceremony and that total came to 30,000 dollars. And the green business scholarship fund, the criteria here would be that it has to be a new green job or green business. So, the other criteria would be that it would need to be in a LEED commercial building. Now, right now, to be truthful, we have one LEED commercial building. It's a firm called Vengaworks and they are an incubator business, but we would hope that through the scholarship we would have other businesses start up and other people seek to have LEED certification of their commercial buildings. So, this could be extended to other folks. But for right now it would be in partnership with Vengaworks. We would put up 50,000 from the city and, then, Vengaworks would use their Idaho Power money, which is another 20,000 and -- for a total of 70,000, that could provide 35 scholarships at 2,000 dollars each and with that scholarship they would have a workplace for six months period with all the amenities associated with Vengaworks incubator office space at this time. So, the proposed spending would be McFadden Co-op Farmers, 20,000 over two fiscal year periods and, then, public art with a green theme would probably be done within this fiscal year or shortly thereafter for 30,000. And, then, the green business scholarship funds 50,000 -- and, again, I think that would be over two fiscal years. If the Council chooses to move forward with this proposal, the next steps would be that -- I made changes to this and it -- they didn't show up on this one, so -- it says Mayor's office. The Mayor's office might administer some of these. It might be legal and it might be planning on some of them as well. But we would need to kind of get -- Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 20 of 59 make sure that McFadden Co-op obtains the non-profit status, so we can fund those activities. Establish a green business scholarship committee. And, then, also get a subcommittee for the Meridian Arts Commission. I could also -- would recommend that we bring the expenses back to Council as consent items for the agenda, so that you can pull them off if you want to and talk about them. And, then, as we move forward to fiscal year '10, move those into fiscal year '10 and, then, report back to Council on the programs in January. By January we should have a good idea on the farmers market, as well as the art project and the green business scholarship interest. With that I will answer questions and, hopefully, understand the pleasure of the Council on this item. Rountree: Comments? Direction? Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Anna, what did you say for McFadden's? Twenty thousand or eight thousand? Canning: Well, it was eight -- their wish list for this year was 8,500. If we wanted to kind of help them out this year and next year, depending on whether they needed it, it would be close to 20,000 in a two year period. But for now we would just be looking for the 8,000 commitment for this first year. Rolling over the funds would be an item that the Council would act upon, so you would have an opportunity to discuss that at that time, too. Hoaglun: Anna, on their educational programs, do you know what type of educational programs that they would be providing? I notice that was in their list for funding. Canning: The two they listed were nutrition and the value of fresh local food. And, then, also the importance of eating local foods. Localvore, if you have heard of that term, kind of. That's -- Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: These are worthy subjects, but I can't help also thinking wouldn't it be nice to use some of that money to fund the Ustick bus route. I think that would be -- it meets the criteria that you set up. It would be visible. It would be used in the community. It serves a purpose. Not to throw in a misdirection, but that would be attractive to me. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. Meridian Ciiy Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 21 of 59 De Weerd: You know, I think that's a great idea, bad timing. You know, as far as the Ustick route, I think we are not even there yet. You know, I -- there is a lot of public outreach and comments that need to be done. When I talked to you about this 100,000 dollars that we would bring back a plan, you know, I do know that some of them might roll over into year two, but we wanted to keep the intent of -- of the 100,000 dollars from Idaho Power alive and what that meant and that sustainability and to go with the conservation and really wanted to give incentives and where we could to keep it downtown. So, I guess that certainly is another option. And maybe we would have thought of it if I would have known what they were going to do tonight, so -- Rountree: To that particular comment, I would be cautious utilizing these one time monies on some kind of an activity that has a long term life and if we could commit to one year and get the system up for a year out of these funds, then, we would be on the hook for 64,000 dollars a year from that point forward. So, I'd be a little cautious on using one-time monies for that. Anna, I need to go back to the basics. Were there strings attached to this money? Canning: No, sir. Rountree: So, we have, in effect, brought the criteria around LEEDs, as opposed to some other benefit to the community. I'm sorry I can't see over you. I need a taller chair. Canning: It would help if I were taller, too, so -- Rountree: Yeah. But, then, I'd run into the table. Canning: How is that? Rountree: That works. Canning: Yes. That is correct. There were no strings attached, so we could have wrapped it around other criteria. Rountree: Okay. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I did want to say we have been brainstorming every single kind of energy efficiency, conservation, green, flower power kind of project you can imagine over the last few months related to the -- the emergency assistance and conservation block grant program -- stimulus money is what I was -- that was the word I was looking for, because -- and we will go over the -- some other kind of more meaty projects related to that. These were more kind of community projects, ones that -- that would be very visible. I think in particular the farmers market is one that -- that people don't think of energy and conservation and efficiency, but with a little investment from the city as far as getting that started could have big rewards. The others -- the scholarship programs are something that, you know, creating jobs in this climate is -- is certainly of interest to a lot of people. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 22 of 59 Rountree: And I don't disagree with that, but it seems to me we have limited this to a job market -- or a specific kind of a job. I don't know that there is a rush to spend this money or tie this money up. I like the idea that we are going to build a plan. I would like some time to think about what you have presented and the fact that we haven't dedicated this money in the budget to some location and maybe spend some more time talking about places it could be utilized. But that's my personal feeling and not that any of these that you have suggested don't have merit, but we are going to hear -- we are going to have the stimulus energy money and there might be a project in that that needs a few extra bucks that maybe could come out of this to make it work or make it work even better. So, unless everybody feels strongly that we got to vote and tie this money up tonight, I'd like to at least sleep on it a little while. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yeah. I think we can let you sleep on it and it also gives the McFadden's Market time to pursue what they need to as well. I will say that Anna did reach out to the arts commission for ideas, the downtown business -- or the Meridian Development Corporation, Shaun Wardle, and I did ask all four of you early on if you had ideas and we never got any suggestions back. So, I appreciate Anna and her staff pulling together some ideas to bring back in terms of the possibilities of what we can do and we will put this on an agenda in the next week or so to get further feedback and discussion on this. I will say, too, that as we were looking at that sustainability message and talking to Idaho Power on a separate -- a demonstration project that we are looking at, again, it was part of this stimulus thing that I gave you a briefing on, boy, a couple months ago. Vengaworks, who also got a check from Idaho Power stepped up and challenged us with the green jobs idea. Again, it was in keeping with the intent of that check and he said he would put his check on the table, too, to help leverage our money, so -- Rountree: I would, too, if I could get ofFice space rented with it and I own the building. I mean -- I'm a little cautious about that. Bird: Yeah. De Weerd: Yeah. And, you know, I think that that's what we would like feedback on. It doesn't necessarily have to go to their space. I know they are looking at some remodeling downtown and was looking at LEED certification in that. It would also be incubator of sorts. So, looking at that job creation and some of the early on opportunities, are those upstarts and helping them look at new technologies and seeing how we can help them in the initial upstart in getting their business up and going and I don't know I don't think necessarily rent has to be that piece, even if it's just job creation that -- that you have that kind incentive money as long as they are located in the City of Meridian. We are just looking at -- again. would appreciate your comments over the next week or two to help us refine what conversation we can bring back to you. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 23 of 59 Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Anna, I'd appreciate a hard copy of what you just, you know, presented, what you -- and kind of the reasons why you selected these three and stuff. That would help me a lot. Canning: Okay. Bird: I'm like Councilman Rountree, I want to sleep on it, you know. I -- Canning: President Rountree, Madam Mayor, I can prepare a memo and I apologize for not -- Bird: I'd appreciate it. Canning: -- doing one for this Council meeting. I was a little behind the curve. I did want to say, President Rountree, regarding that -- the last statement you made, I did express that concern to the Vengaworks folks and they understood that that could be a concern. I think that they were willing to say, hey, you know, City of Meridian, if you want your scholarship money to go anywhere, that's fine. If they want to bring it to us, they will get an added benefit. So, that's certainly an option. Rountree: Thank you. Any other comments? Bird: I have none. Rountree: We want, what, a week, two weeks? Two weeks? Okay. We will have this topic again in two weeks see if we can provide some more substantive guidance and maybe we can throw barb at the Mayor. De Weerd: Sounds good. That's sometimes the only way I can get a comment from you, I can throw something really wild out there and see if you respond. E. Energy Efficiency Block Grant Project. Rountree: Next item on the agenda, the Energy Efficient Block Grant program. Pete. Friedman: Yeah. Thank you, Council Member -- Council President Rountree, Madam Mayor, Council Members. This is going to be a tag team between Anna and myself tonight with some possible assistance from a consultant that's been working with us to just bring the Council forward and talk about the -- I'm just going to refer to it as the block grant after this, but it's the Energy Efficiency Conservation Block Grant and what we would like to do is just give you a brief overview of the Economic Recovery Act Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 24 of 59 components of an energy strategy, the reporting measures that we are going to need to develop, what we have done to date in anticipation of these block grants, what we need to do in the future, a few potential ideas for programs and projects and, then, we are going to ask you for some guidance on how to proceed. So, as an overview, the energy block grant was part of the overall stimulus package that was passed recently. The total for energy relate programs was 49.7 billion dollars, but the critical factor, when you get right down to it, is 608,000 dollars that the City of Meridian, as an entitlement city, will be receiving through the formula funding. There are other projects that were part of that package. Some of them are competitive. Some are being administered by the state energy office. Some -- we could leverage with some of our block grant funding. But the critical one we want to talk about tonight is the Energy Efficiency Block Grant. The purpose of the block grant program is to promote quality through the reduction of fossil fuel emissions, reduce total energy use nation wide, improve energy efficiency in all sectors, transportation, building and with an emphasis on a reduction in BTU's. The Department of Energy, which is the administering agency is looking for a number of specific focuses. One is the creation and retention of jobs. The other is savings of energy. Another is renewable energy, capacity, or development of energy -- renewable energy sources. Reduction of greenhouse gases and leveraging the funds that we receive possibly with other local governments. They are going to have very detailed metrics or objectives that we have to demonstrate. They are still developing those. This is a -- this is a process, but it's a very complex application. It's going to be similar to our CDBG application. This alone is just -- just the announcement of the funding and we have been pouring through this, as well as sitting in on a number of web casts. We did know a few months ago that we were going to be entitled to some form of block grant funding, we just didn't know what the formula was going to be. We didn't know how much it was going to be. We didn't know exactly what was going to be required of us. So, if you will recall we did engage HGR last winter to help us develop what we think and now looking backwards we are pretty close to thinking about the fact that we are going to need to develop a strategy, some reporting templates. We also needed to start looking at our energy consumptions as a city organization and we wanted to identify a few potential projects for Council consideration. So, we have been working with them and they have come up with a few items for us, consistent with their contract. They have come up with, essentially, an appropriate outline for -- for addressing the energy strategy, establishing the base line of the energy use, identifying goals and strategies. We have identified a few key projects or programs and they have also developed a reporting or a monitoring template so that we can attach that to -- as follow up to the requirements of the grant. In addition to developing this kind of a strategy outline and a reporting template, they did establish an energy consumption for the city and they were able to provide that by types of energy used, amount of BTU's that are used, as well as dollars spent and I think it's pretty illuminating. No surprises there. Clearly the wastewater treatment plant is one of our biggest users. Our finance department was very good in keeping great records that helped everybody. It was -- you know, McGell would call me and say, geez, I need, you know, all the energy consumption for all the gasoline and fuel you spent. I was able to talk to Jennifer, she says, okay, how do you want that, you know. So, she had spreadsheets and so forth. So, we were able to garner a great amount of assistance from our finance department Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 25 of 59 also in the records that they keep. But we have now sort of established this energy consumption base line and one of the goals we will to have to achieve is demonstrating how we can show the anticipated energy conservatism as we move forward. We identified both projects and programs for possible funding opportunities. We looked at a lot of the city facilities and kind of focused on a couple of buildings that we might want to go in and look at to retrofit or recommission. Clearly there was no need to look at City Hall. Most of them were pretty small. They were our parks restroom facilities and pump stations and so forth. So, it really came down to the police department and fire station number one and they -- getting to this point they did develop a complete list of our city- owned facilities. They identified the energy used in those facilities and the amount of energy used and did a walk through with the police -- staff and came up with a retrofit and recommissioning report for that building. So, that's a possibility for one of the projects. But what we really need to do and where we really need to go next is we have to submit an application to the Department of Energy by June 25th. There are some entitlement cities receiving less than two million dollars, but more than 250,000 dollars, we have to provide an energy strategy that's required and that strategy just identifies the projects, the program, the estimated savings and reduction in energy and C02 emmissions and funds are available for that strategy development. The city needs to obligate the funds within 18 month and spend the funds within 36 months of the award date. We have been approached by both the city of Boise and the city -- and Ada County to see if there is any collaboration on -- or collaborative projects that we might want to go into and we will be having some follow up discussions with them next week, but we wanted to -- as I said to them, we are meeting with you tonight and we would better guidance by then. So, now I'm going to tum this over to Anna. Canning: Thank you. We are breaking this up, so that it doesn't seem so overwhelming. But it may be a failed attempt. So, the real question comes, then, what are the benefits of this strategy that we are talking to you about tonight and the biggest one is it allows the city to access those funds, those 608,000 dollars won't come to us unless we have a strategy. So, again, as Pete said, it's required, but it's required if we want to make use of the 600,000 dollars. It will help us to identify and prioritize the projects and it will also -- we anticipate that there will be additional funding, that this won't be the only opportunity for the grant, that hopefully there will be future grants in future years related to this. We know it's a priority with the current administration, so we are hoping that we will see other funds become available. And also it can help us leverage additional funding. Pete showed you that slide toward the beginning that this is one component of a huge energy strategy for the nation. So, it, hopefully, will help us leverage some of those additional funds as they become available. And it's also already promoted regional coordination. I mean this is six years I have been here almost now and this is the first time both Boise city and Ada County have called begging us to participate in a regional project. So, this is -- it's definitely encouraging regional coordination. This strategy will need to have a number of components, because it is the basis for the grant application and future programs and projects it has to identify our current energy performance and, again, we have a pretty good base line right now. It needs to set long-term goals for savings. It needs to develop the base line greenhouse gas emissions related to that and, then, it needs to outline policies and measures to Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 26 of 59 reduce those emissions. It also needs to provide a framework to prioritize and select actions and steps required for implementation and, then, finally, it needs to establish those benchmarks to monitor progress. Now, as part of this effort -- I mentioned earlier that we have been brainstorming on any number of projects. The retro commissioning that Pete talked about was something we thought about before we knew the specifics of the program. So, now as we get into this -- more of the specifics we realize it's going to be a big benefit to have a larger strategy. So, this strategy that we are talking about is going to be far more than 600,000 dollars worth of funds, it's -- just a couple projects at the wastewater treatment plant -- probably just half a project at the wastewater treatment plant could use up all of that. But we wanted to develop a complete strategy and, really, an energy plan for the city is what would be similar -- again, similar to the block grant program for community development. It's a much larger strategy in thinking about things, that it's not just the one award. So, the programs we are considering is, again, we need to develop the strategies, the first program. We thought about purchasing and distributing conservation items, like complex fluorescent light bulbs, door sweeps. We could do a capital revolving fund for energy efficiency grants and loans and, again, this is one that others have expressed interest in partnering in. We could do a -- we could and will do a stewardship and conservation chapter to the Comprehensive Plan. We could update the Unified Development Code to include water conserving landscape and energy efficiency incentives and standards and we could do a demonstrator program that the Mayor referenced earlier. That would certainly be another program that could come in. With regard to different projects, there is the recommissioning of the police building and recommissioning -- it was a new term to me. I guess I should explain it. It means kind of going in and making sure everything's working efficiently and doing the improvements that gets you the most bang for the buck kind of as far as energy efficiency and conservation. Replacing worn out heaters and things like that. We could change out the lighting at the wastewater treatment plant. Those lights are on all the time. They are a high energy use type light facility. We could install micro turbines for electricity generation at the wastewater treatment plant. We could do replacement -- have efficient equipment replacement of variable speed pumps and different equipment out there. Again, that's at the wastewater treatment plan. We could develop a compost facility in partnership with SSC. We could have a digester gas for building heating at the wastewater treatment plant or wind or solar energy generation facilities out there as well. There is also the possibility to convert the street lights to LED lights. With regard to some of the other programs, particularly education and outreach, we could have a LEED kiosk in City Hall lobby and this was one that was kind of talked about a little bit for the Idaho Power money as well. We could have a monthly publication on conservation. We could retain an energy manager to create programs and projects and, then, their salary would be funded through the energy savings. Some communities have done this, so say it saves you ten percent, then, they get a certain percentage of that money they saved as their salary. We could also purchase hybrid vehicles for public works or electric vehicles for parks maintenance. Again, these are just a huge list that we have come up with at this point. We don't -- we are not asking you to provide priorities tonight. We have a lot more work that we need to do before we are able to tell you how those may rank as far as the feds are concerned. We are hoping that this generates some ideas and maybe you have some other projects or Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 27 of 59 programs or education and outreach ideas that you want us to put on the list, so that we can develop those ideas more fully and -- oh, that's what we were looking for. Sony. But in summary tonight what we wanted to convey to you is this is a complex program and will require personnel time to get this block grant in our hands. It's the application. It's the prioritization of the projects, the monitoring and the reporting. So, it's similar to CDBG. Again, this is not an easy program necessarily. There are hoops you need to jump through. There is less strings than associated with the Community Development Block Grant. There seems to be a little more latitude on what you can spend it on, but there is still a fair number of hoops that we need to jump through. But if we jump through them successfully there is 608,000 dollars at the end. Part of those 608,000 we can hire -- we can use a portion of those to hire technical assistance on the application and strategy. So, really, it leads to the questions we have of Council tonight. One is do you want us to make use of these funds and can we hire technical assistance to help us develop the full strategy. So, we can -- what we can do is we can apply by June 25th, get our application in, ask for the technical assistance monies to fund the strategy development and, then, we can kind of -- it's kind of cyclical. We can submit the whole strategy at a later time. So, that's the question we have for Mayor and Council tonight. And I can answer any questions maybe hopefully. Rountree: Comments? Questions? Anna, the first question I would have is that you were talking about the technical assistance and I assume that's like the administrative fee that comes with the block grants. What percentage of that? Is there a fixed amount or a fixed percentage that's available? Friedman: Council Member -- Council President Rountree, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, we have set guidelines. The administrative fees we can -- I believe we can take up to ten percent on that. That's not necessarily hiring the technical assistance, we can use other funds -- another portion of the grant for that. In fact, we can use up to 250,000 dollars, I believe. We certainly are not even interested in coming close to that amount, but I believe that's the initial funding we could get. Canning: And we can -- on the administrative fees we can recoup a portion of city staff time. I know that the finance department, when these block grants come through, they -- they see a lot of work headed their way. They have already asked us if they can have some money to assist with -- with the implementation from their side of things. Rountree: Comments? Further questions? Hoaglun: Just a comment, Mr. President. You know, I see things like for the wastewater treatment plant and whatnot, some of those ideas is generating power or changing out lights and things like that. I like something like that, because I see it in a cyclical manner. I mean one reducing energy consumption and that's the goal of this grant is to reduce our carbon footprint or whatever you want to call it. But at the same time those -- those dollars we are spending that we getting from grants is not free money, it's already money that taxpayers have paid and they are just getting it back and if there is a way we can reduce the cost to them or not have to pass on higher costs to Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 28 of 59 them in the forms of what we had to do already, that's what I like. There is a tie into that that's a win, win, win for everybody. So, that's how I look at it. Friedman: Council President, Madam Mayor, Council Members, one of the things that's been emphasized -- I have managed to sit in on three web casts now on -- on this program and the one thing they have answered -- and I would emphasize and I think Councilman Hoaglun brings it up, is sustainability, not, you know, one shot projects, but something when you do a project, when you put into effect a program, something that will be sustainable over the long term that will accrue those benefits over the long term, so -- De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: And I guess in light of your comments, Councilman Hoaglun, energy savings out at the wastewater treatment plan -- actually energy savings in any of our public buildings do go back to our citizens in some form. As with the LED street lights conversions, that has continued to be a rising expense in our general fund and so any -- and we have had different parts of our community citizens come to us saying we have a really dark street, you know, can you put a street light up. Well, with the LED street lights there might be greater opportunity for lower cost of installation of lighting in certain parts of our town that need safety aspects to it. So, a lot of these ideas that have been brought to you are with those -- those savings and that capture savings in mind. Canning: Madam Mayor -- song. President Rountree, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, what our next step is that we would imagine coming back to you on is to take that list -- unless there is ones you want us to take off of it. But to take that list and other ideas you might provide and to, basically, go through each of these major criteria that -- that the DOE is looking for. Program X, how many jobs do we think it will create or retain. How much energy do we think it's going to save? Is it going to be high, medium, low. And to give you kind of a snapshot of each one, so that you can -- it's kind of like when you go to consumer reports and you want to check out the new gas barbecue, you know, which one cooks the best, which one lasts the longest, that kind of thing, to give you an idea of how these projects rank against one another and, then, you have your prioritized at that. But I think, Councilman Hoaglun, the criteria that the DOE is looking for I think keeps in mind the fact that these are public monies that they have collected, that they want them to still have a public benefit, whether it be jobs, energy saved, whether recreating new renewable energy capacity, things like that. Rountree: Anna, you had a couple questions up there that you wanted to answer or direction on this evening. My direction -- my preference is that, yes, we -- look to this program for funding from Meridian and not necessarily look at it to be satisfied for 608,000 dollars, but we build an incremental plan that moves us beyond that, if there is an opportunity. But a plan that's built in such a fashion that somebody can say, yes, they have accomplished this and the next step is this, this, and this. Particularly in our Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 29 of 59 infrastructure and our wastewater treatment facility. One thing I didn't see on the list and I know it can be extremely expensive, but I know we spend a lot of money treating irrigation and storm water through our plant. To me that would be a major project to the reduction of energy consumption out there. I didn't see glazing for any of the older buildings that -- Mr. Bird's not going to mention that, but I'm going to -- I'm going to beat him to the punch if he was thinking about it, but make sure that the glazing in our buildings is -- is energy efficient. As far as education materials go with the 65 billion dollars or whatever this program is that's going to devastate for us with the literature that's produced. I would encourage anything we do we do electronic and we do it in cooperation with groups of people that have common interest, as opposed to everybody going out there and spending the same dollar over and over and over again for the same message. And I would propose that we make that recommendation to DOE and say, hey, there is only so many brochures the world can consume and don't spend a hundred million dollars doing printed material in this program. And I support, finally, in terms of your questions, that we get technical assistance once we make that application and are in a position to ask for technical assistance funding. I don't see any other way to develop a program that has the incremental aspect to it. Other comments? Canning: I missed those -- the typically part of that answer. Was there general nodding of heads? Zaremba: Yes. Canning: Okay. Rountree: I think there is nodding with -- Canning: I don't hear them. Rountree: Rattling up here. Thank you. Canning: Well, we will proceed with that, then. Thank you. Rountree: And, Pete, especially thank you. If you can sit through three of those webcasts, you're a better man than I. F. Fire Department Strategic Focus Discussion. Rountree: Next item on the agenda. The fire department. Anderson: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, City Council people, thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight about strategic focus areas and future planning for the fire department. If you recall, this is something that we talked about that you folks wanted us to do at your workshops is each month a different department would come in and present what their strategies are and kind of keep you abreast of what's going on. So, that's the purpose of tonight's presentation. I wanted to start off with the fire Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 30 of 59 department's mission statement and as I read through this mission statement I guess it kind of strikes me a little bit differently tonight, because of all the time I have spent at our legislature recently and feeling like I have just been bashed from one side to the other by our elected officials at the statehouse, but the words in this mission statement mean a lot to me. It's to preserve lives and protect the property and provide services to prevent and control fires and accidents and other emergencies while maintaining the highest standards of professionalism, efficiency, and effectiveness and to me that's a pretty noble profession and it's a pretty noble mission statement there and I find it kind of interesting, because in the legislature we heard people that seem to make fun of a lot of what we do in the fire department and I think protecting people's homes and saving people's lives is something that's worthwhile and I don't ever want to apologize for that. It's something I'm proud of and I won't apologize for it. Those same elected officials I remember in 2001 were the ones after the terrorist attacked the World Trade Center that wanted to have their pictures with -- with the local heroes and wanted to be standing next to the firefighters and ride on the fire truck to help them for elected purposes, but now they are the same ones that are bashing up the overzealous fire chiefs and rogue fire chiefs and abusing our powers. So, these words have special meaning for me tonight. The vision of the department is to provide a safe community through increased public education, strong code enforcement and superior trained fire suppression forces. Meet the demands for service while anticipating the needs of a growing city and enhance and improve services through innovative thinking and challenging the norm. Also it wouldn't be a complete strategic focus discussion if we didn't include Anna's cogs here. So, we have Anna's cogs that she created. I did add the little photograph in the comer there of our Meridian spoke for the -- currently is missing, but I understand it's going to be found again and resurrected down there. So, these are the things that we are going to be talking about tonight, though. Meeting the demands for service, the strategic growth, how the fire department contributes to economic excellence of the community, our organizational excellence and how we are good stewards of the public trust. I wanted to start off by giving you an overview of the fire department, because I know sitting on that other seat -- other side of the podium over here that sometimes you forget just how many people work in a department and those types of things. So, a quick overview here. The fire department covers 54 square miles and so it's a larger footprint than just the City of Meiridian, because we do have that relationship with the rural fire districts. So, currently 54 square miles, the addition of four square miles that we have now addressed with the county commissioners that is to the west of McDermott Road and south of Chinden that will enlarge our area eventually to 58 square miles and it may go a little bit larger depending on where the boundaries end up south of town. Population-wise between the city and the rural fire district, we estimate that there is about 85,000 citizens that we protect. We do that out of five fire stations locations. We have 54 full-time firefighters presently and 15 part- time on call personnel. What that equates to is normally we have 18 folks on duty due to vacations or sickness. Minimum staffing is 16 fire suppression personnel. We also have a fire chief, three deputy chiefs, one fire inspector, one public education specialist and two administrative assistants. Out of those five fire stations we run four engine companies and one truck company. We also have two reserve fire engines, one water tender, and two brush squads. And last year we responded to a little over 4,200 Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 31 of 59 emergency 911 calls. When you look at the divisions of the fire department, we are broke into basically three divisions. Operations, prevention and education and our EMS, emergency medical services. And so I put a small org chart up there so you could kind of see that. But as you can see that the deputy chief of operations by far has the largest amount of responsibility, because there is 18 station captains in those five fire stations out there that he has to oversee all of their daily operations, as well as the training and several other things. He is also responsible for that part-time on-call staff, the additional 15 people, making sure that their training and all that is up to snuff. In the prevention and education, that's where we do the code enforcement, the plan reviews for the rural area. As you recall, the city contracts the plan review services in the city out with -- through a private contractor. But we still do that in the rural area for them. The facilities and vehicle maintenance is handled through prevention and education. Kenny Bowers is still doing those things, in addition to his fire inspector duties. So, whenever a vehicle needs to go in for maintenance or repairs or a station needs repairs, Kenny is the one who takes care of those. And, then, Pam, as you know, does our -- our public education. And Mark is in charge of the emergency medical services and working closely with our medical director and the training and the other EMS providers that we work closely with here in the county. Services meets demand. I couldn't resist putting this picture in there, because I know there is several of you that sat on this Council that probably remember that -- that fire station and it was only ten years ago that that was Meridian's only fire station and so had to throw that in there. De Weerd: Sat in there when you turned on the engine and inhaled the fumes. Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. Good times. Our goal is to maintain a five minute response time. When somebody dials 911 in this community and has an emergency and requests help, it's our goal to be to their doorstep and be by their side providing aid or suppressing the fire within five minutes. And in order to do that that means that we have to strategically place fire stations throughout the community. We have to try to keep those stations staffed, keep a crew in a constant state of readiness 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. And that's not always easy to do and sometimes we don't always meet that five minute goal, but that is -- is what our goal is and we are awful close to it. When you look at our monthly reports that you guys are providing, we are normally right in there as an average, but we do have some that exceed that. Another challenge that we have is to recruit, hire, train firefighters in time to staff these new fire stations. When you look at that picture down below and you think that we have built five fire stations, really, in nine years time and we have now 54 firefighters, in the last nine years, if you asked us what we have been doing in the last nine years, .aside from going to emergencies, it's pretty evident. We have been planning, building fire stations, hiring, recruiting, training -- De Weerd: Spending money. Anderson: Spending money. But it's been money that's been well spent, in my opinion, because ultimately we have a much safer community because of that. We also need to insure that fire codes are adopted and enforced throughout our service area and this is Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121, 2009 Page 32 of 59 what I have spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks up at the legislature fighting and, obviously, in tough economic times people want to find ways that they can cut expenses and one of the ways that they seem to be looking at is let's cut any expense that's associated with providing safe buildings and so they want to eliminate things like sprinkler systems out of three and four-plex units and those types of things. So, we have spent a great deal of time trying to educate our legislators and trying to stop some legislation that wasn't -- wasn't well thought out. But I do want to take time and applaud you folks for taking the time and listening and letting us provide education to you about the importance of the code. When you go back to that mission statement, we can't prevent fires unless we have safe buildings and we need safe buildings for our school children and our elderly folks that team in and they live in and they work in, but we also need safe buildings that aren't going to be fire hazards when our firefighters go in there and we owe them that much, too. And so we need to constantly stay on -- on top of the fire codes and make sure that current codes are adopted and enforced. And, then, high quality training is provided to all personnel and skills proficiency testing required. In the areas of strategic growth -- we talked about this a little bit already, but one of the most critical-things that we need to do as a fire department is stay ahead of the game when it comes to finding locations to build fire stations, so we need to site them, we need to find creative ways to fund them, whether it's through donations or partnerships, impact fees. Design them, build them, staff them. And keep that capital improvement plan, which includes that our capital improvement plan will be updated and will include personnel costs and operating costs, so that you have a total picture of what those costs are going to be as we build future fire stations. One of the things that the slow down in the economy has provided for us is an opportunity to catch our breath and to kind of go back and revisit some of those things and bring them up to snuff and make sure that our CIP is current and that we have a good handle on things that when growth does take off again. And, then, preparing the city to meet future safety needs through partnerships and alternative service analysis. And, you know, we don't know what direction ultimately the EMS is going to go, the emergency medical services. Councilman Bird, myself, Deputy Chief Niemeyer have been working on a state wide code task force for over three years now and it may end up that being that the fire service plays more of a roll in EMS, it may play less of a role. It kind of depends on how things shake out. But there certainly is opportunities to be involved in and to have your input and your say so and so we are participating in those and we will come back with our recommendations once a direction is figured out. Economic excellence. A lot of people probably say, well, how does a fire department contribute to the economic excellence of a community. Well, I can tell you one way that just happened recently and that was the change of the ISO rating for the fire department. Meridian just achieved a class three rating that was lowered from a class four and in 2001 we were a class five. And every time we lower a class like that, what that potentially means to our citizens and our business owners is a lower rate in their insurance premiums. Now, not all insurance companies quote directly those ISO ratings, but there are a good majority of them that do and so a lot of those businesses will be receiving a lower premium on their fire rating and it's even magnified even more when it comes to businesses versus a residential home. So, it's much more attractive for a business to locate in a community where there is a lower class rating than a higher class rating. And ultimately that class rating kind of is a scale and if you Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 33 of 59 will of the fire department capabilities, too. And so if the fire department can keep property losses and damage when there is a fire that occurs, if we can keep those to a minimum and keep those businesses operating, then, they continue to bring in revenues, there continues to be jobs in your community and those types of things. We also spend a lot of time working folks that want to come to the community that maybe some of the processes or some of the chemicals or things that they use may be somewhat of a hazard or may be a unique hazard that the fire department may not be equipped to deal with and so we have demonstrated I think numerous times in the past the willingness and the ability to sit down with those folks and talk about that and in some cases it means more training for our folks and in some cases, it means that they have to put in special fire suppression systems or something like that to accommodate them, but we want them to come to the community and we want them to be safe, good partners in the community. Organizational excellence. We think that utilizing technology can increase our staffs efficiency and their effectiveness. If we can connect our staff, what they are doing out in the field, to the city's network, that will enable us to do fire inspections and enter that data directly from the field into our firehouse software. We can be linked to the local hospitals when we respond on emergency medical calls. Patient information can be relayed directly to the hospital. It can amve prior to the patient, so the doctor can review that information, have a good idea about what -- what his procedures and what his treatment might be for the patient. And, then, connecting with dispatch, so that we are getting the most current information about buildings and conditions and all those kind of things. We are also looking to link the fire stations -- all the fire stations together through fiber optics and what this will enable us to do is it will enhance our training, because we can leave the crews in the stations and actually do training through video conferencing and be able to keep them in quarters, it will help with facilitating meetings, so we don't have to bring everybody to the one location and that will lower response times, too, the more we can keep those folks in their districts. And, then, also utilizing the city's website and the fire department's web page to take care of a lot of the routine business. We are trying to figure out ways right now, we are working with the county and our IT folks to put our bum permits on the website and allowing folks to schedule station tours and those types of things through -- through our website. So, many opportunities there to become more efficient in what we are doing. Additional organizational excellence can be through preparing our employees to meet their career goals and prep them for promotional opportunities within the department. One of the things that we have been contemplating recently is offering to our part-time on-call staff is the availability of taking an EMT class or even a paramedic class. If you think about that when we added paramedics to the fire department a few years ago, the cost to send a paramedic through the class isn't the most expensive part of that, it's the overtime cost that the department would incur while that individual is off taking the training is the biggest expense to that. So, if we have folks that are willing to volunteer their time in the community and volunteer their time to take the class, then, the class might be something that we offer to them and a lot of the -- a lot of the full time firefighters that we have came up through our part-time on-call program and our volunteer program. So, this would be an incentive for folks that are looking for a career, as well as it ultimately can save the department, taxpayers money in getting good qualified people. And, then, offer additional training for our staff for folks wanting to Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 34 of 59 promote to driver operator and fire officer and other special training. And, then, obviously, recruiting quality applicants in the workforce and that continues to be a challenge and so we are working with partnerships through ISU and some of the high schools we have over the next two weeks we have many high school students that are involved in -- enrolled in an EMT program that are doing ride alongs with all of our engines. So, we are constantly looking for partnerships there. Organizational excellence. Continued customer service. We talked a lot about this when I was on the Council. I know that it's something that the -- that is near and dear to the City of Meridian's heart and I can tell you that it's something that the fire department takes to heart and we believe in it. I was telling the Mayor and the directors a story recently about an elderly woman who lived in a trailer park here in Meridian and she took some eggs out of the refrig and she set them on the stove, the carton on the edge of the stove and she fixed herself a couple of eggs and when she got done eating she didn't realize that the edge of the egg carton had been over the burner of the stove and she accidentally caught that on fire and stuck it back in the refrig. Well, a few hours later she opened her refrig and the refrig was full of smoke and all the food in the refrig was ruined and she called 911. Now, the fire department's obligation was to respond to the 911 call and extinguish the fire. The firefighters did that. But they didn't stop there. At that point the firefighters saw to the elderly woman, she was on a fixed income, she didn't have a lot of money, so they contacted a local clean up company, there was smoke damage in the refrig and the kitchen and the clean up company came out, assisted with the clean up, the firefighters gave the lady a hundred dollar certificate to go buy new groceries down at the grocery store and put her back in operation. Now, that's customer service in my mind. They could have just stopped at extinguishing the fire and rolled up the hose and going back. But those are the kind of stories that we consistently hear and you can't -- you can't teach people that, they have to feel it in their heart and I can tell you that the firefighters do those kind of things on a regular basis. For a couple of the councilmen -- well, three of you now that have been our liaisons, you know that the first part of our meeting we spend reading thank you letters that we get from folks in the community and there is always three or four thank you letters every staff meeting that come in throughout a month. We also subscribe to the care values of the city. We get a lot of the care cards -- in fact, Ithink --Ithink the Mayor's office is getting kind of tired of seeing some of the care cards -- De Weerd: No, we are not. Anderson: -- from some of the individuals within the fire department. Are they passing these out and putting their own names on them or what? But -- and, then, the survey -- De Weerd: Ithink they are printing them now. Anderson: The surveys, both internal and external are a good way to keep a pulse on how you're doing. We do presentations to community groups. I have done a couple of them recently, the Kiwanis and the Rotary clubs and, then, town hall meetings. If you recall the first town hall meeting was held out at new station five when we started those. Stewardship of the public trust. Our goal is to manage the department resources wisely Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 35 of 59 and efficiently. Don't ask for things that you don't absolutely need. Look at the cost versus the benefit and be accountable for every dollar that you spend and I guess the picture up there, that's an example of -- we said we need a reserve engine, but we need a reliable reserve engine. Instead of coming and asking for a new fire engine, we took one of our old fire engines back to the factory and had it refurbed. That project there saved probably close to 200,000 dollars over the cost of a new fire engine. Those are the kind of things that we as employees and as good stewards of the taxpayers money, those are the kind of things that we should be doing. Some of our present challenges. Obviously, budgets are tight. No one knows when this economic slump is going to end and we might come out of this. So, in the meantime we just need to tighten our belts and get by with what we have. Training is one area that we need to focus on the most within the fire department. It's the professionalism, being able to respond quickly and efficiently and put the fire out. That comes through repetitive training and skills maintenance. And as I was showing you earlier in the presentation, when we look at the responsibilities within the divisions, we have got -- we have got one position in our department that's completely out of whack and I will be talking to you more about that at budget time, but we need to get some help in the area of training for the department. The technology upgrades are needed to link the stations together. And, then, also additional personnel are needed to staff an engine company at station one. You know, these things may not happen this year, they may not happen next year, but they are things that need to be on our radar scope and if we are going to think strategically we need to be thinking about them. We have five fire stations, but we have four engine companies and one truck company. One of the things that if you look at that rating on the class three rating, one of the things that we are still -- pick up some of the fewest points for is the amount of personnel that we have and we -- we currently have to split the crew that is -- that is at station one, depending on the call that comes in, they either get in the truck company or they get in an engine or they get in a brush squad or they get in a tender. So, they don't know which rig they are going to be going on until they figure out what the -- what the type of call is and, then, they get in the appropriate rig. So, it would -- ideally it would be nice to be able to staff both an engine and a truck company out of station one. The station was designed back when it was built and this is a goal, but at some point we need to try to get with our staffing. Regarding staffing, there is a program in the fire service similar to what you guys have heard about the COPS and this is called SAFER and that stands for the Staffing Adequate Fire and Emergency Resources. And it was a program very similar to the COPS where the feds would pay the first year 75 percent of the cost and the second year 50 percent, the third year 25 percent and the fourth year you're on your own. Because of the economic stimulus money that the feds are putting into this, there is no matching portion now, it is not decreasing, they pick up the cost for the first three years of employment for these folks. Those grants are not out yet. We can't apply for them yet. It will be later this summer when we can apply for those. But it would be something that we need to discuss further probably at budget time. We are going to be requesting some additional staff and we are also -- hopefully with your endorsement would be applying for some of these SAFER grants, if you feel that it's the time to do that. And, then, we always need to be looking out for land acquisition, keeping our ears open and as projects come throughout the city we have a good idea already where we need to locate the fire Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 36 of 59 stations as the city grows and so it's just a matter of when the right project comes along asking for donations and looking for good deals on land. And with that I will wrap it up and stand for any questions that you guys have. Rountree: Thank you, Ron. Any questions for chief? Hoaglun: Mr. President, I wouldn't mind if the chief would just talk briefly -- you know, you showed a slide about preparing employees to meet their career goals, prep them for promotional opportunities within the department and in my short time as liaison to the fire department there is a lot of young men and women who are part of the force now and, you know, it's the type of thing they want to see a career where they can advance and if they aren't going to -- they don't see an opportunity there, they can't move up, they are going to move on. And I know the chiefs been working with the firefighters in keeping a firefighter three designation alive to keep those opportunities to move up. So, chief, do you mind just briefly describing that and what's going on there, because I think that's a neat way to keep these folks moving through the system. Anderson: Yeah. The fire services is a little bit unique in the sense that normally most of the positions from entry level firefighter up to a company officer level, those come from within the organization and it's unlike other professions where you might be able to work at this company and, then, move to this company and hold the same position. In most of the full-time firefighters where they have union contracts, the union contracts require that the individuals promote from within. So, because of those contracts it also kind of dictates that you need to have some good training programs in place to be able to start mentoring those folks. And so that's something that we do. When somebody enters the fire service the first thing they do is they go into a 15 week training academy and, then, when they come out of that and they get assigned on shift, then, they are assigned to a FTO, a field training officer, who they work directly under and their performance is monitored. But immediately the goals are laid out for them to move to the next position, whether it's firefighter one, two, or three and there are specific classes, a specific number of hours, certifications that are required to move to those different positions. And one of the areas where we are really lacking right now is that step between driver operator and fire officer, because the state just recently adopted a fire officer program, but we really need to hone that in for Meridian Fire Department. But mentoring and having somebody that will take you under their wings and, then, meeting these class requirements, the department trying to fulfill all those -- those class hours and training requirements as much as possible, but it requires a lot of study on the part of the individual. And, then, we give exams. One year we give the driver exam and the next year the officer exam. So, there is .always a current eligibility roster available for those positions should we have any opening and those are competitive. The guys really fight for those positions, because the chance to move up in the organization and that's one of the things that has been so attractive about Meridian is because of the growth of the city there has been great promotional opportunity and folks that would have -- had they entered a career in another city, they may still only be a firefighter two or three or a driver, they are captains within our fire department already. But that does mean that we got a very young workforce. They are bright, they are Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 37 of 59 intelligent, and so they need to be fed and they need to be fed with knowledge and that knowledge comes probably through having afull-time training position. Hoaglun: Thank you. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I just a comment. First of all, AIC at our task force meeting wanted to express the work that Mr. Anderson has done at the legislature this year. He's definitely been helping us throughout by doing testifying and working with the legislature on all these different obstacles that's come up. He's been a leader in the task force, I can tell you that. And not only that, one thing I'm proud of and I think Mr. Rountree's along with me, we have lived in Meridian since it was afull-time volunteer outfit, which did a nice job and I have seen it come into what I think is probably the finest fire department in the state. I don't think we have to take a back seat to anybody and I think that our firefighters and our administration has -- really works hard towards that and I'm just proud that -- of what the fire department does. Thank you. Anderson: Thank you. Rountree: Any other comments? Questions? Zaremba: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I just want to say congratulations on the class three rating. I think that's outstanding. Great for everybody. Anderson: We are excited about that. Thank you. Rountree: Ron, I want to express my appreciation for the work that you guys do. I'm probably a little closer to what you do than the rest of the folks up here, at least from a personal perspective, and the training and the safety that goes into protecting your staff is significant and it's important and we can -- we can't -- we can't ever give that short shift and to you personally I want to thank you for the effort and the time you take with the legislature. I know how frustrating it is, but my question in that regard is did you have any success this year? Don't know yet. De Weerd: They are not gone yet. Bird: They are still in session. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 38 of 59 Anderson: I got one bill stopped in committee that really would have done some damage to us, but the caveat there was that we have to come back during the summer and put together an interim committee and try to find a solution to the problem for next year or we will be facing the same obstacle again next year. Rountree: Yeah. I did have a question about the -- the organizational excellence and you talked about the offer the EMT or paramedics serve to the part time and on call -- or part-time on-call staff. And I know our training -- when we have training for our permanent staff or full-time staff, it is based on an overtime basis, but if we did have firefighters that wanted to get the parametric -- paramedic or -- or paramedic certification, because we do have a tough time getting those folks and they wanted to volunteer their time to go through that training, is that possible? Anderson: It is if we do the class in house if we find an instructor and bring them to our location. If it -- if those classes happen in Boise or Nampa or another city, then, that probably wouldn't happen. Rountree: And that's constrained by the union contract? Anderson: Yeah. And so I -- certainly thinking along the same lines as you are, that if we find an instructor and we offer that in house, then, anybody who voluntarily wants to come and take that additional certification we'd encourage that. Rountree: Well, it's going to be available real close to station one here in the next year, I believe, if it's not already available, through ISU's facility. So, I would think that we would want to encourage that, so we can make that possible for the folks that want to stay in the department and have that extra skill and get the bonus, in effect, they get salary-wise for having the paramedic certification. Anderson: I'm tracking with you. Rountree: Yeah. Okay. Good. Good job. I loved that trip to the factory and driving in that big platform truck back here. That was a --that was a -- Anderson: Yeah. I should have put that picture up. Rountree: --once in a lifetime event for me, I'll tell you. Anderson: That would have been a long drive by myself. De Weerd: Thank you. G. Update and Revision of City Code Licensing Provisions. Rountree: All right. Next item on the agenda, Jaycee or is that Bill? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 39 of 59 Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, I'm going to go through and hit the high points and, then, I'll give Bill an opportunity if he needs to add anything that we have changed. What you have before you -- and I provided copies -- the most updated copy of our draft ordinance for updating and revising the city code licensing provisions. If you recall, I brought this to you a few months ago. We decided to try to attempt to update it in the two phase process. Phase one being removing the in code references to licensing fees and changing the text to just refer to our fee schedule, which we also established. This is phase two, which is updating some of -- just the older language and making it more current with really what we are doing today in the clerk's office and as a city for the licensing and Iknow -- I'm sure you have read it all, because licensing code is endlessly fascinating. So, I'm just going to hit the highpoints and, then, if you have any questions. Emily Kane in the attorney's office actually did the majority of this, but we had a meeting yesterday and discussed it. Chapter one, which is the general licensing provisions, this chapter said generally what is specifically listed now under each type of license, so we just removed the duplicative text, which just summarizes that a little bit more. Under pawn broker license fee section we added a reference to the fee schedule, because we missed that the first time around. The massagist license really has the most changes. We changed the name from massagist license to massage therapist license, because there is really no such word as massagist as we had different massage therapists come in and point out to us. They asked us where we got that -- I don't know. So, we are going to change that throughout the text of the code to just refer to them as a massage therapist. We added the ability for the clerk to revoke a license or deny an application. The applicant will have the right to appeal to the City Council by notifying the city clerk's office with a written letter and we would schedule it for a Council meeting to be heard before you. One of the major changes is we removed the massage establishment license. It duplicates what they have to do as a massage therapist. The city does not require general business licensing and we don't really see how this is different. The language mainly had to do with police department issues and we spoke with Lieutenant Overton, our code enforcement division, he had no problem with no longer requiring this type of license. Iknow that the building department had some concerns regarding removing this language about -- because this -- they wouldn't inspect this establishment under an establishment license. Under the inspection section of the code, which will remain in there, it still reserves the right for the police department, the fire, and the building department to inspect the premises at anytime during business hours and I'd like to add also on the massage therapist application it asked them who their employer is and the address. So, if they are actually operating out of a commercial business we have that information. So, that has to do with the massage therapist section. On the same line of thought, under the -- we used to have two things, private security patrol -- I can't remember. There was two different things. One was, essentially, a private security agent, one was a private security service, and, again, that was kind of the same thing as the massage establishment, we don't do business licensing in the city and we are asking the actual establishment to get a license. This came up because we actually had -- the way that the code read, we had the people that owned this security service, some of them were back east and really the way it read they were all going to have to come in and have a background check and get fingerprinted and there just really just Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 40 of 59 doesn't seem to be any reason for that. With that, that pretty much summarizes what we have changed in these -- with just this section. It really just brings it up to date and I would like to ask Mr. Nary if he has anything to add to it. Anything else you can think of that you -- Emily may have spoken to you about. I think I hit anything -- and it also gives possibly Mr. Bany an opportunity to comment on the building department's concerns or not. Nary: You hit it all. Holman: Okay. So, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, if -- what we are looking for is just some guidance to be able to come back to this in ordinance form. Rountree: My only comment in an area where you made significant changes and took away a word that nobody knew what it was and you still use that throughout the draft ordinance. Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, we are -- we realized that in our meeting yesterday with Mrs. Kane. She's going to go through and change that. By the time it comes back in the final -- it was something that had come up that we had not changed before our meeting yesterday. De Weerd: Formatting, too. Holman: This is a very rough draft version, but it's capturing the essence of what we are changing here. Rountree: Personally I agree with the direction you're going, so keep it up. Hoaglun: Mr. President, this is probably a question for Mr. Nary. Under the denial section it talks -- it changes if they have been -- have a misdemeanor from three to five years prior. Is that standard pretty much now, five years as opposed to three years? Nary: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Hoaglun, yeah, that is a fairly standard term that is used anymore, because it -- sometimes the -- with the transient population that you have of people moving, having that longer window is probably better, because they can certainly come from other places. Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you. Rountree: Any other questions? Comments? Move forward. Thank you. Holman: Thank you. H. Budget Amendment for Reservoir Land Acquistion for Public Works for $274,000.00 Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 41 of 59 I. Budget Amendment for Computer Purchase for Public Works for $6,400.00. J. Budget Amendment for Furniture Purchase for Public Works for $7,500.00. K. Budget Amendment for Collections System Maintenance for Public Works for $75,000.00. L. Budget Amendment for Public Works for Plant Software Services Purchase for $40,000.00 for Support Services & Training and $20,000.00 for Software Licenses. M. Budget Amendment for Water Software License Purchase for Public Works for $23,000.00. IV. Budget Amendment for Infrastructure Management System Funding for Public Works for $60,000.00 for Seminars / Training and $17,500.00 for Software License. O. Budget Amendment for Black Cat Trunk to Sewer Line Extensions for Public Works for O. $216,000.00. Rountree: Next item is 5-H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O and 3-C-P. So, Rich or Tom, whoever wants to start on that list of budget amendments and budget items. Barry: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you. Good evening. Both Rich and myself will be addressing the majority of these -- well, all of these budget amendment requests and I suppose that with your permission we will just save the item that was pulled for Consent -- or from Consent, Item 3-C, to the end of our request. Is that -- Rountree: Yes. Barry: Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, we have several budget amendments before you this evening, which are really budget reallocation requests, but it's been explained to me by the finance director the way we go about this is to actually request it through budget amendment and the budget amendment process. So, we have eight of these. I am happy to report that none of these are new funding requests. These are just reallocations. So, we are not asking for utilization of the ending fund balance or any new money requests in the -- in the budget amendment. Instead, we are just repositioning money from one account to another as a result of savings achieved in that -- in that first account. So, I'll address the first three and, then, I'll let Rich address the next several and, then, I'll finish up on the last couple. Item H is a request that -- as I mentioned before, it is not -- that, essentially, results in a no net increase for land acquisition. We would like to move money from our savings achieved in the Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 42 of 59 construction of the water department administration building on the order of about 272,000 dollars from that account as savings into an account that would allow us to purchase land associated with the new reservoir that we have talked about with you in the past. Now, this reservoir is on our master plan and it was originally conceived to be a project that would be -- at least from a land standpoint property that would be donated by a developer for our use during the development -- during a development project. However, as you know, development has significantly dropped off and so the opportunity's available to us now for acquiring a suitable piece of property through that process has essentially dissipated and so because the need is still there and the timing is not right, we would like to reallocate the funds from savings in the water department administration building over to this land acquisition account and move forward with that transfer to allow us to, then, acquire a suitable property south of the interstate to locate this next reservoir. So, that's, essentially, the nature of the request for item H. I'll address any questions you might have on that particular item. Rountree: Questions? Comments? My question, Tom, this one and all of these have been discussed with your liaison? Okay. I'm getting the affirmative here. Okay. Bany: Great. Thank you. If you'd like, I can continue to move on. I'm not sure how you want to handle the approval or denial, if you want to do it singularly or with all of them together. Rountree: I think we can do them all together. Barry: Fantastic. Okay. Moving forward, Item I, again, a result of no net increase, just a reallocation. In this particular case, what we would like to do is, essentially, approve a small budget amendment to allow for the purchase of four computers associated with personnel that have transferred -- or FTE's, I should say, vacancies that have transferred from operations -- the operations sector of the Public Works Department to the engineering sector or public works sector. This was a result of our reorganization that occurred last October and that reorganization, as you may recall, did identify an opportunity to move four positions that were not necessary in the operations sector to positions that were very necessary in the engineering public works sector. However, that actual transition resulted in a situation where now we do not have computing resources for those four positions, because those positions were originally operator positions, which do not have dedicated computing resources of their own. So, what we would like to do is request, again, from the savings achieved in the water department administration building, funds that would allow for the acquisition of computing resources for these four staff in the amount of about 6,400 dollars. That's, essentially, the nature of that request and I'll entertain any questions you might have regarding that particular item. Rountree: Questions on Item I? Zaremba: Mr. President? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 43 of 59 Rountree: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I guess this is just a general citywide question. How do we decide when a department purchases their own computers or when IT purchases them? I would have thought computers would be an IT budget item. How is that decision made? Barry: Mr. President and Mr. Zaremba, I think Mr. Nary may be best suited to answer that particular question. Nary: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, it is made -- IT doesn't purchase all of them. So, the departments actually purchase them. IT approves the purchases to make sure they are in conjunction with our standard setup that we have. So, it does go to the department's budget for the computers, but IT does weigh in to make sure they are purchasing the right type of equipment that can be supported by our staff. Zaremba: Great. Thank you. Bany: And so on this request we would coordinate, as Mr. Paternoster has been made aware of this item, as well as Mr. Nary and they would be the ones to actually complete the transaction, we are simply here to request the funds for that transaction and they would go and make sure that the computing resources are sufficient with regard to need and also within alignment of our IT policies as well. Zaremba: Thanks. Rountree: Thanks, Tom. Next item. Item J. Barry: Thank you. Okay. Item J. Again a no net increase in funding request here. We are requesting the movement of some funds from, again, the water department building savings. This is, again, a small amount in the order of about 7,500 dollars to allow us to finish off our training room in the Public Works Department second floor. You may recall that was a -- a training room that was not furnished as part of the City Hall move in. Funds were not available at that time or identified for acquisition of furniture in the form of tables and chairs and so what we have done in the interim is actually pulled out of the trash and recycled what was to be discarded tables and chairs from the old City Hall building and we have been using those since. They have -- they are in very, very poor condition and are actually warped and extremely heavy, because they are the old particle board types, so it's very difficult to move them around and also the edging along the particle board tables have come off in many cases and creating splinter problems for staff. So, what we would like to do is replace those, which were initially set to go to the dumpster, with lightweight portable folding tables and lightweight portable folding chairs as well. This will allow us to have maximum variability in the set up of the room. With this funding request also comes a request for a portable projector screen, so that we have some place to project our presentations and whatnot -- training materials onto. And, then, also the acquisition of curtains -- actually, blinds I should say for the large Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 44 of 59 window that is above the lobby here, which that room faces. We have gotten a quote from a blind company and have coordinated the blind colors and styles with Mr. Minnick's office and Mr. Keith Watts, our purchasing agent, is waiting for this approval, should it come, to coordinate the entire blind purchase, so that we have the same style, the same color of blinds on both sides of the lobby here as it relates to the blind. So, this funding request would allow for the training room to be finished and that is the -- essentially, the nature of that particular budget request and I would be happy to entertain any questions or comments you might have on that. Hoaglun: Mr. President, quick question about this double blind purchase. Tom, just to -- I couldn't resist. On the account it talks about spending 7,500 dollars, but on the memo it says specifically we ask that 12,000 dollars be spent. So, is it the 7,500 or do you need the 12? Barry: My apologies, Mr. Hoaglun. It should be 7,500. The original estimate we were kind of guessing would be in the ten to 12 thousand range, so when the memo was first drafted we did put 12,000 on there. After we got some quotes we realized that that was high. So, the budget request is for only 7,500 dollars. We believe we can do it for this amount based on the refined numbers. So, I apologize for the confusion in the cover memo, but it is only the 7,500 dollars that we are requesting. Hoaglun: Thank you. Bany: Uh-huh. Rountree: Any other questions? Okay. Next item. Barry: Thank you, sir. Dees: Mr. President, Mayor de Weerd, and Members of the Council, the next request is also a budget amendment that adds no net increase to our bottom line. This one is sort of in error. We discovered 75,000 had been placed into a capital account for sewer line extensions. However, if you read the amendment that was passed last year, it's for repair of sewer lines to fix the man holes and fix the leaks in the sewer system. As Councilman Rountree mentioned, this is a very important priority for us. When we identify things we have got to go fix them and this money is needed to be used so we can do just exactly that. So, we are asking that the money, essentially, be moved from an O&M account -- I'm song, from a capital account to an O&M account, so that we can get to it and make the sewer line repairs. Are there any questions about that one? Rountree: Thank you, Rich. Next item. De Weerd: I like how he reports. Dees: I'm song? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 45 of 59 De Weerd: I like how you report. Straight to the point. Dees: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The next amendment is also a no net increase amendment. This is for plant software purchases. Our wastewater treatment plant right now has a version of Hansen's software, which is version 7.7. It is the older version. The newer version is Hansen 8. This amendment request moves, again, money from a capital account over to a software account, so that we can, indeed, upgrade our software licenses for the -- for the wastewater treatment plant. One of the things we are charged with in our MPDES permit is to properly maintain and operate all of our facilities and the way we do that is we have to keep track of it. As you know, our plant's become quite complex over the years and it's just getting more and more difficult for people just to do it on scraps of paper, we have to have a system that, indeed, takes care of all of our assets. We have got a great deal of money at the treatment plant. We just want to maintain it properly. So, this software -- this amendment simply moves money from a capital account to an O&M account. If we buy it right now and do it right now we will save 42,000 dollars over what we have to in the future. So, we think it's a great idea to move 60,000 dollars so we can buy those licenses. Any questions I can answer about that one? Hoaglun: Quick question on that -- for this one and the other one. Are there any annual licensure fees that you will have to pay with that and any idea what those will be? Dees: Councilman Hoaglun, yes, they are. We do have those figures in. In fact, part of the 60,000 dollars includes the licensure fee for this year and, then, next year we have budget amendments that take care of that for ongoing purposes. Hoaglun: Thank you. Rountree: Any other questions? I have a question for this item and the next two items in terms of the software. Is this stuff going to be compatible with our enterprise wide system that we have deferred purchase at this time? Dees: Councilman Rountree, the answer is maybe. It depends on what you buy for an enterprise software package. The enterprise software package hasn't been determined yet. It's -- we don't know what it's going to be. It could very well be the Hansen product. Hansen makes an enterprise wide software program that will handle everything literally. All you do is add modules to it to expand it. We already own Hansen. We own Hansen 7.7. For us to find a different software package would be very difficult, because we already are invested in Hansen number one. The other problem with that is Hansen is sort of the best in the industry as far as asset management is concerned. But will it be compatible with whatever we pick? Most likely it will, because this is a sequel based piece of software and anything we buy will be also sequel based. Rountree: Okay. Very good. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 46 of 59 Hoaglun: Mr. President, if I might add to that. Based on my experience in the state controller's office, all the software companies will tell you of course they are compatible with everything. However, experience -- we have to be careful there. Rountree: Been there, done that. Barry: Mr. President, if I may also add, my understanding in talking with Mr. Paternoster, our IT manager, Hansen has been short listed as one of the top three for the enterprise system wide software package. So, that may be somewhat comforting as well. Rountree: Very good. Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you, Rich. Next item. Dees: Council President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this next amendment is for the water license purchases. Now, we -- I have talked about the plant licenses just a second ago. This is another module made specifically for water. Again, if we buy the software right now, the Hansen 8 software today, we will save about 33,000 dollars in the whole package compared to what it would cost us later on. I can't emphasize enough how important this is that -- the chief made mention just a second ago that he was quite proud and he should be of that class three fire rating system. Well, one of the things that we can do to help him maintain that is to understand what we have to do with all the fire hydrants and to maintain all the valves and the things in the streets. So, this software goes a long way to help us manage that -- those assets that we have in the ground. Again, we are asking we move 23,000 dollars from the capital account over to a software account, so we can buy the water licenses to do our asset management in water. Any questions about that one? Rountree: No questions, next item. Dees: Council President, Madam Mayor, the last one is the largest one. The -- this is a budget amendment related to a vehicle purchase. And, again, what it does is a no net increase movement and we put 600,000 dollars last year into an account which bought ourselves a hydrovac truck, sewer cleaning truck, and also a television van, which went through Council here just a few months ago. We haven't gotten delivery of those. We will very shortly. However, when the television van particularly gets here, we have to have the software and all the related things to go with it to make it run. Well, all this money to buy the trucks were in one capital account. Software is not a capital asset, it's in a different account. So, we need to move the money that's allocated for the truck purchase, left over from the truck purchase, to a software account so we can buy the software to make the trucks be efficient. The particular driver for this one here is the television van and it has the same -- the same things associated with it as all the other things as the lastest version. Buying this right now or moving this right now will save us about 84,000 dollars. It's -- this one here is probably the most important piece that we have in the entire package this evening, because those trucks are -- will be here next month. So, do you have any questions about this one? Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 47 of 59 Rountree: Any questions? That completes your budget amendment request -- no, it does not. Have one more. That's for Tom. Barry: Thank you, sir. Item number O is a reallocation of funds again resulting in essentially no net increase or new fund request. It is, instead, the reallocation of money from one account into another account. This has three drivers associated with it. First of all, two of the drivers -- well, the first driver is, essentially, moving up a project and this project is, of course, the construction associated with the Ten Mile interchange project, which was supposed to be originally constructed and spent in the fiscal year 2010. However, ACRD and ITD have moved up that project with regard to our component of the project and, therefore, we need to move those monies now to insure that we have the funding available to complete our component of the project associated with the interchange. Secondarily, but separately, there is a need for us to expedite the improvements to the Ten Mile Creek sewer crossing. This was a project that was identified in our capital program plan for fiscal year 2010. However, the sewer crossing itself has deteriorated more quickly than we had expected and, therefore, it is now an urgency that we get this thing corrected sooner, rather than later, so we don't have sewage into the creek problems. So, we would like to go ahead and include that also with this transfer. And, then, finally, the -- there is a little bit of a shell game in the last -- shell game in the last part of this request and that is of the 75,000 dollars that was mentioned by Rich in item K. You may recall that that was erroneously placed in the wrong spot in the budget last year, so re-correcting that has now created a 75,000 dollar gap or hole in that line item, which now we have to plug with money from another account and that's what this would also do. So, essentially, this money is coming from money left over from the Black Cat trunk, which there is significant savings or left over unspent budget and this particular request would allow for the transfer of those funds from the one account to the other two to allow us to do those three things. So, with that I will entertain any questions you might have on that one. Rountree: Questions on that item? I see none. Bird: Do you want a motion? Rountree: We need a motion. Bird: What I'm going to do, if it's okay with you, I'm just going to give the -- like H with the amount, is that okay? Rountree: That's fine. Bird: Okay. I move that we approve H for 274,000. I for 6,400. J for 7,500. K for 75,000. L for a total of 60,000. M for 23,000. N for 77,500 dollars. And O for 216,000 dollars. Zaremba: Second. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 48 of 59 Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the mentioned budget amendments and the amount. Need a roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. C. Change Order No. 1 with JC Constructors for N. Black Cat Lift Station for $78,847.89 Rountree: Next item is Item 3-C. Tom. Barry: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Item 3-C is, essentially, a change order -- change order number one with JC Constructors for the North Black Cat lift station in a total amount of $78,847.89. This packet, which you should have, includes several work change directives that were associated with the construction improvements on that project. The majority of the funds come from just a few of these work change directives -- work change directive number four, which is the generator room, fire upgrade associated with ACHD's rerating of the fire requirements for the generator room. That's about 5,000 dollars. An increase in the electrical service allowance as we have extended the original allowance and so an increase of 23,000 to the electrical allowance is being requested as one of the work change items. Modification of the control room to make sure that it is meeting the field conditions that are associated with the project. It's about 4,000 dollars. An increase in asphalt prices associated with the late summer construction last year that you may recall when oil prices were rising significantly, that also triggered increases in asphalt and so that increase is about 7,000 dollars. And, then, a new chopper pump to replace one of the vertical pumps in the actual system. This was necessitated because, as you know, the Black Cat lift station is built to accommodate significant flows, but right now those flows are not there and so the vertical pumps that are in the system are not efFcient, if you will, or effective in moving low flow waste through the system and so moving to a chopper pump will allow us to more efficiently transfer lower flows and, then, we can transfer that back when the higher flows come at a later date when development picks back up. That amount of 24,000 dollars. And, then, there is several other directives associated in this packet which make up the remaining ten or so thousand dollars. So, with that I will turn it over to you for any questions, comments, or concerns you may have. Rountree: Questions? Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: The reason I pulled this off, basically, is I like change order stuff, but -- and don't anybody take it personal, because I don't think you were here, Tom, when it started. I Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 49 of 59 know Rich wasn't. But these purchase orders or change orders I mean, have been paid without the Council or the Mayor's signature. The Council approving it and the Mayor's signature. They start back on September of '07. I don't know why we are running 12 change orders through at one time and they come from 9/9/07 to 3/17/09. That is not good business. I mean I know that a subcontractor didn't -- hadn't waited for 24,000 dollars two years. Now, how did we pay that legally without the Council approving it and the Mayor signing it? And a lot of this stuff, which I could be here all night and I'm not going to, because it's getting late. A lot of it is a practice or policy that we are doing -- we are evidently not checking the final drawn plans before they go out for bid, because there is a lot of stuff on here that I think should have been picked up, but that's something, Tom, you can take care of within your department. Other than that, I mean we owe it, but Ijust -- I mean I can't believe we went through three -- three fiscal years of payment for one purchase order or change order. It's ridiculous. And I'm sure the Mayor isn't too happy either. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: And I think that's some of the changes that Tom has incorporated into his reorganization and his budget practices and trying to phase these different expenditures to a more realistic budget cycle, so that you don't see some of this. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: A request for information or -- and a purchase order -- when one comes in, I don't care if it's for five dollars, it should be processed right then. You process them as they come in. Barry: Mr. President? Rountree: Tom. Barry: Mr. Bird, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is a fantastic opportunity for discussion on this item. The way we do things when we built projects like this is frustrating and convoluted, to say the least. You may want to consider a force account or a contingency account, maybe that has been considered in the past, that allows for some variability up to a certain percentage of the total contract amount that would, then, authorize staff to continue the project moving forward, give Council the approval or denial opportunity you seek before construction of the project and as the project continues and things come up that are within the confines of the force account or contingency, the flexibility for staff to address those and keep the project on task, on schedule, and under the overall budget, would still be allowed. I don't know if that dialogue had happened in the past. I don't know Council's comfort level. It is certainly a Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 50 of 59 -- a process and procedure -- I'm very comfortable working under my experience in the past and these type of projects is exactly on that line. I understand that Council may feel differently as it relates to the expenditure of funds and having, essentially, the final say in that, but you could have that in a Council contingency or force account that was set up in advance of construction of the project. I'll tum it over for you for thoughts on that kind of an approach. Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: Contingency, I -- you might -- if you put in a contingency you might as well sign the contract for that. I'm not -- I think you get a set of prints that you pay -- or your engineering and you get a firm bid. I mean it seems like either we are not -- we are sending out halfway prints for people to bid. And I know things can come up, but that -- and Ihave never seen, other than an RFI to change the wall sockets from two feet, which a guy should be able to do, but I have never seen anything with a large amount that needs to be a change order that has to be done that day. Because you usually go through an RFI to get to the deal. I just think Tom and I -- like I said, I don't want anybody to take it personally, because this happened before your time, to be truthful with you. I just -- I just think it's bad management by the five of us up here. Okay? Barry: Mr. President? Rountree: Tom. Barry: I would agree, Mr. Bird, it's bad management on staffs part as well and I offer that suggestion as -- as a success opportunity. I mean I have worked in that environment and it has been very successful and I understand your concerns and they are very justified as it relates to having some kind of contingency and having contractors know that and take advantage of that. But there are very specific borders that you can put on a force account that allows for the contractor not to be able to touch those funds and for staff to execute the expenditure of those funds only under those specific conditions. So, it's not a blank check so to speak. There are ways to do that and if you would like we can investigate that further with the purchasing agent and bring a proposal back to you or at least some information to maybe provide you an opportunity to at least consider it more under that kind of a frame work. I will say in this case just very quickly looking through, the generator room fire upgrades for 5,000 dollars, I don't care how good the contract documents and plan specifications were and original estimates, that was an unforeseen expense. There is no way for us to be able to know when another permitting agency is going to require us way in advance -- especially if conditions or other sorts of things change. I would say the same is true with the oil escalation of 7,000 dollars. That's beyond our control during the contract period. Oil prices spiked significantly. We have had some -- some volatility in the market. The same thing with the flow, the chopper pump, you know, this is a 24,000 dollar expense that, you know, in 2007 and into 2008 development was going gangbusters, we anticipated that the vertical pumps would be exactly what was needed for that project, they were -- they were constructed, yet when the development stopped and, essentially, Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 51 of 59 all of those pipes that were laid and homes that were, you know, plotted or properties that plotted, did not come to fruition with regard to usage, we had to change the strategy on how to get -- how to move sewage through the lift station. So, I guess I'm suggesting, yes, there are cases where better PSE -- plan specification and estimates can eliminate a lot of the surprises like we are talking about tonight. But there are legitimate situations where the costs for certain things are just unforeseen and in a lot of cases can't be seen at the time the contract is let to the time construction is completed. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: And I don't disagree with you on that aspect of it and to be truthful with you, this is a very small amount of change order for the total deal and Iwill -- and I will talk to you and we will -- we don't need to sit here taking up everybody else's time. Rountree: Well, to move this along, we do need action and I believe one of the actions is that the liaison and Tom will get together and work out a process and let us know what the outcome of that is. But we need action on this item. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we approve -- I guess we are calling it change order one with JC Constructors for North Cat lift station -- North Black Cat lift station for $78,847.80. Hoaglun: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the change order for Black Cat lift station. Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 6: PUBLIC HEARING. A. Public Hearing: Amendments to the 2007 and 2008Community Development Block Grant (CDBG)Action Plans Rountree: Next item on the agenda is a public hearing for the amendments to the 2007- 2008 CDBG action plan. Matt. I'm going to open this public hearing. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 52 of 59 Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. If it's -- if it's standard practice open a public hearing prior to an introduction I'm at your disposal here. Rountree: We are going to take your introduction as part of the testimony. Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Item 6-A on this evening's agenda, really, breaks down to Item 6-A-1 and 6-A-2. If you will recall from past presentations and directions provided several -- several weeks back, in order for the city to move forward in spending past year's community development block grant funds, action plan amendments are required for the relevant program year. In this case for 6-A-1 the first of these two action plan amendments. The funds that we are discussing this evening amount back to a project from program in 2007 that came in under budget. So, we are here tonight on this item to discuss the action plan amendment that will allow use of those funds for a project previously discussed. Those projects are to aid in the design of Five Mile Creek pathway, segment H-1, which runs from Fairview Avenue down to Pine Avenue per the staff report in your packet. There is 45,000 dollars allocated for that preliminary estimate from the cost estimator. Public Works indicated it will likely be a little bit less than that, but just to play it on the safe side we went for 45,000 dollars there. The second piece of the 2007 action plan amendment is to allocate 20,000 dollars for ADA upgrades to the Meridian Community Center. We went out and scoped that with -- with the consulting team. They said all in all the building is in fairly good shape, but there are a couple of modifications that could wind up making it even more usable for the community. The third piece of this action plan amendment for the 2007 program year is 20,000 dollars for public service projects. Excuse me. And the wording in this -- this part of the amendment is somewhat -- it's intended to allow the flexibility to go engage in discussions with public service providers to gauge the need, the urgency, and so forth of each of those within the total amount, which is 20,000 dollars and to secure the exact amounts that will flow from the CDBG program to each of those based on that urgency in need. So, again, the request before you this evening, which -- which is, again, in the staff report here, is to open a public comment period this evening. Per federal regulations there is a required public comment period of 30 days for this sort of amendment. Outside of that 30 days the next regularly scheduled City Council meeting is May 26th, 2009. So, that's kind of the time line depending on how agendas shake out and with that I will stand for any questions. Rountree: Questions for Matt? No questions? This is a public hearing on this item. Anybody in the audience here tonight to testify? I do have one folk--one person signed up. Greg Fastaben and you've indicated you're for. If you could give us your name and address. Fastaben: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, my name is Greg Fastaben. I live at 1101 North Shreveport Avenue here in Meridian. My home is adjacent to the proposed pathway. I came to -- to give my support to the project. I'm very excited about this addition to the pathways in Meridian. I often have taken my family on trip -- bicycle rides on the greenbelt and we have made attempts to get from Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 53 of 59 our home to some of the community parks in Meridian on our bikes and that has often proved to be a dangerous endeavor with the number of streets crossings and other areas that we have tried to ride to where there are not bike lanes or even in some sections finished sidewalks to ride our bikes on. In, for example, getting to Tully Park we have tried to get over to Meridian Road and, then, come up Meridian Road and there is a lot of areas where it's not very safe for us to ride our bikes as a family, especially with smaller children. This pathway would provide for us an easy access to get to Fairview and, then, cross the street there and there from the presentation that we were given in our homeowners association meeting, it appears that there are several connecting ways that we will, then, be able to get closer to that park and to other areas in the -- in the city. I'm excited to look at a lot of the other proposed pathways that we have on the master plan, which would make it even easier for us to even get from our home to the greenbelt almost entirely on pathways, which would be a fabulous activity for the family. I have sent a few a-mails to Steve Siddoway and to Matt Ellsworth regarding suggestions that I had in relation to his project. In looking at the way this pathway matches into our neighborhood, there is only one link point down off of Maple Creek, which would make it fairly inefficient for members of our neighborhood to get to the path itself without going out of the neighborhood on Stonehenge and, then, over on Pine and getting back in at the base of this proposed pathway. They had mentioned to me that there is discussion about a link between Crossbill and Inez. You can see on the map that there is a small pathway section there between those two neighborhoods -- I don't know if I -- if you have got that for me. Right there where they are moving the cursor. Right now there is a fence on that fence line that blocks the connection between these two neighborhoods, but if that was opened up it would provide -- just right here -- right here is an existing fence that blocks access between the two neighborhoods and if that was open it would allow this northern section of the neighborhood easy access into the pathway. One issue with that could be that the homes that were built on these little stub streets tend to have an extended driveway with that section of public road that may -- they have some opposition to having that, then, open to a lot of foot traffic to the path. But it's a question for you as to whether it would be more of a benefit to the neighborhood and the residents to be able to get to the pathway than the inconvenience on those homeowners. At the same time I discussed the availability of coming off of Sandlin here where these are still undeveloped lots and allowing a connection that would come across to that pathway there. That would also allow -- I'm sorry. We do have afinished -- there is a small section of finished pathway over here that connects to Locust Grove and if riders are coming in or walkers across that to Stonehenge, rather than having to go up to Fairview on unfinished -- sorry. I can't get back to -- Rountree: If I could get you to summarize, please. Your three minutes are up. Fastaben: I'm sorry. I was just saying that it might be nice to have that kind of a connection there to allow more residents to get in and, again, just wanted to express my appreciation for this project and the amenity it will bring to the neighborhood. Thank you. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 54 of 59 Rountree: Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. Anyone out there -- Doug, you want to testify? I think, Frank, you're next. No? Okay. Mason: Madam Mayor, President Rountree and the City Council, thanks for the opportunity. Rountree: If you'd give us your name and address. Mason: Excuse me. Doug Mason. 864 East Ashford Street. There is some -- I'm the president of the homeowners association and we support the project. There is some items that as a board, of course, we want to talk to the homeowners. We would like to see included in this project more than what Greg mentioned. Right in there is an entrance to that field where the pathway goes through. We just want to ask for a street light there, because that whole cul-de-sac is dark. And other than what Greg said, right beside my house -- I live right there -- there is a path connector to that ditch bank and we'd like to see an improved path there. That's gravel. We feel baby strollers, bicyclists and whatnot goes through there. They'd have a hard time unless it was improved. Other than that, we support this project and I have talked to several neighbors and they support it and we would be in favor of supporting you on this project. Thank you. Rountree: Thank you. Any question? Anyone else wish to testify? Seeing no more folks wanting to testify, this hearing is open until -- and scheduled to be heard again on May 26th. Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Mrs. Kane told me I thought we could close the hearing, is what I had understood from her and all we needed to do was, then, bring the resolution back. Am I incorrect, Matt? Rountree: I understood it had to be open for 30 days. Bird: I did, too, for public testimony. Nary: It's already been open for 30 days. We already -- we had this hearing a month ago. Isn't that right? Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Mr. Nary. I apologize for the confusion. There was a previous amendment to the same action plan for the 2007 action plan. Nary: Oh. Ellsworth: What that did was allow the city to begin spending money or allocating money to the Meridian Food Bank to the tune of 10,000 dollars. Nary: Oh. Okay. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 55 of 59 Rountree: It was a different item. Nary: My mistake. I'm song. Ellsworth: But it's the same hoops to jump through. Bird: Yeah. Nary: Got it. Sony. Item 7: CITY ORDINANCE/POLICY REVIEW. A. Ordinance No. 09-1404 : Reimbursement Code Legal Department (1st of 3 Readings): Rountree: So, we are still on schedule for May 26th? Thank you, Matt. Next item on the agenda, city ordinance. 7-A. Ellsworth: Mr. President, I apologize, but to interrupt, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Mr. Nary, there is an additional amendment in front of you with Item 6-A here this evening and that is an action plan -- or an amendment to the 2008 action plan, so I'm not sure if those can be considered with the same opening of the public hearing or if they should be considered separately. If they can be considered concurrently, just for the record, to indicate in line with the public noticing that went out for the '08 action plan, the total dollar amount for the amendment to the '08 action plan is 64,584 dollars. The projects -- it's one project, two components that are proposed for that action plan amendment, are to prepare an income survey for residents within the service area of Centennial Park and pending the outcome of that income survey, to spend funds on park improvements, installation of playground equipment and so forth. Yeah, the time lines are the same, it's the same requirement for a different action plan. So, I just wanted to clarify that. Rountree: Any questions? Bird: I have none. Rountree: And that isn't another piece of this hearing? Ellsworth: Well, again, Iwould -- Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I would look to Mr. Nary as to whether or not Council by the single action of opening the public comment period for the 2007 action plan is at the same time opening the public comment period for the 2008 action plan. Rountree: Yes. Ellsworth: Thank you. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop April 21, 2009 Page 56 of 59 Rountree: And is there anyone out there wishing to comment on the 2008 action plan? And, again, we will see that on May 26th and be able to close the public hearing at that point in time and take action. Thank you, Matt. Rountree: The next item is the city ordinance, Item 7-A. Nary: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you. Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, I just wanted to make one notation on the first reading of this ordinance. Council Member Zaremba pointed out there was an error in the -- on page nine, number nine, the growth priority areas definition is a convoluted juxtiposed sentence. So, the actual wording on that is supposed to read -- and I have sent a corrected copy to Mrs. Holman and so we will have a correct one for a second reading next week. It doesn't change any of the meaning of the ordinance but what it should read is the City of Meridian Public Works Department, in conjunction with the Meridian Planning Department, shall develop a map indicating growth priority areas within the sewer master planning areas. The growth priority area map, once approved by the Meridian City Council, shall be used to determine the percentage of eligible reimbursement amount that a particular parcel within the master planning area may be eligible to receive. In the event that a develop spans across more than one growth priority area, the designation of the greatest portion of the development shall be used for the entire development. So, in the numbers of iterations of this ordinance that particular -- that particular definition got cut and pasted poorly. So, Council Member Zaremba pointed that out. I think the rest of it is fine. If someone else points out something else we will make that change, too. Rountree: Does that constitute the first reading? Nary: I think Ms. Holman probably should still read the title. Rountree: Okay. Jaycee, if you would read the title. Holman: Thank you, President Rountree. City of Meridian ordinance number 09-1404, an ordinance of the City of Meridian repealing Title 9, Chapter 1, Section 13, and Title 9, Chapter 4, Section 19 of the Meridian City Code relating to cooperative and/or reimbursement agreements, enacting a new section, Title 8, Chapter 6, Section 2, relating to reimbursement agreements for infrastructure enhancements and providing an effective date. Rountree: That constitutes the first reading of this ordinance. Is there anybody in the audience that wishes the ordinance to be read in total? Item 8: Executive Session: Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c) & (f). Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 57 of 59 Rountree: Seeing none we will move on to the next item. Bird: Mr. President? Rountree: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c) and (1)(~• Zaremba: Second. Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. EXECUTIVE SESSION: Zaremba: I move we come out of Executive Session. Hoaglun: Second. Rountree: Moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All in favor? Opposed same sign. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. De Weerd: Mr. President? Rountree: We are out of Executive Session. Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I know we probably have something else to discuss, but I did want to just remind you if you would like to go to the prayer breakfast to let Robert or Peggy know, if you haven't done so already, since I don't know if you have or not. The city is discussing the possibility of a coffee kiosk in the front. And we talked about this a long time ago. Rountree: A coffee or copy? De Weerd: Coffee. Rountree: Okay. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 58 of 59 De Weerd: Kiosk. And you will know more about it as we look at it. And AIC city achievement awards are being collected. If you have any ideas, talk to your departments and encourage them to submit them. Bird: Mr. Zaremba -- Rountree: You want to make a motion on the -- Bird: On the land purchases. Zaremba: We need a motion for authorizing the Mayor to sign a real estate agreement; right? Rountree: Yes. Zaremba: So moved. Bird: Second. Rountree: Just for the record, that's for the purpose of 70 -- approximately 78 acres in the south impact area for future park purposes. Okay. Bird: Second agrees. De Weerd: Anything else needed there? Nary: I think that's adequate. Rountree: Let's have a roll call vote. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Rountree: I think that concludes our business this evening, unless anybody else has another comment. Zaremba: I move we adjourn. Bird: Second. Rountree: Moved and seconded to adjourn. All in favor aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Rountree: We are done. Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop Apri121,2009 Page 59 of 59 MEETING ADJOURNED AT 11:06 P.M. (AUDIO RECORD ON FILE OF THE PROCEEDINGS) cy ~~~ ~/ 0 ~ / ~~/ TAMMY DE WEERD, YOR DATE APPROVED ~° rFO ' JA EE LMAN, CITY CLERK ~ o~' .~ ,,~`9~~oUNT`~ ~ ~~~~~~ I~rI u~I~ R51~~~`