HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009 06-16Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop June 16, 2009
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, June
16, 2009, by Council President Charlie Rountree.
Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, and David
Zaremba.
Members Absent: Brad Hoaglun.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Tara Green, Caleb Hood, Steve Siddoway, Bruce Freckleton,
Matt Ellsworth, Thomas Barry, Ron Anderson and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Rountree: It's Tuesday, June 16th. I will get the right microphone here. I will call the
City Council Special Workshop Meeting and have roll call attendance. City Clerk.
Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda:
Rountree: And welcome you all this evening. We have a very busy agenda. I hope
your item is up first. If not, we will be spending the evening together. Next item on the
agenda is the adoption of the agenda.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Noting a couple things, Item 5-B, the resolution number is 09-672. Under
Department Reports, section five, there is a request to move K to the end of section
five, so that 5-K would come after 5-M. And in section six, the ordinance number is 09-
1419. And with those modifications I move we adopt the agenda.
Bird: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to adopt the agenda. All in favor? Opposed
same sign? Motion passes.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 3: CONSENT AGENDA:
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June 16, 2009
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A: Development Agreement: AZ 08-016 Southridge 31 by James
L. Jewett.
B: Budget Amendment for South Meridian Park Land for
$601,192.00.
C: Approve New Beer License for Chronic Taco, 3240 E. Louise
Dr.
D: Sewer Service Agreement with Coleman Homes, LLC, for
Cabella Creek Subdivision.
E: Professional Services Agreement for Musical Talent for
Concerts on Broadway.
Rountree: Next item is the Consent Agenda.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move we adopt the Consent Agenda as published and for the Mayor to sign
and the Clerk to attest.
Bird: Second.
Rountree: Roll call vote, please.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 4: COMMUNITY ITEMS/PRESENTATIONS:
A: Presentation of Scholarship Award to Tyler Hale.
Rountree: Next item, the community items for presentation and, Mayor, the
presentation of the scholarship award.
De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. President. We're honored to have our fourth scholarship
recipient here with us tonight and before I go down to the podium and present Tyler his
plaque and information on how to get his scholarship, let me give you a little information
about Tyler. He graduated from Mountain View High School and plans to study material
science at Brigham Young University. He has been very dedicated to community
service in a variety of areas from assisting with blood drives to visiting the elderly in their
homes and participating in community projects, like Breakout Meridian. Tyler truly
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enjoys serving others. For his Eagle Scout project he helped settle and landscape the
old Pine Street school in its new location. He has an amazing academic record and is
active with his faith community. He is described as hard working, energetic,
compassionate, and a well rounded person. We do wish him well in his endeavors and
if you will bear with me for a moment I'll go down and present Tyler his scholarship.
Tyler, do you want to come forward. It's certainly my privilege to offer you just a small
token of our congratulations and hope that you have great success for this next stage in
your life and career. This is just in recognition of your high level of community
involvement, academic merit, and outstanding leadership potential. We congratulate
you and wish you luck. Thank you.
B: Update of Split Corridor Phase 2 Design with ACHD.
Rountree: Next item on the agenda, the split corridor phase two design update. Matt,
you're going to introduce this?
Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor. Here
with us this evening is the project manager for the design of phase two of the split
corridor project Adam Zaragoza. We felt that it was time to give you an update. It's
been a little while. So, with that I will tum it over Adam to bring you guys up to speed on
the latest.
Zaragoza: Good afternoon, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm Adam
Zaragoza with ACHD, the project manager here to provide you just a brief update of
where we are at with the split corridor phase two design. A couple of areas that you
maybe interested in. So, a couple of areas here. First of all, the design right now is at
75 percent. We are heading into the 95 percent plan. We should have those by this
summer and, then, we will roll into the 99 percent. I'm assuming everybody knows at
this point in time that with the five year work program that the construction year did get
pushed from 2012 to 2013. A couple of areas of interest. First thing we are talking
about right now are the -- is this going to work here? Okay. First area of interest right
here is -- what you're looking at on this screen is what I have been calling triangle area
A. It will be vacant. Just a point of reference here is the Hungry Onion is just on the
bottom part right there. Main Street is just to the right of the triangle area. We have
been in discussions with Meridian staff on what to do there for treatment through this
proximity to the City Hall area. Triangle area B, again, another area that will be bought
out during the right-of--way acquisitions. Again, due to its proximity to City Hall and the
downtown corridor area, what kind of treatments the Meridian city staff would like.
Again, just a point of reference. Right here we are at Meridian Road and the cross-over
is just there to the bottom of your screen. Triangle area C, the area bordered by the
Fairview and Main intersection, with the phase two project the free right is planned to be
removed and we have been discussing treatments with the staff as to what -- what to do
there as far as landscaping or what treatments that the staff would like to see. Possible
bicycle enhancements. Recently we have been looking at -- with the implementation of
phase one and the asphalt pathway that's at the end of Franklin, one of the treatments
-- our best option right now is the area that's in blue. Just to give you a point of
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reference is Franklin is to the south, just to the bottom of the screen here just out of the
picture. The cross-over goes right there with that triangle area A. We are reviewing the
feasibility for a concrete striped pathway between Franklin and Ada. And able to keep
the curve right there, that enables us to maintain the storm drainage system. It probably
will beaten foot, 12 foot wide concrete path. At that point we would probably have
shared roadway signs noted to the north of that up through Main Street. Access
challenges we will have with the businesses right there and one of the things we need
to look at is what I call rollercoaster effect where with the ten to 12 accesses that are
there, you don't want bikers and pedestrians doing this. So, that's something that if this
does go forward with the concrete pathway, that's something that we will need to figure
out and what to do to not have the rollercoaster effect. Pine Avenue between Main and
Meridian, been working with Matt recently. We have been talking about what's going to
happen with the on-street parking there. To give you just some dimensions and the
constraints that we are working with, there is 450 feet between the curbs of Meridian
and Main Street. There is 45 feet of right of way exists and the plan right now for the
cross-section is to have 11 foot travel lanes, 11 foot tum lane, and, then, a six foot curb
face as your bike lane. Pine Avenue is the dedicated east-west bike route. As far as
parking goes, there is 75 feet planned for each tum lane with the -- for the vehicle
storage and there is 86 feet for the taper length, which only means it leaves about 120
feet for the westbound and for the eastbound travelers for available parking, though it's
possible we could sneak a couple parking spots in there, but the area is so small. With
that I'll stand for any questions, comments.
Rountree: Discussion? Questions? Comments?
Bird: I have none. Appreciate the presentation.
Zaremba: Mr. President. Thank you for the presentation and, actually, this is a
comment that's a little bit outside of the phase two project and that is having moved the
intersection control signal from Idaho to Broadway recently, this is just a personal
opinion, but I think downtown works better with it moved. It seems to be a big
improvement, so thank you for doing that.
Bird: I didn't remember it was moved until I stopped.
Rountree: Adam, I have a question about your request for input as it relates to the
triangles and some of the areas that will be bought out in all three areas. You have
asked what is the city's preference and my question is what is the expectation on the
part of ACHD in terms of who is going to pay for it, because my understanding of TLIP
is that treatments are not necessarily something that they are including in project costs.
Zaragoza: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, certain areas of the triangles here we
are going to provide for pedestrians in order to get them access out. For this triangle
here, one of the things that we looked at during our design review is we don't want
people funneling into those areas. So, to answer your question as far as payment and
who is doing that, I think that's something that we will work out as we get going here.
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With the design being pushed another year -- or, excuse me, not the design, but
construction being pushed another year, we have the available time to work that -- work
those payment costs -- who is paying for what out.
Rountree: My next question relates to the acquisition of those rights of way. Are you
far enough along with the design in order to start that and, if not, what's the schedule for
that?
Zaragoza: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, typically our procedure is to not start
on the might of way acquisition until 99 percent. However, in the cross-over area we
have already bought out two of the three properties in that area that has been preserved
for these specific sections.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I imagine that this presentation will happen at the MDC and some of the
discussion on what to do with those triangular areas can -- can be discussed. The one
that's on Main Street is a great gateway into downtown and sets up a nice entry
opportunity to the old town area and I'm sure they have an interest in those discussions.
I guess I just wanted to make comment on phase one as it continues to -- it seems like
a real obstacle course at times and you never know what to expect the next day. But I
have gotten comments that it's already improved traffic flow, even with the guesswork
about how will be set up the next day. So, compliments to that. Certainly interest in
seeing it gets done sooner rather than later, but a notable change already. So,
compliment in that regard.
Zaragoza: Thank you. I will pass it to the construction crews and the necessary people
that have been working on it. Thank you.
Rountree: Any other questions?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Do you know off the top of your head the rough area size of the two triangles
A and B? Are we talking like a half acre or --
Zaragoza: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, that's probably the last piece of
paperwork I grabbed before I'm on my way over here, so -- the triangle piece that we
are looking at on your screen right now, triangle A, is 12,600 square feet. And, then,
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triangle area B is 12,400 square feet. And that does not include the two foot easement
that we would preserve for back of curb.
Zaremba: Thank you.
Rountree: Very good. Thank you for being here.
Zaragoza: Thank you.
Rountree: Appreciate the update.
Ellsworth: Mr. President?
Rountree: Matt.
Ellsworth: Before we move onto the next agenda item, City Council does have a joint
meeting on June 29th with the ACHD commission and we did reserve a spot on the
agenda for afollow-up conversation pertaining to the split corridor, if any issues arose
out of this presentation and they warrant that further discussion. From the sound of it, if
anything, there is just some additional coordination that has to occur between the city
and staff and MDC, rather than a joint discussion between this commission and the
Council. If -- if I'm construing that correctly, then, we can go ahead and remove that
item from the join meeting agenda.
Rountree: That would be my preference. I think we haven't identified any significant
issues, but MDC may.
Ellsworth: Thank you.
Rountree: Thank you, Matt. Tyler, I really compliment you on your accomplishments
and appreciate your attentiveness, but you're not obliged to remain here this evening.
If you have got something --
De Weerd: Mr. President, I already told him that.
C: Presentation Requesting Direction on Priority
Projects/Activities for PY2009 CDBG Action Plan.
Rountree: So, you're obviously welcome to stay. Next item on the agenda is
presentation, direction on CDBG grants. Matt.
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, staff is in the process
of drafting next year's action, which is a necessary step in~ the process of securing the
2009 program year entitlement which -- for program year 2009. It's going to be just shy
of a quarter of a million dollars, 250,000 dollars. So, again, that plan is in process at
this time and what I'm here before you this evening seeking is some direction as to the
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priority of projects the Council envisioned for inclusion in next year's plan. See on the
screen there the rough process plan at this time is to forward on the adopted version
from the city of the '09 action plan to HUD on August 5th of 2009. There is an interim
base there as well. One thing that worked really well the last time I was before you
guys for some similar direction was just working our way down the bench and having
everybody indicate one through six, one through seven, what the priority order of each
of those projects were and based on that I was able to go back and compile sort of a
composite prioritization for the city. So, if it seems an appropriate way to move forward,
then, that's what I'd like to engage in after a quick rundown of the projects that we are
contemplating here.
Rountree: Very good.
Ellsworth: Project number one is a familiar one to you, Centennial Park, to purchase
and install playground equipment. That came to the top the last time that we were here
and it's still right there on the radar. There should be plenty of room for inclusion in next
year's action plan. In addition, installing game tables and insuring ADA accessibility for
that park site. The next project that the staff identified for your consideration is code
enforcement in the designated low moderate income area around downtown. That's
received funding in previous years and we have been in discussions with the police
department to sort of streamline that process, make it easier for everybody involved.
Facade improvements is another one that was identified as a top priority the last time
that staff sought direction. That is an activity where MDC acts on the city's behalf in
administering. The MDC finalized the process for administration of the facade
improvement program. They have identified a project and we are hoping to move
forward initiating that project later on this summer. The next one may be a new one to
some of you and the high level summary of the situation is that there are three mobile
home parks around town that at present time lack adequate fire flow to protect area
residents should a fire erupt in those areas and I had some discussions with the fire
department, as well as Public Works staff and we felt it was appropriate to bring it to
you, because, again, there is a public safety concern that needs to be addressed. With
that I'd offer a couple words of caution about using CDBG funds for that purpose and
those are that on the one hand this is -- each of these three parks are privately owned,
so a bit of a deviation from the norm for the city to come in and use public dollars to
alleviate the risk that would otherwise be taken care of by the owner of that property.
Could also run into possible equity issues among park owners, for example, if one of the
owners is willing to come to the table and take care of their responsibility for insuring the
safety of their residents. How do you divvy things out, essentially. The third one is that
the necessary improvements based on very very preliminary discussions with the Public
Works could -- could entirely dry up next year's allocation of CDBG funds and, again,
there are different ways that we could approach it, whether it's entirely funding it,
whether it's some sort of a match, there could be some ways to cut down on that cost,
but it's a limited pool of funds that we are discussing here and, again, it's up to Council
as to how best to spend those. But, again, there is a public safety concern, so for that
reason we wanted to make sure that you were aware that this is a potential means of
addressing that. The next project, another familiar one for you, is the Five Mile Creek
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pathway segment H1. It goes from Fairview down to Pine along the Five Mile Creek.
Ongoing discussions with property owners prior to initiating the design, which we do
hope to do sometime this summer. So, as it relates to the program year 2009 action
plan we would be talking about wrapping up any additional required environmental that
would be attached to the federal funds involved and moving forward with construction,
whether that's phased, to initiate construction for the end of this next fiscal year in order
to transition with the following year's entitlement to complete construction. We can
figure out the details on that at a later date, depending on the priority that this project
lands in. Home ownership assistance is another one where a sub recipient administers
this service on the city's behalf. Boise, Ada County Housing Authority has 50,000
dollars in the current program year and those funds go to aid eligible home buyers in
that purchase. They recently closed on the first home, they have a second home that
is, hopefully, here in Meridian before the end of the month, so it's been a strong
partnership so far and it's certainly one worth considering for continued funding in the
future. And, finally, here this one's a little bit different. Council in the past has
expressed interest in -- in these public service projects and CDBG regulations limit the
city to 15 percent of an annual allocation to devote to those sort of projects. The city
received formal requests from two entities for three separate activities for use of these
funds and rather than diving into the details of each of those activities at this time, it may
be better in the interest of time to come back at the July workshop when the requesting
entities are present to answer any questions and discuss how best to divvy up those
funds. For purposes of this evening's discussion I suppose the first question for you is
the amount of total funds that we should devote to this purpose. Staffs
recommendation is to -- to set aside the full 15 percent off the top for public service
projects. Each of these three activities are -- are well in line with the intent of the CDBG
program, they are very strong proposals, and each of them meet a very worthy need
within the city based on staffs assessment of these programs. So, yeah, the first
question for you, again, is -- is the level of support that we should devote to those public
service projects and outside of that, unless there are any questions, we could move
forward with the additional exercise of prioritizing each of the remaining projects from
there.
Rountree: Questions for Matt?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess, Matt, on the fire protection upgrades, if you look in terms of a
granting program, would that set aside some of the concerns about inequity and that
sort of thing? Certainly I agree that the properly owner, if there is a public safety
concern there, they should have responsibility for the upgrades, but we know that that is
a low income trailer park, so come back with some kind of a -- a grant program or a
matching program or something that -- that can help with that kind of equity question,
because I know it will -- it will surface. And, then, in the public services, what has been
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the total request? We have 35,000. Those three are all very worthy, but what is the
total for the requests that are in front of us.
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, in regards to the first
one, we can certainly consider some sort of a match and the level of that funding would
be recommended by staff in light of the other priorities and are identified this evening
and that full draft plan will be presented for the initiation of the public hearing comment
period coming up next week. So, that's certainly something we can consider based on
this evening's discussion. In relation to the second question, the total amount in dollars
requested by the two entities pushes six figures and, obviously, that's well outside of
what we can do with the 35,000 dollars available under 15 percent there, the cap that
we are working within. But in light of the needs and in light of the caliber of the request,
again, that's why staff recommended setting aside for purposes of tonight's discussion
that full 15 percent to come back again a month from now at the July workshop to
consider exactly how best to divvy that up.
Rountree: Further questions? Matt has asked for some direction and prioritization. I
think the last time we did it we just each gave him some numbers. If each of you are
ready to do that -- Matt, are you ready to take notes?
Ellsworth: Yes, Mr. President, I am.
Rountree: I'll give you my comments first, then. I agree that the full 15 percent of the
funds to the public services and we can -- we can see how that splits out when we do
the nuts and bolts piece at some point in time. My first priority would be to get
something done that we have started previously and that's the Five Mile pathway. My
second would be to finish the playground activities in Centennial Park. Thirdly would be
facade improvements. Fourth would be code enforcement. Fifth would be fire
protection. And sixth would be home ownership. My concern with fire protection is that
it is, in fact, a private property operation and I think before we even consider that we
need to know the status and future of those particular parks, what the owners plan in
the near future for those. I would not want to see a lot of money expected, only to see
the money needed to potentially relocate some folks if they want to change use.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I agree with how you have categorized in priority order and I, too, with the
grant type for the fire protection upgrades, if they expend dollars you know that there is
going to be a commitment to stay there for awhile and I won't comment further than that.
Rountree: I agree.
Bird: Mr. President?
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Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with your -- you know. And I definitely agree with 15 percent in the public
service, the full 15 percent. And the Five Mile, Centennial, facade, code, fire, down the
line. I truly agree -- I think -- I'd like to see us get the Five Mile finished and Centennial
done -- park done. They would be my one and two, but --
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: My order of preference is similar, but not exactly the same. I would put
Centennial Park first and my comment on the game tables -- some people may not
know. I believe the history on that is that United Heritage donated to us, currently in the
possession of the parks department, some cement tables and the money would be used
to place either checker boards or chess boards or possibly backgammon boards on the
surface of the tables. They come with benches. Then, that's just an applicae that would
need to be laminated on. So, really, what we are talking about is putting the applique
on, laminating it, and actually placing them in the park. The cement tables would need
to be on a fairly solid foundation. So, we actually have the tables and this would just
complete that project. So, Centennial Park is my number one. And the other things that
you had on that list. Five Mile Creek completion would be my number two. The facade
improvements I put as number three. Code enforcement I put as number four. Number
five is the public service one. And I agree with the 15 percent. The one comment I
would make there is that I see one of the items was to help the Boys and Girls Club
purchase a bus for some of their activities or something like for a shuttle, something or
other. Was that a bus or --
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman
Zaremba, the Boys and Girls Club already owns the bus. The details of their proposal
essentially break down to hiring a bus driver, gas, scheduled maintenance, things of
that nature in order to shuttle -- shuttle students from Peregrine, from Meridian High,
and from Meridian Elementary to the Boys and Girls Club after school.
Zaremba: Okay. That helps. The other part of my question was going to be -- I know
that our parks department is putting in a request to own a van, which they end up
having to rent fairly frequently, and I was thinking if we are subsidizing the Boys and
Girls Club whether we could share it with them. But that doesn't sound like that would
work, so -- but, at any rate, I have that public service one at number five. Number six I
would put the home assistance and that leaves the fire protection one as last and I have
to claim not to be very enthusiastic about that one. I certainly understand the purpose
and the value it would be in protection, but it opens a can of worms of if the city gets
involved in subsidizing private homeowners or private property owners to make safety
improvements, do we open ourselves up on some properly that we didn't help for them
to come say that something that -- say it happens in a safety nature is our fault and I
just as soon not open that can of worms, so I put that one last.
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Rountree: Thank you. Matt, you have got our opinions. I leave it your hands and I
know you'll do a good job as per normal. Anything else you need?
Ellsworth: Mr. President, thank you.
D: Update from ACHD Staff on City's Request for Speed Limit
Changes.
Rountree: Okay. Very good. Next item on the agenda, Caleb, update from ACRD on
speed limit changes.
Hood: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You may
recall in January and even before that we discussed some changes to speed limits. In
January we brought those before the ACHD board of commissioners. Ross Oyen is the
traffic engineer supervisor over there at ACHD and he has performed a study and is
here this evening to report those findings back to Mayor and Council. So, Mr. Oyen.
Oyen: Madam Mayor, City Council Members, I'm Ross Oyen, traffic engineering
supervisor, ACRD. And it's been some months since your request came my way and
we have put quite a bit of effort into checking some existing speeds and making --
putting together some recommendations for you and so if I can figure out the
technology, we will kind of get moving here. When we started out we looked at Locust
Grove from Amity to Chinden, about seven miles. Franklin Road from Linder to Main.
Overland from Stoddard to Highway 69, Meridian Road as it's better known. And we
also looked at a couple of segments that perhaps were not necessarily quite as high
priority. Fairview from Eagle to Locust Grove. Meridian from McMillan to Chinden.
Just very quick, a couple of words about the intent of speed zoning and kind of the first
part is, really, the -- the traffic engineering perspective. A pretty longstanding rule for
traffic engineers is you attempt to set a speed limit at or below the 85th percentile speed
of traffic and that is the speed at which 85 percent of your traffic is traveling at or below.
The benefits of that is it achieves the lowest accident rate. Typically encourages
compliance from the majority and so you get people, essentially, reinforcing the speed
limit just by their behavior and it supports the enforcement efforts so that the -- your
police officers can spend time dealing with the obvious offenders and -- rather than --
than kind of contending with a speed limit that doesn't really meet expectations of the
drivers and so, obviously, one of the things that the Council brought forward was a
desire to establish consistency on roadways within the city. That, again, reinforces
driver expectations, they get on a piece of road and the speed limit is likely to be the
same as the one they just came off of or very similar to and the other thing we'd like to
do -- and, again, this is from an enforcement standpoint, I think, from the police
department's perspective, like to minimize mid mile changes in speed limits and that's
one of the reasons we looked at Meridian now. So, that just helps them out a bit. That
is a little bit of a muddy slide there. There is -- and the reason to have it here is maybe
to just show that there is a little bit more going on than just perhaps what shows up on
the map and I think we will -- we will jump to the map and we can talk about some of
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these technical details as -- as we proceed. So, we looked at, again, the seven miles of
Locust Grove from Amity to Chinden and the middle five miles, if you will, our -- the
findings of our speed study and the associated work we did, suggest that -- that the
speed limits that Council has suggested are very appropriate and we'd suggest going
ahead and moving forward with those. And the same thing applies with regard to
Franklin from Main over to Linder, that's posted at 35 miles per hour and the speed
study indicated that it was more appropriate to have a speed limit there of 40, which is
consistent with the roads to the east. And, similarly, with Overland Road from Meridian
west to Stoddard, again, we posted it 35 miles per hour and I have to kind of take
ownership of that one. I had concerns just due to some access issues and a bit of a hill
heading up towards Roaring Springs there and, in reality, what the study has shown us
is that 40 is really a more appropriate number and so we are getting rid of those -- if we
raise them up to 40 we are getting rid of a low limit that is sandwiched between roads
with somewhat higher limits. So, now we will talk about the ones where I'm suggesting
maybe something different than what you have asked and so I'll start with Locust Grove
between McMillan and Chinden. The existing posted speed is 50 miles per hour and I
think the desire is ultimately as that urbanizes certainly 35 miles per hour would be a
more desirable sort of a posting, but the findings of our study at this point are that --
that, really, I can only, from an engineering perspective, support a reduction in speed to
about 45 miles per hour. And so that -- you know, that much comes out of the study
and we can -- when I wrap up I'll talk about that just a little bit further. The other end of
the spectrum on Locust Grove is the piece between Victory and Amity, again, the
request was for 45 miles per hour. The current posting is 40 and the study actually
recommends or would suggest that 45 miles per hour is more appropriate and my
suggestion is that we keep it at 40 and that really has more to do with -- with some
recent issues that have come up with the opening of the Sienna school and a fair
amount of interest that's come our way in the school district and also to Mr. Hood over
here at the city to get some pedestrian crossings in place, not only on Locust Grove, but
in the context of Locust Grove, if we go to put a school speed zone in and we -- and we
want to put a school speed of 20 miles per hour on that road, I would recommend
keeping the speed limit at a maximum of 40, if we are going to do those things. So --
so, while the numbers, as they sit there now don't bear it out, I think the conditions out
there with the school are support enough to just maintain 40 and continue to monitor the
situation out there. And the other piece that we looked at is a piece where we have a --
amid mile shift of speed limit and we looked at Meridian from Chinden to about a half
mile south. It is posted at 45, while the south half mile of that segment is at 35. So,
notionally at least looking at the -- the other roadways on either side, the desire would
be to get it probably down to 35 miles per hour and it just appears that -- that that is a bit
premature. The study really tells us 45 is probably the right number right now and that's
what I would suggest we stay with. So, to kind of wrap that up and put it back onto a
boring slide, instead of a pretty map, I think those roadways where -- where what the
Council has requested doesn't really match up exactly with what we are seeing from the
study. What I would suggest is that we -- is that we make the reduction where we can
on Locust Grove south of McMillan to 45 and, then, very closely monitor it. You know,
Madeline Estates is out there, not a lot of activity has gone on there, but that will change
over time and so that's one of the things about our speed zones is they are something
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that we have to continue to keep tabs on and so what I suggest there is update the
radar study annually for possible reduction and a similar sort of thing with Fairview,
Locust Grove to Eagle, we took a look at that one and I think I skipped over it. We know
we have got some pretty significant development coming there. That's probably going
to have some effect over time on speeds. Right now 40 miles per hour is -- is an
appropriate posting based on the way the traffic is using it. But, again, it's something
that as the development goes along I think we revisit it and I would suggest, similarly,
that we do the same thing with the segment of Meridian. So, with that I will stand for
questions.
Rountree: Any questions? Comments? I will start, because I'm sure there will be
more. What's the recommendation on Locust Grove from Ustick south to Overland?
Oyen: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, the recommendation on -- on Locust
Grove from Overland to -- actually, get this right -- from Overland to Fairview is to raise
the speed limit -- there we go. Thank you, Caleb. Raise the speed limit to -- from 35 to
40 miles per hour. And that is supported by the study. It just makes sense to do that.
The Overland to Victory piece holds up well at 40. It's posted that way. I wouldn't
recommend any change there. From Fairview to Ustick the request was to -- to change
to 40 and the study supports that. It's performing well at 35, but 40 is probably a -- of
the two choices, if you will, probably more ideal. And our piece from Ustick to McMillan
is posted 35. The numbers kind of -- are -- put it in that 35 to 40 range, but my
suggestion is hold the line with the 35 mile per hour posting that you have suggested
and, you know, we have got the school there, we have got the fire station, we have got
quite a little bit going on there. I think it's reasonable to just leave it where it is, so --
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: While you're talking about that stretch, the stretch from McMillan to
Chinden, you have an altemative high school on one side and on the opposite side of
the street is a private Christian school that's just going to be opening in the fall. I would
be concerned that with the higher speed limits with some of the recent activity that's
going in out there that is immediately up against that road to keep it consistent and carry
on the 35 clear from Ustick to Chinden just in light of the safety aspects.
Oyen: Madam Mayor, I certainly appreciate the comment. What I tell you is based on
what -- the conditions we saw when we went out and studied it. Yes, there is an
altemative high school. It doesn't generate a lot of pedestrian traffic. Does generate,
obviously, vehicle traffic. The Christian school is probably going to be similar in that it's
not going to generate a lot of pedestrian use, but it will create some activity that we
haven't had before. That may -- that may actually affect speeds in the area locally and
that's something that we can certainly always reconsider. My suggestion is we post it
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45 now and we follow up with it as we -- as the land use changes. So, a reduction to
35, basically, what I'm telling you is with that conditions that we measured is going to be
a pretty difficult one to get the stream of traffic to stick with.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Just a follow up. And I don't want this to sound caddy or offensive, but if the
city is requesting it, because we feel it might be a safety issue, what kind weight does
that have over a study?
Oyen: Madam Mayor, tough question. Obviously, I -- again, I'm giving you an
engineering opinion and all I'm telling you is that we certainly take that into account, you
know, you have identified a new school that's opening, there isn't an indication from
what safety information we have that the existing speed limit or a reduction from that to
45 miles per hour represents a safety problem of any kind and slower does not
necessarily equate to safer if we end up with more a dispersion of speeds, so that you
get more tail gating activity, more potential for passing, because those are the sorts of
activities, driver behaviors, that can come about if a speed limit is unrealistically low
based on the driver's perception.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: A follow up to the Mayor's is on -- between McMillan and Chinden. We have also
got on the comer there, the northeast comer we have got a convenience store and a
little retail thing going out and I can't figure out why we -- we would raise the speed limit
on a narrow two lane above what we have got on a nice four lane highway that we have
from Overland to basically halfway between Ustick and Fairview. We are keeping that a
40. I question the 40 from Overland south to Amity. That's a pretty narrow -- and there
is quite a few subdivision entries and exits there. I -- and, you know, there is two
churches there and that same -- with the schools. One of the churches has got ball
fields and stuff, which I'm sure is used quite heavily. I really question that 45 in that one
mile, but, like I say, I'm not an engineer, but Iwould -- and I'd a lot sooner see it
consistent. I mean you're going one mile at 35 and, then, all of a sudden you -- or
you're coming down one mile at 45 and all of a sudden you hit 35.
De Weerd: And, then, you're at 40.
Bird: And, then, you hit 40. And was one of our biggest -- I thought was my biggest
complaint is we'd go six miles on a -- on one of our roads and we'd have four or five
different speed limits. It wasn't consistent.
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Rountree: I can say this and Ross can't. Every year we get our drivers license renewed
and that makes us all experts, but that's not necessarily true. I appreciate what he says
about the study and people's behavior. That's how fast they are going to drive and it
becomes a significant enforcement issue if you do significantly post a speed limit lower
than drivers' expectations. I think his comment about an annual radar study will address
the issues on Locust Grove and I believe that they will probably show we need to
reduce those speeds, because we are going to have more volumes turning, you're
going to have a lot of school dismissals, start-ups, and that in itself will reduce some of
the speed limits, but what I want to say is that I appreciate you hearing what we said
initially and that's get some consistency in the police -- for the police to be able to know
where and what to enforce, because every mile on most of those corridors there is a
different speed limit and I got to tell you, if you happen to blink within the first 400 feet
going down the road, you, as a driver, didn't know how fast it was posted. So, I think
what you're doing is a good thing. One safety comment. and, boy, I agree with the --
up'ing the posting on Overland Road, is that that double line into the turn median on
Overland Road on -- west of 69 is not keeping people from making that left-hand turning
movement into Walgreens and to Lowe's and I know there is an issue of folks coming
out of the Shell station and crossing there. In all my travels there I have never seen a
near miss in that movement, but I see numerous cases where people are coming down
the hill and, then, getting in the lane going east to approach 69 for alert-hand turn in
conflict with people headed west into the turn lane across the double yellow, making a
left into those. So, you might want to look at a raised curb or median or something and
that might be something that the police department might want to work with you. I don't
know if there has been any accidents, but I have seen just randomly too many near
misses of people just missing head-ons.
Oyen: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, we will take a look at the -- whether we
are starting to see an actual accident history there. It's a very challenging area because
of the preexisting access and -- and we have some limitations on how far we can go
with -- with just unilaterally taking away access and so, you know, when we do it, we do
it in a very considered manner.
Rountree: I understand.
Oyen: We like to have the -- you know, have the support for it to document it, but
appreciate your other comments. Other questions?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess that's an interesting one. I have only seen it once. Could there be
something done on the present property that limits just a right into the -- the property,
because if you did that, that left turn movement would not be able to get in there. And,
then, that still allows JB's and Mr. Sandman and the gas station access out onto
Overland. I don't know. The traffic safety commission can take a look at that and have
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fun with it. So, the one area that we also had talked about is Pine Avenue and I didn't
see a recommendation on that. Talk about changing the speed limit in the middle of
nowhere. It's a great speed trap, but --
Oyen: Madam Mayor, I have to apologize. I think there were a couple of different
documents floating around out there and the one that I started with was actually one I
think that you conveyed to our director and it didn't include that, but I understand there
is another document out there that Mr. Nary has produced and so we probably have a
couple of other roadway segments we need to revisit in addition to Pine. I -- you know, I
have to apologize for it, I just did not see it. We are really comfortable with going
forward and visiting -- revisiting -- visiting or revisiting any of the roadways that you have
suggested and so we will go ahead and take that one under advisement and see if we
can come up with a -- you know, a recommendation and a good plan.
De Weerd: And, Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: One final comment on Locust Grove. You know, if we look at a 40 mile an
hour corridor and, then, change to 35 and, then, go to 45, at least if your study -- and I
don't want to offend a room full of engineers, so I won't, but -- that's something new, uh?
Is if you would consider at least 40 miles an hour, so you have some predictability or --
Oyen: Madam Mayor, a question just for clarification.
De Weerd: Between McMillan and Chinden.
Oyen: Between McMillan and Chinden. Yes, ma'am, we will take that under
advisement, because certainly one of the goals of the thing is consistency and so there
-- we are in a -- you know, a developing or a transitional environment as we get towards
Chinden, as we get farther from the downtown core on these routes and so it becomes
a little more challenging to be perfectly consistent, but we can sure -- you know, we can
sure kind of nudge things that direction. So, I will take that -- you know, I'll take that one
and, you know, kind of just think about moving that one immediately. And, again, it will
be a feedback loop. It's something where we are going to -- you know, we will make
some changes here, we will revisit them and see if what we have got is what we
expected.
De Weerd: It's a compromise.
Rountree: Bill, you were acting like you wanted to say something down there.
Nary: No, Mr. President. Mr. President, Members of the Council, I wasn't aware of the
-- the disconnect on the Pine Street one, so we will get that information back to Ross, so
we can get that answer.
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Oyen: Madam Mayor and Council Members, I'm -- since Mr. Wasson of my office is
now on active military duty and heading fairly far east pretty soon, I have actually
stepped into the safety commission and so I have a little bit more and better
communication with Mr. Nary and Mr. Colaianni or Lieutenant Colaianni and the other
members and I think that would be helpful as we go through this process of trying to get
what we all want, which is consistency and appropriate and safe speed limits.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Rountree: Final question or comment. At what point will we see postings change and is
there anything you need from us at this point, other than a move forward?
Oyen: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, the postings that -- that I have suggested
I'm prepared to go out and make by the end of the month.
Rountree: Terrific. Very good.
Oyen: The compromise recommendation I'm going to sleep on it, but I think you can
bank on it.
Item 5: Department Reports:
A: All Things Transportation
Rountree: Thank you. Next item, Item 5, Department Reports. All things
transportation. Caleb.
Hood: Mr. President, thank you. Mayor, Members of the Council. This is the bi-
monthly check in with you all to just kind of advise you of what's been going on in the
transportation realm. I did include most all things transportation in that memo, but I'm
not going to go through that entire memo, as I mentioned in the memo, but I do want to
spend some time and highlight a couple of things, again, that have transpired or about
to happen here regarding transportation in Meridian. First of all, TLIP, if you're following
along with the memo that I prepared, page two, top, there is a master street map
workshop planned for June 25th from 1:00 to 4:30 in the planning department
conference room. I have invited all the Planning and Zoning Commissioners to that
meeting. This is a step in the TLIP process where we will, basically, be looking at a
map of all the roads in Meridian and future roads in Meridian and, essentially, tagging
them with a typology for -- for each roadway in the city. So, I would extend an invitation
to the Council. However, if there are going to be three or more -- two or more,
attending, we need to notice it as a meeting and, then, we would probably change the
venue from being in our conference room to being in a more -- conference room A or
something like that. So, I have also extended that invitation to Councilman Rountree,
but I have not heard back if he's able to attend. But if you are interested, certainly let
me know and you can participate in that, too. Rails with Trails. Quickly wanted to let
you know that Alta Planning and Design out of Portland is going to be in town later this
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week, Thursday and Friday. I will be meeting with Matt and some other stake holders in
the area, COMPASS, ACRD, I'll try and make some contact with Idaho Northern and
and some of the property owners along the corridor. Ten Mile interchange. The bids
came in on June 9th. They were approximately 20 million dollars below what the STIP
estimated for the construction of that project. There will be a ground breaking ceremony
held on the site, so the southeast corner of I-84 at Ten Mile on Tuesday, June 23rd, at
3:00 p.m. Bring your shovels I have been told. Also on the -- regarding the Ten Mile --
De Weerd: We have to bring our own shovels?
Hood: I don't think you probably have to. I think you may have been provided -- I'll
double-check on that and if you're supposed to bring your own, I'll let you know, but I
think yours is probably provided.
De Weerd: I carry it with me.
Hood: If you have a special hard hat you want to wear, though, you probably need to
supply that. Regarding the Ten Mile interchange, there is 880,000 dollars is the dollar
amount that ITD has landed on for what it's going to take to landscape slash hardscape
around the interchange, so -- so that's progressing forward as well. Just wanted to let
you know about that. The Ustick and Linder intersection has -- I understand some of
you are aware that is under construction. They closed the intersection here a couple
weeks -- I think the 5th and 6th. It was closed for a couple of days and nights so they
could do some of that. I'll touch on that project here in just another, excuse me, second,
but they do anticipate that project to be done in the fall of this year. So, before school
starts or, again, right as school is underway. The Meridian Road interchange. The
Mayor will be attending the ITD board meeting on this Thursday at 10:00 a.m. That will
be held at District Three's office on Chinden Boulevard. 8150. We are going to show
the ITD board how much that rebuilt interchange means and the Mayor will be
presenting to that board. If you can attend -- fill the room is what we are trying to use to,
again, show that support. Also, while I have got the floor, there is a resolution is the
next agenda item and, essentially, that's what that resolution does is shows a support
for using GARVEE funds to rebuild the Meridian Road interchange. The ACHD joint
meeting. Matt mentioned it earlier. You do have a joint meeting scheduled on June
29th at 10:00 a.m. at ACHD with their commissioners. In the memo -- and this is where
if you do have that electrically by chance, if you can move to page five -- you don't have
to, but I have bullet pointed the potential agenda items -- at least the draft agenda items
we have. I'd like to run through those with you real quick to make sure we are on the
same page and see if there may be a couple of them that need to come off or some that
need to go on. The first thing is impact fees. This is very related to the recent police
and fire impact fees action you all took a week or two ago now and ask the ACHD
commission a similar question if they'll defer their collection of commercial impact fees
until occupancy is requested by the developer. So, maybe I'll pause just real quick --
I'm assuming that that's okay, but if someone has aquestion -- further question or
doesn't think it's an appropriate topic, please, speak up now or I'll leave it on the
agenda. The second one on there downtown split comdor and I think after that
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presentation I'm going to go ahead and yank that, as you already mentioned, or
consensus here earlier when Matt had the floor. East 2nd Street. This one I'm not
really in the loop on. I certainly know that they have -- they -- ACRD has restriped a lot
of downtown consistent with MDC's restriping plan for the downtown core. However,
East 2nd Street is still -- hasn't been converted to that one way southbound. I don't
really know what the status is. I don't know if it's something where it's a joint meeting
worthy or not, but I've had it on this draft agenda for about six months now, so I just
want to touch base and see -- I did shoot an a-mail over to Shaun Wardle. He didn't
think that maybe it needed to be on the joint meeting, but, again, I've had it on the
agenda for some time now, so before I just pulled it off I wanted to touch base and see if
there were thoughts on -- on that being a topic or not.
Rountree: Comment?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I don't think it's probably timely.
Hood: Thank you. The fourth bullet on their policy is the cost share policy. I will let you
know that ACHD -- this is another one that's been on the agenda for quite some time.
ACHD did, at the end of May, May 27th, adopt a cost share policy. We did want to
discuss with them before they adopted that policy a little bit of what the rationale for that
policy was and just make sure, again, we understood where they are coming from with
that policy. There will be another opportunity for us to talk with ACHD, at least at the
staff level, and we will talk about future joint meetings here in just a second, too.
Regarding their actual code and how that relates to their recently adopted cost share
policy. Again, earlier on I was hoping that they could just give us a for example this is
how cost share would work. I still think that would be beneficial, even if this -- at this
point in the game without them having that integrated into their code, but, again, if it's
not something that the Council wants to have that discussion at this point, we can take it
off as well.
Rountree: Comments?
De Weerd: I think that is a timely discussion.
Rountree: Heads are nodding. Keep it on.
Hood: Are there any -- so, I just mentioned a couple of things there. If there are other
topics -- sub topics within that general topic that you would like -- I have been asked by
ACHD to kind of maybe set the stage a little bit better for some of these, not just having
an agenda item, but kind of say why are we asking for this to be an agenda. So, if you
have some of those, again, sub -- sub topics that I can share with them to kind of set the
stage so they are not walking in blind to this, saying, oh, they want to talk about this
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aspect of that, then, they can prepare or their staff can prepare them to have that
discussion. I'll leave these things, but if you can think of anything else regarding cost
share that you're particularly interested in, you could pass that information onto me I
would appreciate it.
Rountree: The only that comes to mind is flexibility of the policy as it relates to
participation.
Hood: Thank you. Meridian speed limit is also on there and Ihad a -- you know
depending on how it went tonight -- Madam Mayor, not to step on anyone's toes, it
sounds like you two have reached a mutual agreement there on one of those roadways,
but if there are certain things that you want to have a roadway or two just -- you don't
agree with or whatever with the study, that is a mechanism, potentially, where they
could -- I'm not trying to dis their staff, but certainly if you wanted to have that discussion
and you really felt strongly about a roadway or two that maybe wasn't consistent with
the -- we can leave it on there or I can pull it off, so -- I'm tempted to pull it off, unless
you guys have something else that you want to discuss with them. The other may be
adding -- it's place could potentially be that that center median or -- and that would be
just a quick thing I would think to request -- I know it's similar to the Maverick there on
Locust Grove at Overland as well, that the 33 Quick -- if we can plant the seed maybe. I
can even probably do that at a staff level. Certainly it carries more wait coming from the
Mayor and Council, but I don't know that there is consensus there or if that's something
you all want to add in its place or not. Just a thought.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I think staff level probably is fine with that. There will be another weighty
topic from Public Works that we do need to add on and I think, Tom, were you going to
include that in your -- your department report or your presentation or -- do want to talk
about that now?
Bany: I'm sorry, what kind of support were you looking for from Public Works?
De Weerd: Well, Tom, I guess we are looking at the joint meeting topics for ACHD and
the City Council and the recent occurrence or conflict that we have going on with ACHD
right now.
Barry: Yeah. Madam Mayor, we were not planning to discuss that tonight. I wanted to
brief you fully on that and let you know the course of action we took with ACHD. It's still
sort of going back and forth at the moment. We hope to have final resolution here -- or
at least direction in the not too distance future, preferably before, obviously, this meeting
with ACRD. But I wanted to sit with you -- we have about three other issues with
ACHD, too, that require some attention. So, I want to get your opinion as to what --
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which of those items you'd like to see placed on the ACHD meeting agenda and we'd be
happy to address any and all.
De Weerd: Okay. Caleb, I guess pending that meeting -- it's probably all about
communication and coordination. Project coordination and expectation of roles and
responsibilities, probably the reasonable summary at this point. It does need a place
holder and you can let them know that we will get more details to the topic once we can
frame it.
Hood: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, and Tom, Anna brought
this up this aftemoon -- late this aftemoon regarding this project and I can put the place
holder down that we had talked about when she brought it up. As I understand Mr.
Bany has prepared a letter to ACRD and that may serve as background information
topic of discussion. I have not seen the letter, but if you're okay with me making that --
basically the background information for, again, setting the stage for where -- what we
need to talk about with them, unless there is something else that you want to put in that
packet, that's what I would propose to do, so --
Barry: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Mr. Hood, that would be
just fine. We are happy to provide the letter. ACHD's in receipt of the letter, we sent it
certified return receipt, and we got that back a couple days ago. So, we are happy to
include that. We sent it to the deputy director of ACHD. I don't know that the director's
aware, so you guys might want to make the directors aware or we can certainly do that
as a courtesy, as well as the commission.
De Weerd: I'm sure he's aware.
Bany: Pardon me?
De Weerd: I'm sure he will be aware once they get the letter.
Barry: I think so. The other issues that we may or may not want to address -- the
Mayor and I will need to go through and see if it's appropriate for this next meeting. So,
Madam Mayor, you and I want to get together here shortly, we could give Mr. Hood
some direction as to what other items might need to be placed on that agenda.
De Weerd: Okay.
Hood: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Sue from ACHD,
administrative assistant, has asked -- they have a meeting tomorrow and they were
hoping to get our draft agenda items -- I've put out a few things before you tonight and
we get back with her tomorrow. So, I don't know what Mr. Barry's and your schedule is
like, but sooner rather than later certainly would be appreciated.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
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Rountree: Madam. Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess, Caleb, you can tell them as far as you know that's what it is and
there may be an addition.
Hood: Fair enough. Thank you. Finally, just to close out this -- this topic, I did have a
joint meeting on there, so setting the next meeting date seemed to be appropriate, given
the difficulty we had scheduling this one, so if you can bring your calendars or let's talk
-- do you want to do a quarterly star or every six months or whatever the case may be,
but some of the discussion, maybe, so we don't have to the letters back and forth trying
to -- trying to get a meeting scheduled, anyways, was my thought. So, if there are any
other topics, please, let me know ASAP so I can get from them that revised draft
agenda at hearings. With that I'll conclude our presentation on this topic.
B: Resolution No. Supporting the
Rebuilding of Merdian Interchange.
Rountree: As well as your comment on Item No. B. So, we have a resolution before us,
09-672. If you have read that and wish to make amotion --
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve resolution 09-672.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve resolution 09-672. Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, nay; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: TWO AYES. ONE NAY. ONE ABSENT.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I just wanted to thank Caleb for all of his efforts on not only the Meridian
interchange, but the number of other moving targets that we have kind of thrown his
way and appreciate the due diligence you have given it and you have done fantastic
work. So, thank you.
Hood: That's my job. Thank you.
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Rountree: I'd say the stimulus package was real stimulating, wasn't it? Your direction
anyway. Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Caleb, this kind of slipped by while you were discussing it. I'm thrilled to see
that the Ten Mile interchange is likened to safe 20 million dollars. I think that's what you
said. Any chance of encouraging ITD to either put that into the Meridian interchange or
a Linder overpass?
Hood: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, that is going to be the main
topic that the Mayor is going to be discussing -- presenting to the ITD board on
Thursday. There are some 30 million dollars already in GARVEE savings. I do want to
say they probably won't save 20 million dollars on that project after you get your change
orders and all that, but just preliminary estimates it came in about 20 million dollars
under what they expected to pay. Or, again, what has been set aside, essentially,
through the bond program that they can potentially pay for that project. So, there is
some significant cost savings, in addition to the Orchard and Vista, they are coming in
with the same type of estimates and if they get constructed this year or next, we'll see
ten, twelve, fifteen million dollars a pop that, then, are pooled to a 60, 65, 70 -- just in
the I-84 comdor, they could pay fora 40, 45 million dollar project. So, yes, that is -- that
is what we are going to ask ITD -- the ITD board to do is to add one more project to the
GARVEE list using those cost savings.
Zaremba: Thank you.
C: Budget Amendment for Heroes Park -Phase 3 Maintenance
Building for $98,000.00.
Rountree: Thank you, Caleb. Next item, 5-C, budget amendment. Steve.
Siddoway: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You
have before you a requested budget amendment for 98,000 dollars. I actually wish to
request to reduce that amount tonight by 11,000 dollars to 87,000. My intent is to cover
this budget amendment with the savings that we have realized from the Settlers Village
Square project. And I did find 11,000 dollars of un-posted transactions that I needed to
take off that -- that request to keep that whole. The reason for it is so -- through the
Heroes Park project, which was sent out to bid last Wednesday -- and we have apre-
bid meeting on it this Thursday -- this budget amendment would allow me to put the
maintenance building in the base bid, as opposed to as an alternate, which I believe we
will get better prices if its in the base bid. So, my request -- as you -- we have talked
previously about the separation that we did of the maintenance building from the
concessions and restroom building and put over, excuse me, on the west side of the
park and so I guess that's the presentation that I have that we would like to be able to
put the maintenance building in the base bid. This amount would provide us with
enough budget to meet the current cost estimates and we plan to cover it with the cost
savings from Settlers Village Square Phase One and I'll stand for any questions.
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Rountree: Any questions for Steve on the request?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Seeing none, thank you, Steve.
Siddoway: Thank you.
Rountree: Need a motion for this consideration.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move we approve a budget amendment for Heroes Park phase three
maintenance building in the amount not to exceed 87,000 dollars.
Bird: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the request for a budget
amendment for a maintenance building, 87,000 dollars. Roll call.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Nary: Mr. President? Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, because
many of these budget items you have heard, as you'd like you can certainly hear all of
them and, then, move individually at the time and, then, it might speed you up a little bit
if you want to. I mean you certainly don't have to, but you can do that if you'd wish.
D: Budget Amendment for Idaho Power Rebate for Energy
Efficiency for $100,000.00
Rountree: I'm hearing one at a time, so -- next budget amendment request, Caleb.
Hood: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I'll try to keep it under
three minutes. The next budget amendment request is regarding the 100,000 dollars
that we received from Idaho Power on the energy efficient -- for the energy efficiency
building. In May Anna came to you and asked for some direction on how to re-invest
that money. So, this request is that proposal getting back to you for the first half of that
money. So, 50,000 of the 100,000 dollars -- the 40,000 of it going to a grant for green
businesses, 7,800 for promoting and administration of the green business grant
program, 2,200 for compact florescent spotlights on downtown banners and, then, Anna
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will come back to -- with more details in the future and on the rest of the 50,000 dollars,
too. So, I will stand for any questions.
Rountree: Questions for Caleb?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Need a motion.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the budget amendment on the Idaho Power rebate for the sum
of 100,000 dollars.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the budget amendment for
100,000 dollars. Roll call.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
Rountree: Motion passes.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
E: Budget Amendment for Police Training Funds for $4,760.00
Rountree: Item 6-E. I do not see the chief here. Somebody want to tell us about this?
Colaianni: President Rountree, Madam Mayor, Council Members, I haven't talked to the
chief about this, but I do know what it's about, because I'm the one that put on the class.
This budget amendment is to -- this is income that was raised when we put on a K-9
training school here a few months ago. I was the one that brought the vendor in from
Alabama. He put on a school for our K-9 to certify them as instructors and as a result
we sold seats to this school to help offset the cost to the city and as a result we have
income sitting in the account and it needs to be moved back into our training fund, so
we can spend it before the end of the budget year.
Rountree: Very good. Any questions?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Need a motion.
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Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the budget amendment for the police department, police
training fund, 4,760 dollars.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the police training fund, 4,760.
Roll call.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
F: Budget Amendment for Fire Safety Education for $13,228.00.
Rountree: Item F. Mr. Anderson.
Anderson: Yes, Mr. President. This budget amendment is a request for 13,228 dollars
to purchase some item like CPR manikins, a fire extinguisher training prop, smoke
detectors, and pub ed materials. This -- this budget amendment would be offset -- we
have collected this same dollar amount, 13,228, through grants through the Idaho Fire
Chiefs, through Walmart, and Light My Fire organization, as well as numerous small
donations. So, these are donations that have come into the city, intended for this
purpose, and so we are asking for this budget amendment so we can expend those
funds in this budget year.
Rountree: Thank you. Any questions? Need a motion.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move we approve the budget amendment for fire safety education for
13,228 dollars.
Bird: Second.
Rountree: Moved and seconded to approve the budget amendment for 13, 228 dollars.
Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
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G: Budget Amendment for Mayor's Youth Advisory Council for
$3,393.00.
H: Budget Amendment for State of the City for $5,994.00.
I: Budget Amendment for Meridian Business Day for $4,500.00.
Rountree: Items G, H and I. Robert, are you going to do those? Okay. Thank you.
Simmons: Council President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, the first one is a
budget amendment for the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. This is to allow to send a
check to the Idaho Meth Project for the funds that were raised by the youth council for
their fund raising dinner to cover their expenses for that evening.
Rountree: Why don't you go through all three and we will do the three Mayor's office
requests.
Simmons: Right. The second one, the budget amendment for the State of the City, this
allows for expenditure of the additional funds that were raised from the State of the City
event. We know some of the places where this will be used at this point in time. We
have committed to purchase some stuff for the art gallery per the Arts Commission's
request. Also an item for the -- under the Initial Point piece that we have here for City
Hall. We also have some other items, some other framing things that we'd like to get
done related to the art pieces that are selected from the student art shows and we
collecting those from the artists and we'd like to add those as permanent fixtures here in
the City Hall. We'd like to do a back drop for city events very similar to the ones that
you pull up from the ground and be able to use those for State of the City or other press
conferences or any other city filming that we do. Potentially also looking at doing
another pieces of art through the Arts Commission if that's something they -- they want
to pursue. Those are the uses that we are looking at for those expenses. Nothing is set
in stone, with the exception of the pieces that are already submitted. This gives you an
idea. And, then, the third item is of the Meridian Business Day budget amendment.
That is to -- oh, those expenses all raised by Josh to pay for the events for that. The
event was 3,000. The additional 1,500 would potentially go towards another event
before the end of this year that hasn't been decided. If not, we may be looking to try to
use those funds next year and we will be working with finance if that's the case.
Rountree: Any questions?
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve the budget amendment for the Mayor's Youth Advisory
Council of 3,393 dollars; the State of the City for 5,994 dollars, and the Meridian
Business Day for 4,500 dollars.
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Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the budget amendments in Items
5-G, H, and I. Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
J: Economic Development Update.
Rountree: Next item, be 5-J, economic development. Josh.
Grant: Good evening.
Rountree: Welcome.
Grant: Since last update in late April there have been some very positive efforts to
comport with some others on the horizon. Many of these you have likely been aware of,
as Meridian's businesses have recently received some great press and recognition.
There we go. On June 24th, Wednesday of next week, the health sciences and
technology corridor will be launching. Hopefully you have all received invitations for
this. It's scheduled to take place at 1:00 o'clock at the Meridian School District
administration building. Our Mayor and the governor and President Vailas from Idaho
State University will be among the speakers at this event and, hopefully, you will all be
able to attend. Following this event in July a marketing forum will be taking place. This
forum will be made up of businesses within the comdor. There will be the opportunity to
provide additional details about the corridor and what it means to their business and
how they can take advantage of this opportunity. I'm also pleased to announce a
Chinese group is looking at a couple of potential investment opportunities in the
corridor. They will be actually -- have a representative here in the next week to attend
the launch and also support some potential options. We also are continuing to schedule
site visits with the Mayor and Meridian companies. Most recently we have been
focusing on engaging start-ups, like R2EV and Adrenity. Relationships that are being
formed with these companies are very important as we continue to work with them to
help keep them here in Meridian. A little background on a couple of these. R2EV, if
you're not aware, is creating battery packs for electric vehicles. Most people are aware
of the Red Boxes out there with the videos. They are looking at creating green boxes
for electric vehicles to trade out their batteries. They have been working with grant
funding for this business. Also another company Adrenity. They actually won the tech
launch business competition, recently receiving the entrepreneurial Idaho grand prize.
We continue to work with Rick Ritter from Idaho Tech Connect to identify how we can
assist these and other technology start-ups. There is still major issues for business
ventures to find investment capital and we are trying to work with them to see how we
can assist. This last month, May 27th, Meridian's Business Day, thanks to the volunteer
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sponsors and speakers for the great success for the education and networking. I know
some of you were able to attend. We had over 400 business people in attendance at
that event. Following that event we conducted a survey. Had over 80 responses.
There is a summary of that survey in your packet. Just a quick summary of that, some
highlights. We had a hundred percent of the respondents felt that this was a beneficial
event. A hundred percent of the respondents say that they would attend an event like
this again. A majority of the respondents said that they would like to see this happen at
least twice a year. So, look for the next one soon.
Rountree: Josh, what was the total number of attendance?
Grant: The total attendance? I -- you know what, unfortunately, I don't have an exact
number, because not everybody -- registration wasn't required, it was just encouraged.
We had -- as a follow up, I think there were right around 400 that were actually
registered, but I do know for a fact there were people who didn't register that were there.
So -- and we had -- as far as the luncheon, the restaurants were there to serve at least
500 and one of them planned for 400 and they went through all their food. So, kind of --
to gauge the numbers that were there.
Rountree: Okay.
Grant: And those who were in attendance know that it was pretty packed, so we
definitely filled our space and it was a very well received event.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: And one of the things that Josh left off is those that have said they would
like to see it happen at least twice a year have also offered sponsorships and we were
kind of pounding the pavement on the sponsorships leading up to the event. The event
sold itself and the sponsors that did sponsor this -- this first event want to continue and
additional interest has been created. So, that's a good position to be in.
Rountree: Very good.
De Weerd: Self sufficient.
Grant: Very much so. We also conducted a business survey this past spring. A
summary of those responses are also in your packet. I won't go through those. We did
receive maybe six responses from local businesses and we will be, of course, utilizing
these results going forward and working with these businesses to address their needs.
As I mentioned or referenced the need for businesses to find investors and investments.
We are exploring tools to draw investment into the community. An example like the
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EB5 program. We also continue to work with BVEP in looking at identifying regional
incentive opportunities. We have been working closely with the Department of Labor on
forming a workforce summit to focus on health science and technology. This was
originally planned for June, but it's been postponed to just constraints as far as planning
the event, which actually ended up working pretty well, considering the corridor launch
next week. Part of that launch will be a panel and discussion around that panel will
serve as a great foundation for the workforce summit in coming months. We are also
working with the Department of Labor and some volunteers in forming Meridian
Business Association, also known as the MBA. That first group meeting will be taking
place next Tuesday at 5:30 at Flat Brick Community Oven. And also working with a
local business about creating a network of -- a networking group here in Meridian and
look for that to take place hopefully in the next few months as we put that plan together.
De Weerd: Josh, do you want to say a little bit more about what the Meridian Business
Association is?
Grant: Absolutely. The business association is really focused on -- Meridian doesn't
have a true business networking group or structured networking group, so we have
looked at opportunity to bring together some -- some business people in the area,
business professionals who are looking to start up their own business and provide a
forum that will be focused around education and networking. We haven't detailed
anything out for the purpose of -- we want to bring the first meeting -- people to the first
meeting. to provide and open forum to help structure this, what it would be, without
saying here is what it is and here is what it's going to be. If you like it, great. If you
don't, don't come. We'd like to leave it a little bit open ended to see what we can create
with this group. So, I'd definitely be exited to report back on where that goes this next
meeting. What the plan right now is to have it meet once a month. A no fee based
group to encourage obviously attendance, with the help of the Department of Labor to --
in forming this group. And, again, the volunteers have been critical as well to make this
happen. And our plan is to have at least 15 to 20 people at this first meeting and to
grow from there.
Rountree: Any questions for Josh?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Carryon.
Grant: A couple more items. In the last few months and in the coming months we have
-- Meridian's received some great PR. Next month, actually, the BVEP's ROI will be
spotlighting Meridian and the health sciences technology corridor following the launch.
Last month -- I don't know if you were -- received a copy of Architect magazine, but it
includes a copy of the article in your packet. Meridian was highlighted in there, focusing
on downtown and the corridor as well. A quick follow up on the Society of American
Business Editors and Writers conference that Phil attended in late April. I know he
reported briefly on it in our last update. A follow up to that is we will be following up with
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the contacts made in that event after the launch of the corridor, as this will be a great
opportunity to get some story ideas in front of these writers to say here is another
opportunity to get some information on Meridian, some exciting news is happening in
this area and the state. The IMC, which is the Industrial Management Conference, Phil
attended this in May. He made several contacts and reconnected with some people as
well. Some of those included Dow Chemical and -- make sure I'm pronouncing this right
-- Weyerhaeuser Real Estate. The general feedback was that companies weren't
making a move right now, as we are aware, a lot of companies are hunkered down and
waiting things out. But the contact relationships and a real opportunity to get in front of
these people and tell our story was very valuable and, then, maintain these contacts as
things tum around. Semi Con West trade show is coming up next month. We will be
attending that with BVEP. It is attended by micro electronics and photovoltaic
industries, obviously, a sector that we have focused on as far as technology and
manufacturing. And next month is also the second Ignite Boise event. We did submit a
presentation for that. I just found out yesterday we weren't accepted, but we will still be
attending, and it's a great opportunity to network and meet some start-up companies.
With that I will stand for any questions.
Rountree: Questions? Comments? Thank you, Josh.
De Weerd: He talks faster than Matt.
Rountree: Yeah.
Grant: I can drag it out a little more if you'd like.
Rountree: No. That's fine. Good information. And I did attend the business day and it
was an extreme success in my opinion. All the comments I heard were good deal, good
seminars, good information. People walked away feeling like they had spent their time
wisely. Okay.
Grant: Thank you.
L: Proposal for Acceptance of Credit /Debit Card Payments for
Building Permits.
M: State of Development Services Division.
Rountree: Thanks, Josh. Next item is L, Bruce and Tom, and go ahead and do M.
Bany: President Rountree, we had, actually, another item that was requested to be
placed on the agenda. A quick clarification on resolution regarding the fire and police
impact fee waivers. Mr. Freckleton was going to speak to that with your permission to --
Rountree: That's why I was going to assume that Mr. Freckleton would wrap that into
his state of the development services division, Item M, if he would.
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Barry: Happy to do it.
Rountree: Okay.
Freckleton: Thank you. Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council.
Excuse me. For some time now in the last three or four years in our discussions with
the development community and more particularly contractors in several of the trades,
they have requested that we get the process in place so that they can pay for permits
with debit card or credit card and there is some -- some changes in law recently that
made that option very attractive to us and Ihave -- we have looked at a couple of
different presentations. Ihave got Rich Steckler and Leslie here this evening with
Access Idaho and I have asked them to do a quick little presentation just to summarize
the program that we are -- that we are looking at and the benefits of it, so --
Steckler: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Rich Steckler of
Access Idaho. I'll give you a brief overview of our company and what we do as far as
credit and debit card processing. Talk about the company itself and, then, about the
service. Ihave control, right? Thank you. All right. We were established in 1999 and
our status is -- or we have a state contract and there is a provision in there that let's us
do work for counties and municipalities as well and we are aself-funded model in the
sense that we make our money off transaction fees, so we do -- and we can only work
with govemment entities within the state of Idaho. So, our big cash cow is ITD, the
transportation department, which allows applications through them and we get funding
from them. So, we have a pay for the application as it comes off the shelf that counties
and municipalities can use as well. So, it's our tenth year in Idaho. We just got our new
contract last June. Time flies. And it goes through June 2013. We are located in
downtown Boise. We have to -- our contract says we have to be within walking distance
of the state capital, so we are. And we have 13 employees. Eight percent are from
Meridian. Well, one Meridian resident amongst 13 employees. And we are a subsidiary
of NIC, Inc., which is a company based in Kansas and we are in 23 different states
doing business as the same thing, as far as doing govemment work for the states as the
self-funded model and we are on the NASDAQ at EGOV, if you look at that, feel free to.
The application is for over the counter and online transactions, so you can have one
catalog and organize that and use it for over the counter and online transactions. The
best part about it for you guys, of course, there is no cost to the city. You can pass the
fees onto the customer and everything is disclosed that way, too, and -- and that way
they can choose to pay for that way or not. One thing I will mention, too, is you can take
e-checks as well. If they did it online just with a debit card or credit card, it's three
percent -- a flat three percent on top of the statutory fees. If they use an a-check --
usually that is probably a good option for bigger companies, because if you're paying
10,000 dollars you don't want to pay 50 off of that, so we have an a-check option, which
is a flat five dollars no matter what the -- what the cost. There is no merchant fees or a
monthly minimum. We hold the merchant account, so you don't have to worry about
that. One thing that I'll mention, too, that we don't sign -- I guess sign a minimum
contract like that, we are locked in for two years. If you will go with this and decide,
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well, that's not working for us, you can walk away with no penalty or anything like that.
There is no equipment to buy. Everything's done with your own PCs. There are a --
there is a swipe card device you can purchase. They are 85 bucks apiece. But it's not
needed. It's for the over-the-counter kind of transactions, of course, but it speeds the
process, but it's not needed to run the application. We are asecure -- we -- the
payment card industry standards -- was it CCI -- we have two redundant servers. One's
in a big bunker in Ashburn, Virginia, another one at a site in Allen, Texas, and we
guarantee an 99.9 percent up time and everything is secure and backed up and
encrypted, that kind of thing. We offer detailed exportable Excel spreadsheets,
transaction reports, so fun time for your accounting people. We have electronic
deposits into one or more accounts, the accounting accounts or another account. There
is free easy setup and support and we have kind of done that most of the part. Bruce
and Mindy have been kind of playing in the sandbox and we have set them up in a
pretend environment and as near as our city wide environment, so they have been
swiping cards, that kind of thing, just to test it out and that kind of thing. We did win last
year the government achievement award for one of the best applications last year at the
national award and, then, we are used by govemment entities statewide and that moves
us to my next slide. We are in 11 state agencies and 40 counties. Most notable,
probably, in this area is Ada County. We have -- with over the counter we handle a lot
of processing for them. Last year we did about -- for pay port alone we did eight --
almost eight million dollars, 95,000 transactions. Our company as a whole we did -- we
do lot of things for the tax commission as well. We did 132 million last year for
processing, so -- and we are statewide. And, then, if you want to find out more
information, there is a url there at paperwork.idaho.gov. That's my high level paperwork
and Access Idaho. And I'm open to any questions.
Rountree: Questions?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess once we really try this out is it something that can be utilized
citywide?
Steckler: Absolutely.
De Weerd: It might answer some of the hesitancy that finance has had in accepting
credit cards. So, you know -- and I just appreciated the entertaining statement of calling
ITD a cash cow. I have just never heard that in reference to ITD, so --
Rountree: That's how they started in Idaho.
Freckleton: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Council, I -- at this point we have gone
through two different presentations. We have vetted this process through the Finance
Department and -- and IT as well, because of the -- the interface with the internal
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network. This is the -- the product that we have basically chosen. What we would like
to do, if it's -- if it's your pleasure tonight, is to get your direction to go ahead and start
working with Access Idaho to put together a contract and come back to you for that
approval
Rountree: Comments?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Is this anything that would require open bidding or can this done as a sole
source authority?
Nary: Mr. President, Members of the Council, it's a service, so it doesn't have to be bid.
But we can if you'd like, but it's not required.
Zaremba: Okay. Thank you.
Steckler: It does fall in the state contract, too, so -- do you have all the legal documents
that you need? I sent you -- Mindy, I don't know if you --
Nary: I don't have any.
Steckler: Oh, you don't? Okay. I can send you all --
Rountree: Bruce, my guidance, I guess, is to move forward with putting together the
agreement and certainly get the information to legal and make sure that all the folks in
the city that do make transactions are in the loop on this and that they all have input and
let's move forward.
Freckleton: Sounds good. Thank you.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree wholeheartedly with that. Let's get forward with it, bring back something.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just to clarify some of those comments, I mean this is being presented for
use with building permits, which are large fee things, but is the discussion saying we
want to let people make their water payments this way also? Is that what's happening?
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Rountree: That would be my direction. I'd as soon get air miles as send you a check.
De Weerd: Certainly, Mr. President, we will talk with finance and pursue that and bring
it back. No. Thank you.
Rountree: Bruce, you still have the floor.
Freckleton: Thank you, Mr. President. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. The
next item is our State of the City -- or State of the Development Services to you. I have
several members of the Development Services staff here tonight that wanted to see me
fumble, so I would like to acknowledge them and thank them for their effort. Maybe a
show of hands for Development Services staff, so --
Rountree: Thanks for being here.
Freckleton: We are happy to be in front of you tonight with this -- with this report. I
wanted to kind of show you what we have been up to. If I can get this presentation up
and running here. Okay. This first slide, basically, what I wanted to do is just kind of
reiterate the make up of the division. The Development Services division is made up of
land development services and building services. The land development services being
enterprise fund. Building services, as you know, is development services fund or a
portion of the general fund. Development -- currently we -- we have got a pretty good
idea of where we are at with the enterprise fund, but I wanted to dig into the -- to the
Development Services fund distribution just a little bit with you tonight. The graph you
see on the left is our budget trend to the end of the fiscal year. It shows the -- where
our revenue is anticipated to come from. Ninety-two percent from building revenue,
seven percent from planning, and one percent from interest. The graph on the right is
the expenses trended out to the end of the fiscal year. Again, there you can see
building department's 44 percent, planning 51, and economic development 11. The
other point I wanted to make with this slide is the little table down below, the historical
transfers to capital improvement over the last eight years there, just slightly over 8.2
million. Wanted to launch into what we have been doing. We have been very busy.
Brent Bjornson and myself have been working the past couple of months on
renegotiating terms of our cooperative impact fee agreement that we hold with ACRD.
Some of the -- the things that we have been able to accomplish coming out of that --
those negotiations, with the creation of a consistent application process to insure
complete accurate transmission of information from the applicant and this is a --
basically to both agencies we get the same information. ACHD will now be responsible
to collect. any impact fees that are revised after a permit issuance. The city will no
longer hold up its issuance of occupancy permit for these issues. Historically they have
asked us to hold things up while they work out any revisions and so this is a -- this is a
big one. This is the biggest one, in my opinion, is the creation of a major and minor
tenant improvement category. ACHD will not be involved in the review process on
minor TI's. Therefore, our applicants will be able to pull their permits for minor TI's
within three business days. Meridian applicants won't need to make special trips down
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to ACRD just to get a signature for a certificate of occupancy. They can call a hotline
that ACHD has and ACHD will send us a proxy sign off. It saves the applicant a trip.
ACHD has committed to review time lines -- excuse me -- of no more than five business
days for major TI's and 15 business days for new commercial. If these time lines aren't
met, Meridian will issue permits. Through these negotiations we have been told that our
process is the best process -- or we have the best processes and procedures of all the
other cities in the county and that ACHD will be working with the other cities to try and
replicate our process. The implementation of these new terms that we have been
working on is going to happen immediately. We are going to follow up with
formalization of them into the impact fee agreement addendum. And, then, a big topic
of discussion that is still ongoing is the impact fee deferral during down economy. This
is -- this is an agenda item that I think would be appropriate for the joint meeting on the
29th. That would be a good point, probably, to launch into some discussion about the
resolution that we -- that we worked on and you passed on the 2nd. The question has
come up recently as to how this should be applied. Historically when we have had
changes that come through the building department, we use the date of application as
our trigger date. So, in other words, your resolution -- the window was July -- or June
3rd through September 30th. So, the way that the resolution is -- that I read the
resolution and my interpretation of the resolution was that it would apply to all impact
fees on all applications during that period of time. We had an applicant recently that
questioned that and didn't think that that was quite fair. His application was in to
building services in April and he wanted the benefit of having those fees waived. So, I
wanted to just have a little discussion with you to find out what your intent was for that
resolution. Also, I wanted to let you know that I currently have 13 projects -- 13
commercial projects that are sitting on the shelf ready to issue. Total police impact fees
for the 13 would be 14,187 dollars. Total fire impact fees for the 13 would that 59,322
dollars. Per the report that was produced through the Finance Department when we
first began discussions on this topic, it was noted that 93 percent of annual past fees
were collected in the period of June to December. So, that's, I believe, why we kind of
settled in on that -- that window of June 3rd through September 30th. I will seek your
input.
Rountree: Any comments about the dates on the resolution and applicability to other
applications?
Freckleton: Yeah. Basically, what I'm looking for is what date I should use for the
application of the waiver, if it should be the date of the application or the date that we
issue the permit.
Rountree: My recollection of the discussion was that it was date of issuance of the
permit.
Bird: Yeah.
Nary: Mr. President? Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, you did
leave it open and I think that was the reason we wanted to request what your
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interpretation was. What it says in the -- what it says in the resolution is that during the
period of June 3rd until September 30, 2009, the city will waive the requirement for fire.
Please collect fees on all applications for building permits or -- by nonresidential
permits. So, it certainly could be -- whatever your intent is I think is what the application
we want to be consistent in applying that.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree with you. I thought -- I thought the intent was when the issuance of the
permit -- when they come picked it up and paid for it is when that did and I -- it certainly
slipped by me in the resolution.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I'll admit I had not really thought about the difference. I think I was thinking
application date, but I'm happy to go with whatever the majority chooses. The only
issue with making it the .permit date is that at the other end of this thing, the 30th of
September, we are going to have issues with people that have put their application in on
the 30th of September and we are going to charge them when they actually get their
permit and they are going to scream about that.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: But as long as we are consistent. I mean my way of thinking is that the fees are
waived when you come in and pay -- pick your deals up when you pay for the stuff, not
when you tum in the application. The fees are paid regarding -- with the building
permits and all that stuff. And so that's where I -- where I thought it was at time of -- of
picking up the permits, instead of the application.
Zaremba: I certainly can agree with that. I think it would behoove us probably to wam
people that apply within the last week or so of that period that they probably don't qualify
for the -- I'm sorry, I don't know. How long does it take from application to handing them
a permit? It has to go through review. Is there a standard delay or does it vary by the
complexity of the project -- between application and --
Freckleton: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Council, Councilman Zaremba, the --
typically it's four to six weeks. So --
Zaremba: So, anybody that applies like the first of September is not likely to get the
waiver.
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Freckleton: No. I mean does certainly -- certainly the complexity of the project does
play in, but --
Zaremba: I can go along with the consensus that I think we are coming to, that it should
be at the time of permit, but I think somewhere around the first of September we need to
start warning people that they may not get it.
Barry: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Barry.
Barry: The intent, as I understood, was to incentivize development during this down
time and if you do that with -- you can do that either of the two ways, through the
issuance of a building permit or through, you know, the time that the building permit's
released or at the time of application. The fiscal analysis that we have done and
presented to you in consideration of the original resolution was for application only and
that resolution -- or that fiscal analysis was on the order of about 72,000 dollars, if I
remember correctly -- 73,000 I'm corrected. So, this change has the potential to -- to
increase another 65,000 dollars, as I understand, to that consideration beyond what I
think your intent was at the time of the approval of the resolution. The other danger, as
Mr. Zaremba points out, is that as we get closer to the end of the period staff will be --
staffwill be placed in a very difficult position due to regular turn around times on building
permit applications that could be seen in the developer's eyes as delaying purposely the
issuance of building permits to avoid payment of impact fees and I think that's a
dangerous place to be during the end of this period. So, just wanted to make sure
those couple of things were said in your deliberations and we will take any direction that
-- or will move forward any direction you render on this.
Rountree: Tom, I'm kind of confused by a couple of your comments. One was that you
said if we make these changes -- and I'm not sure what you meant. If we go to the
application date, I think that's what you meant. And, then, you went on to say if we
make these changes, then, the projection in terms of the cost of the program could go
up another 60 some thousand dollars. I would say that if the numbers we had before us
that have been applied for at this point -- is that correct? The fire and police impact
fees. This sheet? Is that for the year?
Freckleton: Yes. Those are the ones that we have --
Rountree: Currently.
Freckleton: We have already reviewed, they are ready to issue.
Rountree: And they were farther from that window?
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Freckleton: Those were the ones that -- you know, I'm not exactly sure. I'm pretty sure
that all of those are prior to the January -- or, excuse me, the June 3rd date.
Rountree: They are prior to the June 3rd.
Freckleton: Correct.
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: But they haven't been issued.
Freckleton: Yeah. But they have not been issued. But they were applied for prior to.
Barry: And the key with application, of course, is that applicant date is driven by the
developer. That's the incentive is to get the application complete and to the building
department. If you do it on building permit, of course, then, the onus, then, is -- on
timeliness is on staff, which is fine by us, we can certainly do that, but, again, if it is a six
week turnaround time on a complex project and those complex projects are very large
and, therefore, would have huge impacts or impact fees -- or I shouldn't say huge, but
larger impact fees, then, certainly by the time you're August 15th or so we probably
need to make them aware, as Mr. Zaremba said, that the likelihood of them achieving
that waiver during the normal review time is probably very low. And, of course, that
being in the middle of construction season, that's sort of disincentivizes the -- I think the
program that you had envisioned.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Most of your large commercial construction -- and I don't have figures or anything,
but most of the large ones would have to have -- would want their permits -- at least
their foundation and permits picked up by the first of October, because if they don't get
their foundation, their walls and stuff up by December, they are probably not going to
work through the winter on most winters. The other winters you could work, but most of
them plan that way. And I don't know what the history is of -- of permits, but I -- I mean I
was under the assumption that it was time of pick up when you paid your fees, that's
when -- that's when you got the benefit of not having to pay the impact fees for fire and
police.
Rountree: Bill, I have a question. It appears that we need to amend the resolution or
come up with a motion that clarifies the intent of the resolution, one of the two, or both?
Nary: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I would suggest both. I
mean to avoid the -- the dilemma and concern that Mr. Barry has for his staff, I think the
motion should reflect what your intent is for this and, then, we can bring an amended
resolution next week. And I would agree from the earlier discussion with Mr. Bird, I
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think the logical spot where you're going to get the benefit is when you're actually writing
the check and that. So, whatever point you're going to pay for that seems the most
logical place where the benefit would be -- would be granted. So, however -- whatever
point in the process they pay for it seems to be the logical place.
Rountree: I'm just going to take a moment to let Bruce continue on with his discussion
about building services and we will hold for a motion once he's complete and give you
direction at that point, but thank you.
Freckleton: Thank you, Council President. Okay. So, the next item that I have was we
have completed the internal process improvement study. This was a study that was --
was kicked off internally. We were assisted through the process by Josh at Aspireon.
This study broke down every step of the development process and identified points of
potential weakness. New procedures were established or were created to more
efficiently process applications. Creation of a project sponsor in the planning
department and department services to help shepherd projects through the process.
Another outcome of the study was a flow chart of the development process that will be
shared with the development community through handouts and web postings. I counted
-- building permit application submittal was -- was kind of a challenge. This came up out
of a conversation that Brent and I were having one day and I kind of challenged him,
you know, why can't we do this and so my crazy idea turned into beginning January 1st
the building permit application process was enhanced to require electronic submittal of
all plans and supporting documentation. It reduces storage space requirements for
review sets and archival. Other reviewing departments, such as water, wastewater, and
fire can now access the electronic files via the network, thereby saving staff time.
Historically they had to make the trip down to the building services to pick up plans and
transport them back and forth. So, now it's -- it's right there at their fingertips. It
improves the availability -- or ability to record and retrieve information by staff at
anytime. It reduces cost to applicants. Fewer plan sets equals less cost. It also will
integrate into our new building software when we get that. We had applicants that --
when we rolled this out and we told them January 1st we were going to start -- start this
new program, they were wanting to submit in November, December, they were wanting
to do it ahead of the -- ahead of the implementation date, they were pretty excited about
it. We have also been, as you know, working on the police and fire impact fee waivers
and the effort to stimulate commercial development activity. The program has been well
received by the development community. Additional work is being done, as I said
previously, about negotiating with ACHD to possibly defer the collection of their
development impact fees. We have been working since Tom came on board on doing
capital project review process. It's a new proactive procedure that we have established
to send all new capital projects through the review process established in the
development services division. This review insures consistency between public and
private projects. It insures that capital projects are being built to the state and local
standards. Being involved in the review process has reduced the number of utility
conflicts and change orders that we once experienced, thereby saving the city money.
You heard about our e-commerce system. Integration of system to be able to accept
electronic payments for all payment types issues through development services. The
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system fulfills need requested repeated by our customers. No cost to the city. The
customer pays a three percent convenience fee for the use of Visa, Mastercard,
Discover card and American Express. This is -- this is, basically, the same that you see
when you go to the DMV. They allow you to use this system now and the applicant
knows when he walks right up to the door that if he chooses to use his debit or credit
card, he's got that convenience fee on top. The reimbursement code that we worked
on, the creation of a new code that reimburses developers according to the strategic
value of the infrastructure being built and for funds collected within the area being
served. It was a big shift in the philosophy there and it was a good change. It provides
an incentive to the development community for the installation of public works
infrastructure in growth priority areas. This is just a snapshot of the statistics of our
building through the end of May. I have shown you there an eight month -- or, excuse
me, an eight year graph on the top of our activity. This is activity in dollars. The tables
below is our residential permits on the upper left. It shows you our current year
compared to last year. And, then, the percent change in permits and value. Below that
is our -- is the -- same type of information for our commercial activity. To the right you
will see two -- two little tables there, one is our residential 103 month average permit
value. The minimum and the maximum permits, the dates and the permit -- the permit
values. Same thing for commercial. Next slide is our development -- land development
statistics. This is the number of projects that we reviewed through development
services over the eight year period. We did this with a pretty lean staff. As you can see
on the table below, the second to the last column, the number of analysts and during
those heavy times, '04 through '06 or, really, '07, we accomplished those reviews with
three -- three development analysts. We are now down to two development analysts
and I will get to that here in just little bit. The next slide is a building services survey.
This is an annual survey that we conduct on random site visits to solicit customer
feedback on how well we are performing our jobs in each of the five contract building
disciplines, the structural, electrical, mechanical, fire, and plumbing. These surveys are
presented to five separate contractors at five different sites for each of the five
disciplines. The respondents are asked a series of five questions with a rating of one to
five. They are also welcome to provide any other feedback that they wish. And Brent
usually receives quite a bit of other feedback as well. But the exciting thing here is you
can see that we have got an upward trend in our levels of customer service. In 2005
our average across the five trades was -- our average score and points was a 3.91 and
in 2008 we are sporting a 4.65 average. So, I'm really pleased with these results and
we are going to be launching into our 2009 surveys here real shortly. So, going
forward, we see -- you know, we have got a 20 percent reduction in our development
services staff by vacant -- eliminating a vacant position in our FY-09 budget, we had a
staff position, afull-time position in the building services that we eliminated. It was an
unfilled position. And we are freezing the position that was vacated in FY-09 for our FY-
10 budget. That position was one of the development analysts that applied for a new
position in the engineering division and was accepted for that position. So, we froze his
empty -- his spot and we will just keep an eye on development and we will come back
before you when we are ready to staff up a little bit more. We are also converting one
building permit technician position to part-time status effective end of July of this year.
Earnings over the past three years and shortfalls, it's always a challenge as we go
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forward, we are going to have to just keep monitoring that. Also capital contribution
shortfalls. Development services base budget reduced by 933,126 dollars for fiscal
year '10. No budget enhancements were requested in FY-09 or FY-10. I guess the
message I'm trying to get through here is we are trying to be responsive to the
economic conditions and be responsible with what we are provided. Going forward we
want to find ways to incentivize development. Certainly our new reimbursement code
helps that. Also our city water -- or sewer waiver and deferral programs. And as I have
mentioned twice before, our ongoing negotiations with ACHD for impact fee deferral
during the down economy and topic of discussion at the joint meeting on the 29th.
External. We see with that down tum in the economy that we are experiencing an up
tum in building code violations. I think that people are trying to get by on the cheap and
so we have seen -- we are seeing quite a few more violations, which has increased our
demand for enforcement actions. And with that I wi11 conclude my presentation and
open myself up for any questions you might have and thank you for your continued
support.
Rountree: Any questions for Bruce?
Bird: I have none. Just a nice report.
Rountree: Bruce, I have one. You mentioned early on in your presentation that you
have required electronic submission of plans. I assume you have standardized the
format that those plans will be presented for the convenience of our customers and
does that also include residential?
Freckleton: Yes.
Rountree: Has that presented some conflict with some of the old school folks that still
have drafting tables? Like me.
Freckleton: The ones that come in on napkins?
Rountree: Yeah.
Freckleton: You know, we had the discussion early on that it could cause some
problems with some and if they come in with hard copies, we have the equipment in the
office that we can run them through and scan them, so -- but so far I don't really think
that we have had much of push back at all on this program.
Rountree: Very good. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Thank you,
Bruce. Good presentation.
Freckleton: Thank you.
Rountree: Good to hear from you. The next item is Tom's presentation on Public
Works, but before we go there we need a -- we need a motion. Yes.
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Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we clarify in our resolution the deferral of police and fire impact fees
will be done at the point of picking up the building permits.
Rountree: And that's within the time window that's stated --
Bird: That's within the time window from June to October.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: Stated in the resolution.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded. Probably need a roll call vote on that.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Rountree: And, Tom, before we get to you, budget presentations are July 2nd. Mr.
Siddoway has a family conflict that day would like some guidance on when he might
present to us. It's been suggested, since we don't have a Council meeting on the 5th
Tuesday this month, the 30th, that we could have a meeting for his budget presentation
first thing in the moming and let him get about some of the family issues he's dealing
with.
Bird: Mr. President, that would suit me great.
Rountree: Does that work with you, Mr. Zaremba? The 30th of June.
Zaremba: The moming of Tuesday?
Rountree: Yes.
Zaremba: He has also said that he could work around our ACHD meeting, either before
or after that, if that's another option to consider.
De Weerd: Tuesday, the 30th, you're talking about?
Rountree: Yes.
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De Weerd: In the moming?
Rountree: In the moming.
De Weerd: I'm not available.
Bird: I thought ACHD was the 29th.
Zaremba: Monday, the 29th --
Rountree: Monday, the 29th.
Zaremba: -- is the day before and he would available before or after, as would I.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I'd prefer to do it on the 30th away from the ACHD, because I think we can just
take care of that.
Rountree: But the Mayor's not available.
Bird: On what, the 30th?
Rountree: On the 30th.
De Weerd: On the moming of the 30th. I don't know where that date came up, but --
Rountree: It was one of the suggested times.
Bird: It was in the packet I got.
De Weerd: Well, just got back in town. I guess I assumed someone worked with my
office.
Bird: You want to change it to the 29th at 8:00 o'clock?
De Weerd: I can do that.
Bird: Because we -- our 10:00 o'clock is our ACHD.
Rountree: That's fine with me.
Bird: That's fine with me if you want to do it.
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Zaremba: If we are all here together, then, we will car pool and Steve says he can do it
K: Public Works Department Strategic Focus Discussion.
Rountree: Okay. Let's schedule it for the 29th at 8:00 o'clock here. If you would take
care of that for us, Tara. Thank you. Yeah. Make sure Steve gets the word. Okay,
Tom, it's yours.
Barry: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my
pleasure to present to you tonight the Public Works Department strategic focus
discussion. We have a lot of information to cover tonight, so I'll just jump right in. First
of all, I'd like to also recognize the staff that are in the audience today from the Public
Works Department. Many of them are from our strategic leadership team in Public
Works, which was developed three months after I started. I convened a group of about
ten of our senior managers to come together and challenged the organization to take on
some pretty tall orders as it relates to performance improvement, modification to
processes, establishment of policies and consistencies, technological improvements
and the like and I'm happy to report that the majority of what you will see this evening is
a result of their ability to collaboratively come together and challenged our department
and while this is still a work in progress, I do want to share with you some of the things
that we have been able to achieve and some of the things we are looking forward to
over the next several months and years. First of all, I wanted to go through our mission
statement for the Public Works Department. Our mission is to anticipate, plan, and
provide exemplary public services and facilities that support the needs of our growing
community in both an efficient, customer focused, and financially responsible manner.
This is a new mission that has been -- this is also one of the results of the strategic
leadership team. Our department overview is as follows: We have about eight divisions
now as part of our reorganization. We have 14 sections within those divisions. Are
current employee count is 79 FTE's, although we have budgeted 91.5 FTE's. So, we
are running about 15 percent vacancy right in the Public Works now. Our infrastructure
continues to grow, even in this down economy. Currently we have about 450 miles of
water lines and almost 500 miles of sewer lines and, of course, as this infrastructure
grows so does the cost for maintenance and a personnel need to maintain this
infrastructure. I'll just point out that, you know, just in this last fiscal year we have had
2.8 miles of water line added. That's compared to a four year average monthly -- or,
excuse me, yearly average of 31.6 miles, so certainly development's down. And, then,
in sewer 3.7 miles from the start of fiscal year 2009 and compared to an average four --
or four year average of 17.1 miles per year over the last four years. I wanted to run
through quickly some of our performance -- the performance of the department in
certain areas and, then, also our accomplishments quickly. One of the things that you
probably know already, but maybe have not seen in a graphical form, is our service
demands. Now, this chart here shows the number of -- or the amount of gallons of
water that's been distributed through our system as it relates to the economic climate
and what you see here -- the two big valleys there, the first one in October or so of 2002
is the dot com bust and, then, of course, I don't have to tell you what we see at the end
of the chart there as it relates to our current economic state. But what you do see in the
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green trend line is our average gallons of water that's distributed and that's in million
gallons. And you can see that demand for services continues right through these
economic slumps. We don't see a decrease in average daily or monthly demand
through these economic climates. If you look at what's going on in the sewer
department or the sewer division, rather, you see the very same thing. The need for
services continues despite the economic climate. Probably a good opportunity to talk
about as part of our performance departmental efficiencies, because a lot of people are
asking what are you guys up to in this economy and we are busy as ever and I also
want to showcase how efficient we have become. This graph here documents the
number of accounts that we have seen since 2001 and, essentially, account growth
since 2001 relative to staff growth during the same period. And what we see is that
account growth has been three times faster than staff growth on average over this
period. This creates a situation where we are asking our staff to handle more accounts,
as well as customers over this time period. If you look on the graph to the lower left it
talks about number of accounts per staff member in FY-01. Each staff person in the
Public Works Department as handling on average 224 accounts. At the end of fiscal
year 2008 they were handling 328 accounts. By the same token, number of customers
handled by public staff -- or Public Works staff per capita, 607 in fiscal 2001, 961 in
fiscal year -- end of fiscal year of 2008. So, we are -- we are becoming more and more
efficient and we tend -- intend to continue this trend into the foreseeable future. One
thing you may have heard and seen in Bruce's discussion is this focus now of our
department to focus on industry standards, customer service reviews, collection of data
to make better decisions in how we move and operate within our department. So, I
want to share some industry benchmarks with you really quickly. This first benchmark
here, water on the left, wastewater on the right, is our cost of service metric. Now, this
metric is based upon the America Public Works Association cost of services for utilities
around the country and what you can see here is that Meridian's cost per million gallons
of water developed is about 513 dollars. That green area there represents industry
best. That's top ten percent in the industry. Of course, the red is worst ten percent and
the yellow is everything in between. So, our water costs are considerably lower than
industry average. If you look over at wastewater you see that our costs for wastewater
service is a little bit higher, but certainly within industry standard. And, of course, these
costs are related mostly to the fact that we have a very sophisticated wastewater
treatment plant. One of the most sophisticated in the Treasure Valley. And certainly
that increases the cost for treatment. But we are a little bit ahead as it relates to the
technologies we are using for some of the regulations that are coming down our way. If
you look at our year-to-date operating ratio, this is, essentially, a ratio that takes
operational expenses and compares it to operational revenues. What you can see is
we are in the red here, which is not good. Most of this you're aware of as it relates to
the need to move forward adjustments in our rates, which has been done. But our
operating ratio -- you generally want that to be, essentially, one or greater than one,
which would put you in the green. Certainly we are close in water at .83 and in
wastewater at about 8.87. If you look at our revenues versus expenses, you see the
story that we have been talking about for some time now and that is that, essentially,
our expenses are greater than our revenues currently and this is why we are digging
into the enterprise fund ending fund balance. Year to date, revenues versus expenses
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for water, we are down about 1.5 million dollars and, then, for wastewater down about
6.2 million dollars. One thing of interest in our benchmarking is this next graph here,
these two black dials, if you will. This is called the affordability index and the
affordability index is an interesting index, because, essentially, what it does is it's based
off of EPA's requirements under the federal government safe drinking water act, which
says that any new regulations that are introduced have to be affordable for rural
communities and they created this affordability index that said that essentially residents
or customers ought to be able to afford 2.5 percent of their median base income -- that,
essentially, if services are 2.5 percent or less of median income, annually, then, that is
considered affordable. So, there is the scale that's been developed and I've showed
that to you here on the graph, that, essentially, anything above 2.5 percent is not
affordable as it relates to cost for water or sewer service. Anything between 1.5 and 2.5
is generally affordable. Anything less than 1.5 percent of median income annually is
very affordable and what you see here is that our rates currently -- and this is including
the April 20th increase, are very affordable. If you project this out to what our rates will
be at the end of the three year term, you will still have a number that is less than one
percent, meaning that it qualifies as very affordable and I think that's important to know.
While it is unfortunate we have to make modifications in rates, if you look nationally and,
course with other standards, we are not anywhere near out of whack with what's going
on. Down here this scale is troubling and it is one that we have talked about before and
that's depreciation. Also known as system reinvestment. Essentially, we are not
currently placing enough money into our depreciation fund. We have discussed this
and we will be making improvements along the way, but we are putting what we can
afford at this point in time. And as we move forward we expect these numbers and this
index to get better. Lastly, sort of our fuel gauge, if you will -- if you can see what I'm
building here. Our fuel gauge is, essentially, money. Where is the ending fund balance.
The beginning of this fiscal year 2009, the end of the last fiscal year 2008, our ending
fund balance in the enterprise fund was about 20, 25 million dollars. The end of this
2009 fiscal year it's projected currently to go down to around 9.1 million. As you know,
when we presented the rates, we will continue with deficit spending for the next two
years or so as the rates catch up with us. And we talked about that in the model where
you have several years of deficit spending where we have to, essentially, take from the
enterprise fund ending fund balance to cover operational and capital costs until the
rates catch up to a point where, then, we can start rebuilding our ending fund balance.
This is a financial dashboard, one of the ones we have built recently to sort of showcase
what performance is like, at least from a financial perspective in the Public Works
Department. We hope in the future to have several more of these types of dashboards,
which we can communicate with you to show you what our performance is in an effort to
be more businesslike as it relates to our services that we provide to our customers. We
have several accomplishments I'd like to go through. I'm going to bum through these
really quickly, because the good stuff is after this, although this is great stuff, too. We
have been doing a lot of great things that you may or may not know about and what I'd
like to do is present to you a hard copy of this presentation, so you spend a little bit of
time going through these. But until I do -- until I'm able to get that to you I want to run
very very quickly through these things. In business operations we have been able to
save more than 400,000 dollars making adjustments in the way that we order
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equipment or reuse equipment or, you know, our staffing approach currently. We have
also incorporated laserfiche -- or, excuse me, the laserfiche agenda manager program
into our operations which helps to streamline the Council process for us, developing
financial benchmarks like the ones you have seen and recording criteria to monitor and
adjust fiscal policies for performance, that's really something we are moving toward.
We also participated in national public works week. You may recall the Mayor read a
resolution -- or a proclamation I should say, and we had a big open house event -- it
was really kind of a neat event our first time ever doing something like that. And, then,
lastly, I'm pleased to report also our participation in the Paint the Town event this last
weekend. We had about 50 folks from the Public Works Department, that includes
family members -- about 25 employees in total, show up to paint two homes in the City
of Meridian. That's actually pretty spectacular considering that only seven homes in this
city were participating in the Paint the Town event. So, we are very pleased that we
were able to improve the lives of two of those homeowners. I also want to formally
recognize Mr. Bird's support and generosity for the Public Works Department. He
sponsored us and paid for T-shirts for us. We are grateful -- you can see our staff
wearing those T-shirts proudly in the picture there. Thank you, Mr. Bird, we are grateful
for your support. I'd like to move on with the construction division. Obviously, we are
building lots of projects. You may recall we added a position of construction manager,
although we may not have called it that, that's, essentially, the position -- whereby
construction management or services was brought in-house and that position has
already saved us tens of thousands of dollars and helped implement smoothly several
projects, including the Settlers Village Square project, moving forward of Heroes Park
phase three and many other projects and processes that are improved as a result of
that position. We have also hosted a Somar prevention plan, erosion sediment control
training class for local contractors to get them familiar with those requirements. We
held that in house here in our training facility. Implemented a wide variety of
construction projects inspection requirements to improve our inspection protocols. We
have increased efficiencies and reduced construction management costs for Public
Works and Parks, as I mentioned. And as soon as fire and police want to give us their
capital construction projects we are happy to do that as well. We also bought a variety
of GPS units for our inspectors, which has helped vastly improve our collection of data,
which we are using to upgrade models right now. That -- that project in and of itself
saved us 38,000 dollars over consultant's fees. And, then, of the other projects I
mentioned already there. Our engineering division has been up to quite a bit of work as
well. You know, that we finished the Five Mile Creek restoration project. We are very
proud of that and we hope to have more of types of projects in the future. We also
finished the water main connection to south of the Lewis & Clark Middle School, which
helps to vastly improve fire flows, as well as connectivity in that area. Well 28 has been
drilled and the casings gone in. We hope to have that online in July and if you haven't
been out there, there may be still time to see the picture in sort of the center there with
the rig up and putting the casing in and it's really pretty spectacular to see a new
drinking water well go in that is a state of the art facility in the way it was drilled and in
the way it's going to be cased and sealed. That well will be able to provide 2,500
gallons of water per minute and improves the robustness of our system. We also freed
up nearly five million dollars in capital expenses in FY-09, which really saved our
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cookies here by using just in time capital financing approach, which we have talked to
you about before, but are now -- are now moving forward. And you see more of that as
we bring projects to you, you will approve only a portion of the project, but, actually, the
full project itself, so we will be asking you in our enhancements in a couple of weeks to
improve an entire project, but only the portion of the funding we need for the next year.
And we can talk more about that at a later time. And, then, finally, Well 14 rehabilitation
that cost us around 275,000 dollars, certainly of significant savings to rehabilitate that
well over the cost of putting a new well in on the order of 800,000 or more. As you
know, we have been working diligently to capture information and data and use that
data to make better decisions in how we work in -- or how we conduct or work in the
department. Hansen software, purchasing and integration is going on right now and our
GIS staff, as well as IT staff and our analyst out at the wastewater plant have been
working very diligently to get this system in place and after it is we expect to be able to
track, monitor, maintain our assets and infrastructure better than we ever have been
able to before. Wastewater. Certainly we did receive our first municipal class A -- or
the first municipal class A reclaimed water permit in Idaho. We are about two months
out from receiving the first city wide class A reuse permit. We are very excited about
that. We did also present at the re-use conference this year as a regional -- actually,
statewide leader on the topic and so we are pretty proud of that as well. Our lift station
at North Black Cat is getting ready to be opened -- or come on line I should say in July.
A biosolids improvement project, this was the digesters, a 10.3 million dollar project.
That's, essentially, substantially complete and the digesters are functioning right now.
They have been at gas pressure for about two weeks now, holding steady, which we
are -- which we are still monitoring. Our. tertiary filter project is getting ready to start up.
That's a big project for us. That's one of the bottlenecks in our treatment train at the
treatment plant. So, getting these filters, three new cloth media filters, will go a long
way to helping us increase hydraulic capacity at the plant. And, then, also we have
been looking at operations out there and we have been able to improve or bring about
efficiency in authorization improvements that will save us around 127,000 dollars
annually just in electric and gas costs and we are still looking for other savings in those
areas. We are also trying to automate the plant. We have got a project underway to --
to automate the treatment plant, which would, hopefully, allow us to eliminate graveyard
shifts and keep the plant fully automated at night without staff, sending automatic
alarms and allowing staff to -- via the website go into our treatment plant and make
modifications -- certain modifications to the treatment process or know when they
needed to respond to an alarm. And, then, our collection manhole repair project, that's
been a big project for us, as we have been able to cut down on I & I costs, that is inflow
and infiltration costs, and increase our capacity at the treatment plant as a result to the
tune of 115,000 gallons per day. That's big news. And, again, shows the most promise
in gaining capacity at the treatment plant by filling up these leaking lines or manholes.
The water division has also been up to a lot of good. They have implemented the use
of air cards, which allows their staff in the field to access data anywhere in the city that's
not blacked out by certain radio frequency things or stuff like that that I don't know much
about. MXU installation. This is the radio read technology. We have been able to
eliminate one staff position through attrition, because we didn't need to rehire that
position, since we are able to read more meters through this technology. We have
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added more flush lines, which increases our water quality. We have been
benchmarking our data with Hansen software. Also, we have helped improve the fire
department's rating -- insurance rating because of the robustness of our system and we
are pleased to partner with the fire department on that. We have participated in a public
works week, as you know, and did many different activities during that week. And, then,
we have been recognized both internally and externally by customers and staff as it
relates to our customer service. The last thing here -- and I want to -- I want Bruce, if
you don't mind, to hand this out. We have enhanced and expanded our customer costs
in this report, also known as the CCR's is our annual water quality report that's required
under law. You will have two copies there. The blue copy is last year's version and the
smaller copy on top is this year's version. And, hopefully, what you will notice is a
remarkable difference at a lower cost. We are working very -- we are working diligently
to improve the way we get information out to the community and improve their
understanding of the types of services we provide, so that they can support the types of
things we do in this community. That is one example that we have been able to now put
an eight page spread in color together and give to over 25,000 customers. That isn't
enough copies, so it hasn't gone out yet, but they are being printed currently, so I
thought you would be interested in that. So, now we can talk about sort of the fun stuff;
right? Our strategy. What we are planning and where we are going, with your
permission, of course. This is our strategic planning process. It may look complex and
it kind of is, but I love stuff like this. We are engineers. Essentially what you see here is
a process that we are following and currently in the process you know that we have --
through the development of our strategic leadership team, revised our department's
mission and vision statements and I shared the mission with you. I'll share the vision
statement with you in just a moment. We have also incorporated the city's mission and
vision into our department's mission and vision. Also the budget initiative and the
Council policies have gone into that, to make sure that we are completely in alignment.
We don't want to be working on things you don't want us to be working on or are outside
of the direction you have given our department directors. We have -- we, then, move
forward with a resource allocation study and recommendations. With your approval we
moved forward in adjusting our resource utilization. We had our departmental
reorganization, which is, essentially, what resulted from that. We put the right people in
the right place in the organization to insure that we were going to be efficient and
effective in our work. Currently we are at the point where we are developing strategic
initiatives and that's what I want to share with you tonight. Those strategic initiatives,
once approved, will become our department strategic plan and that plan will guide all of
the work in our department for the next five years. That is our period of time frame that
we are working on. That strategic plan will, then, be broken apart and disseminated to
staff into annual work program plans. And that will ensure that staff are working toward
and understand the goals and strategies of this department, which are founded in the
Council's directives and focus areas. After that annual work program plans are
developed, staff will receive feedback annually, of course, through the performance
process and we will also monitor the performance of our department through either swat
analyses or audits or benchmarks or internal reviews or anything else that will be an
input to our overall performance assessment. We will take the information for that
performance assessment and we will modify what we do. It may be changing a vision
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statement, because we have achieved the vision early, it may be deleting or adding a
new vision statement at Council's -- under Council's direction or advisement. But, in
any event, we will have performance reports and give this information which will, then,
allow us to go through and an adaptive management process to make adjustments to
insure that the golden objectives we set for ourself are going to be attainable in the time
frames that we have allocated for ourself. Our management approach, kind of in the
center there, essentially, what we are doing is we are incorporating data driven decision
making, statistical process control, continuous process improvement and adaptive
management in our overall strategy. That will allow us to insure that as we move
forward managers will be able to maintain the flexibility in their decisions by monitoring
and adjusting as needed. This will help us to improve our understanding of systems
and processes to achieve management objectives and outcomes and insure that the
right action is taken to improve progress toward our desired outcomes as a department.
You have seen this before. This is your strategic focus areas and we are going to --
also I'm just throwing this up here to show you that this, again, is the Council's focused
areas. What we did is we numbered and lettered your focused areas and what you will
see in the following slide is a direct correlation between our vision statement and your
focus areas or initiatives for the city. So, when you have this -- this presentation you will
be able to go back and forth and cross-reference. each of these. We have several vision
statements and these vision statements are -- or the reason we have several is largely
because we have one of the most diverse departments in the city. We cover a lot of
things. We do a lot of stuff, from GIS implementation and integration to cleaning sewer
lines to engineering water towers -- I mean you name it in the Public Works arena we
are doing it, except for streets. Essentially, we will go through the Public Works vision
statements here. Our vision is by -- we want to attain the following things by the year
2030. First of all, we want to be fully accredited as a department and we want to get
strategically positioned so that we have modem and reliable facilities that -- and that we
also emphasize financial stewardship and environmental sustainability and that we are
acceptable and responsive to our customers needs always. We like to think that we are
not going to wait until 2030 to get this one done. We are working on this today and we
feel in many ways we are already there, but that will be something by the year 2030 we
hope to be doing even better than we are today. This at the bottom there says it meets
all Council focused areas. Another vision regarding our staff is that we want to make
sure our staff are technically proficient and that our information is centralized, our
processes are streamlined and automated and that we leverage cutting edge
technology, provide expedient single contact customer service. So, that's also very
important. By 2030 we'd also like to employ aggressive conservation strategies and we
are working, as you know -- some of these might sound like things we are doing already
and that's correct, we aren't waiting to 2030, we are moving forward as quickly as
reasonably possible within our means and, hopefully, we will attain all of this before
2030. But, nevertheless, in employing our conservation -- our aggressive conservation
strategies, we'd like to reduce demand on our resources and promote sustainability by
using efficient and alternative energy sources. Also carbon neutral operations and a
zero emissions fleet and we also see ourselves managing a water district to recycle and
redistribute reclaimed wastewater. Focus areas, again, are -- being met are down there
in the lower right if you want to refer back to those. For water, our water area we'd like
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to say by 2030 we are producing our own chlorine free drinking water from a variety of
sources. We don't have a single source any longer. That is distributed through an
efficient and regionally interconnected delivery system. For flood plain and surface
water systems, we'd like to see ourselves being -- having a comprehensive surface
water program and that we are class four members of the National Flood insurance
program community rating system, which enables us to conserve and protect our
natural resources, as well as our property. We see ourselves maintaining 24 miles of
rehabilitative riparian and wetland corridors that enhance our natural environment,
improve stormwater quality, help to control flooding and serve as pathways for people
and habitat for wildlife. In wastewater our vision is by 2030 that our plant will be self-
sustaining, utilizing close loop systems to recycle and redistribute 80 percent of the
waste stream. And this is important. We hope to do this by using liquid stream
reclaimed water approaches and energy cogeneration, as well as other opportunities,
as well as on our biosolids or solid streams nutrient recycling. In building services,
development services, we like to say that at least 50 percent of our buildings by 2030
are built green and LEED certified and that 50 percent of new land development
projects utilize low impact development standards. That means that we are going to
have our work cut out for us in helping to move the community in that direction, but we
have incentives and ideas for how we can do that in codes, so -- and certainly this
building is a testament of the Council's dedication and commitment to those kinds of
initiatives. Also as it relates to transportation, we say that by 2030 Meridian residents
travel between home and work, school, shopping, recreation, and other destinations
utilizing their choice of several modes of surface transportation safely and without
excessive delay. We'd like to the determine the look, fit, and feel of our streets and
pathways and we think that we'd also be guiding funding methods and programming of
transportation capital improvement projects. We determine road maintenance and
construction standards and schedule work in conjunction with other city activities to
insure minimal inconvenience to residence. Those are tall orders. But I'd also like to
say that all of that can be done with ACHD. We just have to get to the work that needs
to be done to improve communication coordination between the two agencies. Also, by
2030 we think it's important that our customers understand and hopefully before 2030,
that our customers understand the functions of the Public Works Department, that they
value our sustainable approach to managing our community's resources and waste
products and openly support the programs, projects, and services we provide, because
we know that fundamentally if the public doesn't support what we do, we won't be able
to do what we do effectively. So, this is how we think it will happen. And, again, this is
a work in progress for us. We are integrating under the strategically issued plan in
Public Works a variety of different divisional sort of approaches here that allow us to
work as one department, but cross the -- cross-divisionally within our group. In
economic excellence what we would like to say -- and some of our things to promote
economic excellence includes that we would annually evaluate the enterprise fund.
This is important. You know that we have already committed to doing this and it's
important to make sure that we have projections that allow us to make better decisions
today about what's going to happen in our future. We'd like, as far as economic
excellence goes, to continually evaluate and anticipate departmental needs and
challenges by forecasting these needs and challenges we prepare ourselves for what
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may lie ahead. So, we don't want to look annually at what's going on any longer, we
want to move further out. We also would like to utilize facility optimization and service
forecasting to evaluate functional limitations, redundancy, and execute capacity and
volumetric analyses with water and wastewater facilities. This allows us to do a variety
of forecasts that would help us improve services and reduce costs on our infrastructure
and certainly to our citizens. And maintain appropriate infrastructure plans. We know
that those plans have gone a long way to guide development. We'd like to make sure
that we can continue to provide detail, which helps to clarify development and
expectation and lay infrastructure in a timely and sequential manner that benefits our
developing community. That also plays into our strategic growth initiative to evaluate
community master planning incentive opportunities, to insure that we appropriately
incentivize and locate growth to the highest degree possible that makes sense for this
community. We'd also like to develop preventative maintenance and replacement
programs for our water and wastewater infrastructure. This will allow us to enhance
current programs, such as valve exercising, hydric maintenance, meter testing, sewer
pipeline cleaning and distribution, system maintenance -- and this will, obviously,
increase the lifespan of our utility assets and certainly, hopefully, lower replacement and
repair costs in the future. We'd also like to investigate alternative methods for
wastewater treatment to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous loading. This is one big
vulnerability that's coming our way. We are already working on this, but, again, that is
something that will continue to challenge us for quite awhile into the future. Also, we
are -- we would like to make sure that we have a comprehensive biosolids program that
allows us to reuse the waste stream instead of wasting it, which we hope will also
lessen the cost for disposal of that valuable resource. And, then, we are, as you know,
updating our five year capital improvement plans to insure that those plans coincide with
our master plan and that they are in relationship to the services that we need to provide
as it relates to continued development. As I mentioned already, we want to improve
Public Works departmental visibility within our community. We are doing that in several
different ways and have many initiatives associated with that objective. Regarding
services meeting demand, we are focusing on long range solutions. We are not -- we
are trying to get away from quick fixes or short-term reactionary result. We are really
looking -- trying to look further out and plan accordingly. We also, as I mentioned
before, want to develop transportation improvement plans that reflect what this
community needs and wants as it relates to mobility, operational efficiencies, capacities,
and those kinds of things and we can certainly do that with ACHD's help, but that
coordination has been lacking for a long time and we feel that we have opportunities to
improve there. Regional planning is, obviously, very very important. Water is critical to
insuring along term viability and quality of life of our residents, so insuring that we have
as much information about the subsurface as is possible, that we shore up our water
rights and that we move forward to the preservation of adequate supplies of water into
the foreseeable future are all priorities for us. E-commerce technology has already
been, essentially, covered by Bruce, so I won't go into that, but we are also looking at
ways that we can reach out to the citizens and our customers and provide them better
ways, more efficient ways, of doing their business with the city. Finally, identifying and
establishing and maintaining standards and practices for the maintenance of city
buildings is important. We like to lessen our maintenance costs, obviously, and insure
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the long-term viability of our buildings by improving these standards and practices on a
long range basis. Regarding organizational excellence, certainly we are focusing on
performance measurement, monitoring, and reporting practices throughout our
department, because the more we know the better decisions we will be able to make.
We also want to establish customer service standards throughout our department. We
are elevating those standards daily and our police report similarly as to what Bruce has
seen in his customer satisfaction surveys over the last four years, that there are
improvements being made in our department we are very proud of. We want to begin
the process becoming a fully accredited department recognized by the American Public
Works Association. This is a tall order, it's about a three year program to become
accredited. There will be some costs associated with this as well, but there are only
about 50 to 60 agencies nationally that are accredited.. Just as a side note, the city of
Lewiston is already 12 to 18 months in the process and is moving forward to become
the first accredited organization in the state of Idaho.
De Weerd: And you are going to beat that.
Barry: Well, don't want to go on the record saying that, though. With your approval
we'd certainly like to give it a try. Departmental processes and technology assessments
are important to us again. The more we look for things the more we find, the more
opportunity there are for improvements. Creating citywide unified mapping systems for
all user data is also critical to efficient and effective customer service, whether those
customers be internal within the city, planning versus police versus fire, or externally to
our customers and in Public Works we like to focus on developing succession plans and
individual training plans for all positions within Public Works Department. This is
important for us. We want to invest in one of our most valuable assets in our
department and that is our people. So, our managers have recognized this need and
will be moving forward in that direction over the next little while. And, then, finally, we'd
like to work with HR additionally to implement employee incentive programs
department-wide that are just and equitable and fair and have the purpose that's
intended behind them, again, because we want to not only attract, but we want to
recognize and retain, again, the most valuable assets we have in our department and
that's our employees. Regarding stewardship of the public trust, we'd like to establish a
citywide reclaimed water program. That's no mystery. We are really excited about that
and, hopefully, we will be able to make significant progress on that front here in the next
couple months with the -- with the acquisition of our permit and, then, we have to build
some infrastructure, which is going to be pretty costly, but will have great benefits. We
also want to preserve, protect, and enhance the city's natural resources and we know
that open space is a natural resource adds to community character and quality of life
and we'd like to contribute to both of those improvements in the city. Also, we recognize
that to meet our NPD at phase two -- NPD, that's, again, National Pollution Discharge
elimination system programs under the federal Clean Water Act, we have to have in
place polices, procedures, and plans for attainment for surface water quality standards.
We are still wrestling on how to do this. Right now we are working on how we could
establish a surface water utility -- separate utility and a program and finance that
program from rates, but do it in a way that doesn't impact our rate payers. So, we are
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still toying with this idea and how to make this happen. Nevertheless, the obligations
don't go away. We are making progress on that. We'd also like to promote sustainable
growth practices and ideals as kind of mentioned earlier and prudently manage our
department resources. That's critical. It's in our mission statement and we will do that
and continue to do that daily into the foreseeable future. We also have challenges, but
we like to see those challenges as new opportunities. Certainly for the next couple of
years our biggest -- probably one of our biggest challenges are those of the financial
and this includes rates which we have a program already in place, we went through a lot
of work, and appreciate your support and understanding with regard to the rates.
Budget constraints are certainly things we are aware of and we think you will be pleased
with our budget as we present that in the next couple of weeks. But creating future
budgets is also going to be an important activity for us, because we want to make sure
that we spend within our means. And, then, certainly depreciation's an area that I have
mentioned earlier, that we have a lot of work to do and even with the rate increases we
have -- we have passed and propose, the depreciation is still not adequately financed.
Permit limits continue to plague us. We -- the current limit -- we have a flow limit, unlike
a lot of the jurisdictions in this valley, our flows are limited and they are pre -- well, they
are, essentially, 1999 flows that we are having to operate under. So, this continues to
be a challenge for us, which is why reclaimed water makes so much sense for us and
why I&I, inflow and infiltration, is a critical component to increasing capacity at the
treatment plant, particularly during the summer months. So, permit limits for like
phosphorus and nitrogen are also big deals for us and they will cost us a lot of money
and that money has not been factored into rates at all. So, we know that that's going to
be a new challenge that we are going to have to face soon. Technological
advancements. While this is daunting for many of our staff, we believe strongly that
once we become familiar and utilize the data and the software programs that collect and
report that data, we will be able to make substantial improvements in the way we
operate and maintain our infrastructure. Unfilled staff positions. Certainly a little bit of a
concern. We are 15 percent down in staffing. We are looking at -- the Mayor and I are
looking at key positions that we need to fulfill immediately and, then, those positions
which we might be able to continue to stave off until things look a little bit better and the
need is there for some of those positions. Other challenges or opportunities are
enhancing our CIP program and creating a more robust project management database,
so we can be more accountable as it relates to our scopes, projects, and budgets in our
capital side of operation. And, then, a streamlined approach to minor improvement
projects. Again, Bruce spoke to that. As well as directed development that is more
beneficial to the city's growth priority plans and we have touched on that as well. I know
that's a lot of information. That's all I have for you this evening. If you'd like more I can
come back another time. But, really, we do appreciate -- we have a big department and
we do a lot of things and we know it takes a lot of time to get through this information
and we appreciate your patience and continued support, but there so much going on
that we feel compelled to share it with you. We don't -- we don't want to miss anything
and I know that I have missed a lot, but, nevertheless, we do our best to get that
information to you. So, thank you for your time. I'll take any questions or comments
you might have.
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Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I just got three comments that -- first of all, I want to thank all of your employees
within the department that did the Paint the Town, for being a citizen of Meridian. It
makes me proud to -- not only the Paint the Town concept, but also to see our
department out there and the number of people that participated. Tom, I hope you will
pass it on to all the employees that did that. And I think I can speak for all the Council
and the Mayor, too, we are very proud of them for doing that -- stepping forward and
doing it. Second, this was a great presentation. I will be glad to get the hard copy so I
can study it. You don't talk quite as fast as Matt, but you still talk -- it gets going. And,
thirdly, there was a lot of times in the past that Public Works has come forward wanting
to -- put new electronics and labor saving things in that I thought maybe wasn't right,
because Idon't -- I'm a very electronic dumb person, but I'm sure glad we have when I
look at the chart that you showed that we can -- we are taking care of -- one employee's
taking care of six hundred and some -- was taking care of six .hundred and some, how
he's taking care of 900 and some. I'm glad we invested in those and I hope we continue
to invest in labor saving -- not that I want to eliminate labor, but automation definitely
does help. At any rate, thanks, Tom, for your -- to your department and everything for
the presentation. It's first class as usual. Thank you.
Barry: Thank you, sir.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: And I would like to add my thanks. Not only is there a lot of material, but it's
interesting and you make it interesting as you present it, but I want to thank you and all
of the management group that you put together and all of your department employees
who are doing an excellent job for us and making it understandable. This is -- this is
really great. One other thing that I really appreciate is looking forward and starting --
and planning for what the future infrastructure needs to be and I very much appreciate
that you were including in that Meridian's transportation needs. I understand that other
agencies are the ones that are officially responsible for them, but I have long been an
advocate that Meridian should at least understand what we are going to need, because
the other agencies have either a whole county or a whole state to look at and we are
just one of the many of their constituents and I feel it's important for Meridian to know
what our needs are and to work together with the other agencies. You mentioned
COMPASS, ITD, and ACHD. I would add to that Valley Regional Transit, because
that's a factor in our transportation as well. But I appreciate that you're suggesting that
we have input in that subject and do our long range planning and I think that's really
wonderful. I had a question about the annual system reinvestment or I think you also
said that was depreciation. You mentioned that we currently have 400 plus miles of
water pipe and almost 500 miles I think it was of sewer pipe. I'm guessing because of
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop
June 16, 2009
Page 57 of 60
our growth there is a good percentage of that that's fairly recent, but off the top of your
head how much of that infrastructure is more than 20 years old or more than 50 years
old? And what -- we have been getting by so far, but are we going to have some
surprises pretty soon?
Barry: Thank you, Mr. Zaremba, for your comments. Regarding your question, I think
we are fortunate that most of our infrastructure is less than 20 years old. If you look at
the population specifics for the City of Meridian, our population in 1990, as I understand
it, was around 11,000 folks. It, essentially, tripled between 1990 and 2000, so that by
2000 our population was around 33, 34 or 35 thousand folks and, then, doubled again
between 2000 and 2008, as I understand it. So, that our population currently today is in
the order of 72 to 75 thousand. So, based solely on that information alone and not
having access to the information yet on infrastructure condition and age and those kinds
of things, it is reasonable to do that. The majority of our infrastructure that serves our
community is less than 20 years old and that a substantial amount of that is even less
than ten years. So, it is beneficial. We are lucky that even though we are inadequately
financing depreciation, we do have, hopefully, some time to catch up and that's great
news. The bad news is is that the appreciation life span of certain types of
infrastructure varies all over town. As as example, we have rehabilitated wells that were
supposed to last on the books anywhere from 50 to 100 years in less than 20 and that's
because of steel casings that are prone to corrosive water, as an example, as we since
adapted and been replacing those with PVC casing that will not deteriorate as quickly.
So, that's a good example of how we have adapted in our approach in modifying
systems and capital assets to try to extend the life of those. But, again, we do think that
we are in a good spot, even though at the moment we are temporarily underfunding
system reinvestment that we can, in the next five years or so, get that number to
something more closer to what it should be.
Zaremba: Thank you.
Rountree: Comment?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I think Tom's heard enough accolades and I'm not going to ruin that.
Barry: I'll take more.
De Weerd: I would like to congratulate the team. You know, there has been a lot of
change over the last year and I think much of it has been positive and transparancy of
the long-term planning is something that we have never -- we have had little of and so
this is very refreshing. I've appreciated working along side of you and your team and it's
truly exciting being able ~ to speak on the advancements and forward thinking of this
department and so I just want to congratulate all of you. You've really -- when I was at
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop
June 16, 2009
Page 58 of 60
the reuse conference -- I'm giving Tom a hard time. But there was a lot of admiration to
what you all are doing and we are very proud of that.
Rountree: Tom -- it's my turn, I guess. I really appreciate the level of sophistication that
you and your strategic planning team have brought to the strategic planning process
and actually gotten away from just the buzz words and, actually, put something together
that has matrix, has specificity. And I think it's really and truly the only way you can plan
and make it work, get away from the loftiness and get down to the nuts and bolts of
what -- what you need to do. But you've taken it to the next level, I think, within the city
and I appreciate that and I think we all can learn from that. My only caution -- and I
have seen it happen with the enthusiasm that it generates, is that you are and will
become data rich, but don't get information poor.
Barry: Thank you, sir. We will keep that in mind as we move forward.
Rountree: Great report. Appreciate it.
Barry: Thank you.
De Weerd: And I'm sure we need that on a thumb drive, because it can't be e-mailed.
Bany: I know. It's about 37 megs, I believe.
Bird: We can have hard copies, can't we, Tom?
Barry: Yes, sir. We can print hard copies.
Rountree: That would be.good, I think.
Bird: Forme.
Barry: Great. We will have those in your boxes before the end of the week.
Rountree: Very good.
Bany: Thank you, sir.
Item 6: CITY ORDINANCE/POLICY REVIEW:
A: Ordinance No. : AZ 08-016 Southridge 31 by
James L. Jewett.
Rountree: Look for that as well. Next item. Item 6. Ordinance. Proposed ordinance.
Would you read that by title only, Tara.
Green: Thank you, Mr. President, Members of the Council. Ordinance No. 09-1419.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop
June 16, 2009
Page 59 of 60
An Ordinance AZ 08-016, Southridge 31, for annexation of a tract of land situated in the
southwest one quarter of the southwest one quarter of Section 14, Township 3 North,
Range 1 West, Boise Meridian, Ada County, Idaho, as described in Attachment A and
annexing certain lands and territories situated in Ada County, Idaho, and adjacent and
contiguous to the corporate limits of the City of Meridian, as requested by the City of
Meridian, establishing and determining the land use zoning classification of said land
from RUT, Ada County, to ME, Mixed Employment District, in the Meridian City Code,
providing that copies of this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County assessor, the
Ada County recorder, and the Idaho State Tax Commission, as required by law, and
providing for a summary of the ordinance and providing for a waiver of the reading rules
and providing an effective date.
Rountree: Thank you. You have heard the ordinance read by title only. Anyone wish
to hear the entire ordinance? Thank you very much. Seeing none, I need a motion.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we approve ordinance number 09-1419 with suspension of rules.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve ordinance in Item 6-A. Roll call
vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Item 7: EXECUTIVE SESSION:
A: Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c)(t) ~ Q).
Rountree: And the last item an Executive Session. I need a motion to go into Executive
Session.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c),
(1)(f), and (1)Q).
Zaremba: Second.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop
June 16, 2009
Page 60 of 60
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, absent.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Rountree: We are in Executive Session.
EXECUTIVE SESSION:
Bird: -- Mr. President.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: Moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All in favor? Aye.
Opposed?
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Rountree: Need a motion to adjoum.
Bird: So moved.
Zaremba: Second.
Rountree: Moved and seconded to adjoum. All in favor.
MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT.
Rountree: We are adjourned. Thank you all.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 10:27 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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