HomeMy WebLinkAbout2009 07-21Meridian City Council Special Meeting Workshop July 21, 2009
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, July
21, 2009, by Council President Charlie Rountree.
Members Present: Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun and
David Zaremba.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Caleb Hood, Steve Siddoway, Jeff Lavey,
Keith Watts, Matt Ellsworth, Thomas Barry, Ron Anderson and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
Rountree: Good evening. I will call the special workshop session of July 21st to order.
It's 6:00 p.m. for the record. And welcome you all that are in attendance. Roll call
attendance, please, Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda:
Rountree: And before I ask the adoption of the agenda, there is going to be an addition
to the agenda that's published and we are going to have the pledge of allegiance this
evening. It's going to be led by two members of the Meridian Youth Softball Team,
Laura Graham and Allie Frogley. You're members of the softball team that placed in the
state tournament and you're leaving tomorrow morning for the regional tournament in
Washington; is that con-ect? Good for you. If you'd come forward and lead us in the
pledge.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess before I ask the girls to take a seat, I do have some City of Meridian
pins I'd like to give to them to maybe share with the other teams that are going -- this is
what we could drum up and offer it for you to trade or to wear, whichever you so
choose, and wish you great luck tomorrow. So, I will come and bring these to you.
Rountree: Next item is the adoption of the agenda.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
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July 21, 2009
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Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: On the agenda there is a -- one addition to be made. This will be a new Item
6, an Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(e) to consider preliminary
negotiations involving matters of trade or commerce in which the goveming body is in
competition with goveming bodies in other states or nations and there are no other
requested changes. With that I move we adopt the agenda.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: Moved and seconded to adopt the agenda. All those in favor? Opposed
same sign? Motion passes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 3: CONSENT AGENDA:
A. Approve Minutes of July 7, 2009 City Council Regular Meeting:
B. Approve Minutes of July 14, 2009 City Council Regular
Meeting:
C. Addendum to CDBG Subrecipient Agreement -- Meridian Food
Bank:
D. Change Order No. 2 for Well 7 and 8 Abandonment:
E. Change Order No. 2 for North Black Cat Lift Station
Construction:
Rountree: Next item is the Consent Agenda.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I move that we approve the Consent Agenda as published and for the Mayor
to sign and the Clerk to attest.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the Consent Agenda. Roll call
vote, please.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
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MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: COMMUNITY ITEMS/PRESENTATIONS:
A. Presentation with Ada County Seeking Assistance on Draft
Boise River Trail Plan by Matt Ellsworth:
Rountree: Next item on the agenda, Community Items and Presentation, 4-A,
presentation of the Ada County Seeking Assistance on the Draft Boise River Trail Plan
and, Matt, are you going to lead this discussion?
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council -- and, actually, I'll
keep my portion of this fairly brief, I'm here this evening to introduce John Caywood
from Ada County who over the course of the last two years has led an effort with a
coalition of citizens, representatives of city and county government and other interested
parties in drafting a unified vision for a river and riverside trail system spanning from the
Snake River all the way over to Lucky Peak along the Boise River. City staff has been
involved providing input in particular to the Meridian specific segments of that plan with
the recently extended area of city impact up north to the river. John and other Ada
County staff came to the parks and recreation commission to give a presentation in
March 11th of this year. The commission voiced general support for the plan, as well as
to the effort that John's been involved in. So, again, with that brief bit of background
here John Caywood from Ada County is here to present the plan and to seek -- seek the
city's concurrence and support thereof.
Caywood: Mayor, Councilors, my pleasure to be here tonight. I'm John Caywood with
the Ada County Open Space Trail coordinator and in regard to this coalition trail plan
down the Boise River. I was an Ada County co-chair, shared with Canyon county.
They had a co-chair. The Powerpoint that we have up will refresh your memory on this.
If I can get this right. So, we, the coalition members, a very wide group of folks. Matt
and Councilman Zaremba were in on the effort. We really appreciate that. Also we
thought it was very fortuitous that Meridian became a riverside city in the middle of our
process. That really helped our product. And we had subcommittees with a wide
variety of esteemed people, hard working people here in both counties and this is the
web page, if you'd like to see it, and Matt does have a copy of this Powerpoint. And the
vision here is for a trail from Lucky Peak down -- down to the Snake River. And this is
the type of layout we have in Ada County in the upper Boise there below Lucky Peak.
This is the land we are going to do a public land assemblage on and have 12 to 15
miles of trails. So, this is the type of thing some of the communities are putting together.
The plan has some indefiniteness in it, just because that's what the communities need
to implement their plan. It was really exciting to see what Star did in just a year and we
have a lot of historical things along there. In particular, this one amazes me. I found
this out on the web, so -- hot August day, 100 degrees plus, whatever it was, in 1854
and this fellow and his pony were up on the rim there looking off at the river and couldn't
get there. And this is the type of historic and interpretive things that we have all up and
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down the river and the greenbelt path in Boise city is there. This is probably where a lot
of communities are going to go in a short time and others in a long time. And we have
some breaks in the trail below Garden City going to Eagle and the city of Star -- we had
a question mark on this when I put this presentation together last winter, because Star
didn't have any trail system or program. But we just talked to them about it last August
and, then, now they are implementing a 1.2 mile Star river walk. So, the community got
behind this in a hung. And this is the type of implementation this is. It's not a top down,
the county is going to do it, it's here is a tool kit for each community to build and hook up
to the next community on the river. And at Plymouth Park at Canyon Hill, this is the trail
they are envisioning, so they will connect to Middleton on the left, cross on the old
electric trolley piers, which are still in the river and, then, go on through the Plymouth
Park through Caldwell. And at the mouth of the river we have the wildlife management
area, site of Fort Boise, and this would be a nice terminus. And, then, what we also
figured out is the Boise River water trail could be incorporated, because the Boise River
has the legal status of a public highway, so folks can go on that anyway. And Tom
Chelstrom with RAI said you can use his trail plan and that was a plan that he
researched and it was mile by mile, diversion by diversion, access point by access
point. So, that's incorporated into this. So, it was an immediate implementation of that,
we have got it on the web site, so if you go to our web site you can see this type of thing
down here north of you. And if you click the little bubbles on Google Earth these type of
things pop up. So, it's a user friendly online river guide and this is posted on the Ada
County Parks web site and, then, we have got a link coming out Canyon county for it
and anybody can put a link to it. And we also thought, well, there is all these roads up
and down the river, so we talked to the bicyclists and they devised routes, first in
Canyon county and, then, coming back on the other side of the river up into Ada
County. So, we have bike paths going down one side of the river, coming back up the
other and those are coordinated with the highway districts. So, they immediately
qualified for transportation funding. And here is how we link to ACHD's roadway to bike
ways plan. And another place. And we connect to the foothill trail. So, the goals are
create a trail system plan that embodies the spirit of our vision through community
participation and design connected pathways for a variety of uses, connect to other
community trail nets and provide alternative transportation, because there is a lot of
people really starting to cycle commute. Respect rights of private land owners and
that's preeminent in this. We did not step on any toes or say this is where that's going
to go through somebody's parcel and if anybody brings that up, no, that's why that line
was so foggy and couldn't figure out where it is, because as each community
developed, each parcel develops, that's probably when the implementation is going to
happen. So, each community is going to do this on their own with their own local
people and promote health and wellness benefits, it's a tremendous exercise
opportunity there and educational opportunities and interpretation and promote the
economic development of the river communities through partnership programs and
facilities, i.e., Barber Park grosses over 300,000 with their raft and tube outfit and that
could be done a couple three times up and down the river. So, it's not just about nice
recreational stuff. And we'd like to ask you to help us fulfill this vision of a connected
system of pathways on and near the Boise River, all the way down. Thank you. And I
have nothing to do with this editorial in the Statesman last weekend, but it says it very
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well. It's worthy of commitment and it was really exciting as we got into this to see the
different communities. You know, maybe they are going to have to work within their
own boundaries where that trail is going to go, but they knew where it was going to hook
up to the neighbors and it was fun to watch that come together. So, that's our request.
Mayor, we have a written invitation for you to come sign this plan on the 12th of August
at Barber Park as part of the Idaho Environmental Forum, so that should be in this
week, if it hasn't hit here already. Thank you. Any questions?
Rountree: Questions for John?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I just have -- in the area where we touch the Boise River, do you have a
plan on which side of the river that pathway should -- is going to run along?
Caywood: We are leaving it to each community and at this point Eagle and Star have
figured out where their connection point is. Star and Middleton have figured out where
that connection point is. So, on your side of the river it would up to your park staff to
figure out where that's going to go and the timing of it and, you know, just when things
are right. So, we didn't come in and plan for your community, we used your -- Matt and
Councilman Zaremba's input over time to perfect the words in the plan that pertain to
Meridian and -- and what the signatures are going to do on the plan -- it says they sign
off on the vision and goals, they are not signing off on a line on a map. So, anyway, it's
politically safe, but it says, yes, we are going to work together and make the river a
larger community asset.
De Weerd: Can I just follow up?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I couldn't tell from the ACRD map, but I'm assuming that we will connect
also down Linder Road.
Caywood: Yes. As I understand it -- and I'll have to check with your experts, the
Meridian input to the plan reflects your community bikeways plan --
De Weerd: Okay.
Caywood: -- as the logical connection.
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the pathways master
plan was actually adopted before the area of city impact was expanded further to the
north to routes along the Boise River. In light of that expansion and with the effort that
Ada County had underway, part of the change in the future land use map did include
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public/quasi-public designations up north along the river, presumably for a larger future
park in the floodway area. It seemed a natural fit to continue the pathway along the
south side of the river and that's part of the master graphics that staff provided to Ada
County for inclusion in the plan. So, similar to what John just gave a rundown on, it's
somewhat of a wide swath, but it does go parallel to the river, indicating an approximate
route for a future trail connection east toward Eagle and west toward Canyon county.
De Weerd: Okay. I guess to, Steve, our pathways -- I don't know if it's on road or off
road, but does go down Linder to connect; correct?
Siddoway: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, yes, our pathways plan does include a
connection along Linder Road to Eagle Island State Park and the pathways. I'd also like
to state my intent to have a greenbelt pathway along the Boise River when the city does
develop out towards that direction. The graphic that's been included in the plan does
depict our intention to do that and, then, connect to the east and west. I believe it also
supports future connections, a bridge of same kind that could connect to pathways on
the other side of the river, but the location to be determined. It's not a specific location
in the plan today.
De Weerd: Since it was so easy to get a culvert and I'm sure a bridge would be just as
easy, uh?
Siddoway: Yeah. Especially over the Boise River.
Rountree: Any further questions? John, f•
indicated that they will incorporate this plan
existing pathway planning activities?
~s any community indicated or the county
into their Comprehensive Plan or into their
Caywood: The Ada County comp plan talks about extending the greenbelt, which this is
logically a part of. As we went through this process with the two counties and the nine
cities, those other jurisdictions looked at amending their ordinances to do that.
Middleton in particular came up with a very solid set of ordinances and they offered
those up to the other communities as a model.
Rountree: Thank you. Any further questions?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Dave.
Zaremba: I was just going to comment that I have definitely been a cheerleader on this
project. I was heavily involved in the Ada County open space planning committee,
which sort of was a precursor to this. This was an element that was identified in that.
Since that time I have pretty much just been the cheerleader and I have to give credit to
Matt and Steve for their participation in this. They have worked -- and Matt particularly
has worked hard on it. I know just from discussions --and this is nothing formal, but the
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property owners who asked us to extend our boundary to the river have suggested that
-- that they see a park site in that area with a pathway through it. So, I don't think this is
going to be a struggle even with these property owners, I think that's their vision as well.
So, I can't speak for them and this is like three years ago that it came up, but I just
wanted to comment I have been a cheerleader, I am a cheerleader, and I'm all for it.
Thank you for your work as well.
Caywood: Thank you. And Meridian's been a wonderful partner.
Rountree: Any further comments? Questions? Thank you, John. Appreciate the
presentation and look forward to some day -- hopefully some day being able to see it in
total, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.
Siddoway: Mr. President, this is more of a process question, but do we need an action
on the Council tonight to authorize the Mayor to sign at that meeting approving it on
behalf of the city? Just more of a question.
Rountree: I don't know that we need a motion. I think we have got heads nodding that
we are in affirmative to move forward with this.
Siddoway: Ask in case.
B. Blueprint for Good Growth -Adequate Public Facilities update
by Caleb Hood:
Rountree: No. Thank you. Next item on the agenda 4-B, Blueprint For Good Growth,
adequate public facilities update and Caleb.
Hood: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm here to
give you a quick update of the TAPFAWG work group. Sally Goodell is also in the
audience, if by chance you pose a question that I don't know the answer to, she has
drawn the short straw and is here this evening for that purpose. So, as part of the
Blueprint For Good Growth. TAPFAWG was established and that stands for
Transportation Adequate Public Facilities Accounting Working Group. I'm a member of
that group and we are working on developing a method to insure adequate public
facilities -- roadways, essentially, are in place and timed appropriately with
development. The focus of this update and the reason that I'm here tonight is to just
bring you up to speed on the work plan that we have proposed to the consortium for the
next -- the foreseeable future. Before I go into that, though, I do want to give you just a
little bit of a history, because I'm not quite sure when the last presentation you had
regarding Blueprint was and this arm of it, the TAPFAWG work group -- I'm not sure that
you have every had a presentation on it. So, I did want to go into a little bit of the
history. I will try not to take too much time, but last summer a draft adequate public
facilities ordinance was compiled. ACRD and COMPASS began to look in detail at the
technical work that would be required to implement an AFPO. It was realized that there
were problems with the draft AFPO. It did not appear to protect planned road capacity
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for planned development areas. There was no mechanism to insure that unplanned
growth would not use that capacity up before planned growth is built. One of the goals
of Blueprint is to have the unplanned growth bear the financial responsibility for added
impacts. Second, implementing the AFPO requires a foundation that was missing.
Specifically an analysis of the transportation system required to serve the adopted
comprehensive plans. This requires quantifying the demographics implied by building
out the land uses in the adopted comprehensive plans, which, in turn, are used to
estimate travel demand and determine the transportation network needed to support
that demand. So, as I mentioned recently, a presentation was given to the Blueprint
consortium. Councilman Zaremba was at that meeting and we asked if -- thought it
would be beneficial to bring a presentation to the entire Council and so that's, again,
why we are here today. What -- the main reason that that work plan was shown to the
consortium -- was two fold, I guess. One, it's going to take a significant amount of staff
time to get what the work group wants out of this. That is quantifying the
comprehensive plans down to the TAZ level of being able to analyze development and
what that future transportation network will look like. So, it's going to take some time to
get there and the second reason that we brought to the consortium is just to make sure
that that -- that that methodology, at least in its infancy, is okay and we think we are on
the right track. It's certainly not moving at the speed of lightning, it's something that is
going to take some time, so that's, again, kind of that second reason is this work group
will at least have worked through the rest of this year, so -- and I have got on the
Powerpoint presentation a couple of things that we are currently working on. Preparing
the demographics proposed out of the comprehensive plans in Ada County, so, again,
quantifying those comp plans. We have run into arecent -- we are trying to get this very
detailed, so we have something we can defend and measure against as a base line, so
as changes happen we have some base line to measure against. We have run into
some difficulties with some of the mixed use designations in particular and trying to
guesstimate what those mixed use ratios may look like in the future, how much is
commercial versus office versus residential, how many stories, what's the density like.
That's certainly going to have an impact on what the roadway network would look like.
So, we are working with COMPASS right now on trying to nail those -- those numbers
down. After we get those we can evaluate the travel demand model that's created by
that build out and, then, that model run will tell us, again, what the infrastructure needed
will be. Next will be to understand that those infrastructure needs of building out the
Comprehensive Plan and do those numbers give us the roadways we want or do we
want to modify some of our anticipated land uses to not have seven lane roadways or
failing roadways at certain intersections or whatever the case may. So, that's kind of
the next step. And, then, being able to measure those changes in the Comprehensive
Plan as time goes on. Again, we are trying to set a base line here. Comp plan
amendments, what kind of impact does that have, then, to what we anticipated that
roadways network would be. Are we freeing up capacity? Is it using capacity, was it
planned to happen in this manner? And, then, finally -- and very importantly, will
facilitate the discussion about AFPO and if we are all on board with helping measure
those things and if there is a fee involved or how that's all going to work at the
countywide and maybe even the bi-county geographic area. Right now we are just
working on Ada County, but certainly Canyon county I could see being -- this happening
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there as well. Another activity that is in the process is developing and further fine tuning
some maps showing the level of service for roads and intersections. ACRD is doing this
process right now. The maps and the next few slides are very preliminary and don't
include all the roadways and intersections in the county. But ACHD did take a sub set,
a limited number of roads with some of the -- with current enough information that they
had and synchronized the intersection data to set up some methodology for analyzing
level of service. The purpose of these LOS maps is to establish a shared vision for
appropriate service levels, which are the basis for future investment decisions about
transportation system improvements. This first map shows where we are today
regarding level of service. Trying not to focus too much on the colors or the level of
service levels, but it gives you a flavor of what that map would look like. It can show
you, you know, where roadways are failing. Today, well, we are looking pretty good as
far as level of service would be. This is, essentially, what your base line map would
look like when you get all of the intersections and roadways colored. Again, this is the
few select intersections that are shown in this map. I'm going to cruise through to the
next one. And it looks real similar, although what's changed -- and that's kind of what
the arrows show are the difference -- so, you get your three columns -- three slides from
the 2008 committed slide and map. It shows the roadway network, what it would look
like if all the improved developments -- so, preliminary/final plats, if they were all
developed today what would that do to our roadway network. There are a number of
projects in Meridian, obviously, that haven't constructed their infrastructure and are in
the ground. They are waiting. But if those approved developments, those entitled
developments were built out, what would that do to our roadway network. You can see
that the level of service -- and, again, in that second column starts to substantially
decline if, in fact, everything that was approved was built. So, the third slide in the LOS
series shows what that same development would look like if ACHD's five year work plan
were built out. Again, it's hard to --without having these side by side by side, it's hard to
really see those changes, but, again, if you look, you know, the level of service isn't
quite as bad as that second -- second column or the do nothing column. Even with the
preliminary numbers and just on the few roadway segments that have been mapped
thus far, after comparing the existing level of service to future level of service, the
following conclusions were derived. LOS already is well over capacity and/or target
service levels on a number of roads and will worsen when all approved development is
built. Planned roadway improvements will help meet some demand, but likely overall
service will degrade. So, again, if ACHD built some projects it will help in those areas,
but overall you're going to see the system begin to go towards failure. So, this level of
service analysis should be developed more completely to help inform future investment
decisions and ACRD and COMPASS are working on this through the rest of the year.
And these maps will probably be used in the future to evaluate the adequacy of planned
public facilities. So, this will be, again, your base line and we can measure -- we can
plug in a development and it will show you the impact to the roadway system down line.
That's going to be a great tool to have as we move forward and get down to that very
detailed level, that comprehensive analysis of applications. So, real quickly here is the
-- the work plan that was submitted to the consortium. We are, obviously, into July now,
but it kind of shows you what -- what we have got planned for the next little bit, as I
mentioned before, what I'm going to be working on with ACHD and COMPASS, to look
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at those land use impacts and the TAZ level of our Comprehensive Plan and, then, how
to -- how to implement and monitor development as time goes on. But, again,
especially to end of establishing that solid base line to measure change and
development against. Just another note. From now on I will try to include, as
appropriate, an update in my all things transportation workshop summary memo, just to
kind of keep you informed of any developments that may occur and if -- if something
critical does arise Iwill -- I will try to get on the agenda as well, but I just wanted to let
you know I'll continue to follow up this work group with my -- on a regular basis, so --
that's all I have. If you have any questions for me I will try to answer them.
Rountree: Questions, comments for Caleb?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: I don't see any. And, Sally, I don't see any for you as well, so -- thank you,
Caleb. Appreciate that update. Look forward to the next one to see how far you get.
Item 5: Department Reports:
A. Budget Amendment for CIP and Public Safety Fund for a
Transfer of Funds (Multiple Amounts):
B. Budget Amendment for City Hall Construction for $1,000,000:
Rountree: Next item on the agenda, Department Reports, Item 5-A, budget amendment
for the CIP, public safety funds. Todd.
Lavoie: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council members. I'm here to present to you Items
5-A and 5-B. 5-A is the budget amendment for fiscal year 2009 to transfer funds from
our general fund to CIP public safety fund. This amount was discussed during the fiscal
year 2010 budget workshop. You should have a copy of it. We are requesting that we
move approximately 1.4 million from our general fund unrestricted to our public safety
fund, which will be just classified as public safety CIP for the future. Any questions on
5-A?
Rountree: Questions? Madam Mayor? No? Okay.
Lavoie: Item No. 5-B --
Rountree: Give us the second one and, then, we will take action on both.
Lavoie: Oh. Sorry.
Rountree: Go ahead with 5-B.
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Lavoie: Okay. 5-B is a -- an amendment for fiscal year 2009. This amendment
represents the needed funds from the general fund to finish the City Hall construction on
anticipated costs that we have accounted for as of this date today. This is our best
number that we have available to you. The amendment is requesting total cost of one
million dollars to be added to the City Hall construction fund. We believe this will satisfy
all needed expenditures for the future to get the building finished. I stand for any
questions. I have Keith here as well the help me answer any questions regarding the
construction cost that we have anticipated.
Rountree: Questions?
Hoaglun: Mr. President?
Rountree: Brad.
Hoaglun: Yeah. Quick question, Todd, Keith. This one million transfer, then, will that --
that should complete the construction cost for the building, so that phase will be over
and, then, any future expenditures will be either a capital project or maintenance
situation?
Watts: That is correct, Councilman Hoaglun. There -- there was -- the only remaining
item that I have right now is a -- the addition of a closet from the conference room B out
front, which is going to dissect the police room right next to the finance department, put
a wall in there and a door, so we can store the additional chairs and tables, rather than
haul them from the room here all the way across the room to put them in that room, so
we will be able to have astorage -- small storage facility right off that conference room.
Estimated cost right now is about three to five thousand dollars for that thing -- for that
entire project.
Hoaglun: Okay. Mr. President, follow up, then. So, once -- that is part of the million
dollars and once that's done, anything else, what we do for changes will fall into a
completely different category, no longer construction at City Hall.
Watts: Correct. It will not touch these funds. We will come back as a separate --
completed project and ask for approval, just like we would any other project.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Rountree: Further questions?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Discussion? Seeing none, I need a motion.
Bird: Mr. President?
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Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Seeing how they are budget, we will do both of them at the same time. I move
that we make a budget amendment for the CIP and public safety fund, transfer of
1,470,000 dollars and also a budget amendment for the City Hall to add one million
dollars into the City Hall building fund.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve a budget amendment for the CIP
and public safety fund transfer and the City Hall construction, Item 5-A and B. Roll call
vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
C. Community Liaison Update by Luke Cavener:
Rountree: Thank you? Thanks, Keith. Rob. Next item is Community Liaison Update.
Luke.
Cavener: Good evening, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's
been awhile since I have had the opportunity to come up here and talk with you and
share what's been going on in the community, what I have been doing with our friends
and neighbors and I'm fortunate to have some time tonight to kind of catch you up to
date. First, one of the things I want to talk about is something that I have noticed since I
began that really is critical in me continuing to be successful in my position and that's
communication. I look back to my very first public relations course I took in college and
the professor got up and said, you know, the message is what's important, the message
is what's important, the message is what's important and I really have afeeling -- I
actually disagree now with what he said. In Meridian it's the conversation that are
important. It's. talking with our citizens one on one, getting in front of different
organizations and finding out what's on their mind. And I found out once I looked at it's
not so much what -- what we are going and telling our citizens, it's what they are
bringing to us and what they are sharing with me and it's fortunate that I'm able to
really, again, pass that information on to you. One of the things, like I said, I love doing
is speaking directly to the public and bouncing ideas off of them and hearing things that
are on their mind that affect their home, their neighborhood, their job. I found in order to
really do that successfully, in addition to some of the other duties and things that I'm
going to share with you tonight, is it's been imperative forme to diversify my time. So, I
spend, you know, maybe part of my afternoon talking to a different business
organization or a civic group and, then, spending my nights and weekends going to --
going to parks and talking to John Q and Jane Q Meridian and finding out what's on his
mind. Going into our homeowners associations and finding out what issues are on their
mind. Some of those issues that you think would be very small and very miniscule to
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them and in their neighborhood, are the most important thing in the world to them and
it's been enlightening for me to see things that -- well, that I might not have personally
seen it as a huge issue to see everything through their eyes and understand that those
issues are very much important to them and to their neighbors. I'm happy to really say,
though, that I think that Meridian as a whole is doing a better job of communicating and
talking to its citizens and it's neighbors today than it was when I started. We have
implemented a lot of unique changes to speak to them and I get to hearing directly from
them some of the things that I want to share with you tonight. By better communicating
and by better participating in the conversations with our friends and neighbors we have
seen a lot of successes. We have stronger relationships with civic organizations like the
Kiwanis, Elk's. Organizations like the Meridian chamber, we have got a fantastic
dialogue where the chamber has continued to promote events on behalf of the city and
send information to the city that we can share to our citizens. We have been able to
maintain great relationships with organizations like SSC, the downtown business
association, businesses like Ultra Clean. But most importantly we continue to build
strong conversations with our neighbors, because, like I said, the conversation is really
what's key. I spoke briefly that as a city we have kind of embraced some new and
exciting ways to better communicate with our citizens. Embracing technology and
moving full force is something I was really pleased that as a city that we have done.
The last time I spoke to you I touched briefly of the Mayor's Facebook page and based
on that success the city's moved forward by communicating via electronic means,
Facebook and Twitter, with our citizens. For those that are in the audience that maybe
aren't up to snuff with what these other electronic means are, Twitter is a way to send a
very small, very brief message to people -- 140 letters, and sometimes my mornings are
spent figuring out how I'm going to say something that I want to spend two or three
pages writing, but just putting it into 140 characters. But we have had a lot of success
with that. Facebook is another electronics medium where we are able to post pictures,
links, and tell -- really do a better job of telling Meridian's story to our friends, our
neighbors. We have people -- we have a person overseas that is a fan of Meridian that
loves hearing about things that are going on, like the Concerts on Broadway or the play
in the plaza or about different things that are going on in our parks. So, that's been a
really unique thing to see people really now all over the world connecting to Meridian. I
really have to give credit, too, to our directors and to Robert Simison for really moving
full force with our blogging initiative. I just think that's just something that really makes
Meridian unique is that our department directors have a unique opportunity to really
interact intimately with our citizens and share unique information really from a -- from an
expert's point of view and I really have to applaud every one of them for being very pro-
active in sharing their information and really providing a very unique approach to what
goes on in their day-to-day lives. While technology and what I have spoken about is
nice and it's a unique way for us to interact differently, I'm such a proponent of face-to-
face communication and getting in front of people, if you think, really, anyone who works
City Hall, it's very rare that I'm going to pick up the phone and call you to ask you for
something. I'm going to come find you and talk to you and be able to, again, have that
conversation. I think that it's important that as a city and as Council that you recognize
that while we are doing these other things to interact and communicate, that's not
stopping my -- my job and my passion to really going out and getting in front of people
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and talking to them directly. So, I wanted to reassure you that while technology are
great tools that are helping us, they are by no way, in my opinion, going to take over
how I'm interacting and communicating differently with our citizens. With that I'd also
like to update you on some of the things that I have been working, give you, I guess, a
unique cross-section of how I spend my day or my week or my month. In addition, I
have kind of a supplemental packet that I will provide to you that will kind of give you
some more in depth explanation of the things that have been going on. As I mentioned
in my introduction, talking to our homeowners about issues that are -- that are on their
mind, issues large and small, is something that I do on a regular basis. I found that in
Meridian Thursday nights are the night for most homeowners where they get together
and talk about what's going on in their neighborhood, whether it's -- it's an issue with
skateboarders in the park after hours or who is going to rebuild the fence in the common
area -- there is no shortage of subjects that are covered at an HOA meeting and I have
been fortunate to participate in a lot of those and able to take some information actually
back to my own homeowners association to make us a better group. I wanted to share
with you one real unique experience that I had, along with, actually, a lot of other city
staff and that's in the neighborhood of Cedar Springs, which is right next to Settlers
Park. Our office was contacted by a resident of Cedar Springs who was concerned that
park patrons and people that were participating in some of the -- the city athletics were
parking on their street to access the park they felt that that wasn't right, that wasn't
appropriate, that their public streets were only meant for those that lived in the
neighborhood. I worked diligently, along with -- with Bill Nary, Scott Colaianni, Joe
Silva, Steve Siddoway, to come up with a lot of different plans that we were able to
present to the City Council. In addition, Steve and I worked with Meridian Youth
Baseball to come up with some plans to reduce the overall congestion that was being
held at that park. We were able to go in and stand in front of the City Council -- or,
excuse me, not City Council, the HOA board and present a plan that would have
reduced parking and, really, would have made the situation for the neighborhood in our
collective opinion a lot better. What we found is that the -- very typical, a lot of people
have a lot of different ideas about how to solve a small problem and an hour and a half
later -- and I'd say probably well over 30 suggestions later from probably about 25
people in the audience, we were unable to come to a conclusion. What's been
fortunate, though, is working with Meridian Youth Baseball and parks. The set of
implementations that we did was reducing the amount of games, placing sandwich
boards in the neighborhood to let those people know that are parking that there is plenty
of parking tha#'s available near the entrances to the park, so they could take advantage
of -- has reduced the parking congestion in that neighborhood tremendously and that's a
great example of really all different elements of city staff working together to benefit our
community and it was something that -- well, at times was -- was a little frustrating,
especially I'm one of those people that Iwant -- I want to help, here is a solution, let's
take the solution and .make it work. It was frustrating at times, but overall it seems the
majority of the neighbors have been really pleased with the implementations that have
went in. Another -- another organization that I'm working with, along with Matt Ellsworth
is the complete count committee, which is an organization with the 2010 census. Our
primary goal is to educate and inform those about the 2010 census and Iknow -- I know
March is a long -- kind of a ways away, but it's important right now that we are educating
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people, letting them know, in addition, because of Meridian status as an entitlement
community, it's key that we are not undercounting people and not overcounting and
something that was really surprising to me is that an overcounting, meaning, that, you
know, a person is counted once by themselves and typically counted again by another
organization or family member, it's counterproductive to an accurate count and can
actually affect finances coming into a city. So, we have been working both in finding
ways to educate people about it's important to be counted, as well as not to be counted
twice. We have people from various industries participating in committee. We have our
faith communities represented. The school are represented. Media, nonprofit, really
trying to find all those nooks and crannies that are out there to make sure that we are
talking to the right people and getting them the right information. I've also done a lot of
work with our business community, as I mentioned previous, working with our Chamber
of Commerce, working with the downtown business association, working with other
people in business developing a new business networking group that's really an off-
shoot of the success that we saw with the Meridian Business Day. Meridian Business
Day was this, you know, great really grass roots effort partnering with the city and
Department of Labor to say just because we are next to Boise that doesn't mean there
is people that aren't creating, you know, great industries in our community and that is --
it's funny, we are two and a half months after it and still a week doesn't go by where
someone doesn't bump into me and share how important and how much they enjoyed
the Meridian Business Day and, then, they quickly follow up with when is that going to
happen next and, then, very quickly after that how can I be involved and it shows that by
offering something that our community needs and our business community, we are
really filling a void that's not out there and it's been great to work with Josh Grant and
develop this new business networking organization that will really be able to be an off-
shoot of Meridian Business Day and help build off that success that we have had with
Meridian Business Day. Another organization that I typically give you updates on is the
Meridian Senior Center and a lot's changed at the senior center since the last time I
spoke. Last time I was here -- excuse me -- Sage had been bringing up the idea that
they were going to be changing the senior nutrition program. Central District Health had
made mention that they were going to be pulling out and, really, there was a void being
left, nobody really knew at this point in time -- at that point in time who was going to be
providing meals to our seniors. Since, then, the Elk's hospital has stepped up and is
currently providing the senior nutrition program. Like most new organizations when they
take over something as vast as the nutrition, there has been some general hiccups and
I have worked with our seniors to provide them insight and ideas on ways to work with
Sage, to work with the Elk's, to get better meal quality for our seniors, both at the
Meridian Senior Center and on Meals On Wheels. I'm happy to say that our seniors in
Meridian are much more happy today than they were 45 days ago. The food quality,
while not a hundred percent probably where they want, they are much happier than
where it's been. In addition, the Senior Center is looking at exploring a lot of different
avenues to make changes to the nutrition program using organizations like Life Kitchen
or going into a different type of agreement with the Elk's to provide better meals for our
seniors. In addition, I have done extensive work with the Senior Center on their capital
campaign. They are eager and excited to break ground on the new Senior Center and
to move forward in Kliner Park. They have raised now a little over 12,000 dollars and
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our hoping to really launch into a full capital campaign by the end of the summer. They
are getting ready to launch a new website and are producing some marketing material
that they really hope will make them successful. When I last spoke they were -- the
Senior Center was very adamant about that they wanted to be in their -- their own
building kind of separate and pulled away from everything else in Kliner Park and I
really worked very diligently with them to show them there were a lot of benefits by
wanting to partner with organizations like the botanical gardens and the library and by
being in one center you're going to reduce your overall cost, which they have now seen
the light and are very excited about moving forward in one big unit. In addition, seeing
that by making -- building a partnership with the Idaho Botanical Garden, that opens the
doors to bring revenue into them and allowing them to function, because their new
structure is going to be much larger than what they are dealing with with a lot more
amenities than what they currently have and to have a staff available to manage all of
those is going to be much larger than what they currently have and so I'm hoping that by
partnering with the botanical garden, using their new kitchen to serve as an outlet for
weddings and other different organizations and events, that they will be able to recoup
some revenue to help be able to manage their organization. And, lastly, since the last
time we spoke, we have -- the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council wrapped up their last
year. They had a very successful fundraiser for the Idaho Meth Project. Raised a little
over 3,000 dollars and were just -- just for me it's always unique to see our leaders grow
and surprise me, even when I think that they have -- have reached their max of what
they are capable of doing, they go and surprise me. That was very evident. That was
touched on last week by some of the members that were here talking about the
Association of Idaho Cities convention and, well, it was a very unique opportunity for me
to go back into the dorm. The beds aren't as comfortable as I remember. 10:00, 11:00
o'clock comes much earlier than I remember. But it was a great great event and I was
happy to be there with them, despite them getting me up on that 50 foot rope swing,
which is unique -- it's a once in a lifetime event, because I'm never going to do it again,
but I'm fortunate that f had them there to coach me along and get me up there.
De Weerd: What did Eli say, it was like throwing cold water on a cat? Was that --
Nary: Something like that.
Cavener: Something along those lines. Yes. They have -- they missed last week --
actually, the day after they spoke to you and have come up with a lot of really great
ideas to be more involved in the community next year and I'm really excited about
having the opportunity over the next academic year to share a lot of their successes.
So, I know that's a lot of information to throw at you and I've got some -- kind of a
supplemental packet that will provide a little more in depth information for you and with
that I'd stand for any questions.
Rountree: Questions or comments for Luke?
Hoaglun: Mr. President, I'd just say I'm impressed from the standpoint that he gets
young kids excited about city government, he gets senior citizens who like their food,
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and people that are next to a park satisfied with the results that finds, I think that puts
him in the category of a miracle worker. Thanks, Luke. Appreciate your work on that.
Bird: I don't think Luke said that he had the seniors completely satisfied. When you get
that accomplished, then, it will be a miracle, uh, Luke.
Cavener: Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Councilman Bird, I just had such a great time
interacting with our -- with our seniors and it's unique, I'll come to that, and I think that I
had found, again, the solution, this is what's going to make sense to them, and they
bring a very unique perspective and I have been able to learn from and I agree that
when I -- when I find the answer to their question, they very well may just go and
change the question on me, so --
Rountree: Luke, thank you for all you do. Thanks for your time and your update and
you're right on the button tonight 20 minutes. Good job.
Cavener: Perfect. Thank you. Have a good evening.
D. Hansen 8 Implementation Approval to Enter into Negotiations
and Standard Contract:
Rountree: Next item on the agenda is 5-D, Hansen 8 implementation approval. Keith.
Watts: Thank you, Council Member Rountree, Madam Mayor, Council Members. The
Public Works Department has previously been approved to have a budget approval and
authorization to go out for an RFP for Hansen 8 software implementation. It is an asset
management system for the wastewater treatment division and the water division. In
May we went out for RFP, we sent it out to five different vendors and posted it in the
newspaper and on our city's website. In June we had a preproposal conference, we
had four vendors participate in the preproposal confidence. We issued one addendum
right after the conference to clarify questions. On the 17th of June we received six,
proposals and sent them to the evaluation committee, which was a wide group of city
personnel and one person from the city of Boise as well, as they will be participating in
this contract award as well. We have narrowed it down to two companies. The
committee narrowed it down to Esco Porter and M4. After we met on the 26th, the
references were passed out. In this RFP process I kept the pricing envelopes separate
and sealed during the evaluation process in order to keep a fair and impartial
evaluation. When that came back we opened to pricing on the 30th as a group. We
reviewed the pricing and empowered the evaluation committee's scores and it was
going to Esco Porter and at this time I would like to request authorization to enter into
negotiations with Esco Porter and for to enter into a standard city contract for Esco
Porter upon successful negotiations and for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest for
not to exceed the previously approved budget amount.
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Rountree: Questions for Keith? I don't see any. Tom, I just want a nod that you'e in
agreement, you have requested this through purchasing, just want to make sure that
you're here tonight, that you're on the record as saying yeah.
Bany: Yes, sir. Thank you, President Rountree.
Rountree: Thank you. If there is no questions or comments, I need a motion on this.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we enter into negotiations with a standard contract with Esco Porter for the
implementation of Hansen 8 and not to exceed the budget amount.
Rountree: Need a second.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to approve the entering into negotiations with
Esco Porter for the Hansen 8 implementation and that is not to exceed the budgeted
amount and authorizes the Mayor to sign, that I assume the motion maker meant.
Bird: Yes.
Hoaglun: Yes.
Rountree: Second agree? Okay. Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Watts: Thank you.
E. SH-16 EIS Information:
Rountree: Thanks, Keith. Next item is State Highway 16 EIS information update from
Caleb.
Hood: I won't give you the same presentation, but I put both my presentations on the
same -- the public comment period is underway for the draft State Highway 16
environmental impact statement, I-84 to State Highway 44. We have until August 7th to
submit comments to ITD and FHWA and, in fact, I have prepared a letter for your
consideration this evening. I'll run through that letter at the end of my presentation to
just make sure that you concur with that and would ask for your signature. If you do or if
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there is tweaks that need to be made, we can do that as well. But, again, I want to give
you a little background first. 2007 the Idaho legislature provided bonding authority of
between 4.3 and 17 million to fund the preparation of an EIS, the acquisition of right of
way, and the future construction of State Highway 16 across the Boise River to I-84.
So, there have been several alternatives that have been discussed in the two years
since and through the screening process six altematives were chosen for evaluation in
the EIS. The city has previously identified altemative 2-D as the city's preferred choice.
This altemative proposes that State Highway 16 extension of the new divided highway
with type five access control, interchanges will be located at I-84, Franklin Road, Ustick
Road, and US-20-26. So, except for that first one between I-84 and Franklin Road,
every two miles. And, then, the over -- over and underpasses would be, then, located at
the mile in between the interchanges, so at Cherry and McMillan in Meridian in our area
of impact. The right of way corridor is 300 foot wide and contains two travel lanes in
each direction, with shoulders. This right of way also accommodates the storm
drainage, roadside safety features, utilities, and allows for future multi-modal operations
and additional travel lane capacity if necessary. Project is proposed in two phases in
the EIS. Phase one is two miles long and goes from State Highway 44, State Street to
US-20-26, Chinden Boulevard. That first phase also includes the Boise River crossing
and the interchange at Chinden Boulevard. The second phase goes, then, from
Chinden to Interstate 84 and terminates there. I'm not going to spend a ton of time
going through all six of the altematives contemplated in the EIS, but I did want to at
least show them to you. A lot of the altematives are very similar. The main differences
tend to be, one, where the highway is located, so that's a pretty main difference. Two,
the interchange locations. This slide's a good example of where you can have some
difference and in altemative one there it -- the interchange at I-84, so that's on the far
left of your screen -- the interchange to I-84 is, basically, in direct alignment with
McDemott Road. And both of these altematives, the State Highway 16 extension is just
to the top of your screen, although west of McDermott Road. That would be true for a
majority of the altematives, these two, particularly. Obviously, this one diverges and
goes further into Canyon county in this instance, makes the interchange about a quarter
of a mile, a third of a mile west of McDermott.. So, two miles between Ten Mile is right
on McDermott. So, we are just off a two mile spacing for the interchange access here.
This one is at the two mile location. The main difference between a lot of these
altematives, you will see the same concept and mirror altematives as well. It doesn't
show up too tembly well on this slide, but there is a subdivision right here on the south
side of I-84. This interchange has the least impact to those property owners. And also
-- and I think this is pretty important -- it also has the best ability to be further extended
to the south. Now, that isn't part of what is being evaluated today, but I do see that
some day there will be demand to extend 16 or some version thereof south and so,
again, the main difference, as you look at these altematives, these are two big ones, the
interchange locations on I-84. And the final one is a local roadway network. These
plans, essentially, are the same. You can see some of the way that access is proposed
to some of the existing parcels, since they will no longer be able to take access to
McDermott Road and varies slightly in these two examples. All the rest of the local
roadway network are the same in these two altematives. You will see that there is
variations throughout a lot of these slides. These two altematives -- altemative two is
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the one that the city has previously stood up said absolutely that is the one we are
against. This alternative varies from McDermott Road and is constructed, again, about
a quarter to a third of a mile off of McDermott Road and leaves asliver -- you got Ada
County -- this is future Meridian, it's in our area of impact and, then, over here as well.
So, you create this frontage and between an interstate and an arterial, where we call for
medium density residential. So, we really do prefer the altematives that stick to the --
the McDermott corridor there and don't create those opportunities for strip commercial
development fronting along the State Highway 16. Also, in this example you see both of
these alternatives have the interchange at I-84 not on alignment. So, you do have to --
this is the preferred alternative. It does break away, then, from that McDermott corridor
and so you can get to that terminus at I-84, again, removed from the subdivision and
allow for a future extension. 2-D is the preferred altemative. I will come back to that if
we need to, but I'm going to jump to the last two altematives just quickly. Again, some
slight variations in these. Again, the biggest difference between these two altematives
is your local roadway network, particularly between Cheny Lane and the interstate and,
then, the actual interchange location of State Highway 16 extension. If you have any
questions or you want to look at those in any further depth, just holler and we can sure
go back. I do want to just quickly give you a synopsis of the letter that I have drafted. I
don't know if you have all had a chance to read that or not, if -- I hope so. But I will
summarize for you real quick. The letter says that we support altemative 2-D as
modified as located nearby McDermott Road and reinforces the areas of impact
between Meridian and Nampa. We don't want to see altemative two as it creates a strip
of land between McDermott Road and extension and Ada County and Meridian. The
preferred altemative -- the preferred is most consistent with our Comprehensive Plan
and Communities In Motion. The reasons for supporting the preferred alternative are
noted as taking few existing parcels to negotiate future right of way purchase from.
McDermott Road alignment fits the logical progression of freeway interchanges at two
mile spacing. Alternative 2-D will result in the access controlled expressway with
McDermott Road becoming a frontage road in Ada County, serving future development
and that will enhance the city's ability to coordinate future planning, development, and
access along McDermott Road, as opposed to having multiple properties fronting on
McDermott and opening up the possibility of multiple accesses. The local street
network layout is complimentary to the current and future land uses in altemative 2-D
and the preferred altemative has very limited impact to environmental and social cultural
resources in the area, while providing the biggest community and regional benefit. You
will have to believe somewhat on that point, although I do have the draft EIS is you want
to go through it. They did a matrix and, basically, scored all the altematives against
impacts, noise, costs, all kinds of cost benefit analysis at that, but it is the preferred
altemative in the draft EIS. The letter concludes by saying we believe it to be the
altemative that best addresses the regional and local needs for mobility, circulation, and
travel demand. Is most consistent with the City of Meridian and the region's long range
planning efforts and have the least impact to the environment. That's my presentation.
Again, if you have any changes to that letter, we can certainly make them. If not, I
believe there is an original copy floating around here somewhere and I would ask for
your signature. Oh, I do have a couple of other things. The Meridian fire department --
I did talk to Joe Silva today and Chief Anderson, I believe, was talking to Joe. I don't
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know if he wants to add anything necessarily, but we do have a memo that you all
should have in front of you as well regarding this topic. Just real quickly, basically, what
it talks about is feature station locations and that will be very important to coordinate
where their EMS and fire stations will be located, as there is going to be some
jurisdictional issues that need to be worked out anyway, some coordination issues that
need to be worked out with the county line being there, a state highway being there, and
just those fire station locations. Also, they state in their memo the need for frontage
roads. We believe that's very important, not only for emergency access, but for
circulation in general, so we definitely support the fire department in their memo and
their comments that they have made. A couple of their comments are for consideration
as this project moves forward. They talk about building height, fire flows, those, type of
things. This is not at that level yet, but certainly we will file that away and bring that
back out when we get to design and construction. The other thing real quickly. Did
receive a letter from Mr. Ed Jenkins, too. You should have a copy of his letter. Mr.
Jenkins lives on the southeast corner of U.S. 20-26 and McDermott Road and his main
concern is access to his property. He's right where an interchange is proposed to go.
So, obviously, he doesn't want his access to be right at an interchange, you got to send
them back and what the preferred alternative shows to do. Let's see if I can find him
real quick. His property is right in here. I think it's somewhere about half of the property
is being used for the interchange here. The access, then, back to those property is all
the way back down to the mid mile and back to McDermott that way. So, he lives on a
very long cul-de-sac. His bigger concern is longer term and our future land use
designation of mixed use here and if there is not adequate access to that parcel for
mixed, he has some concerns about how viable that is. Again, I hope you have his
letter. I will be working with him. This plan is not meant to be -- particularly the frontage
roads are not the end all, be all of the network -- roadway network system in this area,
we will further look at our plans for where collectors should go, access to parcels, cross-
access, and reevaluate those as -- in the bigger system. But I have been working with
Mr. Jenkins and wanted to share that -- he asked me to share it with you, so I have
provided you a copy. So, now with that I think I will stand for any questions you may
have.
Rountree: Questions, comments, for Caleb? Caleb, to start, we have indicated in the
letter that our preferred alternative is 2-D and it's consistent with our comp plan. If --
other alternatives that are being proposed are not consistent with the comp plan, I think
it would be well to point that out, because I think that's a significant factor in the decision
making process. In your point about the fire department's comments, I think we tried to
weave in their comments that are consistent with -- with the environmental document
and keep the comments that relate to future development that may occur out there for a
later date. Given that this is a process that resulted in multiple alternatives, at the same
time we were doing comp plan update and/or expansion of our impact area, not
knowing which alternative might come to fruition and we still don't. We will have to
make those accommodations and change once they -- an alternative is selected and
initial acquisition starts. So, it may well be that a number of those land use
classifications or designations might -- might change and access to them certainly is
going to be something that will be worked out in finer details of design, right of way
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July 21, 2009
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negotiation and acquisition and ultimate work that we do with the resultant project and
adjacent properties to incorporate that into our Comprehensive Plan in a final form. So,
anybody have any comment they want to make on the letter or with those changes I
suggested?
Hood: Mr. President, can I maybe just address those in maybe reverse order, so the
last one -- just to let you know, we are right now working on putting together a public
participation plan for northwest four square, six square area, we are kind of working on
that, where the boundary's going to be. We will this fall be kicking off something to --
hopefully arecord of decision will be issued by that time and we kind of know where 16
is going to land, then, we can reevaluate our future land use map and say what does
work, what should we look at, what do you as stakeholders envision for your property
and we look at that whole access, cross-access. We do -- you know, with 20-26 being a
limited access facility and State Highway 16 being a freeway, essentially, with every one
mile under-over passes and interchanges, we don't really want to compromise those,
looking at sections and how they get folks around, and so we will be doing that, just to
let you know. The fire comments, just for clarification, then, do you want me to include
-- so the ones that are related to future development, leave those out -- the first two
really are -- I mean they are not the same language, but they also support 2-D. The
frontage road stuff I guess would be the one aspect that isn't probably highlighted
enough from the fire department's perspective in here. Is there anything else on those
other bullets that --
Rountree: No.
Hood: Okay. And, then, finally, the first one that you brought up, I do call out in the
second paragraph there construction away - so it's on the fifth line down, construction
away from McDemott Road, as shown on altemative two, will result in a strip of land in
Ada County between McDermott and the future Highway 16 expressway. This area
would not be desirable -- so, I mean I do touch on that. I can certainly highlight that
more, that we really don't like that altemative --
Rountree: Just say it's inconsistent with our comprehensive planning and goals. If
that's true. And I believe it is.
Hood: Yeah. And it does -- it does say that. It goes on to say -- which is inconsistent
with the city's Comprehensive Plan policies and future land use map.
Rountree: I didn't get that part.
Hood: I didn't know if you wanted something else or another -- to beef that up a little bit
more. I can certainly add the fire comments and make those changes and have it back
in the morning, if there is anything else.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
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Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess, Caleb, we want to get everyone's signature on it so if there is any
chance you can --
Hood: Sure.
F. Distribution of Available CDBG Funds for Public Service
Projects:
Rountree: Questions? Comments? Thank you, Caleb. We will see you shortly. Next
item on the agenda -- if I can find it. Matt Ellsworth, distribution of CDBG funds.
Ellsworth: Thank you, Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor. In
particular, yeah, the use of funds that we are contemplating this evening is the public
services component of the CDBG entitlement for next year. The overall program year
2009 CDBG entitlement is just under a quarter million dollars, 250,000 dollars, of which
HUD regulations allow entitlement communities to spend up to 15 percent for public
service projects. Those are typically direct service oriented activities. They are
administered by sub recipients. So, at a previous City Council meeting Council directed
staff in the original draft for the upcoming program year's CDBG action plan to allocate
the full amount available to that sort of project and what staff essentially did is put a
space filler in next year's action plan. The total amount that's set aside in the plan is
37,490 dollars. That's the maximum amount that the city can spend on public service
activities next program year. In addition, earlier on in the process of drafting the
upcoming year's action, staff solicited applications from public service providers to allow
an opportunity for them to identify different needs within the community to propose
solutions to those needs and to allow the city to engage a little bit indirectly in providing
assistance that's needed to meet some of those needs, to work with our nonprofit
service providers toward the goals of the CDBG program to align those with the city's
goals. The city received in response to that request application for three activities from
two very qualified sub recipient entities. The first application was the Boys and Girls
Club, who propose an after school transportation program that would -- that would
transport students from Peregrine Elementary, from Meridian Middle School, and from
Meridian High School to the Boys and Girls Club to engage in the after school activities
that are already offered over there. The total amount of that request is 17,000 dollars.
The second entity requesting CDBG assistance for next program year is the Meridian
Food Bank. The Food Bank has two sub requests within their overall request. The first
one is a continuation of assistance that they are currently receiving though the CDBG
program, that's for general services. They are purchasing food, taking a look at
purchasing the necessary equipment they need to sustain their operations, that sort of
thing. The second component of their request is for the Backpack For Kids program,
which -- which members of Council and the Mayor are familiar with, that provides --
provides backpacks of food to underprivileged children to bring home with them over the
weekend to make sure that they can -- they can receive the necessary nourishment
they need when they are not at school. The total amount of the two sub components of
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the Food Bank's request are 50,401 dollars for general services and 16,120 dollars for
the Backpack For Kids program. So, to add it all up there, what is before City Council
this evening is a grand total of 83,521 dollars worth of requests that the city needs to
figure out best to either make the 37,490 dollars spread to meet all those needs or
figure out how to pair those requests back in order to make it work within the amount of
funding that is available. Where we are in the process overall, the draft that I mentioned
previously is currently out for public review. That's set to come back before you next
week coming up here on July 28th, at which time City Council will consider any
comments received, along with the draft prior to finalizing the document draft and
sending it on to HUD. So, again, the direction the staff seeks this evening is for Council
to determine how to spend the available 37,490 dollars of available assistance on public
services projects. In your memo that's in your packet this evening staff gave a brief
rundown of what we discussed here this evening, along with the recommendation.
Before we go into any of that, though, here with us this evening are representatives
from --from the two entities that submitted applications for -- for use of these funds and,
first, I just want to extend my thanks to both of those organizations for both your work as
subrecipients in the current program year and also for the quality of the applications. It's
-- it's a tough decision to have to make, but it's encouraging to see the nonprofit
community in Meridian step up and propose these great solutions to the needs of
Meridian's citizens. In addition, Mr. President and Members of Council, Madam Mayor,
if schedule permits, I thought it might be helpful for you in making this determination this
evening to allow the representatives of these entities a couple moments to come up and
brush on the high points of their applications prior to -- prior to giving staff direction as to
how best to use these available funds.
Rountree: Any questions or comments for Matt? None? And, Joey, do you want to
start?
Braga: Good evening, Madam Mayor and Members of Council. My name is Colleen
Braga, I'm the executive director of the Boys and Girls Clubs and you all know Joey, the
director of our Meridian Club. Thank you for the opportunity to come and talk with you
tonight about this very important program and thank you very much for allowing us to
apply in the first place. We really appreciate that. I also want to thank you for all the
past support we have received from the city. Had it not been for the city's help in getting
our club started, we would not even be able to stand before you today looking to expand
what we are doing. So, I do want to acknowledge that we have appreciated everything
that the -- that the Mayor and the Council has done for our organization. We have
helped to serve -- in the seven years that we have existed I ran a report today, 3,888
kids in Meridian in the past seven years. This year alone we have got 1,217 members
and that's -- we are. only in July. So, we are anticipating probably 1,500 members
before the end of this year. We respectfully ask for your consideration of a 17,000
dollar grant that will -- for help -- that will help us provide daily after school transportation
to primarily low income children who attend Peregrine Elementary School and will also
allow us to safely transport kids who attend Meridian High School and Meridian Middle
School, especially during the winter months when walking to the Boys and Girls Club or
riding their bike can be particularly hazardous. A transportation program to serve
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Meridian kids has been one of our top priorities in the last -- at least five years and in --
we have, actually, purchased a 60 passenger bus in anticipation of getting a program
started. What we lack is the funds to actually run the program to provide the driver and
all of the associated costs within insurance and all that. We believe that through this
program we can serve a total of 120 youth. They would be able to take advantage of
the program on a daily basis, 60 from Peregrine Elementary School and 60 as a
combination of the middle and high school students. Our cost estimate of what the
17,000 dollars will do, it will cost the city 71 cents per day per child to bring them to the
Boys and Girls Club and they will be there -- they can be there after school from 3:00 to
8:00 p.m. They can be there 40 weeks a year, five hours a day. We chose Peregrine,
because of the low income population served by that school. Forty-six percent of the
kids who attend there qualify for the free or reduced lunch program. Sandi Scheele, the
principal there, submitted a letter of support. She has -- in particular, she has been very
vocal about the need for after school programs for the students who attend her -- her
school and decided that the lack of transportation is the main barrier. And to support
that, we have -- we look at our numbers. Right now we have about 56 kids per day
coming to the Boys and Girls Club who -- who are students of Peregrine Elementary
School. That is because they have transportation to the club. In our after school
program we serve an average of only 14 per day and in polling our parents as to why
their kids aren't coming to the club after school, the answer is very simple, they do not
have transportation. We chose Meridian Middle School and high school simply because
we do have a large population, particularly from the middle school of kids who have to
get to our club each day. Matt Ellsworth was very candid in telling me that his -- what
his recommendation would be to the Council and I really do appreciate his candor and
respect whatever decision the Council comes to in this matter. If in the course of the
decision you decide not to fund the Boys and Girls Club, we will certainly understand
that, because you have been very generous to us in the past and -- and we know that
there are other organizations serving -- serving critical needs. Matt shared with me his
reason for his recommendation as that he felt that the other organization served a
critical need and basic needs and I would just say that if you polled the families who
would be served by our transportation program, that they would, indeed, believe that we
are -- this program would be fulfilling a very critical and basic need. And so I brought
Joey with me today, so that he can tell you what some of those kids can experience
once they are at the Boys and Girls Club. Joey.
Schueler: Thank you. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, it's fitting that we are
here with the Food Bank, because I love that organization and we try to get our kids
involved, too, because getting the basic needs is so important and that's a big part of
what we want our kids to understand in the future here at the Meridian Boys and Girls
Club. The reason I'm here is I guess to explain that question why transportation to Boys
and Girls Club from Peregrine. I believe families now more than ever need a Boys and
Girls Club. Peregrine Elementary is one of the highest free reduced lunch school sites
in the district, as my boss mentioned. Kids in this demographic are more likely to go
home to an empty house. They are more likely to not receive a nutritious meal and not
get assistance with their homework. They are left unattended, a lot of them, and I have
spoke and I do poll -- I'm one of the people who calls the Peregrine Elementary parents,
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because we set a demongraphic of the kids who are attending less frequently in a three
month span and we call those families to ask them what's going on, you know, we
missed your kid, you want to come in and 99 percent of the time, there is very few
instances, other than we can't get them there. We are at work, that's why we need you
guys. So, you know, we offer programs every day that service the needs of those very
families who need it. We give them free meals, which is a healthy start. Okay? We
give them a place. We give them caring adults. We give them opportunities to serve at
places like the Food Bank, Rake Up Meridian, the Old Town community clean up, where
we actually designated I think 345 around the area to the area to the food bank for --
which is giving our kids that chance to realize you give those dollars to the community,
you're helping your community and that's helping you. Okay? So, we are giving them
that and we are giving them marketable skills. A prime example is our youth of the year
state winner from Meridian, Idaho, that represented us at Anaheim, California, last
week, myself chaperoning. I was very proud of her. So, we are giving them five things
-- five things that this Council agrees to be very important. Meridian's Promise stands
for those five promises to youth and we want to fulfill that and your funding would help
us do that. And we are also very excited, incidentally, to offer a free dinner program this
fall and we hope to offer that every day to ever child that comes into our building,
including parents, for the entire school year. So, when they are not in school they can
still get a nice warm meal and we do a great job. So, I just want to emphasize that for
right now in this economy this -- your money -- any dollar you designate is well spent at
the Boys and Girls Club and is an investment over time. This is not a one day thing, this
is years. These are the future supporters for this very city that we are trying to raise
here. Thank you.
Braga: Do you have any questions for us?
Rountree: Any question for Colleen or Joey?
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess my question is if the 17,000 dollars were granted towards this
program, will it be sustainable? I mean this would be a one year gift or grant. What
would sustain that for future years?
Braga: Well, that's a very good question, Madam Mayor, and we -- this -- like I said
earlier, this has been a priority for our clubs and we have already made steps to get it
going. This would just give us a jump start that we need. As you know, we are always
seeking funds for a lot of different programs and a transportation program is right now
very high on our priority list for grant funding and when we do our fund raising from
individuals and all those. So, I think this gives us a chance to get the program started,
to show some successes, to get -- to be able to show the outcomes, so that we can
secure the grant funding that we need to continue this. Because we have actually tried
-- you may know this. We have tried in Garden City to charge families, because we got
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July 21, 2009
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the program, we saw that as the most critical need for transportation and with the
families that we serve, no matter what we charge it always seems to be too much and,
really, the spirit of the Boys and Girls Club is we -- we believe in serving the kids who
need it most and, unfortunately, those families are not the ones who can afford to pay
monthly fees, so --
De Weerd: Thank you.
Rountree: Further questions?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I'm clear on the need to transport kids -- transport kids from the schools to
the Boys and Girls Club. What happens to them at 8:00 o'clock? Do you transport
them --
Schueler: I wait until their parents show up usually.
Zaremba: Okay.
Schueler: They pick up --
Zaremba: They are able to --
Schueler: Most people are -- can make that arrangement and, you know, you get a few
stragglers every now and again, but we always get them home and we are not
authorized to leave until they are safe.
Braga: Yeah. I think our Hitch is really the children of the working poor. So, it's typically
parents who are at work and by enrolling their child, they know that 8:00 o'clock is the
time we close and that's the time they need to be picked up by.
Zaremba: Follow up. So, that isn't part of the plan that the bus is also going to take
them home from the Boys and Girls Club?
Braga: No. No.
Zaremba: Okay.
Braga: Unfortunately, we can't do that.
Zaremba: Okay.
Rountree: Any further questions?
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Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr.6ird.
Bird: Have you checked with the school bus -- they don't have any routes that -- from
middle school or from Peregrine that would come by?
Braga: No.
Schueler: I have met with Principal Scheele on numerous occasions. We have actually
tried finding any way to do this in previous years with Peregrine, even just with our van
and a few kids, and so we have exhausted our resources in Peregrine with the school
providing that transportation. You know, I have my own opinion about busing -- being
able to list us as a drop from the schools, but that seems to be a mute point, because in
the state they don't -- they don't reimburse schools for busing to the Boys and Girls Club
yet. But one thing I am aware of, there are other schools that do have that, but It's
always on preexisting routes. They can't extend routes, because that extends budget,
so -- but, unfortunately, Peregrine does not have one in the proximity of our club.
Rountree: Further questions? Comment? Thank you.
Braga: Thank you.
Rountree: Dan, you want to -- and I really and truly hate to pit you two against one
another for this, because you're both so worthy of recognition and praise for what you
do, but we have to figure out some way to slice and dice this. So, thank you for your
time.
Clark: I don't envy your decision, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I didn't quite
know what Matt was going to bring me in here for tonight, so I wasn't as prepared as
those guys. But I think most of you know, you know, what we have been doing. We
have been -- for ten years we have been working this little food bank that started out
with just one person in a little tiny house to where we are now and thanks to all of you.
You know where we are. You have been a big part of that and I appreciate that. You
have helped us a great deal. Brandy, our director -- she hates to come up here. She --
she has indicted to -- her and I -- or a number of people, and we were going through all
the numbers. We have determined -- or she determined today that so far this month we
have fed 1,600 people and last month we had a record of 2,200 people. So, we are well
on our way to meeting or beating that. We have given out over 500 food baskets. Last
month it was 700. So, with still this many days left in the month, there is a good chance
that we are going to feed more people. We are averaging about 6,000 dollars a month
of our -- of buying food, basically, at Albertson's or Walmart or where ever it is we have
to go to buy food and we have been and always have been a donation based
organization. We are -- we have no -- no income, other than begging and pleading and
whatever we can come up with. We get some good opportunities from some of the
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schools that give us little food drives throughout the course of the year. The post office
food drive that we had back in May, we were able to get 16,000 pounds of food, which
we have gone through pretty much already and the need is so great, it's just there, and
it's just -- it's getting worse and I think until such time as you no longer need it, it's going
to continue to grow and when you no longer need us, then, that will be a good day, you
know, but it will be a long time I think coming. As for the backpack program, which is
probably one of the faster growing little programs that we have, we just tried it out last
year just to see what kind of impact it would have. We didn't know for sure whether
Idaho Food Bank was going to have a backpack program and we found that they didn't
and, then, we started one and we found out they did, so -- so, we fed -- we had 60
children max, but throughout the entire school year we had up to 60 children every
week that we were -- and a lot of them were the same children every week, too. But we
anticipate next year that growing and, like Peregrine, they were talking about we supply
backpacks to Peregrine and -- which it's just a need that's there and we just welcome
the opportunity to do it. So, we have got a little place set aside in the Food Bank that's
just for the backpack program, so -- it's going to cost us several thousand dollars,
probably, to keep that program going, but, again, you know, we just -- we just hope that
the money comes and it always seems to come, so -- and I do appreciate, you know,
what you have all done for us and we are going to keep it going. Thank you. That's
probably all I know.
Rountree: Any questions?
Hoaglun: Mr. President?
Rountree: Brad.
Hoaglun: Dan, you or Matt, Backpack For Kids program, that's -- the community's also
involved with that --
Clark: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: -- because I think there was some things done at City Hall that was food and
other organizations in the community also provide the actual backpacks with food --
Clark: Right. That's true.
Hoaglun: -- to supplement that. Any idea on what -- how much that -- where that -- the
amount that the community gives versus what you're giving? Is it 50/50? Is it 60/40?
You know.
Clark: Well, the community -- I think it was just before the end of school, I think, we
ended up with a couple of pickup trucks full of food that came from here and that's --
that's probably not as much as what we purchased, but it's a lot, and it went a long way.
We have a buyer for the Food Bank, that's all she does is just goes out and finds the
best deals, but she's buying for the backpack program, so she's getting all of those best
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July 21, 2009
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deals as well. So, we can get a lot, based upon how effective she is and it's really been
working. But in answer to your questions, Bradley, the -- I venture to say probably with
the size of those two pickup loads I'd say, yeah, there was probably 50/50, I would think.
But there was a lot of food. There really was a lot of food that came over from here.
Hoaglun: Thanks.
Rountree: Any other questions? Thank you, Dan.
Clark: Thanks.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I guess I'll kick off the discussion. The City of Meridian, the Mayor's Youth
Advisory Council, our faith ambassadors have had an opportunity to work with both
these programs and certainly I see the value of the Boys and Girls Club in serving out
kids and making sure they are fed during the week and the Backpack For Kids, making
sure they don't go hungry on the weekends, we have a commitment, certainly, to the
youth of our community and will continue to partner with the Backpack For Kids program
through the MYC and I would imagine through the different churches that not only
participate in the Backpack For Kids, but also in the Food Bank itself. I would like to see
a split between the two programs and I do realize that on the Meridian Food Bank
general service side, that we serve more than just Meridian families out of the Meridian
Food Bank. Peregrine will serve Meridian families. The Backpacks For Kids serves the
Meridian School District. So, it's not exclusive just to Meridian kids, but I think it's pretty
close. So, I would like to at least lend my support to splitting the support between the
two programs and first focusing on our -- the youth of our community and certainly
making sure that we do all we can to continue to partner with the Food Bank in
meaningful ways.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, just a question. And how would you propose to split that?
Put you on the spot.
De Weerd: Well, I see there is 37,000 dollars and so -- and the Boys and Girls Club are
only -- are requesting 17, so that 17,000 will go to the Boys and Girls Club and 20 to the
Meridian Food Bank to have them determine the Backpacks For Kids and the general
service split.
Rountree: Other comments?
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: I would agree on splitting. I don't -- all the programs are very very worthy of it. I
wish we had more money. Backpack For Kids I think is, in my mind, the most important
thing going. There is a lot of these young kids over the weekend don't get much food. I
would -- I would go with the 17 for the transportation, 16,120, for the Backpack For Kids
and the remaining 4,000 or 5,000, whatever it is -- my math isn't working that fast right
now -- go on into the Meridian Food Bank and, then, just continue to help in all we can --
every way we can. That would be my -- I think we have to -- I think we definitely have
helped the -- myself, I believe we have to help the two childrens programs.
Rountree: Other comments?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I agree with what everybody is saying, that it's tough to have to split the baby
here. They are both very worthy and I wish we could give a whole lot more to both of
them. I do support the idea of the Boys and Girls Club's participation and receiving
funds out of -- out of this amount and I feel that for the same reasons everybody else
does, but also to repeat something that I think Joey said, is that they are feeding kids as
well. I mean their work takes some pressure off of the food bank and also they help the
Food Bank as well. So, to agree to help the Boys and Girls Club does not equally
penalize the Food Bank. There is Food Bank benefit there as well. So, I would support
the 17,000 to the Boys and Girls Club and along with the Mayor, I would let the Food
Bank decide how to allocate the rest. I think that's what she said.
Hoaglun: Mr. President, just to give you a little insight into my thinking, I see it just a
little different, but -- I mean we have got two very outstanding programs that this
community is fortunate to have and we certainly need to expand. I looked at it as listen
to the presentations that there is certainly a need and the Boys and Girls Club will be
serving low income children who cannot get to the facility, because their parents are
working. And what I see the Food Bank serving is people who may be working and they
can't make ends meet, but they are also serving people who don't have a job and that,
to me, is the greatest need is that is the ultimate safety net of food for families who may
be going without completely. So, that's how I saw that between the two -- two entities.
Certainly worthy and if you want to split the baby on this one, I'm certainly not opposed
to that, because as I looked at it, to me what is the -- the most foundational safety net
that we can provide to the citizens in need and that is food and no -- Boys and Girls
Club will provide food and other activities that are certainly certainly needed and I think
there is greater benefit than just the food and the home work. It keeps them out of
trouble, too, for those hours that their families are not there, but -- so, that's what makes
it so hard. But that's what my thinking was coming from and I'm looking at going more
with -- with the full funding to the Food Bank to provide that and even that's not enough
far the need that I'm afraid we are going to see increasing for many months to come for
-- for quite some time. But if we do split the baby on this one, that's fine, and we just
need to keep working and finding ways to fund both programs as we go along, so --
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De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Just a follow up. I do know there are kids at the Boys and Girls Club whose
families are unemployed. This is a place were the kids can come and be fed and both
in the summer I believe it's breakfast, lunch, and I hear there is going to be a dinner
program available to the kids and their families. So, it is a different approach. I believe
some of these kids go there, rather than going home if their are parents there, but they
go there for the -- the friendships, for the safe place caring adult environment as well.
So, I see that these are not cross-purposes. Certainly these two organizations have the
same mission in serving those that -- that need to be served and appreciate what both
organizations are doing.
Rountree: Matt, a question. And I'm sure you have done this, but I just want to make
sure that it's been done. It seems to me that we are talking -- we are talking about the
public service funding percentage that the CDBG program provides, but it also provides
programs for economically depressed area and that sort of thing. Have we fully
explored the potential for funding out of the rest of the program, particularly in an area
such as the Peregrine school boundaries where we have an economic indicator there
that there is something going on and we need to address it.
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, as far as
rejuvenation of economically distressed areas, you can get toward that end in one of
several different ways. The most typical way that entitled communities do so is by
making the link between certain census block groups and those areas. Peregrine
Elementary falls outside of that -- that free census block group geography that we have
discussed in the past, but centered around -- well, it's in between Linder Road, Locust
Grove, Fairview Avenue and Franklin, jogging up to Pine as you continue to the east.
So, Peregrine, in general the school service boundary there, is outside of that area. The
other piece of the puzzle is the nature of the service provided. It's -- it's sort of its own
separate -- separate category, the public service of the component of the CDBG
program. The more conventional uses of CDBG funds are -- are construction oriented
projects, they are less direct service to -- to areas, things like park improvements,
infrastructure improvements, things of that nature, and because that does constitute the
bulk of the program is why HUD has mandated the cap at 15 percent of a community's
overall entitlement year after year to go toward those uses.
Rountree: Thank you. Having heard that and it appears that we have been through the
weeds of the regulations, I don't disagree with what I have heard. I don't like the idea of
having to split this, but my rational is is that on one hand if you go all the way to the
Food Bank you still don't meet all their needs. On the hand, we can complete a
program -- the question of sustainability is still there, but we can complete the program
request that the Boys and Girls Club go. So, I'm inclined to move that direction. I like
the idea of the Backpack program. I think it's been successful and my sense is that if
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we do split it, I don't know that we necessarily have to mandate that it go there to the
food bank. I think they probably see value in that program as well. I would hope that
we could continue to support both of these groups better than we have in the past. Not
that we haven't done a great job. I think we have done a great job, but it just -- it's just
taking more and more and more all the time. So, I'm hearing general consensus that
we ought to split it. I'm not sure that we need to split the numbers. Head one way or
another -- folks, are you in general agreement that we fund the 17,000 dollar request for
the Boys and Girls Club and the balance of some 20,400 dollars go to the Food Bank?
Hoaglun: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I just want to let you know that, yes, I could support something like that. But I
also just want to disclose -- I'm a member of Valley Shepherd Church, which has the
Compassion Ministries Centers which runs this. I'm not a part of that particular group
and I see this as a Meridian Community Food Bank, so my decision on this is not based
on my membership, but -- but I can support doing that amount.
Rountree: Thank you. Any other comments? Do we need a motion in that regard?
Ellsworth: Mr. President, Members of the Council, Madam Mayor, I do not. What I will
do based on that direction is -- is put some detail to the -- basically the space holder that
currently is in the draft action plan that will be up for consideration next week. Again,
next week I will fill in some of those blanks in the action plan. It will be back before you
for -- for your formal deliberation. Also, might have any comments that we receive
between now and then. So, formal action will be up for consideration next week.
Rountree: So, for the record, this is not a done deal, this is just to articulate in the
action plan what we think -- how we think we would distribute those funds.
Ellsworth: That's correct.
Rountree: But still looking for public comment.
Ellsworth: Yes, sir. It's still a draft. You're just providing staff with the direction needed
to complete that draft.
Rountree: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: Just to remember -- or remind Dan, I'll continue my sponsorship next year.
And I would challenge the Council to do so as well.
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Rountree: Thank you, Mayor.
De Weerd: You can sponsor a backpack. You pay me later, right?
G. Weed Abatements of two properties: 3273 N. Elmstone Ave.,
Meridian $225.00 4656 Station Place, Meridian $240.00 For a
Total of: $465.00
Rountree: Before it gets too much here, let's move on to Item 5-G, weed abatements.
And, chief, you're going to talk to us about those?
Lavey: Yes, I am. Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Council, it's my understanding that
you didn't want to hear anymore of these ever again and that they are supposed to be
on the Consent Agenda and I am not prepared to talk about one of them today, because
once I saw that they were on the department reports, I started to solicit information and
was not satisfied with what I was getting, so I am going to request that we postpone
them until next week. I can talk about one of them, but not the other.
Rountree: So, you want to continue them both?
Lavey: Until next week.
Rountree: Okay. We can do that.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council President Rountree, in the
future do you want, as these come forward, do you want the clerk's office to put those
on the Consent Agenda?
Rountree: That would be my preference.
Bird: That would be mine, too.
Lavey: Is there a dollar amount that you might want to see them in a department report
or some sort of direction?
De Weerd: I would like your sign off, so just like -- no, not to hold you in blood
accountable to it, but like you have asked to postponed this, because you're not
satisfied with the information you have, I want to make sure --
Lavey: Okay. I understand what you're saying. And as it stands right now on one of
them, there was three addresses and two of them have complied and one hasn't, but
when I went back to find out the information, the person that has the information is on
vacation and so I'd feel more comfortable doing a little bit more digging first. And as
long as -- it's kind of like some of those other ones we were discussing this last week,
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as long as I feel comfortable with it and it gets on the agenda, I have seen it, so -- and I
guess with the new agenda manager that's easier to regulate as well.
Rountree: Very good. Thank you.
Lavey: Thank you.
Rountree: Do we need a motion to continue that?
Lavey: I don't believe we do.
Rountree: So, we will see it next week.
Lavey: Yes.
H. Mayor and City Council Compensation Discussion
Rountree: Next item, compensation. Item H. Mayor and City Council. Bill.
Nary: Thank you, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm going to
hand out the -- the presentation is on your packet as well. Okay. Madam Mayor,
Members of the Council, this is a -- a presentation on the compensation. We have
discussed it a couple times. We discussed it at the -- we discussed it at the budget
hearing as well and there was a couple of points I wanted to make to you, so we can get
some direction. We need to bring an ordinance back in front of you if there are changes
to be made to the compensation either for the Mayor or the Council or both. Okay. All
right. So, we can talk about -- let's see. Okay. All right. There we go. Let's start here.
There we go. All right. First, compensation 101. All the city positions that we have, all
employees, including the -- all of you, are classified by times and levels in our system
and, basically, each year human recourses reviews all of those positions for four things
and these are things that are normally brought to you -- some through the budget
process and some are through the base budget. Those are market adjustments,
basically, what that is is a change in pay for class of positions based upon some
common factors. So, those are things when we look at the local marketplace for
engineers, for example, and we look at where. our engineers are situated in our matrix of
positions and whether that pay is commensurate with what the local market would bear
if we are going to be hiring engineers or planners or wastewater operators, firefighters,
police officers, whatever. So, what we do is we take the entire matrix annually and we
look at increasing it to stay current with the local marketplace. This particular year,
based on our budget, based on our concerns with the economy, we recommended that
we -- that we move the -- we not move it any percent this year. So, remain static for our
budget in regards to our matrix for times and levels. In the past we have moved it up
three percent. When you have moved up the budget three percent, we would move up
the matrix three percent. This year we decided not to do that. Back in '05 and '06 we
were establishing the times and levels chart, so we didn't move the matrix up at that
time, but we have for the last three years. The equity adjustment basically is a change
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in pace for one position or a class of positions and what we do is we evaluate is this
individual being paid incorrectly based on the work that they are performing in relation to
other people who perform that type of work or are these positions being underpaid or
overpaid in relation to the type of work you're doing in relation again to the marketplace.
We have to look at the Equal Pay Act, which does require that we pay equal pay for
equal work. We can't discriminate against folks. We also look within the budgetary
guidelines of the department and what they have and whether or not they can afford to
move these positions if we need to do something out of guidelines, then, we have tried
to stay within ten percent of the current wage of the individual employee if we are
moving them. It may take us two budget years to move people that need to be moved,
because somehow they were hired too low or the market has grown or changed rapidly
in the period of time they have been here and the -- the normal merit increases that we
have done over the past few years isn't sufficient to move those people where they
should be. And, generally, these are going to be our professional licensed positions,
engineers and things like that. Again, they all require the Mayor's approval. So, two
different things that we look at when we are trying to evaluate what compensation is for
the individual employees. Next are reclasses. These are where we take one position
and we look at what they have been doing and what happens, because we are a small
organization, sometimes we hire folks to do one job and because of our need and we
don't grow our workforce greatly, we may sometimes evolve them into something else.
We may find they have different skill -sets, we may find different needs that we don't
have the same need for what they were hired for, but they have a different need in the
department for something else and so we may reevaluate and, then, determine their
doing something different, something that may be more complex, something that may
be drastically different in skills and we will analyze that each year. The departments will
ask us to look at that for these individuals. Sometimes a position moves up or down in
our matrix. Their pay may or may not change. Sometimes a person may be reclassed
and they are already making -- for example, our times and levels are alphabetical, so
they go from level A to level O. They may move from a level D to a level E, but they are
already making within the band of level E, therefore, they don't get an increase just
because their job has changed. The last is merit. The merit pool each year, we survey
the market, we look at other Idaho cities, we look at our budget, we make a
determination as to what's equitable to put into a pool for our merit program and we
have discussed our merit program a number of times, so I'm not going to go into that,
but this particular year, because of our budget and because of concerns with the
economy, the recommendation was that we not have a merit pool this year, so we
would have zero percent. We did recommend in the budget workshop that we had a
one percent across the board increase this year for employees in October and, then, an
additional one in April. And that, again, to sort of address the economic times that we
have in regards to the merit pool. Didn't mean -- didn't mean we didn't address the
others, because this year we still made evaluations for reclasses, we still made
evaluations on equity and we still made evaluations on market. We just didn't make any
additional monies to the merit pool. In the past couple of years we have done four
percent. In '07, '08 and '09 we did five percent and the previous years before that for
merit. So, what's different? With the Mayor and Council we have a city code that
requires we have an additional step, which is the compensation committee that we have
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talked about before. The state code also requires that we have to do this by ordinance
and they can only be visited every election cycle. So, every two years. So, it's a little
different for you folks as it is for everybody else. Everybody else we can review
annually. Elected officials we can only do it every two. Everybody else we can look at
all of those different factors and with the elected ofFcials it's a little different. So, we
have a committee, as we have talked about before, and members of the committee
were made up of local business leaders, people that were active in our community in
various capacities, some members that are on our commissions, members of business
-- or of business owners in our community, as well as a former Council member
Christine Donnell. These folks came together for a number of meetings that we had
and evaluated a variety of different subjects to come up with a recommendation and
here is what they reviewed. They reviewed the Mayor and the Council compensations
for the cities of Boise, Caldwell, Coeur d'Alene, Jerome, Kuna, Lewiston, McCall,
Moscow, Nampa, Pocatello, and Twin Falls. Those cities all have varying types of
governments, varying size, but it is a comparison and that's what they were looking at.
They, obviously, weren't looking -- they are real apples to apples on every
circumstance, but they were at lease a comparison that they felt was a benchmark they
needed to look at. They looked at the City of Meridian employee compensation for this
year, as well as past years. What type of ones have we done for market and equity and
merit over the last three to five years. They looked at trends in compensation for both
mayors and city councils versus other employees in our city, as well as others.
Compensation for the Mayor, since the Mayor position became full time, that's a unique
situation that we have in Meridian. It's not as common in the other communities. They
may have had a mayor position that was full time for a longer period than Meridian had.
So, they looked at how that has evolved over that time. They looked at the current
number of employee that we have today versus the current number of employees when
the Mayor's position was made full time. They looked at the number of citizens in
Meridian from the same time period. They looked at the highest paid employees. They
looked at the number of direct reports for the Mayor and their salaries. They looked at
the trend in growth and the complexity of the Mayor's position. As the position has
grown and the requirements have grown and the expectations have grown, what's the
compensation and how does that relate. Again, so the change in the Mayor and the
City Council's compensation can be based upon the market which may be on what
other mayors make. It may be based on equity, again, in relation to what other elected
officials or what other positions of senior management, CEOs, other cities, how their
compensated, whether it's a city administrator. Here where our Mayor is the city
administrator, where they have a city manager in some of our cities in our state. They
can look at reclasses under our state code. You can look at that again, how the position
evolved or changed. You can evaluate that. But merit isn't allowed. There isn't any
merit that's allowed for an elected official in Idaho and the reason is is the mayor -- the
second bullet here. The mayor can't evaluate the council and the council can't evaluate
the mayor. That's not how it works. The Idaho Code only allows adjustments for
elected officials every election cycle. The compensation has to be set by ordinance.
And we can't put in a factor that includes a merit type of evaluation. So, that's the
separation of powers that we have in our state. So, merit is prohibited. So, here is what
the committee looked at. They looked at the Mayor's salary over the period of time
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since the Mayor's been full time and so these are calendar year, that's why it's CY, not
FY. Calendar year '01 the Mayor's salary at that particular time was 20,000 dollars --
20,004 dollars. Then, in '02 when it was made afull-time position -- actually, in calendar
year '01 to begin in '02, the salary was moved to 55,000 dollars. And the reason I
highlighted that in red is this was what was probably the most significant to the
committee and what was driving their recommendations, which are down below, is that
you have, essentially, '02, '3, '4, '5 and '6 -- so five years that the salary wasn't moved at
all. And so -- and up until '07 we never reevaluated the Mayor's salary and whether,
again, it was commensurate with the work that was done or being done or expected,
what the complexities of the job had become. And so it was moved incrementally '07,
'08, '09 up each year, not based on merit, but based on the job, the market, the equity
and the complexities of the job and that was the basis of the recommendation by the
committee for calendar year '10 of 76,350 and, then, calendar year '11, 82,500. And
their reasoning for that was their target and their belief was that the Mayor position
compensation to be reasonable based on all of those three factors, market, equity, and
reclass, was 82,500. They recognized that that was a significant jump for our city to
move from one -- calendar year '09 to 82,500. Basically, they split -- the split the
difference between those. So, that's why there is an interim amount. So, that was the
basis of their recommendation between the current year and the next two years, again,
by ordinance, that's the only impact you can have is over the next two years and, then,
you can revisit it again in 2011. Council's salary, they looked at that one as well. Again,
Council for a period of time from '01 through '06 was 5,000 dollars annually. '07 it
moved to 9,000 dollars annually. There was a recommendation to move it to now
10,500 and, then, 12,000 in calendar '11. That was the same reasoning as well from
the committee that they felt the adequate compensation, the fair compensation for
Council members would be 12,000 dollars, but, again, recognizing that was a large gap
to make up in one year and they recommended it in two steps and that's why there is
the two steps there as well. Questions?
Rountree: Questions for Bill?
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: David.
Zaremba: I think we have touched on this before, but are we able to -- I guess I'd say
split the Council and have the three Council members have one salary and the
president of the Council, because there is more work involved, have a different salary?
Nary: Yes. You can do that.
Zaremba: Okay.
Nary: We would just craft that in the ordinance that the Council president would have
one salary, the remaining Council members would have the remainder of whatever it is
you decide. Or leaving it as it is.
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Zaremba: Are we in discussion or still questions?
Rountree: Still questions if there are any.
Zaremba: Okay.
Rountree: Bill, on any salary can it be adjusted similar to the adjustment that we are
proposing for staff as it relates to what the economy does and there might be an
incremental increase or does the amount have to be stated in the ordinance and then --
that the amount will be the following year or -- that wouldn't be a merit situation.
Nary: Right. Based on a factor that's not merit, something else, because the Council
set that, it doesn't prohibit it in the state code. No one else -- no other code I could find
is that way. But it doesn't prohibit that you could set it as long as it's not based on a
factor that could be adjusted by somebody else.
Bird: Yeah.
Rountree: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none, discussion? And,
Bill, I need some guidance so he can get his noticed, if there is going to be a change
and meet the notification requirements and the budget requirements.
Nary: August 28th is the date that we have to notify -- the last date before the election
we have to notice it, which means it has to be approved prior to that. I think when I
counted backwards that means it has to be approved a week before the final printing
date, which I think is like August 16th or something like that. So, whatever the --
August 10th. Yeah. 16th. It would be August 16th is the last date if you have three full
readings of this ordinance.
Rountree: The ordinance has to be approved by --
Nary: Yeah.
Rountree: -- the 16th.
Nary: Because it has to be published the following Monday and so -- and that would be
the last time it would be published prior to when it has to be done.
Rountree: So, those are the rules we have to play by. Now, discussion.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
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Zaremba: I -- let me start my comments with the Mayor, I guess. This may just be a
personal feeling, but my feeling is that -- that there is already a lag built into the Mayor's
salary in that I think that the Mayor's position could have been declared full time --
maybe as many as two years before it was, which would mean that we started out
behind in the salary and, then, had five years where it didn't change. With that opinion I
support the recommendation of the committee of 76,350 for calendar year '10 and
82,500 for calendar year'11. I think that's fair and just for the demands of that position.
As I said before, I personally am thrilled with the 9,000 dollars a year that I get paid to
do this, but I do think we need to recognize that the president is doing more than the
rest of us do and I think I have made the suggestion, which I will make again, that we
would -- I would be happy with saying that the three regular councilmen stay with the
9,000 and that we change the president's salary to 10,500 and I would say that for both
years. One person's opinion.
Rountree: Other comments?
Hoaglun: Mr. President?
Rountree: Brad.
Hoaglun: Well, you can add two people's opinions to that, but I think for the Mayor the
-- that position is the CEO of the city. We are the third largest city in the state. The
responsibility has grown tremendously and it's the position whoever runs for Mayor, you
want to draw people who, number one, want to be Mayor, but also they aren't -- if they
have the talent and skills to be Mayor, they aren't put off by the salary. But that talent
has to be recognized with an adequate salary. So, that's -- that's something to consider
as we move down the road and for the Council members, I'm like Councilman Zaremba,
9,000 a year is -- is a nice sum. We aren't -- I know I'm not in for the money and -- but
at the same time I recognize the fact that the council president does put in much more
time, and, again, it won't be fully compensated at the time that's put in by the Council
President, whoever that is, that, the requirements are much greater. But I think that
10,500 for the two years would be a nice start for a Council president position.
Rountree: And I must add it makes you gray early. Further comments? I'm sure there
we will be some. more. I will make mine. I don't disagree with the rationale that the
compensation committee and really appreciate the effort that they made this year, as
well as previous years. It certainly gives us a basis from which to make a decision. I
don't necessarily disagree with -- with their thoughts on the Mayor's position in terms of
responsibility. I chose to have a real tough time right now giving our economic situation
for considering that level of an increase. I'm not against an increase. I think we have
put a space holder in the budget just for calculation purposes of 75,000. That's
probably my max. I'm probably more inclined in the 72,500 range. I think it's -- it's
tough when we need to do anything different than that when all we can offer our
employees who -- I appreciate what our Mayor does. Works a lot of extra hours, a lot of
weekends, has more enthusiasm than you can bottle. But our employees are the ones
that make us go and if we can't do any better, especially because of the economic
Meridian City Council Special Workshop Meeting
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situation we have and our proposed reduction in budget amount of one percent, I have
a tough time with this kind of an increase. And nothing against Tammy or anybody else
who is in this Mayor position, it's a hard job and it's critical given these times. With
respect to the Council, as far as I'm concerned, I would not favor any change. Council
president does -- you accept that responsibility, just like you accept that responsibility as
a council person and I don't know anybody who has ever taken the job or run for the job
for the money. It's a privilege to serve the community and that's how I view it and that's
my position.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: This -- I wholeheartedly agree with you. I have a hard time -- I definitely with the
Council I don't want to -- I think it should stay the same. Funny story. When Ron and I
were elected back in '98, neither one of us thought we got paid until after we was
elected. We thought it was a free job, so -- and back then I think we was getting 200 a
month or something like that.
Rountree: Well, it was 5,000 dollars a year.
Bird: No, it wasn't. We raised that.
Rountree: Well, it was 5,000 and it was raised to nine. But by the time you take taxes
and everything out of it, it's --
Bird: Anyway, back to my thought.
Rountree: It would buy your gas for the week.
Bird: I don't want to change the Council pay at all period. I could -- I support 72,500 for
the Mayor. And don't get me wrong, I know that Tam more than earns that. But I can't
see giving an increase of eight, nine percent to the Mayor when we are only giving one
percent, plus another one percent, maybe, to our employees. So, I could go along with
the 72,500 and nothing for the Council.
Nary: Well, Mr. President, Madam Mayor, I have to bring you something. You can
certainly amend it. I can leave it blank and we can -- you can talk about it and make a
motion to do that at the hearing, but I got to bring you something if you want to raise it at
all. So, I mean I have to bring you something -- and just one thing -- and I have
probably said this and I'm sure you folks get this, and maybe this is more for the folks in
the audience -- we have employees who have received increases more than one
percent in this budget year and will in the next budget year if their position needs to be
adjusted. So, when the public thinks that you're only providing one percent in this
across the board for employees and that this is different, whether it's for the Council
members or the Mayor, it is not the same thing. It is two different types of adjustments
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and we do -- we have done adjustments for employees that are greater than eight
percent, because their pay was underpaid and because their pay had never been
brought up to the marketplace. So, from the public's perspective I understand where
you're coming from, but they are two different types of adjustments. The merit increase
is -- there is no merit increase that we recommended for the next fiscal year. We did
have it in this fiscal year, but not next fiscal year. But we haven't prohibited and we
certainly will always evaluate pay that is inequitable based on other factors and have
this year and will next year. So, from a public's perspective I just want to make it clear,
that's what we are talking here for the elected officials. We only can do it every two
years versus everybody else we can do it every year. So, that's the reason. But I can
bring you an ordinance that's blank that has the provision for the Council president and
you folks can discuss that if you want to amend it at the time, you are able to do that.
You can add the amount you want it to be. It doesn't matter. I just need to bring it to
you. So, since you obviously have a disagreement as to the specific number, rather
than me putting in a specific number, I can leave that blank.
Rountree: Thanks, Bill, for determining we are in disagreement. I'm not sure we are. I
think we have all stated our position, but we haven't made a motion at this point or -- I
have given you aspecific -- and I hope we do before you leave, so you don't have to
leave it blank. But, you know, we have heard everybody's position. Now, is there a
common ground that we can reach and I just throw that out for discussion.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: I fully recognize what Bill said in terms of equity. I understand the equity
piece and the equity adjustment. It's simply a matter of can I make that right to myself
and I have a tough time with it.
Nary: Again, I'm song, I didn't mean to presume that you folks disagree, I'm just saying
whatever you want to do, I just wanted to make sure -- and I know you know about the
market and equity and such, I really wanted to make sure the public understands why
the difference.
Rountree: Appreciate that.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Since I went first, I will state that, yes, I was stating my opinion, but I'm
certainly willing to discuss. I think we can come up with something that Bill can use as
final as we come through our discussion. I think my question would be -- let's start with
the Mayor. If we used a figure of either 75,000, which we have already established is a
place marker or 72,500, actually, I would prefer the 75,000 one on. That only discusses
calendar year '10. Was the suggestion for calendar year '11 -- I think there should be
another raise in there somewhere.
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Bird: You mean fiscal year'10, don't you?
Zaremba: No.
Bird: We are paid on fiscal.
Nary: These are done by calendar year.
Rountree: Calendar year.
De Weerd: They are calendar year.
Bird: Are they? Okay.
Hoaglun: If I might jump in on that, Mr. President and Councilman Zaremba. I was
thinking in light of the discussion, do we -- I don't want to go backwards, I don't want the
Mayor's position to be stagnant salary for the reasons I stated earlier, but, you know,
looking at -- for the next year calendar year'10, going to 72,500 and, then, the following
year '11 going to 75. That doesn't even get to the bottom of the recommendation that
they made of 76, but at least it moved it forward a little bit, so as things hopefully
economically improve and, you know, a couple years from now there is another
election, whoever is in that office has a decent base from which to start from. But that's
just one suggestion. 72,500 for calendar year '10 and, then, 75 for calendar year '11,
so --
De Weerd: Then, at least you bring it up to what the Eagle mayor --
Rountree: Now. Now.
Zaremba: Well, I believe that's relevant. I mean Eagle has a population that's, what,
less than half of ours.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: If you want to compare -- as I understand, Boise gets, what, 92,000 and he's got
222 citizens, which averages about 42 cents per citizen, if we go to 76 and we have
75,000 according to COMPASS for our dues -- I don't believe it, but that goes to $1.02
we are paying our Mayor per citizen. So, if you want to compare, compare that. And
they are the largest city. And their employees are quite a bit more. They almost got as
many firemen as we got employees. I don't like to compare, but --
Rountree: Well, I would hope that we are not necessarily getting in the comparison
game, but I don't disagree with what Brad said. And I recognize what the Mayor said.
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Bird: And I agree with you. I could go with Brad's 72 and 75. And I know it's probably
not the right conversation, but in these times I can't see anything different.
De Weerd: Mr. President?
Rountree: Madam Mayor.
De Weerd: I think it's appropriate and I think, too, it's appropriate to have the committee
take a look at it in two years before the next election cycle and I would hope that the
Council would give the compensation. Two years ago you didn't take the committee --
or you did take the committee's recommendation with the statement you felt that it
should have been more, but because the committee said this -- you were going to take
their recommendation. This time they made a recommendation and you don't want to
take it, it's -- and you're offering less. So, it really should be made during the Mayor's
election and I would hope that you would bring that equity to -- to that election cycle.
Bird: I would have no problem with that, Tammer.
Rountree: Just a comment on that. And I appreciate that, Mayor. I don't necessarily
want to say that I -- I don't -- that I disagree with what the compensation committee said.
I think their rationale is right. But this year's way different than two years ago in terms
of, well, where we all are and where our budget is and in the unknown of what next year
is going to bring to us and we have all heard there is more coming. Now, I hope that's
more and better, but I have not heard that yet. So -- so, I have heard at this point a step
of 72,500 to 75 in 2011. Shake heads? Jump up and down? No? Whatever you want
to do.
Zaremba: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I could be satisfied that that's a compromise between what I think should
happen and recognizing the current situation and the taxpayers needs and as Brad
proposed Ican -- I can support that.
Rountree: I think there is general consensus with those numbers.
Nary: And also, Mr. President, Members of the Council, leave the Council one at nine.
Bird: Yeah.
Zaremba: I would still like to support a little addition for the president. We aren't talking
about much. What, 125 a month, something like that.
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Rountree: I think, yeah, you're right, it's not much. I'd rather see the 1,500 dollars to
the Food Bank, but that's the kind of things that I'm thinking about.
Zaremba: All right.
Hoaglun: What I think the compromise on that would be, Bill, is the fact that the
committee in their next cycle look at the Council president's position and the time
requirements for that and see if there something that they might recommend in the next
cycle and just leave it at nine, let them tackle that two years from now.
Zaremba: Mr. President, that works forme.
Rountree: Thank you. I think we have got consensus there as well, Bill. Thank you,
Council. I know that's a tough one to talk about. It's a tough one to deal with and I know
the Mayor it's probably a tough one to even swallow, but --
De Weerd: It's a tough one forme to talk about as well.
Rountree: I know. I know. So, anyway, we will see that ordinance first on the 2nd?
Nary: Next week.
Rountree: Next week.
Nary: Yes.
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: But, Mr. President, again, I think it's important -- you know, Councilman
Zaremba had mentioned this when talking about Council's compensation, it's not about
who is in the office at all.
Bird: That's right.
Rountree: You're right. That would be my desire to be able to do that, but state statute
doesn't provide for that.
Nary: And to be fair, the committee knew that they left the hardest decision with you. I
mean they -- they all recognize that they have the easier part. They are making the
recommendation and the hard part is with all of you. So, I appreciate that. I'll have the
draft order and ordinance in front of you next week.
I. Legal / HR / IT Department Strategic Focus Discussion
Rountree: Thanks, Bill. The next item is Bill as well and now he can have some fun.
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Bird: This is when he turns lawyer. We are in trouble, then.
Nary: Lots of hats for this part. Some of my staff was not able to be here, Council,
because they had other commitments, family commitments, other things tonight, and I
think some of them might have thought I might be a little long winded, so they were a
little hesitant in coming and not knowing how long it might take, but I do appreciate the
folks that are here tonight from my office. This is our opportunity for our strategic focus
discussion and I really would like to keep it less than 40 minutes, but you know how that
goes. So, let's get started. Spencer Tracy. You're probably thinking why would you put
Spencer Tracy in --Spencer Tracy is one of my favorite actors and once they asked him
what was the secret to good acting and what he said was the secret to good acting is to
remember your lines and don't bump into the furniture. So, in thinking of that as a
management tool, I also looked at that and said, you know, what's really the key to good
management in my department and, really, it's hire good people and stay out of their
way. And we have some very good people in a variety of different disciplines that we
have in our department between human resource professionals, between legal -- or
lawyers and between IT technicians and professionals that we make a good mix, even
though it seems very out of place and it seems like this cocktail party that's in this
picture, it seems like that, but yet as a team we work together very well, as a team we
are able to work and get the business done of the city as efficiently and as quickly and
as best as we can. So, next, of course, is the vision statement and that's our basis for
all of these presentations. Meridian is a vibrant community whose vision is to be the
premier city to live, work, and raise a family. We as a department support that, we
embrace that, we make that part of why we do our business and how we do our
business every day. The city's mission statement, which we revitalized a little bit this
year. The City or Meridian's mission for 2025 is to be a safe, attractive, inviting
community that's full of diverse activities. Delivers quality service, planning and fiscal
responsibility, with open spaces, strong partnerships, various educational opportunities,
a culture and unique business venture and abundant choice of jobs make Meridian not
just a destination, but a lifestyle. You know, I know all of you sit up there every week
because you believe that, because that's what you want for our city. And that's what --
we believe that in our department as well. That's what we try to make, the place we
work and come to every day to meet these types of goals for our city. How did we get
where we are? Some of you have been here a long time and you know some of the
evolution of it, some of you haven't, and some of the public sitting out here may not
know all of how we got to where we are. How did we get to this mixed bag of services
and so I thought I better at least mention that briefly. In fiscal year'03 we split the civil
and criminal legal services. We used to have -- the City of Meridian used to have a
contract with an outside law firm, they did all the criminal and all the civil work for the
city. The Boise city attorney was awarded a contract for criminal prosecution services
and all the civil was still handled by the outside law firm. So, all the legal work was
done by two different entities. The city of Boise still does our criminal legal services
today. In fiscal year '05 the decision was made with the Mayor and the Council to
combine human resources and the legal service into one department. We had a human
resources, which was very very small, the director and one staff person at the time,
then, we brought a city attorney on, we added another deputy attorney, as well as
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another legal staff person, at the time brought all of our civil legal services in house. We
looked at both for cost savings, as well as efficiency, and we think we found a good mix
and was able to do both. Next fiscal year we added IT and we took, basically, a service
department that handles predominately internal customers. Most of the people we deal
with on a daily basis work here. We do certainly deal with some outside vendors for
different products. We deal with outside vendors for consultants. We deal with outside
vendors or outside people for job applicants and the like. A lot of what we do for all of
those three disciplines between HR and legal and IT, are really to support the services
of other employees and other departments. So, the decision was made by the Mayor in
'06 to bring the IT services in and combine them, again, into one department. Last year
a decision was made to add risk management on top of that to the city attorney's office
and to the city attomey, so, again, working with ICRMP and such we combined all of
those risk safety issues as well, because, again, they have a relationship between
human resources and the legal profession and so there is a real good reason for all the
mix. It may seem to some folks like it's kind of a mixed bag, but, in reality, it all makes
sense and it all works together. Here is our strategic plan. We have all seen these
wheels and cogs before. We have all seen the -- the different areas of our strategic
plan and economic excellence, organizational excellence, strategic growth, services
meeting the demand and stewardship of the public trust. Now, how does that relate to
what we do? Well, we fit into that. All of the things we do support that for the city.
Support those different facets of the city and all the different ones, whether it's -- there
are really the four different areas that we deal with in our department, but they all are
there to support the city. So, first one, our accomplishments. Different areas that we
address: IT. IT has a strategic plan. Has enhanced the intemet. Those are a couple
of things. We will have a few more we will talk about in a minute. Those are a couple of
things that we have done in the last year and a little bit longer to be able to get the city
where we are today. Next human resources. We have integrated HR and payroll. We
have created some affordable benefits for the city and for the employees. We have
enhanced employee recognition and our wellness program. We do continuous salary
surveys to make sure we are current and we update our policy handbook and we are in
the current process of -- or consistent process of doing that. City attomey. We have
new in-house litigation services. We have saved the city a tremendous amount of
money by being able to handle some of our cases in house. We have had to outsource
a couple of cases, usually ones that were more specifically driven relating to specific
areas of expertise, but many of the litigation we handle internally, that saves us a lot of
money, brings our expertise in house. We prepare all the contracts for the city. Again,
we don't have to hire out for services for those things. We do assist all the departments
in being able to address contract concems and writing provisions, whether it's
indemnifications for other provisions that we have to deal with the vendors. We provide
legal assistance to all the meetings for all the commissions. That was something we
didn't do before. So, all the commissions, parks commission, historic preservation, the
traffic safety, the arts commission, as well as our committees for solid waste, all have
legal support there to make sure we are in legal compliance with both the open meeting
law, as well as other issues and concems that come up and, of course, we provide city
wide legal support and that's something maybe I did really commend the Mayor, that
was one of the issues when we had this discussion almost five years ago on how to
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integrate our legal services and human resources into one department and why do that.
I mean you could continue to contract out that service from now until whenever. Most
cities in the state of Idaho have contracted legal services. We have about 200 -- I think
202, 203 cities now in the state, we have eight that have in-house attorneys. Usually
larger cities. Sometimes a few small ones, but generally larger cities. But what we
found and what the Mayor was seeking was the legal piece be integrated into what we
do daily. With an outside firm and with a contracted service, you have a tendency not to
want to use them except for really big things, the real expensive things, or you may use
them in a very limited capacity, because it costs money. By bringing that service
internally, you don't have that concern any longer. You're paying the same either way.
The opportunity to get involved on the front end from a preventative standpoint, for the
city's benefit to make sure we are not going to go down pathways that, then, we are now
hiring legal counsel, because we have proceeded in a path where we shouldn't have,
whereas if we would have had that information or advice up front, it would have saved
us a lot of the time and effort and money for that, was what the Mayor was seeking and
that's where we think we have probably been the greatest asset to the city in having that
internally. And risk management. We are looking at consistency in the departments.
We are looking at working closer with ICRMP and our All American Insurance, our
providers. Being proactive, rather than reactive. We want to make sure we are out on
the front end with folks, with whether it's a sewer back up, whether it's an issue about a
collision, whether it's damage in our parks, whether it's graffiti, whether it's something
else, we got make sure we are coordinating with our insurers to make sure if the public
and the city is supposed to be compensated for this, that we are being aggressive in
getting that done, making sure those things aren't getting missed, making sure the
ICRMP is getting the adequate information on the things they are covering for the city
and our insurer is being able to know what's being done, when it's being done, making
sure our buildings are covered when they are turned over to us. Making sure our
equipment's covered. You know, we have some really-expensive risks out there. We
have a million dollar fire truck. We have a number of facilities that have great risk to
them on whether it be fire or damage or something else and we wanted to make sure
we have got adequate coverage for the materials in it, the people in it, as well as the
buildings themselves. So, there is a lot of things that take that coordination and time
and we are able to integrate all those together. Look at that. Okay. Now, some of the
differences that we have -- or things that we have talked about as part of our strategic
plan. Economic excellence. And in each of the different disciplines that we have we
have different areas that we try to address. The IT area for economic, we have
completely overhauled our web page and intemet and that's something we are
incredibly proud of, something that really -- we were able to do a lot of it ourselves
internally, because of the talented people that we have, some of them are right here in
this room, like Terry and Mike, that were able to do that for the benefit of the public.
The access to us and the access to our citizens, to be able to see what they can do,
what they can do online with the city. Most of the -- I wouldn't say most, but a majority of
the contacts that we have anymore are through the website, through -- through a public
-- through that type of access, through an intemet, through something other than walk-in
traffic and so that's something we are very proud of. Case management is another tool
that we have been using to create better efficiencies when there is work that needs to
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be done, whether it's -- whether it's a legal issue that has to be addressed, whether it's a
building maintenance issue that has to be addressed, the case management system
allows us to use that tool so everybody can access to see what's been getting done,
when it's getting done. We do a lot of training on software that's done internally to make
sure what we are buying is actually efficient and works for us to the best possible. On
the HR side, we have looked at streamlining our benefits and trying to keep it low, keep
the costs low, keep the values of the employees, as well as value to the city, so that,
again, our citizens are getting some value for what the employees are that are working
here. The wellness program, again, helping the employees is important to us and it's
important for two reasons. I have been meeting recently with both St. Luke's and Saint
AI's about providing us some services and one of the things I told them is that I -- it's my
belief and my belief of the elected officials of the city is they want to help the employees
not just because it makes us a little cheaper on how we use our program, a little
cheaper on how it costs us money, but because we care, because it matters to us that
our employees are in better condition, they are going to live healthy lives, they are going
to be productive workers, they are going to enjoy coming to work and they are going to
know that they work in a place that really matters to them how they feel, how they are,
and we can create a better environment for folks. People that are healthy, people that
are concerned about their health, are better employees. They enjoy themselves better.
We want to improve our handbook. We want to address our issues proactively. Again,
to make this a better city, a better run city, a better functioning city for folks in our
community. On the legal side, we deal with code enforcement a lot. There is a lot of
bankruptcies and foreclosures that happen today that we -had -- we had nothing to deal
with that two years ago. We have bankruptcies and foreclosures daily that we have a
part time attorney, part of her function and responsibility is to keep track of all of those
to make sure, again, from the city's perspective there is money owed to the city. If there
isn't, then, there is ways that we can make sure that the process is done correctly, so
whatever we need from our end is getting done, follow the court correctly, and managed
correctly. Same thing with our litigation. Same thing with our contract. Any claims that
we get against the city, we can manage those. Again, we cover all of our commissions
and Council meetings, so, again, they are run properly and they are run more efficiently.
Again, some safety measures. We are looking more actively and proactively with the
department. Departments, for example, police work on safety, fire works on safety,
Public Works works on safety issues all the time and they all do. We need to integrate
some of that a little bit better, so we have a better sense of that. Also, so that we have
a better tracking of what's been done, so that it's more helpful when we have issues or
problems we can target those things. If they need better training or need better tools,
whether we have resources out there -- many of our providers like St. Luke's that we
use for our -- our current for occupational health needs for our worker's comp injuries
and such, are willing to provide us services in those area for safety concerns and such
for our workers and we just need to know what's been done, so we can use that
resource and most of the time it's going to be very very inexpensive or free for us,
because they want us to have healthier workers, they don't want to see an increase in
their costs, no different than we don't. So, again, cooperating with them, cooperating
with our insurers to prevent or settle claims, is really important. I think the economic
vitality of the city is critical that we address these types of things, again, that are
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preventative up front. Yeah. We all know litigation costs a lot of money. Lawyers don't
come cheap. And the cost of lawyers don't come cheap and when we can deal with
these things up front with our insurer, it's a lot cheaper than litigating these things.
Having to deal with that up front forces us to be more proactive on making sure in the
future we can be preventative, addressing problems or issues that arise in the risk
management area. Next strategic growth. Again, looking at the future, in IT we have
enhanced the phone system and we want to enhance our phone system even to our
other facilities of the city. I think most of the folks would tell you that work in this
building that the phone system works great and they wish they knew how to work it
better, because there is a lot more they can do than we probably even use it for today.
But the ability to take that system to our other facilities would be helpful, because, then,
again, the city would be all integrated and connected better and we are. And that takes
some time, it takes money, it takes fiber, it takes some other issues, but that's
something that our IT -- our IT department is looking at as well, expanding our fiber is
part of that. IT is integrated with the other departments. It's critical -- what we found
over the years without IT being integrated with the departments and what their needs
are and being proactive with the departments and to having them define what they need
out there in the marketplace, what can be -- be the best product for them, having IT
being a part of that, avoids both cost for things that we don't need, or we find doesn't
work very well, things that can't be supported require a great deal of outside tech
support and money -- those are things about having IT and especially with Terry's work
with the departments being involved with all those things, we avoid those additional
costs, we avoid those types of things that are going to be a negative, you know, a year
or two or further down the road. General city-wide training. You know, one of the things
that we have done here when we came to this building one of the things that you funded
was an IT training room. That training room gets used greatly. Brad Moy does a lot of
our training, but our other IT folks do it as well. Brad couldn't be here tonight. Crystal
Ritchie is here from our HR staff. Crystal's there in the red shirt. Crystal does our -- a
lot of our HR training. We have changed completely how we do our new employee
orientation since Crystal has been here, how we have added some training to
departments for both compliance needs -- there is a lot of compliance issues we have to
train employees on, but other needs as well. Customer service training and the like that
we have been able to either use our IT training room or by having an on-staff trainer,
HR analyst, as well as a trainer in our department, we are able to provide that service
first hand with the departments and what we found -- for example, one of the early
trainings we did, we had a consultant come and do a portion and we had Crystal do a
portion and what we really found with the employees is they really could tell the city's
investment in their training and their needs because we hired somebody that works for
us. You know, they didn't have any problem with the outside consultant that was
participating and the information that she provided, but the fact that we had an on-site
person who was there for follow up, because that support is the one thing you lose and
you send someone to train and you bring someone in for training, when they leave the
class and they don't know exactly what you covered or they are not exactly sure what to
do next or how to apply that to this every day real life situation, we have a person they
can call. They have a person that's already screened that training or participated in that
training, so they know what the follow up is, so it isn't something that's just going to get
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lost. That's one of the things we have found is employees go to training many times if it
doesn't come back to the workplace immediately and there isn't something that they can
apply to it fairly quickly, they don't have any real way to use it and they generally forget
or they don't forget -- they forget how it worked very well or they can't use, whether it's
an IT issue or something else, having on-staff people that can provide them that
support, enhances the value of what they have done. So, that's a good thing for the
long term, as well as the employee's benefit. We have integrated our payroll system.
That's something that's along-term need that we are trying to get our payroll system,
we have purchased the AVER system a couple years ago and it's been a migration over
time to get that so that it can run all of our payroll through that and we will get greater
data, it's a better system than what we have been using and that's what we are looking
to do and with IT's assistance and with our HR staff we have been able to move closer
to getting that finalized. We want to look at when in-house criminal services could make
sense for the city, when that might make more sense to bring that back from the city of
Boise, that may be something that might be staged, that's something that myself and
Ted Baird from my house has been tasked to work on that issue. I'm going to have the
discussion with the police about that and Chief Lavey to make sure we don't lose
services, we don't want to diminish the quality of services that we have, but we want to
make sure we do it in a way if we are going to bring these in-house at some point, when
does that make sense and do we do it all at once or do we do it in parts. Do we do that
legal services that is provided at the police department on site first, is that in one year or
two years, do we, then, look at the criminal stuff, there is a lot of court issues and court
calendaring that are issues that we may have to factor in as to when it makes more
sense for us if the court's not going to be cooperative on how cases get scheduled, it
may not make sense to want to bring employees on staff who, then, again, spend all
their time driving back and forth between downtown and here, but we need to work with
the court system as well. But we want to make sure the number one thing that I think is
important if we have improved the quality of service that the police department has seen
since 2002, I don't want them to feel like it's a step backwards. I don't want them to feel
like we decided that was too much or too expensive or too time consuming, but we
really want to enhance that. I think everything we have tried to do in our department
and as a city over the last five to seven years has been to always take the next step up
and so that's what we want to look at for criminal services, when does it make sense for
the city, when does it make sense for the growth, when would it be most effective.
Again pro-active approach that we talked about a little bit on risk and safety issues,
again, being more up front with folks on what issues are out there, what kind of
problems are we identifying that we are either having continuing problems with or
continuing concern and how do we address that. Is it training issues? Is it equipment?
Is it something else? You know, and, again, there is a lot of different areas. I think
police and fire do a real good job of tracking those things. I think Public Works does a
real good job of tracking those things, I think we just want to make sure we are tracking
that as well with that to make sure our providers know what we are doing, how we are
doing it, and if it's assistance they can provide it, then, we have the opportunity to use
that. Recent training as I was telling you, we have been able to do -- since we moved
into here Crystal came on board in January, so we started our first training in March, so
since March we have done --from the HR side we have done 91 employees and 14 and
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a half hours of training for customer service, we have done respect for workplace
training so far for 52 employees over 12 hours. IT has done over 120 employees over
450 hours of training on all these various disciplines, Microsoft Office, Ektron, ShoreTel,
and, then, one they call IT-101, how to use the equipment that we have, again, trying to
create some better efficiencies. You know, one of the things I think we have all seen in
the business world is that often folks get so used to doing what they do, they don't really
know to do anything else with the equipment we have already purchased. So, you have
-- you're buying a Ferrari and you're only driving it ten miles an hour and there is a lot of
opportunities -- not that I want to drive much faster, but there is a lot of opportunity that
they can to use the equipment we have already bought, use the programs we already
have to make their jobs more efficient, to make it better. So, the training from IT greatly
helps that. Services meet demands. Again, assessing our internal work force, so that
things we talked about earlier, for example, in compensation, how we assess what we
need -- we are a very small workforce in relation to the size of our city we are a very
small workforce, which means we do a lot of things with not as many people. We have
a lot of people that wear a lot of hats. That's okay, we want to make sure we are paying
them right, we want to make sure we are providing them the right tools to do their job.
We want to make sure we are really being efficient. Sometimes what I found and I have
discussed it with a number of directors what happens, and I don't really see this as
much here, but I have seen it in other places, you tend to expand just to expand. Or
you don't have somebody that really fits the bill of one thing, so instead of looking for
somebody better, you just hire somebody else. And all of a sudden you haven't really
addressed what you're doing and what you need to be doing and what your core
functions are supposed to be and all you have done is add to your workforce. We
haven't done that. We are fairly small and I think we haven't done that out of just the
nature of how we operate as a city, but also how our -- the Mayor, how you folks fund it,
how our department directors really want to go about doing their job. Part of our
responsibility in HR is to help them with that, make sure we have the right people. You
know, the Mayor talked a couple years ago, making sure we have the right people on
the bus and doing the right job and making sure that the people that we have are the
right people in the right places and sometimes they need to be in a different place --
maybe not with the city -- maybe not with the city, but just in a different department or
doing something differently. And we try to help them assess those types of things in
human resources. IT has a strategic plan involved in all the technology and capital
replacement, integration with existing systems, enterprise wide solutions, we are still
assessing that, looking at trying to get that done in the most efficient way for the city
emergency management -- I mean IT is involved in all of these things, because they are
all so related. We have a hard time sitting down, I'm sure you folks can understand --
and having discussion with whether it's emergency management, whether it's the
directors, without eventually saying, well, how can we do this, you know, is there a tool
out there that exists, is it software, is it hardware, is it something else, how do we
integrate that, because most of the things today require some level of technology to
accomplish them and so IT's involvement with that is critical to, again, long term
sustainability for our city. Expanding the wireless security capability in the parks is
another thing. You know, you recall -- remember a few years ago we had a lot of graffiti
in the parks, they had a lot of damages in the park, you know, sometimes we catch
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them, sometimes we won't. We'd have people burning down our playgrounds or
damaging our restrooms. Well, having this wireless capability has enhanced our
security level in the parks. We still have damages, we still have people that are
vandalizing our parks, we are able to catch them better, we are able to follow through
with the police better, we are able to provide the police a better tool, and also once
people understand we actually have the capability it does deter crime, it does make
people think elsewhere before they damage one of our parks or what they are -- going
to damage our bathrooms or whatever. Victim witness application another thing that's a
great tool for the police department he helped develop that allows, again, our victim to
get better services from our victim witness coordinators, for it to be something that could
be done more efficiently and better than we did it before. Again, we continue to work
with ICRMP for risk management and All American Insurance to manage risk. I
probably have contact with ICRMP or All American at least one of them about every
other day and it may be something very simple, like today where they just wanted to
know when a particular well site was going to be operable, so that way they made sure
the insurance coverage was transferred over, to something more significant where we
have damages, we have received some property damages in the last week, we had
someone that we had to make sure that gets processed correctly, make sure we get the
proper paperwork to them, so they can go after the insurance company to make sure
that our property gets reimbursed or paid for to get repaired. So, there is a lot of time
and effort that goes into making sure all those things get done and that's something we
do, again, to make sure we are doing our job as efficiently as possible. So, on the spot
and deeply researched client advice. You know, this probably means more to me than
advice to all of you on a daily basis, but it's critical to me for -- for us to be credible to
you, for us to be credible to our other employees, we have to make sure we are as right
as we think we can be and that takes time. I think people think -- and I used to work at
a place that thought legal work was something you could get out of a vending machine
and you put in a quarter and they could tell you on the spot everything you wanted to
know. I'd like to think that my staff and my lawyers could tell you most everything you
want to know most of the time, but I'm never going to promise that we are always going
to know every answer the moment you ask it. Well, we will get it and we will find it and
we will make sure that the city gets the best advice we can provide it when you need it.
So, by doing that, again, we spend a lot of time doing that and I know there is folks that
come to our office periodically and they may see our lawyers and our -- our paralegal
Michelle sitting there and discussing some topic and they think we are just shooting the
breeze. Well, we may be shooting the breeze for a minute, but, in reality, the best legal
work you get is by the collaboration between attorneys. We all don't know everything,
but we all have varying levels of experience and varying levels of expertise to be able to
get those answers and we use -- we use that collective knowledge to gain the best
advice for all of your, as well as the departments on a daily basis and I'm very proud of
that, I think we do a very good job. Organizational excellence. Enhanced Intranet for
employees. This is something between IT assistance and HR, we have been able to
enhance our Intranet for employees and I think this makes us better as an organization.
We have a lot more information on there today than we did a year ago, than we did two
years ago, things that just benefit the employees, whether it's just forms, because they
have to fill out a new W-4, they don't have to come all the way to the HR department
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July 21, 2009
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just to get a W-4, they can download it off the intranet, they can print it at their
workplace, they can fill it out and send it to us. If they have questions about their
benefits or if they have questions about a job opening that may be available, if they
have questions about -- we occasionally get businesses in our community that provide
city employees a discount, five percent off a cup of coffee, if it's available for everybody
and it meets our ethics guidelines, we allow that. We have an access on our intranet
that tells employees here is some local businesses that provide something. You're
welcome to use them if you want. We provide them a great deal of information
internally, so that we don't waste a lot of time on paper and inter-office mailing and
things like that. We don't have to worry about did it put on the bulletin board, is the
bulletin board full of ten different memos that are six months old or longer. We can
provide that all the time. We have one of our staff people that maintains that and she
will periodically send out notices to employees to advise them something is on there,
you can find it. The other thing we have added to our website and we will do this
annually now, we are required to give each employee an employee handbook when
they start. Now, most of you that have worked anyplace -- if you have worked
anywhere that had an employee handbook you probably stuck it on a shelf and you may
not have ever looked at it again and it may have sat there until you left that employment
and went to work elsewhere. Well, that probably happens to our hard cover ones that
we send out to folks, but we also update them on the intranet, so it's available today.
You can click on the intranet, if you have a question about a policy, whether it's a policy
for sick leave or for maternity leave, FMLA, whatever it is, you can click on our intranet,
look at the current policy that exists. Annually what my intent is is then when each
employee goes through our open enrollment, each year they can -- they can ask and
they can receive if they want or at least acknowledge that they know where it is, that it's
on the intranet, they can have it if they want it. If they want it on a disk, we can provide
it to them on a disk. If they want a hard cover, because there are some people that like
to have a book, they can have the book. If they want a new one every year, we can
give them a new one. But we want to make sure that folks have all those -- that
information for them all the time. So, we have enhanced our intranet just for that
purpose, so that the employees know that there is a lot of information there, they just
can look on it, it's easy to find, it's easy to navigate, and they can gain that information
pretty easily for them. We want to improve our employee recognition and service
acknowledgement. Modernize and recognize. And that's something I think we really
are working on that we want to really provide a greater enhancement than what exists
today. Today we give employees some service awards and things like that, we do
recognitions with plaques. You folks all were at our city picnic, we recognize our
employee of the year and supervisor of the year. I think those are great things. I think
there is a lot of people that take a great deal of pride. We had 22 nominations for
employee of the year this year for 15 different people all over the city and like the Mayor
said at the picnic, they weren't just from people in their department, there were people
from other departments that recognize other employees. I want to enhance that and
build on that. We also want to make sure we recognize folks for their service to our city
that we make sure we do it in a good way and an appropriate way. We want to make a
big deal out of it. We have employees that have worked here for 20 and 30 years, we
want to make sure they know we appreciate that, that they gave -- they have given their
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whole working career to working for us, we wanted to make sure we recognize that in a
very positive way. Wellness we have talked about a number of times. We want to build
on .that sense of team. What we found this year with our wellness, when we had our
wellness challenge in January, February, March, we had a lot of people now --
everybody paid a little to participate, we had our wellness fund to do some of the prizes
and have some of the activity, but I will guarantee you very few people, after about day
two, cared that there was a prize. They liked competing against their coworkers, they
liked the idea that they could lose more weight than somebody else they work with or
that they could be more fit than the fire department or the police department, that they
could do those to -- have an internal competition was a great motivator. Those were
things that really built that sense of comradery as a team and that's something we want
to make sure we build on as an organization. Again, revising city policy handbook.
There have been some changes this year in the law and different areas. ADA
compliance is something, of course, is near and dear to all of us. We have had issues
with that. We want to make sure we are compliant with the ADA requirements that exist
out there, those changes. FMLA has changes. We have had some changes because
of the stimulus package. We have had some changes in other things. We want to
make sure we keep current, make sure our handbook's up to date. Again, benefits and
planning for the future are important for our -- both our employees, as well as the long
term benefits for the city in our risk issues and things like that, those are things that we
think as an organization will make us stronger. The last area is stewardship of the
public trust. Managing risk and safety is probably the most significant area in my mind,
managing or being a good steward of the public's money. How we manage the risk so
we aren't spending money needlessly or wastefully on different issues. Making sure
employees are safe, so that we are not spending, again, money on work comp injuries
and those types of issues, are critical to managing our funds, managing our employees.
Also, doing salary surveys, staying competitive with the marketplace, again, is important
and having affordable benefits. I think we talked about that at the budget workshop.
You know, we can't afford to continue to have just the cost of benefits rise to a point that
we as a city can't afford them and our employees can't afford them. So, it's important as
our department for human resources that we make sure we stay in front of that curve
and reevaluate how we provide benefits, what's the best products that are out there.
There is a lot of changes in these things and the traditional way of providing health and
dental and glasses and whatever, is going to change. It's going to change for us and it's
going to change for the employees and we need to be ahead of the game of that,
because, again, we can't afford to price ourselves out of the marketplace or to get at a
point where we have to make catastrophic changes to our health plan, because we
have suddenly realized we can't afford it. None of the employees can afford it. We
want to be in front of those things. That's something very important and very critical to
our benefits team. We want consistent protocols and ordinances. We want better
transparencies. We think, of course, that's really important, I think all of you as the
elected officials of our city have embraced that. We are more transparent. The Mayor
has certainly directed that. Our website is more accessible for folks and there is
information there that people can see, whether it's just simply our city checkbook,
whether it's our finances, that there is better transparency. We want to make sure our
ordinances match up with that. Again, our in-house criminal prosecution and police
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July 21, 2009
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services, there are long-term benefits to that and one of that's cost. So, we have to look
at the point where that tipping point is, where the cost of contracting, even though the
service has been stellar, the cost of contracting at some point will be greater than it
would cost for us to provide it ourselves and that's the point we have to figure out when
that is and when's that appropriate time to look at doing things different than we do it
today. Citywide enterprise system -- and I put staging and solution. I mean this is
something that we have been wrestling with for a number of years and I think we are
close. I think we are very close and we think we have identified the product. There is a
little bit more research and time that's going to go into that, but we think we are close,
though. We can bring forward something that you funded and we have held off on,
because, again, this is an expensive -- this is an expensive solution, we want to make
sure -- we can't do it twice and we also don't want to be in the situation that many of you
I'm sure are familiar with organizations where they couldn't afford to do it twice and they
couldn't afford to get out of what they did, so they were stuck both ways. They couldn't
get something better and had to keep band-aiding what they already had, because they
had already invested their money in it. We don't want either one of those outcomes, we
want to make sure -- and our IT staff are on top of that. That's something that is very
critical and very up front for Terry, he certainly knows that, that's something that's
probably -- it's in the top couple things of our -- of his path, just as it is for us. Again,
enhanced backup system for city technology infrastructure. Again, it's critical not only
that we keep current what we have, but that we can also recreate it if we need to. We
want to make sure that whatever technology we need to make sure that our city can
run. You know, it's scary to think that it was not too many years ago that if you had a
major catastrophic failure of your IT system that existed, it might have been a long time
before you could have turned it back on. That doesn't exist today. We have multiple
backup systems, so that we can be sure that if we need to recreate data, recreate
things, because we had a major failure of some sort or a catastrophic event of some
sort, that we had the ability to go back in time one day or two days and be able to go
back up and running and we are good. We couldn't afford to be like in Canyon county a
few years ago, they had a huge crash of their system and they had hundreds and
hundreds of cases in their criminal system in Canyon county they could not recreate,
they had to hand do it with every one of them to reenter all this data. It can be done.
I'm sure it cost them a lot of money and it cost them a lot of time. We don't want to be
there. So, IT helps us keep in front of that. Future challenges. Technology. Every one
of you knows this. I mean did we have Twitter a year ago? I don't even think we did.
Did people blog things two years? I don't think so. So, everything, whether it's the
phone you wear, whether it's -- this thing that we have that every week somebody can't
work, the technology changes over time, so it's critical for IT to be in front of that. It's
critical for them to be able to see as best they can what we are going to have tomorrow
and next year and the year after that and what pieces of that technology are not likely to
change, so that we have some bases in there, we have some -- some standards that
exist and, then, as things evolve and change, whether it's -- you know, whether it's in
the handheld technology, whether it's in wireless technology, or whatever it is, that we
can meet those needs. Expanding GIS citywide. We have talked about it a number of
times. That's something IT is integral in helping get -- because we have found, you
know, five years ago GIS was a great tool for Public Works. It's still a great tool for
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July 21, 2009
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Public Works. But what we found in the last five years, it's not just a great tool for Public
Works, there is lots of applications that can be used, whether it's in fire or parks or
police. IT is critical to being a part of that to make that all function and work together.
Greater risk. Every day we have risk that exists out there and that we are even
unaware of, whether it's running a fire truck into somebody, whether it's a shooting that
could occur, whether it's something we are the victim of, one of our employees -- I mean
there are greater risks out there and we feel sometimes, at least for me, that we seem
to have less control over so many factors. There is so many things that occur out there
that we can't control. But at least being aware of those things, having the resources that
exist with the providers that we have today, are ways to help us at least feel more in
control of what happens, more in control of what's going to happen to us, rather than
just responding to it. The cost of services can increase. All of these things cost money
and we want to make sure -- again, we can't come to you every year and say just give
me more money. Everything will be better if you give us more money. In reality, we are
always going to be a city that's going to have to make do with what we have on
occasion, be able to push out a little further on some things, when we have the -- when
we have the extra -- the money and the expertise to do it, and those are things we want
to, again, be in front of, for those things that are critical to us as a city, to be able to
function is to deal with those increasing costs of services. Internal growth. Again, we
are a small workforce, but we are still growing and we are going to grow, as the city
continues to grow in population, our workforce is going to have to meet that. With that
comes greater challenges. We have -- one of the things I find in the human resource
arena after awhile is the more people you put in the box the more people you find that
can't get along with one another. So, there is a lot of work that's involved in making
sure people can work together. We don't all have to go out to dinner together, but we all
have to work together and there is ways that we can do that, whether it's through
training, whether it's through better training of our managers, providing better
opportunities for them to be able to understand how to work with the people -- the
dynamics of people is the most challenging thing I found over -- over my career. Most
things you can learn -- and that's something really takes a lot of time and effort and
commitment to be able to really understand people and how that's going to effect their
daily lives and how they then affect everybody else's daily life. And we have an aging
workforce. What they find in our country is that with the great advances in health care
people live longer, they work longer, but their cost of health -- their cost of health
services goes up and the cost of retirement goes up. Those are things that we need to
look for in the future as to how do we address that, how do we be a competitive
employer when people are looking for things like health care and retirement
opportunities or benefits for them and how do we stay competitive. Those are things
that we are still evaluating today. Legal land mines. That's another one. That's kind of
the other side of the risk management. There is a lot of -- you know, we are always
driven by what the courts might do on a lot of issues and sometimes we have to be
reactive to that, sometimes we can be proactive to that. Those are things that are
always a challenge to us in being current, making sure we have the current information,
the current stuff from whether it's courts, whether it's other communities, is critical to us,
again, providing you with the best information to be able to do your job. Additional
training. Again, one of the things with lawyers is, again, we don't know everything and
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there is a lot of time and effort -- no, I'm serious. We don't. We don't. But there is a lot
of opportunity for training, because we -- again, we learn better when we collaborate
with others that there are a lot of folks out there that have great expertise that we rely on
and there is other tools that we have out there in the marketplace that we use,
something we consider that as we go forward. Again, work the plan. We talk about that
all the time in regards to our plan as far as what we do as a department, what we do as
a city, and we know that, really, at the end of the day working that plan is what's
important to you, what's important to our citizens and we want to make sure we are
doing that. Questions. I just wanted to make note -- and my lawyers didn't like this, but
when you put in lawyer into Microsoft you get an ambulance. I thought that was great.
Bird: I thought you'd get this.
Nary: Anyway, any questions? Again, I'd like to thank my staff for being here. You
know, I know they stick it out. They don't usually come this late for these meetings and I
appreciate them taking the time to come tonight. But, anyway, are there questions?
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I don't have a question, Bill. I just want to thank you and your staff for the fine
presentation and the fine job you guys have done. It's been a pleasure to be your
liaison. You guys have done some good. Thank you.
Nary: Thank you.
Rountree: Comments? Questions? I would second Keith's comments. Appreciate all
the work you do and your staff. Particularly pleased with some of the future challenges
you identified and the work you're moving towards solving some of those. Press on and
keep doing the good work. And you were awfully close to your 40 minutes.
Nary: That's good.
Rountree: Good job.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Amazing.
Nary: Amazing. Thank you.
De Weerd: But I know your staff knows I appreciate them, so --
Bird: Mr. President, could I say one more thing?
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Rountree: Yes.
Bird: Would you record that last statement of his when lawyers don't know everything?
There is a few lawyers I'd like to give that to.
Nary: When you get the minutes for --
Bird: Okay. Thanks, Bill.
Nary: Thank you.
Item 6: EXECUTIVE SESSION: per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(e) - (to
consider preliminary negotiations involving matters of trade or commerce
in which the governing body is in competition with governing bodies in
other states or nations):
Rountree: Last item on the agenda this evening is Item 6, Executive Session. I need a
motion.
Bird: Mr. President?
Rountree: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(e).
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to go into Executive Session. Roll call vote.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
EXECUTIVE SESSION:
Rountree: Need a motion.
Bird: I make a motion we come out of Executive Session.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: It's been moved and seconded to come out of Executive Session. All in
favor?
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
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Rountree: Need another motion.
Bird: I move we adjourn.
Hoaglun: Second.
Rountree: Moved and seconded to adjourn. All in favor? Opposed.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Rountree: Good evening.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 10:11 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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