HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001 05-09 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Meeting May 9, 2001
The special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 7:00 PM on Wednesday May 9,2001 by Mayor Robert D. Corrie.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Cherie McCandless, Ron Anderson, Tammy De Weerd, and Keith Bird.
Others Present: Janice Smith, Ken Bowers, Stacy Kilchenmann, Bill Gordon, Tom Kuntz, and Will Berg.
Corrie: Thank you for coming this evening. I’m going to open the special meeting of the Meridian City Council at 7:00 PM, Wednesday May 9, 2001. The Meridian City Council will make
a presentation to the people here tonight dealing with the up coming election for the increase in the mill levy. Tonight the presentation will be made by Councilman Ron Anderson on PowerPoint.
After he’s through if you have questions which I’m sure you will, we’ll be happy to answer those as you get them to us. At this time, I will Mr. Anderson down from the podium and do
his presentation. Thank you Ron.
Item 3. Presentation Dealing With The Upcoming Special Election For Increasing The Mill Levy:
Anderson: Thank you Mayor Corrie. Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen. I get the wonderful task of standing up here tonight and giving a presentation about why we’re going to ask you to
increase your taxes and hopefully explain to you why we’re in a position where we need to ask you to do that and what that would fund. I don’t think anybody on the council including
the Mayor enjoys raising anybody’s taxes. That’s not something that we’re looking at doing and doing that overwhelmingly with a lot of enthusiasm. It’s something that we feel has just
become a necessity. Hopefully I can demonstrate tonight to you through this presentation what the needs are. Ultimately you the citizens of Meridian will decide what you want to fund
and if you feel that these items are a priority to you. If they’re not then as your elected officials we’re bound and obligated by what your wishes and your desires are. As I go through
the presentation tonight if you please hold your questions until I get through with the presentation then we’ll open up the meeting into a public hearing and you can ask all the questions
that you want. We have several of our department heads here tonight and hopefully they can answer any questions that I can’t answer or that don’t get answered in the presentation. With
that, I’ll kick it off here. The agenda tonight that we’re going to cover is I’m going to give you a little bit of, some history and some legislation that was passed that kind of limits
the city’s ability to raise the necessary funds to provide the services. We’re also going to review some of our mill levy rates right now. Hopefully give you an understanding of how
the mill levy rates tie into what your taxes are. Then we’re also going to talk about where we Meridian is lacking in services and then if this mill levy election is successful, what
those additional revenues are generated as a result of that, what those will fund. The very last thing is
we’ll close off with where you go to vote. Whether you vote in favor or against it, you still need to vote. That’s your right as an American citizen so hopefully you’ll exercise that.
I guess the first thing is to give you a little bit of history. It was kind of about in the late 70s. I call it kind of a tax payer revolt and some of you are old enough to remember
that. There’s was something that was passed called the one percent initiative. That one percent initiative, I think was just citizens getting fed up with ridiculous increases in the
taxes and there was nothing in the state law that prohibited taxing districts at that time from raising their mill levy to whatever they wanted. If they wanted to increase it 100 percent
they could. We as taxpayers ended up having to just foot the bill of that. I think the citizens go tired of that so they voted something into being called the one percent initiative.
As a result of that one percent initiative I know that governments were really put in a strangle hold and as a result of that a lot of services were cut that use to be provided by the
government. Some of those probably unnecessarily but some of those were necessary services that ended up getting cut as a result of that. Running behind here. In the early 80s because
of a result of that a lot the cities and the taxing districts were finding that they just couldn’t keep up with any of the growth. If you’re limited to a one percent increase in your
budget each year, we all know what the cost of inflation is doing and we know what the fuel prices that are sky rocketing right now and the utilities, the electrical bills, the natural
gas, even our telephones, our salaries food everything is costing more. The one percent limitation was just putting a strangle hold on the taxing districts. They went back to the legislature
and they ask them to try to provide some type of a relief from this one percent initiative. As a result, the legislature passed a 3 percent cap. For those of you who aren’t familiar
with how that works, basically what it says is that whatever you receive from property taxes this year, whatever the City of Meridian collects is from property tax. We are limited by
law that we can only increase that by 3 percent. I think the reason they came to that conclusion and how they derived that is taking inflationary numbers that we all know and if we look
at consumer price index things and those types of indicators, those usually are somewhere around 2and a half, 3 maybe as high as 4 percent. They capped what the city could raise their
taxes each year and when I say taxes I’m talking about property taxes there. I think that worked fairly well for us all through the 80s. Through the 80s we were experiencing very limited
growth. Then the 90s came and that’s when things started to happen and I don’t know what it was but all of a sudden Idaho got discovered. I know that you folks that have lived here a
while realize just what a wonderful treasure we have here in Idaho but somebody else found out too. People started coming in droves and our population started exploding. The City of
Meridian has now become one of the largest cities in the state of Idaho. In the last census that was taken back in 1990,not the last one, the most current one. In 1990 the City of Meridian
was the 12th largest city in the state of Idaho. In this last one that they did in the year 2000, Meridian moved from 12th up to 5th. We’re only behind Boise, Nampa, Idaho Falls, and
Pocatello. That means that we’re bigger than Twin Falls and Lewiston and Caldwell and Coeur D’Alene. I don’t think a lot of people realize that but we are. We’re the fifth largest city
now. As this chart up here on the wall shows you, we show you the populations of those cities and Meridian like I said now being the 5th largest city. We’re very comparable in population
to the cities of Twin Falls and Coeur D’Alene.
They’re both right around that 34 35,000 people too. I think we’re probably a little bit higher than that because those numbers are about a year and a half old now just by the time they
get the census numbers out to us. The interesting thing too is I don’t know how well you can see the chart on the wall but there’s the mill levy rates for those other larger cities in
Idaho. When you look at those mill levies Meridian has one of the lowest ones. Did we get the hand out Stacy? There’s handouts out on the table if you want to get those and you can see
those numbers and that too. If we look at some of those other cities that are even close to Meridian, Twin Falls for example their mill levy is .0071. Coeur D’Alene is .0055 and Meridian
a .0031. I’ll explain to you the significance of what those numbers are here in just a few minutes. In addition to the city mill levy rate, when you guys get your property tax bills
and when I get my property tax bill it has all these other taxing districts that are up here on the board too. Ada County as the county still charges you a mill levy and part of your
tax dollars are still going to Ada County as well as the Ada County Emergency Medical Service which is the ambulance service that services Ada County and that’s who you call in addition
to the fire department and they end up transporting you to the local hospitals. Ada County Highway District is getting a portion of your tax dollars and then the biggest one that you
can see on there is the school district and Meridian is surrounded by the Meridian school district and you can see that their mill levy rate is a .0067. The school district mill levy
is actually larger than a lot of those largest cities that we saw in the previous slide that we were looking at. The Meridian Library district. A lot of people get confused and they
think because it says Meridian on it that that library is run by the City of Meridian. It’s not. It’s a separate district and they have their own board on the library and they do all
their own funding and we have nothing to do with them. The Meridian City is part of your tax bill. Again our mill levy that’s .003180 and you can carry that out some more decimal points
if you want. The Meridian Cemetery district. There’s a mosquito abatement district and then the Western Ada Recreation District. In Meridian here the Western Ada Recreation District
actually owns the swimming pool down here in Storey Park. They own that property and the swimming pool. They also own the Parkside creek, the park out there, Fuller Park in the back
of Parkside Creek subdivision. I couldn’t remember the name of it because I live in that subdivision. I’m so far away from it you know. Here’s the thing that’s causing the problem for
us. If you look on this chart here. I told you that in the 80s we were doing pretty good with the restrictions that the legislature put on us of the 3 percent cap. If you look at our
increase in population there from 1980 to 1990 we had about a 46 percent increase in population. If you average that 46 out over a 10-year period we were increasing at about a 4 and
a half percent increase each year in population. That equates pretty good with that 3 percent cap that the legislature put on us. That’s why I say we were doing fairly good at keeping
up. Right there in 1990 and you can see how the chart takes off at that point. That’s when Idaho got discovered and that’s when Meridian got discovered and in the last 10 years Meridian
experienced a 264 percent in population. I mean that’s just staggering. That is, I think we were the second highest. There was one small community up in the mountains that had about
3 people and 3 more moved in so they beat us or something. As far as large cities this is just a phenomenal number to see that our population increased 264 percent in a 10-year period.
If you break those
numbers out, what that comes out to is about a 26 percent increase every year in population. Now remember the state legislature capped us at about a 3 percent but we’re growing by 26
percent. That left us really scrounging around to try to find alternative funding solutions. Here’s a comparison of the growth in a bar chart so that you can see that the lower part
of each, the light blue, that was the growth that was experienced during the 1980s. That pink part is the part that went form 1990 to 2000. Those are those 10 other largest cities in
the state of Idaho. You can see Meridian in the center there with the column. That was our population growth compared to everybody else. Just some statistics about that growth in the
last 10 years, I’ve already told you Meridian went from 12th to the 5th largest city in the state. Our fire department, their run volume doubled in that time> Instead of a little over
a thousand calls they respond to over 2 thousand calls and I think the numbers today are well up over 2600, somewhere around there. Police department and these are actual incidents that
the officers responded to, went from over 2,000 to well over 6,600 in that period. Another tid bit just the school district to handle all the kids that were coming into the area went
from 19 schools to over 32 schools. The city issued over 293 commercial building permits in that time and over 8700 almost 8800 residential building permits in that 10 year period. Where
has Meridian been falling behind? Well, I think it’s pretty easy for us to see after looking at it a little bit. One of the first and most important areas is public safety. I’ve been
on the City Council about 3 years now and one of the reasons why I ran was out of a deep concern for public safety issues in the City of Meridian. I firmly believe that public safety
is one of the most important services that a city provides to its citizens. Without police and fire protection we’d be in serious trouble. If you looked at any city, anywhere across
the country and anywhere in Idaho the most part of their tax dollars and the most part of their budget, the largest part of their budget is going to fund those two critical services.
The other area where we see that we’re falling behind is in park space and recreational opportunities. The reason that this plays in here and the reason that this is so important is
when we start talking about quality of life in a community. Yes we need to have the police and fire, those are essential services but do we just want the police and firemen because they're
there to respond to shootings and knifings and fights and riots and those types of things. If we don’t offer our citizens recreational opportunities then that’s when our city starts
to turn more violent because there’s less activities for our youth to do and less things for our citizens to be involved in. We really feel that keeping a low crime rate goes hand and
hand with providing parks and recreational space and the opportunities for the youth and for the citizens of the community. So those 3 areas are the areas that we and with a lot of input
from citizens have come up with that are the areas where Meridian is really starting to fall behind. To give you a little more detailed example, in the police department here, our goal
is to have 1.5 officers per thousand residents in the community. We’re well short of that goal. The average right now is 1.3 officers per thousand. This leaves us about 7 officers short
at the present time. The cost for hiring a new officer is somewhere around $70,000.00 to hire him, to pay his insurance benefits and his retirement and to equip him and to buy the vehicle
he needs to do his patrol work in and those types of things. These are some average costs. The other thing that’s quite alarming is the response time for both the police and the fire
department. As we grow and as we
become more congested those response times are increasing and without more officers on the streets and without more fire stations strategically located within our community those response
times go up. As those response times go up so do the dangers to the citizens. That means more damage is going to be done if a fire occurs in your home. If there’s a burglar breaking
into your house or if there’s a violent crime being committed against you 2 or 3 minutes difference that it takes for the emergency services people to get there could make a difference
in life and death or whether you lose your home and some of those types of things. Those response times are very critical for both those departments. In the fire department, 3 to 5 minute
response time is critical for them to be able to do their job. If someone was to have a heart attack and stop breathing if they don’t get that person resuscitated within 4 to 6 minutes
there’s going to be brain damage and most likely it’s going to be irreversible and that person is not going to be saved. Those are critical things that we want to try to stay with. Right
now in the fire department if you live in the City of Meridian the average response time is 7 minutes. We don’t meet what our goal should be at this time. I don’t think every citizen
knows and I don’t think a lot of citizens take the time to understand that. Currently, We’re just getting ready to open our second fire station. If you haven’t noticed there’s a new
fire station been built out on Ten Mile road between Cherry Lane and Ustick. With the opening of that fire station we’re hiring 6 additional people. That’s what’s bringing this number
to 20 because before that, we only had 14 people. That’s going to help with those response times, those 7 minute response times. There’s still additional need there. We recently had
a consultant do a survey and evaluate the fire department and his recommendation was at the present time we should have 3 fire stations and should have 37 personnel. The cost of building
a new fire station is roughly around $800,000.00 and then it takes about $500,000.00 in operational costs. To pay those fire fighters’ salaries and to buy the fuel and to keep the lights
on and all the equipment that’s needed. In addition those new pumper trucks you se running up and down the road are about $300,000.00 so I guess you know these numbers are thrown in
thereto give you guys some ideas of some of the cost involved. In the parks department, our surrounding cities Boise, Nampa, Caldwell, they average 7.7 acres of parkland per thousand
residents. The City of Meridian our average is 2.8, well below the averages. This leaves us about 170 acres short of where we ought to be. To purchase and develop one acre of park land
is about $80,000.00 so if we were to take that 170 acres that we’re short at present time and take it times the average cost of development for park land we’re about 13 and a half million
dollars short of where our neighboring communities are. Whoops. I messed up here. I’ve got to go back up. That was a short presentation. I pushed the wrong button. Okay. Let me get you
back on track here. We just talked about the parks. Now I want to explain to you a little bit about the City of Meridian and our finances. Some people look at our budget and they don’t
exactly understand how a city's budget works and believe me, I’ve been on it 3 years and I’m just now kind of starting to figure out how it works. I’m still not sure I’ve got it 100
percent down. The city has actually 2 separate funds that we work out of. One is called the enterprise fund and that enterprise fund funds basically our public works department, our
wastewater treatment plant, our water department, and our utility billings and collection department. The enterprise funds, that side of our business, that part of it is
a self-funding operation. We don’t use any tax dollars no property taxes used to fund that part of our operation. It is funded by new growth, by new development, by fees that we charge
for the water that’s delivered, for the sewer charges that everybody’s charged every month. It’s kind of a self-funding side of our government. The general fund is the one that funds
the public safety, the police and the fire and also the parks and recreation department, our Planning and Zoning, our building department and the administration that you see at City
Hall, the folks that work here. That includes the Mayor’s office and the City Clerk’s office and the finance person and the HR person and all the people that it takes to run a city government.
Those general funds, that’s where the property tax money is used. It’s in the funding of the general fund so it’s only funding these departments that you see on the bottom side. I told
you where we were lacking is police fire and parks. When you look at that you can see where they’re funded out of. They’re funded out of the general fund part of our budget. If we look
at our general revenue fund and we look at that a little bit more detailed it’s not just the property taxes that are funding that. Here’s a break down. Our general revenue fund for this
current budget year that we’re working on is 10 million dollars but if you look over at the property tax which is the light blue that’s about 47 percent of that. That’s 4.6 million dollars
out of the 10 million that’s actually being funded by yours and mine property taxes, that mill levy that we talked about earlier. That’s how much of this city government gets paid by
property taxes. The rest of that gets made up from fees that we charge people and licenses. Building permits make up a big part of that because we’re also funding that building department.
Every contractor that builds a house and we charge those inspection fees, those are helping to fund that building department. Really the building department is a lot self funded I mean
probably 100 percent self funded. We also get money from other government is a variety of things. We get a portion of the state sales tax and that’s based off your population and things
like that. They have state revenue sharing. We also have franchise fees that we charge like to the cable TV company and the phone company and Idaho Power and some of those utilities.
So we charge them a franchise fee for doing business in our town so we collect fees from that. We also have some other creative things like in the fire department for example, we have
an agreement with the rural fire district that surrounds here, the city. We have a joint powers agreement and they actually pay us close to a million. We buy the same fire trucks and
it’s the same fire fighters that respond in both of those areas so that we can save the taxpayers money and there’s efficiency there in the government so that we’re not duplicating those
services in close proximity. There’s a lot of different places where our revenues come from. Then obviously we have to have a certain amount of money kind of in savings or reserve in
case something goes wrong. If we were to have a fire truck smash into a car or a police officer involved in a wrongful death suit and we have to pay out some claims or something like
that. We have to have a balance, a little bit in savings and the other thing is when our tax money comes due. We basically have to operate from October to January just on our cash reserves
because that’s when we start getting the money from the county as far as our actual taxes. Here’s a break down of your property taxes for the fiscal year 2001. The county assessor’s
office they go around and they assess your properties every year and y’all get the little tax notice from the assessor and it tells you how much your property was
assessed at. In the year 2001 if you assessed all the property that was in Meridian’s area it was 1billion 4hundred and 57 thousand 744thousand and 53 dollars. It’s actually a little
bit higher than that. This is just the taxable value. What we have to take off from that is, you have all heard of the fifty-fifty homeowner’s exemption. Probably most of you have that
homeowner’s exemption or if you don’t you ought to be taking it because it’ll save you a little bit of money on your taxes. This number that I’m showing you on the screen up there is
after we’ve taken all those homeowner’s exemptions so the actual taxable value is much higher. This is just after we’ve taken away all those other things. Now that mill levy that we
kept talking about and Meridian’s is about half of what everybody else’s is as far as cities around us and cities that are comparable sizes. Our mill levy is .00 3180480. If you take
this mill levy, if you have a calculator you can take that mill levy number times that market value at the top and that tells you how much money Meridian collects from property taxes.
I did that for you and there’s that number that we just saw on the previous slide 4.6 million dollars. That’s how much of our budget comes from the property taxes. What I’m trying to
do here is I’m trying to show you how that gets derived. Now the next thing that I want to show you is the problem that was caused by the legislature when they put the 3 percent cap
on. The 3 percent cap I think was a good idea to limit government’s growth but the problem was they didn’t think a lot about what happens if we have a city that just experiences an enormous
population boom like Meridian did? Here’s what happens. We just got last night at a meeting right here, the county assessors were here and they gave us the new number for 2002 and that’s
an estimated number. Look what happened that number went up. Our market value went up a whole bunch. Now instead of 1.4 billion now we’re 1,7 billion. What happens is the number on the
lower left hand column, the 4.6 million because of the way the state law reads, the 3 percent cap says all you can do is get 3 percent more money than that. How you figure out yore mill
levy is the first thing you do is you take 3 percent times that 4.6 million. As we do that here’s what happens. Three percent more than the 4.6 is now we get 4.7 million. That’s what
we’ll collect next year in taxes. Then you divide that 4.7 million number by the taxable value and then your mill levy gets established. What happened to our mill levy number? It just
went from 0031, it just went down to 0026. That number just went even lower. Now we’re even further behind all those other cities. The reason that’s doing that is because that legislature
didn’t think about that. They didn’t think about what’s going to happen with a city going with an explosive growth? Our mill levy is actually going down every year because of the high
growth. If we had a slow steady growth of 3 or 4 percent we could probably maintain and manage on what we have. We’re not able to when we’re experiencing 26percent growth a year. It
causes our mill levy to go down every y ear. It puts us in a real bind at trying to fund those essential services. What that means is we get an additional 139,000 dollars over what we
had last year. I showed you some numbers earlier about what it cost to hire a police officer, roughly $70,000 to hire him and pay hi benefits and equip him. With that money right
there we could hire two police officers in a year. That won’t even get us close. We’ll just keep falling further and further behind in those national averages. That doesn’t do anything
at all to solve the problem with the fire department or the parks department. Every year we’re just going further and further in the whole. There is a provision in the state law that
allows
cities that have a mill levy than a .004 to make an adjustment. That adjustment is by an election of the people. That’s the point where we’re at. We’re here to ask you people to turn
out and vote and support an increase in our mill levy and bring it back up to the 004. We’ll still be way underneath all those other cities in Idaho, the cities that are comparable in
size. We’ll still have a lesser mill levy. You’ll still be paying less taxes to the City of Meridian than what those people in those towns are paying. It’ll help dig us out of a whole.
How much additional revenue will it generate? Using those 2001 figures that we had prior to last night because we just got those last night, it will generate approximately a little
over a million dollars in additional revenue from property taxes for us next year. In the hand out that you guys were given there’s a little how to calculate what it would cost to you
sheet. I just basically made that into an overhead here so you could look at it. This would walk you through step by step. If you follow that chart you could figure out if you got your
last assessment how much it’s going to effect you. We just took some numbers here. We just took $100,000 property value and that’s probably a pretty cheap house by today’s standards
I think. If we use those numbers and let’s say the lot had a value of $25,000 and the home on it had a value of $75,000 so they total up to 100. That’s the third line you se there. Then
if you have your 50-50 homeowner exemption and you have that applied to it then you get to take half the amount of the structure not the land. That would take the land price off. So,
you get half the value of the home and the home was 75,000 so half of the 75,000 is 37,500. If your home is valued at much higher, if you’ve got a 2 or 300,000 home the most you can
take under that 50 – 50 exemption is $50,000. That’s what that next number is showing you. If you minus the allowable homeowner exemption and then add the property back in your taxable
value is 62,500. What we’re asking you for is an increase between the difference of 0031 to bring it up to a 40 mill levy. That really is the increase in levy rate that we’re asking
right down there 000820. That would mean a difference, you would pay $51.00 more in taxes on this particular piece of property. If we divided that by 12 months that would mean $4.27.
I work in Nampa and quite often go down to the burger king or the McDonalds that’s one day’s lunch for me. So when you break it down in that kind of detail it really shows you that what
we’re asking, even though it sounds like a lot initially there it’s over a million dollars but when you break that down through all the properties it’s a very small per month increase.
Now I know you don’t pay your taxes on a monthly basis. You pay that on a yearly basis. That’s with the increase. What would that buy you? Well, we’ve asked our department heads to kind
of give us a break down of if we had a million dollars more money and we kind of roughly broke that out 350,000 for police and 350 for fire and 300 for the parks. What could you do with
that money? Here’s the answers that we got back. In the police department they could hire 3 new officers and add 2 additional patrol cars, one evidence technician and a sergeant position
promoted for some of the youth division within their department. If you think about what that, if we don’t increase that mill levy, we got $139,000 to make any improvements next year.
In the fire department they could hire 3 new fire fighters, one fire prevention inspector, the additional space that would be need to house them and they could purchase land for a third
station. In the parks department combining this with some of the impact fee that we collect right now on new residential lots, that would mean 25 acres of additional new park space could
be purchased, new
equipment for Story Park, a more developed youth baseball complex, hire a grounds keeper. All of those things police, fire parks that’s what could be done next year and that’s what’s
being considered if this mill levy passes. If it doesn’t we’ll be looking at trying to just hold our own. Just because of the cost of living increase we probably won’t be adding any
staff. I guess, in conclusion again as I talked about it’s your right as an American to vote and we’re hoping that you’ll vote yes on this. I realize nobody wants to pay more taxes.
All of sitting up here are going to pay those same increases in taxes you are. We feel that it’s important to the community. I think that’s why we all serve on here. I think you guys
are here because you’re concerned citizens. We want to be able to provide vital services of law enforcement and fire and parks and rec to you guys. We’re asking you to come out and vote.
I hope you do come out and vote one way or another. In this election we have to have a 60 percent majority, It has to be not a super majority but it has to be a larger majority than
a 51 percent. It has to be a 60 percent majority for this to pass. Where do you vote? There’s a map on the back of the hand out that you guys have. Depending on which of those districts
you’re in, these are the 4 polling places. The American Legion Hall, if you don’t know where it’s at, it’s just across Meridian Road kitty corner over here from the fire station. Meridian
City Hall would be the other one, right here. The library, you know where that’s at on Cherry Lane. Locust Grove Grange, Keith help me out, that’s south of town?
Bird: South on Victory Road.
Anderson: I think that the addresses are all on there too. That is the end. At this time I guess we’ll turn it over for questions and I’ll go back up and sit down and then maybe we can
all (inaudible) or we have our department heads here that could answer questions about the need for this.
Item 4. Questions and Comments:
Bird: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Yes, Mr. Bird
Bird: Could I make one statement?
Corrie: Sure.
Bird: That 40 mill levy that we’re asking for, that would only last, the 40 would only be one year as long as we keep the growth up that we’re growing. It will start coming back down
out of the 40. It is not set, like the slide that Ron showed by our market value but we could only go up 3 percent each year and as the market goes up it’ll start coming don 39, 38 and
down like that. It won’t stay up at 40 as long as we grow like we are growing.
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: It will come start coming back so, yes the first year the 427 a month on that house is right but every year after that as long as we continue to grow it will start coming down.
It’s like we’re suppose to be at 34 now and we’re at 31 and if we don’t get this increase we’ll be at 26 next year. I just wanted to bring that out to make sure that everybody understands
that even though we’re asking for a 40 that would only last the fiscal year 2002 unless we have no growth which I don’t see that.
Corrie: In order to get this all on tape and then it will be transcribed, I would like to have if you have questions which I hope you do, we’re going to have to have you come up to
the stand, identify yourself and if you’d like a copy of what went on here tonight and everything that was said we can make sure you get one of that as well. So everybody can hear as
well we need you to come up here and we’ll answer the questions. This is open to the public. We’re here to answer any questions you might have.
Anderson: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Yes Mr. –
Anderson: It doesn’t have to be a question too. If you just have a comment whether you support it or don’t support it you know we welcome you to bring those comments forward too.
(inaudible discussion)
Corrie: Yes sir?
Robinson: My name is Floyd Robinson. I live in Mallard landing. When I received your letter inviting me to this meeting I read it very carefully. When I got down to the next to the
last paragraph I was insulted. It says and I will quote public safety is our first priority, maintaining a safe and secure city to enjoy and raise your families. I live in Mallard Landing.
I moved here 5 years ago. When I moved into Mallard Landing it was 200 250 families. It’s a dead end street. I was told within 6 months there would be another egress. I still live there
and there’s over 550 families and a brand new school and we’re still a dead end street. Now you’ve got a fire Marshall over there? How many businesses do you have that have only one
exit? There aren’t any because the law says you have to have two exits. How many buildings do you have that have public buildings that have to have doors that open out because of safety?
Every one of – We live in a dead end street. I’m only asking that you do something about it. Get off your butts and do something about it. Thank you.
Bird: Thank you.
Anderson: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mr. Anderson
Anderson: I just wanted to respond to it. It’s kind of like the library district too. I’m not sure everybody understands this but when I was showing the mill levies up there. Ada County
Highway District is the one who’s in charge of roads and building roads. We do not have funds and we don not oversee going out and building roads. The only thing that happens is, unless
another subdivision comes in where they are going to go off of that and develop then Ada County Highway District could ask them to connect. It may be something that until another development
comes through there or maybe you need to talk –
Robinson: Excuse me. You’re passing the buck. You guys allowed the families to come in by giving them the permits to build. If you will simply stop giving them permits to build somebody
else will get their job done. Because until they can make money they’re not going to do what we need them to do.
Corrie: Thank you.
Vernon: I’m Terry Vernon. I live in Crossroads Subdivision. Just to make sure I understand this thing right. You’re asking for the .000820 increase with the property rates going up and
everything bringing the mill levy down to .002. You’re actually asking for a higher increase than that by bringing it up to .04.
Anderson: No. That 00082 is the difference between the 31 and the 40.
Vernon: Right what it is now. You mentioned it’s going to drop down to .002 with the property values increasing as per the county assessor which means the increase is actually .01, or
.00130374. Where they’re going to limit it to the 40.
Bird: I see what –
Anderson: Bottom line is it would be a 40 0040 –
Vernon: from last year.
Anderson: -- from yeah whatever your. We just have to pick some numbers and like I was telling you that number and maybe I shouldn’t have even thrown it in. That’s a projection of what
it will be next year. That’s not a hard and fast number yet. What Keith is saying is exactly right. It will bump to the 0040 for one year and then as long as we’re still experiencing
high growth it will continue to nudge back down again to the point where maybe in another 10 years it’ll be back down below 2 something again.
Vernon: I understand that. I see with the property values going up it’s going to increase (inaudible) with a .03, what it is right now. So, basically with raising it to .04
is going to make it even more on top of that so you will get higher increases. There may not be a need for that high increase on property tax.
Bird: Mr. Mayor. Actually though, what the City of Meridian mill levy, on the books, we are suppose to be at 34. If we had had no growth since 1990, we would be at 34.
*** End of Side One ***
Bird: Four point or six points. Sure this like I said the first year you’re going to get hit that 427 on that sample he had up there. As long as the growth continues you’ll get back
down. If the growth continues the next 10 years, we probably, your mill levy will probably be down around 34. Yeah if we stay, if this don’t pass, you’re talking about a .26 mill levy.
Yeah that’s a big increase. You’re taking about 14 points from there to what it would be this year and that’s an estimate up to 40.
Corrie: The only reason that mill levy could possibly go down is because of the 3 percent cap. We can’t go over 3 percent in any property tax level. That’s why the mill levy drops
every year. The population grows, the taxes coming in grows, we still cannot go over 3 percent regardless. That’s when the mill levy drops.
Anderson: If we were actually even froze where we’re at right now with the, 0032 or 31, next year instead of 139,000 we would have close to $600,000. But because of that cap we actually,
we can’t even stay where we’re at. We lose ground.
Voigt: Michelle Voigt and I live in (inaudible) Manor. I have 2 questions. Okay. I support it but how is it going to be guaranteed not to change the amount that each department gets
since the council members change upon election? Is it written down in concrete that –?
Bird: Can’t. We can’t do it.
Voigt: So, in other words the council could change it to be parks one dollar and you know et cetera –
Bird: That’s very true Michelle. But this council can’t indebt another council or make another council say how they’re going to split the budget. It’s a year to year thing. I don’t see
anybody coming in here and doing that. All we can tell you the council here and the Mayor that we have come up with, if it passes and we get his amount that this year that’s the way
it’s going to be.
Voigt: I mean to me it sounds fair you know as long as somebody doesn’t you know department gets it in the shorts or anything and everything. I personally feel that you know I have come
to a lot of them and I think that this council has done a lot of good for the people and everything. I would like to see you know more citizens you know involved in what’s going on and
everything. I do support it. We have to pay for what
we need. I mean that’s the way it is. I mean we either pay or we learn to keep our mouth shut. My other question –
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Go ahead.
De Weerd: Michelle we set our budget at our final public hearing is the end of August. Anything that is budgeted – we’re saying that that is the split if we get the mill increase this
year. That will be committed to this year’s budget. I believe what Councilman Bird was saying is you know, in years after this, it will be up to the council at that time. But certainly
you’ll have input into the public process and you can be the –
Voight: All the citizens.
De Weerd: - or the memory for us too.
Corrie: One of the things that this council would like to do is add three firemen a year that in three years we’ll have the six and open another station which would (inaudible) to
handle that other station. By doing that, we can do that with this money that we’re having with that right now and also we can add two to three police officers every year plus whatever
the budget is going to allow us to add (inaudible). What we’re trying to do is to catch up on this. We’re putting two thirds of that money into the police and fire. A third of it we
think will be going to the parks. One of the reasons is we don’t want to the City of Meridian asphalt and no green spaces or any parks. As we all know recreation is a very important
part of the citizens of Meridian. That’s why we could have a two-thirds, one third split on this money. Next year it may be we have to have more for the police and fire. We don’t know
that but we do now with dedicating that million dollars, approximate million dollars as two thirds and one third.
Voigt: Right. Okay in another words you’re saying that you’re going to try to keep it at this amount that you’ve put in the advertisement?
Corrie: We would like to yes if we can yes.
Voigt: My next question would be like for instance about the parks. You know you said about the softball I think that was for the youth. What about, is there anything yet about the skating
park or a bike park you know to be involved in that also?
Corrie: Are you talking about Skate board Park?
Voigt: I know it’s in the planning.
Corrie: All we need right now is probably the next 2 weeks we’ll have it decided whether it be will at the new park or Tully park and we’ve already funded for that and it’ll be ready
to go.
Voigt: Oh okay.
Bird: It will be built this summer.
Corrie: It will be built by this summer.
Voigt: Oh okay, great.
Bird: Also, Michelle to answer on your budget thing, we’ve spent money to have the assessment on the fire department. Also the same team is doing an n assessment on the Police Department
now. We’ve had a parks master plan and so, we as a council or the people that come behind us have got to if they want to stay up to time have got to stay with these assessments. It’s
not only officers. You’ve got equipment. I mean we’ve got police cars and fire trucks and stuff. We all know we’re short on recreation. We’ve been short for 35 years that I’ve lived
here. You’re not going to catch up on parks and recreation over night. Thank goodness we have state police pretty good and we’ve got fire pretty good. I think that the councils with
these assessments have give us a 10 year plan of how to keep our equipment and our officers and stuff. We’re going to have to try to live by it I feel and I hope the future councils
will feel the same way.
Voigt: I hope so too because like I said I do support and I just hope you the citizens that are here you know get more involved too with the budgeting and everything because I do know
like I said you know of coming what has been said and done pretty much and I appreciate you all. You all have done a wonderful job I think and I thank you.
Bird: Thank you very much.
Voight: Thank you for raising our taxes (inaudible)
Bird: You could probably get odds on that other good job.
Corrie: One of the most difficult things to do is to ask somebody to raise their taxes. Believe me it is very difficult. We felt that that’s what we needed to do and we brought it
to the public and you will make that decision for us. Yes, back here?
Ireland: My name is Wes Ireland. I live in the Chamberlain Estates Subdivision, which is off of Locust Grove and Ustick. My question is going to probably sound like a rehash of what
we’ve already walked about but the specific question I have wasn’t answered. When I first got your letter, I read into it an increase in taxes so I came tonight wanting to say no. After
seeing the presentation I realize that it’s not exactly
an increase in taxes, you’re just asking at first I thought to get back to the same mill levy which would be leaving my taxes basically where they were as far as the percentage rate,
is that correct?
Bird: No.
Ireland: Because you’re asking to go to a projected .4 which is the maximum, can you explain reasons for actually taking that extra jump rather than just asking for an increase to what
we are today. I don’t want to put any words in your mouth for answers so I’m not going to give my reasons why I could see you doing that. But why go to a .4 instead of just back to the
point what is it 32?
Bird: Thirty-four are what we’re legally.
Ireland: What are the reasons to go that extra .6?
Bird: Well, I think Ron kind of, Councilman Anderson kind of pointed that out. Really you wouldn’t raise enough to do anything. I’ll be the first to tell you that up until this year
we’ve discussed this the 3 years I’ve been on here. We’ve discussed it every year about raising it and I’ve always been against it. I don’t like taxes being raised. I think we get taxed
to death enough. I feel that if We’re going to keep up the quality that the city needs right now we need the increase. I tell you, the first year, first 2 years we’re going to bite the
bullet and you’re going to pay more taxes and you’re going to pay more taxes. It’s not going to be that much. If the growth continues, if we didn’t have that 3 percent cap on us, we
could be down at the 25 mill levy because of our commercial growth. The first 25 years that I lived in this town, we were a bedroom community and housing doesn’t usually pay the way.
Now that we’ve gotten commercial the last 10 years in here we are not getting the value of the commercial tax because of this 3 percent cap.
Ireland: And that’s a state law?
Bird: That’s a state law and I think it was a trade off from the 1 percent initiative. Phil Batt implemented this, it wasn’t implemented in the 80s. It was implemented in the 90s. Phil
Batt’s the one that got this in with that 1 percent. Yeah, we’re asking you to take a pretty good chunk to start with but I’m telling you as long as the growth stays your mill levy is
going to come down every year just like it has now. In fiscal 2000 we were 3248. Now we’re 3180 and next year as Ron showed up there we’ll be in the 26s. I’m telling you $139,000 don’t
even pay the increase that our employees are worth or I mean deserve.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd
De Weerd: I’d like to add on to that. It was brought really clear to me as you start looking at that 3 percent cap and the cost of inflation, you basically even out there. Then as a
growing city and that we need to compete now against other cities to keep our city employees, you need to look at competitive wages. Then if you look nationwide, health care costs have
gone up 42 percent. In order to maintain our benefits, just our daily operational figures are rising far and above the 3 percent annually. Every year you equate it to you know maybe
5 years ago we were still behind the 8 ball but every year since, we’ve slipped a little further behind because of those additional costs seem to continue to accumulate and thusly you’re
doing more with less but is that a good thing? If you keep thinking back, where is that point? Is that point 00269 scary? It’s very scary to us because we want to still maintain that
quality of life and that level of service that we would like our citizens to enjoy that they have enjoyed over the years. Every year it gets harder to keep that. Certainly it’s harder
on our employees because they certainly have to more and more. We’ve worked hard at changing our economic base because our commercial base does foot more of the tax bill. As you get
into that complexion change of your community you also have retraining of your employees because fire kind of takes on a new complexion, the service calls take on a different complexion.
So, there’s a lot of intricacies that add to the rising costs and the cost of retraining. That doesn’t include any capital expenses. Then you start looking at like our police station.
It’s sorely in need of more space but because you’re struggling just to meet your daily operating costs you’re not really as well able to set aside into the sinking funds those one-time
capital expenditures as well. We’re just trying to catch up.
Ireland: Would this council say that had it not been the 3 percent law we could have stayed at a single mill rate for –
Bird: Let me, we’d still be at the .34 mill levy which we’re at. Yeah. Let me say one thing right now, this council and Mayor is building a 3.5 million dollar police station with no
tax dollars coming out. We didn’t go for a bond. We’re paying it out of interest that we have been frugal and saved. Also there isn’t a councilperson here or a Mayor that thought if
this increase was going to bloat government we would be for it. We are strictly going to stay lean and mean which has got us through the years. The reason we’ve got through these tight
years this past growth has been because of our department heads and our employees. It’s not because of the 5 of us sitting up here. We just happen to have good employees and good department
heads and we need to keep them. As Tammy said you have got to pay them fair wages.
Ireland: I understand that. Thank you.
Anderson: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mr. Anderson
Anderson: I just wanted to comment to you’d ask the question of why we’re not just asking for that difference to stay at that 32 mill levy. I guess my answer to that and I
defer from Councilman Bird a little bit is that we couldn’t stay at a 34. That was fine when we had the growth of the 80s because we were experiencing 4 and a half percent a year growth.
Now that we’re at 26 percent growth you can’t do that because for all the very same reasons he talked about. You know trying to pay competitive wages and the increases in inflation
won’t keep you up at the 0034. This is just kind of a quick fix. We still have a problem here. We need to be getting the legislature to do something about this 3 percent cap and make
allowances for cities that are in the position of Meridian with this high growth. The difference I think because when the whole thing happened years ago – I grew up here in Meridian
went to junior high and high school, I mean this was a little farming a little dairy community with 2500 people. At the time when the 1 percent initiative was first passed, nobody really
saw it coming. Nobody thought that was going to pass so they weren’t expecting it. Meridian had an all volunteer fire department at that time. They had a little I think 10 member or
11-member police department at the time. We had one park in town and then all of a sudden the legislature says okay you’re froze that’s it. Now we’ve blossomed into a city of 35 36,000
people and the form of government and the services that we provide have to change and adapt with that. We can’t run an all volunteer fire department today. When you’re running 2600 calls
for example if you were a volunteer fireman trying to hold down a full time job you’d be taking off every 5 minutes to go fight a fire call. We have to transition into a fully paid staff
and we’ve been really struggling with just trying to retain our employees because all the other cities are hiring our employees. They turn out to be good employees they’re going to go
somewhere and work for more money. We’re trying to stay competitive in the market. I do agree with Keith that this city has done some remarkable things on a shoestring budget and for
cities our size and with no more income than we have – We have other mayors and city council people and they’re asking us and they’re just shaking their heads. They’re like how are you
guys even staying where you’re at and how are you still keeping from being millions of dollars in debt. Well, we’re doing it by good quality people and staying real frugal. We’re not
asking you guys to change any of that. Like Keith said we plan on staying lean and mean and keeping the government working the way it should here.
Bird: Ron, I think you misunderstand his question or my answer. I thought he said if the 3 percent cap was off could we stay at the 34? Sure we could. If we got the total 34 percent
or .0034 of the 1.7 billion yeah we’d be glad to stay there if they took the 3 percent cap off.
Corrie: But your taxes would be much higher.
Bird: Your taxes would be much higher yeah.
Dennison: Mr. Mayor, City Council members. I’d like to thank Ron Anderson for his presentation tonight because I really wasn’t sure I wanted to raise my taxes either. With your presentation
it makes it pretty clear that if we want to stay a desirable city to live in we need to provide services for residents here in this community. My one comment was going to be about the
parks because, over in our area – My name’s
Kathy Dennison. I live in Chamberlain Estates and over in our area there just is no place for the kids to play other than the street. Every day when I drive home form work or drive through
the community there are kids out in the street playing ball and whatnot. You know when you live in a subdivision you’re really limited to space and you don’t a big back yard to play
in anymore. So, I was wondering if there was a possibility that I realize that the big park is going in on Meridian and Ustick over there. That would be great but the only way people
would be able to have access to that is if they drove over there because there’s no sidewalks between Locust Grove and Meridian that goes all the way through. I was wondering if either
that could be provided or possibly even a smaller park in that area of the town over there because there’s really no other area other than the street where you can have room to maneuver.
When kids are out there playing ball and the ball winds up on your car or something like that, it’s not too good of a deal. I really think you know like maybe a possibility of smaller
pocket parks would be a good thing to do too.
Corrie: That’s a good question. We’ve actually done a lot of planning in that area. Tammy is our Council liaison to the parks and recreation department. We have our parks director
here tonight. I think maybe they can give you some insight about. We do plan some smaller parks and some pathways to connect those.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mrs. De Weerd:
De Weerd: Kathy, I appreciate your sentiments that’s why I got involved in city government myself. We’ve done some things over the year. In 1996 we implemented a park impact fee which
helps lessen the impact of new growth by contributing into a fund that starts to help buying land and developing land. At the time that was enacted and by state law the city is required
also to pay a proportional share of that which this year we certainly are taking some big steps forward in the parks area. Another thing that we’ve done is this year we passed a landscape
ordinance so new development s coming in have to have a 5 percent open space within their development s so to provide for some relief for the residents of those development s. Then also
if they want to go out and play organized sports they can utilize the larger parks where you have more room to do that. You know between the parks impact fee and the new 5 percent that
we’re asking of new development that should help for future development. Now the developments that exist today you know we are working on our master plan. We’re working on a master pathway
plan that hopefully starts connecting our city so that you can safely get from point a to point b whether it’s for recreational purposes or alternative transportation purposes or things
like that. We are trying to start making up some ground that we’ve lost over the years and plan for that and start acquiring it so it does work together. Maybe a pathway system can help
your family get safely from one park or another. That’s what we’ve done up to this point and we’re anxious to see our capital and the police and fire all those plans start working to
be implemented so we can start achieving some of these goals that we’re setting.
Dennison: I also appreciate the way that this community has developed and the efforts of the people that volunteer to be on the council and spend a lot of their time planning for our
future. I must say that I’m convinced. I’m going to vote for the tax increase because I think we really need to keep up and keep our community a viable community. I’d just like to thank
you for your presentation tonight.
De Weerd: Thank you Kathy.
Corrie: Thank you. Bring your neighbors and friends.
Bird: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mr. Bird
Bird: I’d like to state that we have been very successful as a city I believe because of the cooperation we’ve had from the private and non profit groups that have come forward and helped
us in developing a lot of our programs and stuff and I hope this will continue. This is another reason that our tax base has been able to stay down and it’s probably something that I
hope will continue regardless of what the tax base is and how big we get. We still need to stay a community instead of a city.
De Weerd: We will try and continue to be very frugal. We honored city volunteers yesterday. I’ll tell you what if we didn’t have city volunteers donating their time and efforts you know
you couldn’t pay the cost of their time and efforts. We have a parks and recreation commission, a pathway commission that is putting together the master pathway plan. We have Citizens
on Patrol. We have volunteer fire fighters. We have reserve police officers and collectively, with all these people and their efforts. You know if we had to pay someone to do a lot of
what those citizens are doing on behalf of their community we’d really be behind the 8 ball. It’s because we have citizens that are willing to donate their time, we have partnerships
out there that are being created to try and help be a part of the solution that we’re able to be where we are today and hopefully to help us to accelerate into the future and implementing
plans that we want to get done. I think we sustain this far because of the people that get involved. Like Michelle Voight has said earlier we depend on citizens coming and giving us
input, telling us what you think because we try and make the best decisions we can on behalf of you. We’re your public servants.
(inaudible discussion)
Corrie: That’s it?
McEvoy: I’m Sam McEvoy. I live over on Elm Place. Just to let the public know that a week and-a-half ago we had an infant code over behind the new station. It took us seven minutes to
get over there. Unfortunately the baby was termed SIDS. We need to have more firemen and policemen and that. My biggest concern on the letter was
is you know all of a sudden here’s $300,000 for parks. I know the parks gets the impact fees plus they got donations and that that they’ve accumulated almost a million dollars now and
that. Why can’t we have an impact fee to help out the fire and police in their capital expenses you know?
Bird: Go talk to the legislature.
McEvoy: When they first put that in for the parks that was only suppose to be 50 percent for parks, 25 for the cops and 25 for the fire. All of a sudden it all went to parks.
De Weerd: Sam, I’d like to respond to that. Impact fees have to be for specific were implemented for parks. We are researching a safety impact fee but you have to have capital assets.
Right now through the evaluations that your department went through last year and the Police Department is going through this year. We are developing a capital improvement plan that
we can, and a facility plan that we can finally say that we have a base that we can start collecting fees on. It is a process to develop and it has been discussed probably about the
last six months and I know that the Fire Department is close to completion of their plan and the Police Department will shortly be there after. We know we need a safety impact fee and
we’re all pretty desperate to get that as well.
McEvoy: My question is why don’t you have your big stick in there beating the legislature to change things?
(inaudible discussion)
De Weerd: We’ll give you our stick okay? We’ll give our stick to you.
Corrie: Not to cut it short here but we do have representation down there. We have the AIC and we also got the fire unions down there. They’re trying to work together to get some of
these things through the legislature. It might change with this new change in the population where it is you’ll probably see another representative from this area. It’s going from the
rural to urban. I think we are down there and hitting them the biggest stick we can. They don’t always want to listen to us.
McEvoy: You know but as a citizen and that I’m willing to pay the extra to help fight this because it’s not just this council it’s been in the past councils and that that have not kept
the controls on the growth, such a rapid growth and that. So you guys inherit the problem but you’re getting my vote.
Corrie: Thank you. One of the things is it’s very difficult to control growth. We can help manage it but as long as Idaho has been discovered – believe me when I go camping when I
get time, it’s pretty hard to find camping spaces. Twenty years ago I’d go up and do it anytime. Idaho has been found. We have a good place to raise families and recreational facilities.
People are coming and we get it every day that
why don’t you build a fence and say no more growth. Well, we can’t legally say, you can’t come here. We try to manage it the best we can but we’re having real battles as you well know
from growth in the north part of our area of impact, I don’t want to go into that tonight. It’s something else that’s entirely different from what we’re doing here tonight. If that happens
you’re going to see a bigger chunk of money going up there somewhere. I’ll get off my soapbox as well. We’re not here for that tonight. Any questions? Statements? We want to hear everything
you have to say. We’re here representing you and we can’t do it unless we hear from you. Yes, sure.
Bird: Come on up.
Corrie: Come up here.
Vernon: With a new development – I’m Terry Vernon again from Crossroads Subdivision. With a new development coming in can’t City Council you know approves permits and everything, can’t
they make the developers do more to help out?
Corrie: Up to a point, legal point.
Vernon: Okay.
Corrie: They have certain rights as well and we can only do so much. With our new area of impact and plus the comp plan, we’re going from a 3 percent to a 5 percent green space but
you can only extract so much from a developer. Then it becomes a you do this and then we’ll let you have that. We can’t do that.
Vernon: Okay Thank you.
Corrie: They’re helping as much as they can.
De Weerd: Mr. Vernon, as well growth needs to make up for the new growth but it can’t make up for the deficit that existed before they came in. If it did, that would be termed taking
and then we’d be spending our tax dollars in court fighting that. It is a fine line that we walk on that. We try very hard not to – we try to be right there at that line no more above
or less than possible. I think they’re doing their share. It’s just that our deficit gets a little bit more noticeable as we continue along.
Corrie: Anyone else?
(inaudible discussion)
Bird: Let’s get out of here.
Corrie: One of the things that this is the sample ballot that we will have. If you can’t be here the 22nd you can come into the City Clerk’s office right here, get an absentee
ballot and cast your vote as well. The ballot will be mark an X either on the yes or no. It will say shall the city be allowed to increase it’s budget for the 2001 – 2002 budget year
by an amount not to exceed the difference between .004 and the amount of the levy for the 2000- 2001 budget year which is 00318 multiply by the market value of assessable property in
such a year? There’s a place to put an X yes or no. It’s a very simple ballot. It takes 60 percent of the people voting in order to pass it so we encourage you to vote. I will encourage
you to vote yes but it’s entirely up to you. We know where the money is going and we want to make everything up front, not hiding anything. If you have any questions even before the22nd
you call my office; you can call any one of the council people here. You can call our finance director, treasurer. We’ll answer any questions you have or your neighbors might have. We’re
not trying to do anything that’s wrong or that and we want to bring everything out front. You’ve got questions we want to address them because we’re not doing anything under the table
or anything. Okay?
Bird: Mr. Mayor
Corrie: Mr. Bird
Bird: I want to thank you for coming out on behalf of the Council and Mayor. I hope you will go out and vote regardless of how you’re going to vote. At least get out and vote. That’s
the main thing. That’s the one right we’ve got living in these nice United States of America so go out and exercise your vote. We would like that. We’d like to see a big turn out and
see how it goes. I will promise you as one councilperson we will not spend your money wrongly. We will not bloat government.
Corrie: Anyone on the Council want to say anything? Okay. I want to personally thank Ron for that presentation. I like that. Nice job and thank you very much. So with that, I will
entertain a motion that we close the hearing and say good night to these fine folks.
Bird: And that we adjourn?
Anderson: Second.
Corrie: Motion’s made and second that we adjourn. All those in favor say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 8:25 PM
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK