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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001 04-03 SpecialMeridian City Council Meeting April 3, 2001 The special workshop of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 5:30 PM on Tuesday April 3, 2001 by Mayor Robert Corrie. Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Keith Bird, Tammy De Weerd, Cherie McCandless Others Present: Bill Nichols, Janice Smith, Bill M, Will Berg: Special guest: Ken Harward Corrie: Okay. I call the special workshop to order April 3, 2001. Meridian City Council discussing the upcoming special mellody. Note all Council members are present, the city attorney and also Ken Harward, Director AIC. With that, is Janice coming in here? Bird: I don’t think she knows it. Corrie: Okay. I guess Ken what we’re needing some expert advice on how to go about this mill levy. Should we talk to the people and what we need to do and some of the particulars that you’ve had experience with. What we need to emphasize to the people and kind of go over – This is treasurer kind of – (inaudible) might be here to explain what this is all about. Harward: Actually I done the calculations this afternoon. I didn’t bring them with me. In the year 2002 it shows if you brought your levy up to .004 the revenue would be one million four hundred and fifty seven thousand. Five million eight hundred and thirty – Corrie: She was projecting off of a – was estimating that we’d have a 16 percent growth rate this next year. I cautioned her about being a little bit too optimistic there because indications are that the building might slow with the amount of lay offs that are happening in the high tech industry and some of that kind of stuff. I’d rather be a little bit conservative than I would over estimate. I would say, we saw a projection, Bill and I did about two years ago? Just last year at the workshop and it was about a million dollars at that point. I was thinking probably one and a half million would be pretty close to what that would generate based on (inaudible) Harward: I actually did the calculations (inaudible). On this maybe (inaudible) Janice the actual levy for year 2000 was how much? Smith: The mill levy? Harward: No the actual dollar levy. Smith: It was that – Harward: That was actual dollar Smith: Right and we brought in a little more. Haward: But your dollar certification is that amount? Smith: Yes. Harward: With the four million and eighty four thousand. And the levy that you’ll make this year will be that, assuming there’s no election, you’d have 3 percent over that plus last year rate is .0032. Apply the annexation value and new construction value. For the most part you’re dealing with one billion four hundred and fifty seven million. Smith: That’s what (inaudible) Anderson: More sandwiches. (inaudible discussion) Smith: That’s just a blank but I’ve got another formula of how they give it to us. Harward: I really apologize for not bringing my spreadsheet. Smith: Let me go print some out. Harward: I had calculated if you brought it up to the .04 what the difference is. (inaudible discussion) Harward: No it’s a calculation. Mayor, do you just want me to comment on that? (inaudible) ideas for an election? Corrie: No that’s all right. Harward: It does take 60 percent voter approval. You’re holding the election of course in May. The election does have to be either in May or November. The reason that was written into the law two dates that we’re expected to have the highest voter turn out. Now the May election doesn’t necessarily have a high turn out in the off years. The year that there’s a primary (inaudible). Now that can work to you r advantage I think. Just knowing that you can develop a strategy based upon the expected voter turn out. If you really take the million dollars, there are specific things that you’re going to use it for. Here’s where you can be creative in your own budget because we can move dollars around. So you take the million dollars is going to go to a certain project you know that’ll be the most popular. Some might say that’s firefighters and some might say that’s parks. Anyway, put (inaudible) would have the most public appeal. Put the money towards that and it seems like you would want to get some citizens involved in the committee. Have you identified where the money would go? In a specific way or just in a general way? Corrie: Probably general. It would just be police fire and parks right now. Anderson: We do know that we’re way behind in those three areas as compared to national averages and when you look at park space per population you know acres of park ground. When you look at numbers of police officers and numbers of fire fighters per capita and fire stations. There’s are the three big areas that we’re going to target with the money. Harward: All you have to do is look at the population you have in this city and look at the tax revenue you’ve got coming in. Everybody who’s used to a municipal budget can shake their head and say how are you doing it? (inaudible) That’s another good thing to use in the material is comparisons with other cities which might be Nampa and Caldwell and Twin Falls, Lewiston, Idaho Falls, and you’ll show your citizens that even if you only came to the .004 you’re going to be still about half of the levy the other major cities in Idaho will have. (inaudible) That additional million could be spread over a one billion-dollar tax base. There’s going to be a pretty small impact when you’re giving homeowner, business owner, so I hope you (inaudible) a calculation that shows on average (inaudible) Smith: This is that worksheet that we use. (inaudible discussion) Smith: I think I got them all. These are the formulas that we use but to make it simple for you guys (inaudible) go off the top part they give us right here. They give us this mill levy times that percentage. It comes up to the same thing. Anderson: Janice, so this was the L2 for 2000? Smith: Yes. Anderson: You just submitted this in? Smith: Yeah. This is the one that was submitted. Right here. That’s the (inaudible) I’ve got to figure out what, I was messing around with it so I just printed it real quick Harward: You can generalize here pretty easy. The difference between your actual levy and if you brought it up to .04 is in the million dollar range. Smith: So, I tried to simplify it on that other sheet. Harward: Two cities have done this. Both small cities. Iona over by Idaho Falls and they put together a campaign and you’ve got all those documents. Ended up with a 79 percent voter approval. Then the little tiny city of Placerville used it and they got 89-voter approval. (inaudible discussion) De Weerd: Do you have information then on what type of information they got out to their – Anderson: Ken sent us examples of. They have letters going out. Again what they did is what Ken is taking about which is they tied it to specific, we’ve got to remember with Iona they have a contract with the sheriff for law enforcement services so they have a provision that we’ve got 35 thousand dollars we have to come up with some place or we’re not going to have any protection. So, they had some really specific things they tied into what was going to happen. They had some, looks to me like this was probably an ad in the newspaper. It is a vote yes ad, (inaudible) They had a fact sheet if I remember right that specified where these funds were going to be used so that anybody that was going to ask what are you going to do with this money if we give it to you, so you can say here’s this much (inaudible) police budget, this much (inaudible) But those are all pretty standard things. The key is to try to target those that you know are going to vote in favor and get them involved somehow. Harward: Now the chamber has a pretty active public affairs (inaudible) Smith: (inaudible) Thursday. Anderson: This Thursday? Harward: I would recommend getting on their agenda and getting the Chamber’s endorsement and then printing a bunch of (inaudible) You can have, depending if you’re going to target some recreational park project, (inaudible) Produce a lot of volunteers to help. (inaudible) I’ll put together for you the comparisons with the other cities where we show where you are in relationship to the other cities. You have to I guess choose how much publicity you’re going to go after. I’m pretty confident the Statesman would editorialize this (inaudible) I would help get the information to (inaudible) (inaudible discussion) Corrie: I know the other two. I’ve worked with them. I have pretty good repor with both of them. Anderson: I had a question on you talked about trying to tell the public what it is that the money would buy or whatever, pay for. It’s a little bit difficult to head up the budgeting process because you don’t know what the requests are going to be specifically from the individual department yet. Are you better off to take the approach that you figure out what an average cost of putting a police officer on the street or adding a fire fighter to the department or purchasing park ground per acre and what it would cost to develop that and have generic numbers to say that if you approve this million dollar increase this could put x number of policemen or x number of fire fighters better than going with a specific proposal that says we will hire x number of policemen or x number of – Harward: I guess it would be my recommendation that if in fact you have a plan which is certainly not binding until you (inaudible). If you do have a plan for what the money will be used for and it’s specific I would market that specificity. This is our plan. Here’s our needs. You’ve got a compelling argument with the growth rate. You were a tiny little farm town of 9 thousand people and (inaudible) today what 335 thousand plus and you got stuck, really really got hemmed when the legislature passed a property tax cap. You got caught in the squeeze. Nobody’s fault, you just got stuck. There’s a possibility of meeting all of those needs that intend to grow. See, what’s happened, as you’ve had to grow, market valuation has increased. You’re under a cap; it drives down your rates. This is only a Band-Aid. It’s not going to solve your financial (inaudible) Anderson: I guess the problem I see we saw it flair its ugly head last year at (inaudible) time, we feel like all three of those areas are equally important in my mind. I feel like we’re behind in all of those and we need to improve. What happened last year at budget time what we ended up is we ended up with different factions that had their own interests. Just like you said somebody thinks the police is more important than parks or fire is more important than police. Then you start getting all this in fighting and they start rallying more people around their cause to say that my cause is more important than your cause. It actually turned out to be a very ugly hearing, pitting department against department. Harward: And you don’t want that to happen with the election. See the same thing could happen here on that ballot issues. We have different factions. If the Council is of a mind of what you want to put down in a plan, a plan that you vote on as a Council that your proposing this plan. This is where you see the money would go. I think you’d be better off selling it to the public and to the different factions. The message to the different factions if you really want it you’d better all link arms together and help get it passed for everybody’s benefits. Smith: That’s 30. At 40 percent of an increase (inaudible). If it doesn’t pass it’s (inaudible) Harward: So, Mayor just to recap I guess. We’ll put together a comparison (inaudible). We’ll give some history on the property tax laws in the last, well I mean I’ve already got it summarized but what happens is (inaudible). You can really trace what Meridian is today in terms of its tax revenue to what happened (inaudible) in 1978. That’ll give information then take it to the statesman, editorial board. You can develop it into an informational piece to go to the Chamber. It seems to me that someone, you Mayor, or someone or divide it up need to get on the agenda of the service club meetings. You know (inaudible) and solicit every organizations support. (inaudible) One thing we used to do over in Nampa, in gaining support for public projects was actually bring people together for one large community meeting, Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Lion’s Club, Kiwanis Club, all in one day. I don’t know if that would work in Meridian. (inaudible discussion) Harward: (inaudible) But I would recommend if you could get all their membership together on it. Call it the service club appreciation day. See if they would each forego their special whatever day they meet that week and pick one day for everybody can get there. (inaudible) Corrie: We’ve got two service organizations already asking to talk. Harward: Have some fact sheets and maybe at the meeting say okay to get this done we need your support. If we can count on your vote. If we’re going to run some ads like Iona did, that’s not City money paying for those ads. You can give information but when you cross the line into advocacy, (inaudible) (inaudible discussion) Harward: Well, they didn’t. They had citizens sign their name and put in the money. Bird: How about flyers? Harward: I think flyers would really be important. Now in a classic campaign what you try to do is what Bill told you earlier. You identify your supporters, you identify the undecided, and then if you know who the opposition is you don’t try to change the mind of the opposition. You do the things that solidify your supporters and make sure you get them to the polls. Make sure they’re registered and have something in place that gives people a reminder call the day before that election, transportation if they need it. (inaudible) Then you develop the flyers and information (inaudible). You just assume they forgot the day of election so you don’t want to do a whole lot to remind them. I think you do need flyers. I think you need an informational packet. De Weerd: And how would you distribute them? (inaudible) Harward: That’s right. Bird: And you don’t use City money to develop these flyers. Corrie: We get some of the other people to stand out here and hand out – Bird: Mike Walkers. I was going to say that I’m sure that even though it is in May, we start in May that we run about 6 or 700 little league football kids from Meridian and we can hand flyers out at the sign ups. Anderson: I think you can use some of these groups that are supportive of (inaudible) Rather in the fire department, the fire explorers, or the police it’ the Citizens on Patrol. Not that they’re doing that while they’re serving for the City – (inaudible discussion) Anderson: Champion the causes for the City and you know the friends for the parks and (inaudible) and some of those types of – Harward: Those are exactly the groups of people you want to get in with. De Weerd: What about putting some out at the golf – Harward: Now the information, the informational piece is legitimate for the City to produce and to pay for. So, if you’re putting together a fact sheet, a flyer that says, gives the census numbers, the growth rate, comparisons of other tax levies of other cities and a plan for how this money would be used. That’s information. Corrie: So, that could be put out in with the water bills? Harward: Absolutely. De Weerd: Well, we’ve only got one. Corrie: I know but we can get that real quick. Harward: I mean and if you’re pointing out to the folks that there’s going to be an election and the day of the election, that’s all legitimate information. (inaudible discussion) Bird: That’s probably the best way to get them out is in the water bills. (inaudible discussion) Nichols: -- the key is, in my prospective at least, a lot of these that I’ve seen in the past, (inaudible) – where’s the money going to go? The tension, what Ron’s identified, you’re prejudging your budget. You know you’re down in those three areas among others as well. Even if you did nothing more than (inaudible) the percentage of your general fund revenue, how much of it went to police and how much went to fire and how much went to parks in this current fiscal year simply (inaudible) to be 100 percent Take out the administration part of it. Apply those on the money and say this would make this much available (inaudible) this much available for fire. That’s this many new patrol cars or this many officers, this many positions in the fire department. Those sorts of things that makes it tangible. You’re still going to have to come down to the hard part of budgeting and still allocate those scarce dollars. My advice and this is not legal advice so you’ve got to take it for what its worth, is that even if you felt like you made a promise tot he voters that this is what we’re going to do with the money this year, you keep that promise in this upcoming budget. Next time you can massage those numbers around. Maybe next time it’s a little more on the police department, maybe more on the fire department. At least you’ve said this is how it can be used. I think we can work (inaudible) But it’s really important, they’ve got to know this is just not going to be sucked into a (inaudible). They’ve got to know this is going (inaudible) something they really feel is important. I mean, you’re in a meeting with some opponents and (inaudible) (inaudible discussion) Nichols: -- with some of the opponents and yet (inaudible) people said by the way, it appears to us you don’t have enough money to run your general fund. What can we do to help? Those are people that are closer to the particular project that recognize that the City’s general fund needed to be increased. How can that be done? (inaudible) So, you go back to those people and say this is what you said then are you still willing to help? Harward: I think keeping your campaign strategy, have a citizens committee and their names are out on the front line too, get some very prominent citizens, well known, respected and they endorse. The more you could have other citizens leading the effort, the less you as elected officials (inaudible) the battle line. Anderson: I like your idea Bill about kind of figuring out how it is that you’re going to spend that. I think you have to, can’t just take the whole budgets right now though. I think you have to extrapolate out of there some of the things like maybe some of the capital improvement. (inaudible) Police department’s building a new building. This money that we redeem from this increase in the mill levy would be on going money so I would like to see that go more into manpower and operational costs. I think maybe those are the parts of the budget you’d have to look at the police, the fire, the parks and look at what they’re spending on those parts of the budget and then figure out a percentage (inaudible). Then look at how you want to extrapolate that out of there. Nichols: That’s the thing the counsel said is how are you going to do that? Or you could even look at you know a 56 acre park is the first stage of developing (inaudible) is going to make it more efficient. Purchase some different mowing equipment that would allow us to cover this many more acres with just one person. All of those things are legitimate. The key is this is essentially a marketing campaign to sell something, which is why somebody with a 150 thousand dollar home should increase their taxes (inaudible). That’s the question. De Weerd: That’s basically what the schools do when they have a bond election to build new schools. Bird: They have to list the (inaudible) De Weerd: Yeah. Bird: I think Bill’s right but I also agree with Ron. I think that if you want to sell the program, I think – we know the three areas we’re down in. I would say a third, third and third because they’re all, and I’m like Ron you know you can’t go off of this year’s budget because the police have got a big 3.5 million bloated one on capital improvements. I would say those three and I think you’d get more people if you start kicking 76 percent of the budget which the police has ran up until the last three years has been 76 percent, 71 to 76 percent of the budget. You’re going to have parks people saying hey I’m not going to support that if its all going to police or fire and the police are going to say I’m not going to support that if its all going to parks. I think we need to divide that equal. They’re three equal ones and they’re three equally behind. Harward: Right. But also what you’re doing when you talk about police in this marketing campaign you don'’ want to frame it as helping the police. You want to frame it as providing public safety for the citizens of Meridian. The citizens of Meridian are at a disadvantage, a threat because of being under served with public safety. I think you’re going to have tremendous response for the parks and recreation. De Weerd: (inaudible) already ready to help. One of the members would like to serve on this citizens committee. He’s been a school board trustee (inaudible) a number of school bonds so he’s very familiar with bond campaigns and that sort of thing. We just need to pull it together and start doing (inaudible). (inaudible discussion) McCandless: (inaudible) soccer season. A lot of our youth organizations could be very pro active in this. (inaudible) Harward: Can you identify specific projects or programs with parks and recreation where you’re actually listing we’ll do this and this soccer field or we’ll do this with this program, this will enable us to serve this many more children. This will enable us to do this much more for fire protection. And then you start getting the public safety component in there. Where are you now with your fire ready (inaudible) (inaudible discussion) Harward: You can get mileage out of if you’re getting closer Ron and getting into a 4 then you’ll be saving fire premiums far more than the tax dollars. Anderson: Boise and Nampa’s a 3, so I mean that shows that they are behind. This other station will probably, if we ask for a re-rate after its open probably get to 4. But the station – Harward: You can use that. You know and you don’t have to stretch the truth but I’d put it in the material by just this extra nudge and what this allows could very well put us over the hump into a 4, from a five to a 4 (inaudible). Corrie: What would a (inaudible) What does that amount to? You said a 150,000-dollar home? Nichols: 150,000 dollar home, (inaudible) approximately (inaudible) Corrie: So, it (inaudible) Harward: What is the, right now, so if you have a 150,000 dollar that’s where you’re starting at, the value of the home and then you back out whatever the value of the land is. (inaudible discussion) Harward: Right. So, it brings you down to 110. Yeah it’s 50 percent or 50 thousand. So, you’d still be taxed at 60 thousand and you add that to the 40. Right now on a 100,00-dollar home at your levy (inaudible) that homeowner’s paying about 310 dollars to the City of Meridian. Now 150,000 home to be really on the tax rolls at that, that’s a pretty nice home. (inaudible) So, 310 dollars and if you go up to .04, you’re talking 80 dollars a year. It’s 80 to 90 dollars per year. (inaudible discussion) Nichols: I don’t know if on the residents (inaudible) Bird: This is an open state. A lot of insurance companies don’t use those rates. This is the thing that the rural district almost found out that going out and (inaudible) just about didn’t get the mill levy raised up there. Harward: Because they would probably (inaudible) Bird: Yeah. Because I called mine. Anderson: And then the insurance agent may say I’m already quoting you at a three. But where Ken’s correct is commercial people don’t do that. I mean if you’re a 5 they quote you at a 5. They don’t – Bird: (inaudible) Anderson: -- heavier on insurance premiums. Bird: But they’re sprinkling anyway most of them. (inaudible discussion) Anderson: One of the disadvantages we’re at compared to the other two cities you talked about, is we’re so much larger and there’s so many other taxing districts or jurisdictions out there that want that money because we haven’t been taking our fair share of that, they’ve jumped in there and have been taking it from the school districts are taking everything they can in their share. It’s going to be difficult I think for us. I mean it’s a salesmanship job I think is really what its going to take to sell this because nobody else is going to just back off and let the City of Meridian raise their mill levy and then (inaudible). They’re cutting the taxes just as high as they can get it. (inaudible discussion) Bird: County isn’t going to give us any of their 20 percent, ACHD isn’t going to give us any of their 7 percent of our taxes. (inaudible) Anderson: Too Kenneth when you do those comparisons it’s kind of misleading if people don’t understand what all’s getting funded out of that budget and if you use some cities like Garden City and Eagle in that comparison, they’re not funding fire out of that because they’re covered by a separate fire district. Harward: I think that the comparisons that you would use for Meridian would be the larger cities Caldwell, Nampa, Twin Falls, Pocatello (inaudible) Coeur De Lane. (inaudible) I’m going to show you way down at the bottom of the pile. Anderson: You know, comparing Nampa Ken though, Nampa’s got their own highway districts – Harward: Yeah and that’s – Anderson: -- what percent of their .76 is highway? We need to be able to answer that question. Harward: What you’d do, Yeah I was just thinking about that. I think what you’d do in the footnote of this comparison is show what the Ada Highway District Levy is and then you could add that back to Meridian’s levy – Bird: And compare. That’s good. I think that’s the only fair way for people, opponents not to come back and hit us. Harward: That’s right. Anderson: But really tell me can you when you’re showing things that are funded out of the general, I mean like your sewer and water, you’d take that out of there because those are enterprise. Harward: All we’re talking about is that taxes. Unidentified: Right, he’s going to show us the rates. (inaudible discussion) Bird: See, the highway district in Nampa is a general fund. (inaudible discussion) Harward: Well, there’s a street fund in Nampa so there’s a street levy. So if we show here the Ada Highway Districts levy in the footnote and you added it back and just tack it on to (inaudible). De Weerd: Ken is there any simple way of really being able to portray how that cap has really handicapped rapidly growing cities like Meridian. You know, (inaudible) is not allowed to really pay its way because of that cap. Is there any way in simple terms to really be able to write that out. Harward: I will prepare you sort of a description of what’s happened with property tax policy. Very briefly a summary. (inaudible) But then the House bill 156 passed and applied 3 percent (inaudible). See, you were already low. I think we can. I think we can show it graphically. Anderson: I think this thing Janice did really helped to show that because you’re showing that every year your market values increasing but you’re showing that your mill levy is decreasing. With Ken’s expertise and explaining things I think he could more than come up with a very good explanation tying that in with the legislation why that’s happening and why that’s bad for cities that are having high growth rates like Meridian. It actually does not allow us to (inaudible) Even though I think that was the purpose when the legislation was enacted of allowing that new construction to go at your last year’s mill levy rate but it’s not adequate to keep with the high growth rate. Bird: If they took that 3 percent cap off, we wouldn’t be in here talking about raising our mill levy. We’d have more money. Nichols: And that could be part of the analysis. If there were no 3 percent cap, this is what Meridian I guess mill levy rate which was in place at that time (inaudible) With the (inaudible) you’re going to be at x number of dollars (inaudible) 3 percent cap – Bird: 3 percent cap. That’s right. Nichols: -- So you’re just essentially explaining to people that still your taxes are a whole lot less (inaudible) Harward: I think that with that Bill too you need to sort of paint some picture of desperation. Okay, we’ve managed to hang on by our fingernails; here in 2001 we survived. But what are we going to do for public safety, recreation and park (inaudible) if we don’t have something. (inaudible) Show that it’s going to be disastrous down the road. Okay, I’ll prepare that stuff. Corrie: All right Ken. Any other question? Okay. Thank you Ken. I really appreciate you coming here and taking your time and we’ll look for that (inaudible) (inaudible discussion) Corrie: It’s (inaudible) 8 years ago. We knew where it was going and it’s hit the crunch time. Okay. Thank you. Harward: Thank you. (inaudible discussion) Corrie: Well, lets – Bird: go in and get started – (inaudible discussion) Corrie: Why don’t we just make it as we’ll go until 10:00 on Public Hearings and then if 10:00 the last one (inaudible) If that’s what you want to do. Bird: One’s already requested to be – De Weerd: Yeah. McCandless: Why don’t we time them too and stick to it. If there are people up there talking – Bird: Give those developers only 10 or – De Weerd: It’s the developers who need the time. McCandless: Uh-huh. Bird: And the public too. (inaudible discussion) Bird: Regardless of what we have. (inaudible discussion) Anderson: Adjourn? Corrie: Okay. De Weerd: I move we adjourn. Bird: Second. Corrie: Okay. Motions made and second. All in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES Meeting Adjourned at 6:33 PM (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: Keith Bird, President WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK