HomeMy WebLinkAbout2010 04-13Meridian City Council Workshop Meeting April 13 2010
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 p.m., Tuesday, April
13, 2010, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun, Charlie
Rountree and David Zaremba.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Caleb Hood, Keith Watts, Jeff Lavey,
Ron Anderson, Mark Niemeyer, Steve Siddoway, Clint Dolsby, Stacy Kilchenmann, 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
De Weerd: Welcome to tonight's City Council Workshop. We appreciate everyone
joining us this evening. For the record, it is Tuesday, April 13th. It's 6:00 o'clock. We
will start with roll call attendance.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the
pledge.
(Pledge of Allegiance recited.)
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda.
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: We just have a couple of items tonight on the agenda to make note of.
Under the Consent Agenda for Item 4-F, that resolution number is 10-721. And, then,
under Department Reports, Item 5, we'd like to move 5-E to the very end of the
Department Reports on citywide alarm monitoring. So, we also, just to note, at 6:30 we
are going to take a break for a very special event that you all want to take part and see
what happens, so with that, Madam Mayor, I would move adoption of the agenda.
Zaremba: Second.
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April 13, 2010
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as stated. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Beer, Wine, Liquor License Approvals 2010-2011
Limelight, LLC 3575 E. Copper Point Dr. Beer /Wine
Mountain Pizza 980 E. Fairview Avenue Beer /Wine
Chicago Connection 1629 N. Main Street Beer
Chicago Connection 1935 S. Eagle Road 'Beer/Wine/Liquor
Fuddruckers 3421 N. Eagle Road Beer/Wine
Piehole 726 N. Main Street Beer
Fiesta Guadalajara 704 E. Fairview Avenue Beer/Wine/Liquor
Bill n' Lynn's 229 W. Franklin Beer/Wine/Liquor
Busted Shovel 704 N. Main Street Beer/Wine/Liquor
Flatbread Community Oven 830 N. Main Street #A Beer/Wine
Gino's Italian Ristorante 3015 W. McMillan Road Beer/Wine/Liquor
LL BBQ Pit 2845 E. Overland Road Beer /Wine
B. Addendum to PY2008 Community Development Block Grant
(CDBG) Subrecipient Agreement with Ada County Housing
Authority
C. Subrecipient Agreement with Meridian Senior Center for
PY2008 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Funds
D. Award of Roster Resulting from Request for Qualifications
RFQ #CW-10-2010 opened February 18, 2010
E. Water Main Easement for Sundance Subdivision No. 5 (AKA
Settlers Crossing) Lots 45, 46 and 52, Block 7
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F. Resolution No. 10-721: Reappointing David Stolhand to Seat 4,
Rob Walker to Seat 5, and Meg Glasgow to Seat 6 of the
Meridian Arts Commission
De Weerd: Item 4, Consent Agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Under the Consent Agenda, as I moved earlier, 4-F is resolution number 10-
721. And with that I move approval of our Consent Agenda and that the Mayor sign and
Clerk attest.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is
no discussion, Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Department Reports.
A. Dog Park Task Force Update
De Weerd: This is a workshop. We have tried to make it more informal, so it wasn't so
-- not intimidating, but a little bit more conducive to two way dialogue. So, that's why we
are set up like tonight and, again, we welcome you. Okay. Under Department Reports,
Item No. 5, our first item up is the Dog Park Task Force Update. Tom LeClaire is here.
LeClaire: My name is Tom LeClaire. I'm a member of the Meridian Parks and
Recreation Commission. Live at 1923 Pratt Street in Meridian, Idaho. And we have a --
we have been working for some weeks really since January on a dog park plan. We
have looked at different sites in the city. We have looked at different locations. We
think we found one and we found some materials and we have a slide presentation.
Siddoway: Before I hand these out, since we are more in the form of dialogue tonight, it
was just mentioned that -- if you will remember that last winter we -- because of the use
that it was getting and the conditions there, as you will see in a moment, we scaled back
the time -- the days available at the police department from seven days to four days and
the need or the desire for other additional dog park solutions became very apparent.
You remember the town hall meeting that we had in January. I think it was at Heritage
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Middle School. We -- that same night we formed a Dog Park Task Force at our
commission meeting that night and that task force, as you will hear about, has been
diligently working over the past few months at looking at solutions and so here is the
presentation.
Zaremba: While he is passing those out, would you mind introducing the other parks
and recreation commissioners that are here --
LeClaire: I certainly will.
Zaremba: -- unless you were planning to do that.
LeClaire: Well, it's one of the slides you will see in a moment that we have --
Zaremba: Okay.
LeClaire: -- myself and Lisa Baird and, then, Deborah Baker, Jeff Brown, Brian Baker is
here. Stephanie Griswald. And Barbara Matt. Bonnie Peterson. And Brenda
Steinbeck. And Shanna Lewis. And we may have missed -- some that have come and
gone, but this has been the core group, I think, that's been at every one of our meetings
and we have been very pleased with the work. There has also been some very active
parks and recreation commissioners involved. Commissioner Greg Steele, Matt
Schultz, Jo Godell, Michael Mart and Steve Yearsley, Megan Murphy and myself. And
so a big thanks for the work, because there has been a lot of meetings and
determination. So, where we come next is the -- the site that we think we would like to
use. We had a slide of our current dog park condition and just really getting a lot of
wear and tear. The entryway is all torn up. The Parks Department has made a lot of
efforts to reseed this ground, make sure there is enough water on it, but just the usage
is tremendous from members of the task force and our police department feedback that
we have had. as we have gone by, typically there is ten to 50 dogs in there almost every
day, so almost around the clock. So, it's very -- a very popular thing and we are very
happy to have a dog park in Meridian. But this facility is just going to be pretty small
and it's already too small too fast and you probably know that. But the -- so, the next
slide is -- there is some different sites we have considered. This is the Borup property
and you will see we have a few ideas for this. This is an aerial view of it, so -- so, this is
a -- we have three scenarios and the task force deliberately wanted to show three,
because we are just not there on one absolute definite plan yet. But it's a work in
progress and what we are hoping for is some approval and some go ahead to continue
on this project from the Council tonight. And so -- and we will get to what else we want
to do. And so -- if we can go back to the first slide. So, this first slide is our first run at
this and this is the only one that shows a future animal shelter and so we think it will be
somewhere along the Cherry Lane frontage there. We are not -- you know, that's an
even further out project than this one is if we pursue this one, but it's -- it's something
that certainly is a good fit with this site. We certainly would welcome setting aside some
of the land here for an animal shelter and Meridian Humane Society location and
upgrade their facility. So, they do an outstanding job and we are willing to do that.
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Next. So, this one was ashot -- it was one of our shots at what's this going to cost and
the key cost factor for us was in red are the -- are the pathways that we envision and
kind of a loop of two pathways and two sections of the piece of land. The adjustment
here in the parking lot is we found that this Williams pipeline that runs through the
property is not very deep. We thought it was deeper than it was and it looks like there
will be some easements. We think this can be worked out, but there will probably need
to be some kind of a rise that runs along that diagonal across the park, so it will be a
little higher ground. This park already has gravity based irrigation and, basically, the
grade is from south to north. So, it could have worked that way, but when we have run
into this -- and this is so much that we have to plan around that easement, but that berm
is going to make gravity irrigation really hard, so you will see in our estimate we are
going to include an irrigation system. And so -- and, then, this seemed like a good
place to fit a parking lot. And, then, the next slide. This one -- in our very last meeting
we talked about a lot of things, we really brainstormed these concepts, and we -- what
we -- what we are envisioning with this one is a parking lot that would serve both
sections of the park and part of that concept may be the rotation of, you know, activity in
one section and, then, another, just so the ground doesn't get too damaged, but this
would allow that -- it would allow easy access to both sections, instead of having a long
walk up to the north section, we thought probably that wouldn't be happening very
much. People would find their way into the south. So, this is -- this idea and another
factor that impacted this design is it really I think is a top end number, but this reflects
traffic of about 200 dogs per day and so that's 135 parking spaces and so that's a real
high end thing, but it's about twice what we thought we had and I hate to say this for the
task force, it's the first time we have seen this one. So, that point may be negotiable
and the concept when we get to that may not be as high as we think, if we don't put in
full this part right away, but it -- and all these elements could be phased as well. And so
-- could we go to the next slide. This is just a quicky on what the site can do. There is
no water or sewer there yet. There is some irrigation water, which we can upgrade to a
real sprinklered irrigation system. And, then, we have some comparisons. This is
Nampa's dog park and they have had a great impact on us and, in fact, many of the
people that were going to Bark Park now are going to the Nampa park on the days that
our Bark Park is closed and -- and it's a -- it's a very impressive facility. But that's a
picture of it. You can see some pathways in there and some trees. Next slide. These
are some concepts that they have incorporated that we would like to copy. Anybody
that has a good idea we want to copy. So, this is a -- this is a shelter with sponsorship
signs and at the bottom we are estimating that, but the sponsorship program started in
October and this, plus the one time purchases of amenities and they already reached
about ten thousand dollars. And the next one. But that also includes a few of these one
time deals. And so we didn't break it down deeply, but, generally, in this category of
sponsored amenities we think probably at least five to ten thousand dollars a year could
be generated from that. And we will continue. And so here are -- here are components
as numbered on the -- as far as conceptual categories, but these are the major ones.
It's kind of -- you know, for a park developer and so we are going to have to ask for a
use permit for this, as this is the types of activities we are going to have to do to get this
park open. The next one. So, here are our latest and greatest cost estimates. We
have got -- we could half at a time. We also talked at our last meeting about, you know,
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maybe just doing -- fencing a gate, then, pathways later. So, there is a number of ways
to break this apart. Nothing up here. In the very back end of your packet is an itemized
cost sheet that's more detailed. Again, these are estimates, though, and it says draft on
it and everything, because we still are working on it. One of the variables is the material
in the pathways, they were having a challenge in that area. We think it's going to end
up sort of like a -- well, that's -- we can get it to last, so -- but there is areas of these
estimates that we might be able to do better. We have built in a ten percent
contingency in these estimates and what we think, you know, with all the knowledge we
have with the group of people that have worked so hard on this, this is our best offer,
what we think this will cost. And so -- the next slide. We think this is -- the more we
thought about this we think there is a pretty good potential for an income stream with
the park, unlike most of the other parks in the city. The dog licensing fee and -- is
currently -- and it varies, there is some modifications, but it's, basically, a 16 dollar fee.
We would propose a five dollar fee on top of that that the city would collect and set
aside for the park. And, then, the -- last year the -- the shelter caught and released 940
dogs and so when they do that they charge a fee for that and that fee is about 24
dollars. I think, isn't it? This would be a five dollar increase every time we release a
dog and so another income stream there. Those fees could be higher, they could be --
but we don't -- we have compared to those cities' departments of -- of, you know,
sheltered facilities and we think that we are well within pricing. I think the average
license fee in the city of Boise is around 40 dollars, so we are not at all hurting there.
And so -- next slide. Oh, so, anyway, this gives us about -- and these numbers are --
those are from Nampa's experience so far extrapolated over about a year's time. So,
these are pretty good. I see some numbers in there where I thought, you know, our
group can go and ask for money from people and we may find in-kind donations and all
sorts of stuff, so it may be much higher than this 1,500 dollars per year. Basically all
that number is is there is a box as you walk into Nampa dog park that has a hole in it
and you can stick a dollar and they get about 30 dollars a day from that --
Siddoway: A week.
LeClaire: Okay. Thirty dollars a week. So, very -- we are really shooting low and I'm
sure we can do better than that. People just willing to help us out. And so -- and, then,
leasing out signage. It looks like a good potential for income there. And so if this -- and
one possibility about these offsets is if the city was able to do this and it's a concept we
hope that can happen, is that the park be built and, then, this stream of money help pay
the city back for overtime and if we went with a top of the line deal that we think we
would need, it's about 300,000 dollars, we have the payoff we would have to make. So,
that is -- next one. Or here is some other ideas. So, we have -- the concept plan that
we have presented tonight, if you can endorse it as a plan and financing plan and create
-- create a dog park concept and if you're receiving donations, we will probably have to
do some kind of resolution if we want to do a fee and direct the -- the animal control
group to collect that for us. Then, the next big part of this project is this is -- this is city
owned land, but it's in Ada County, and so we have to go to Ada County and get a
Conditional Use Permit for this facility. We have had some preliminary talks, Elroy and
Matt Schultz, who is on our commission, have -- have had some talks with the county
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already and, you know, just -- they want to see a letter signed by the Council or the
Mayor saying this is what we want to do. So, we are looking for some kind of resolution
to get that process rolling as well. And so -- any more slides? So, this is another kind
of a numbers -- look at revenue numbers. It doesn't have top -- one of our fellows,
Brian, who is on -- who is a postal worker, and so he did -- so he just ran some numbers
on what our current license is and we were thinking this -- you know, if the existing
license and that five dollar fee, you can get that. But there is tremendous potential. We
think there is a thousand dogs that are not licensed and a little bit of money in a public
awareness campaign would probably more than pay for itself in bringing in licenses for
people. I don't know what the postal service thinks, but they say 2,000 dogs, so that's a
lot, but we knew this before and if we were to get half of those ones it would practically
-- I mean it would not only help pay for the park, but get us rolling towards an animal
shelter as well, probably. So, anyway, that's a -- that's a big impact if we were to just
increase the awareness of the license and get more families to license their dogs. Is
that it? This is a good summary. So, we have talked a lot about the benefits of this and
I think it's the census that this kind of facility would be great for the city. Opportunities
for the City of Meridian to have recreation for dogs and a safe haven for dogs has taken
on new meaning in the last few weeks with a dog that was lose and we had an
opportunity for dog to run and play and so we don't know that -- not hard evidence of
anything, but we think that this would help the neighborhoods of the city, as well as -- as
well as the parks in the city where dogs are running now and we can't catch them and
so with this outlet, we think that's a good safe harbor for the dogs of the city. And so we
think this is a great place to live, work, raise a family and we have a lot of families and
I'm sure we have a lot of dogs.
De Weerd: I do like how you rewrote our vision statement.
LeClaire: Well, we wanted to, you know, apply it to dogs. So, I have -- we have a lot of
people here from the task force and interested .members of the public and so I'd stand
for questions and if I need help I'll ask,
Tucker: My name is Dave Tucker and I live on Harbor Point right around the corner
from the --
De Weerd: You will need to speak into the mike.
Tucker: My question is this whole thing is going to be eight acres I think you said, but
it's where the animal shelter will go, so how much room will the animal shelter take up?
LeCaire: We don't know yet, but that's a good question. And so, Dave, we are -- they
are beginning their planning process, too, at this time and I -- I mean I think they are
probably more than two years away from even knowing themselves. Maybe not. So,
it's -- we are going to leave space for that and we will carve it out later kind of a thing.
Probably on the south end of the park. I heard -- when we did initial discussions with
them we thought half an acre would be enough. Now we are not sure. They are still
studying. So, they don't know what their needs are. They think they want to have some
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room for dogs to run and play, too, that are in the shelter and so -- but I think there is
room on this for both and so we want -- and we certainly want to cooperate with them. I
think by doing this it gives a place for the shelter to go, which is -- which is huge. I
mean a lot of cities have to pass bonds for shelters to build -- to buy the land, build the
building, build the facility and all that. So, this is an appropriate bonding thing I think,
but whether we want to raise property taxes to do that or not, that's abig -- that's a
whole other question. We are not there yet.
Wood: Shannon Wood. It made sense at the time when we were starting discussions
about the task force and the -- and everybody with the animal shelter, we were talking
about their needs as well, that if we can combine our efforts in fundraising -- and
fundraising is always difficult, that if we could combine them that we might be able to
raise funds just by -- somebody who is not interested in giving money for a dog park
might feel differently about the animal shelter, so that was --
De Weerd: Certainly you hit on the -- the issue. I think Brian must have been the one
to identify the unlicensed dogs and that -- that is a huge -- huge issue. You might also
even look at a different fee structure for licensed dogs and unlicensed dogs that end up
at the animal shelter in getting them out of jail. But I guess to really look at how we can
do a better public awareness campaign in licensing your dogs, we haven't been
successful in the past in trying to figure out how to get more of our -- our four legged
friends licensed and making sure that they have their shots and they are spade or
neutered and those kind of things. But maybe that's -- you may be sick of meeting, but
maybe another meeting topic is considering some of that.
Steinbach: Brenda Steinbach, animal control. We have put out a little thing with the
water bill about the license. We did have an awful time getting the license done, but
now we are using our animal control ordinance 6-2-3 and we are ticketing people whose
dog goes to the shelter without a license on their neck. They must be wearing it. So,
there will be more licensing fees that I know. We have started in the last two weeks and
every dog that comes in if it doesn't have the tag on their neck gets a ticket. So, they
will get one in order to get out of the -- you know, I mean it's like your -- from what I
understand from the attorney I talked to this afternoon, he said that's -- that would be --
they come in and they prove that they have their license and, then, the ticket is like their
insurance or whatever, you prove you have it. So, maybe that will be a little help. Don't
know. We will try it.
De Weerd: Thank you, Brenda.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Tom, more in the way of where we are and where we are going and, then, I
will get to some specific questions, but you're making the presentation this evening as a
report and update from the task force?
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LeClaire: Yes.
Rountree: Have you made this same presentation to the Parks Commission?
LeClaire: No. We are making it --
Rountree: Okay. So, at this point we don't have a recommendation from the parks
commission.
LeClaire: No. But establishing a new dog park is one of the top priorities of the parks
commission.
Rountree: Okay. In terms of the cost, you have indicated that pay me now, I'll pay you
later. Steve, in that scenario what doesn't get done in the city that's already
programmed? I mean we have a laundry list of pathways that need to be completed,
we have parks that need to be completed, what -- that's going to come out of your
budget.
Siddoway: Right.
Rountree: How does that work?
Siddoway: Well, I don't have the budget for it this -- this year, if that's what you're
asking. We do have the Borup property development budgeted in the CIP out about
2014 right now. So, this would be pre-funding a portion of that park that was really
envisioned to be developed further out. So, how we would fund that today, I don't have
a full answer and I -- we do have some cost savings that were -- should realize from the
8th Street Park pathway project, because we have -- we had that project funded with
general funds and we are going through the CDBG program to try and fund it through
there instead. We think we just have the -- the environmental clearances I think just
came back, so I think we are on track to do that, but that's only, you know, 50 or 60
thousand of 250 or 60 thousand that would be needed to do the full improvement.
Rountree: Tom, I'm going to pick on Steve for a little bit.
LeClaire: That's okay.
Rountree: You indicated that the capital improvements program shows development of
Borup Park starting in 2014. That's not very far away. About the same time, potentially,
that this park could be up and running. I don't recall if the Borup property has a concept
and if it does I don't believe it has a concept for a dog park in it. My concern there is
that once it happens there and the ultimate concept of Borup doesn't include a dog park,
then, we have got the same issue with that that we have with the police department.
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Siddoway: We can address that, because the concept plan for the -- for the Borup
property is underway currently with this project. We had akick-off meeting last week
with the Mayor. We intend to develop at least two scenarios and probably more than
that. After this presentation we will be hearing from the Lion's Club about the rodeo. At
least one of those concepts will include a rodeo long term. At least one will include ball
fields and/or other uses as we determine through our public process, but right now all
our vision is to include a dog park.
Rountree: Along the lines of funding -- this is more of a comment, I guess, than a
question. It's along the lines of the comments the Mayor made. It seems to me -- and I
really appreciate this concept of it will be paid for by the users. That's great. But we are
being asked as a community to take the responsibility of providing this opportunity for
people's personal property. In my opinion, if we are being asked to do that, I would, in
turn, want to ask the people to take equal responsibility for their personal property. We
would have ordinances that would regulate this park and I would suggest that those
ordinances would include such things as a requirement to be licensed in the City of
Meridian. Proof and evidence that the animal has the proper shots and vaccinations.
And that the animal is neutered. And I'm not suggesting that we have a dog police, but
I'm suggesting that Brenda could occasionally stop out there, if she's out in the
neighborhood, ask people to provide that information, and if they don't have it, be
ticketed.
Siddoway: And we talked about that last week.
Rountree: And maybe the money that comes through it, but, more importantly, maybe
that responsibility would be drilled into those folks that, hey, we have got this thing, let's
appreciate it, let's follow the rules, let's take care of our animals and let's continue
having an opportunity like this provided by the city. Just some general comments.
Don't have any other questions, other than still got to figure out how to pay for it.
Siddoway: Right.
LeClaire: Councilman Rountree, those are great comments and I think our group is
enthusiastically on board with it. There is some concern about, you know, enforcement,
but just as you said, it's like everything else, we have those littering ordinances, you
know, no jaywalking, but we don't arrest every jaywalker, but you make enough in giving
tickets and people will get on board with it and so it's not something where we expect
animal control to have a tent in the middle of the park, but -- they could be there all day.
Rountree: Well, I would expect that park would be fenced and probably a minimal
number of gates, so when Brenda shows up those 50 to 75, they are there. We got
them.
LeClaire: I think there will be a -- and there was some -- just as a -- almost a side issue,
but Brenda mentioned the ordinance that we have. Emily Kane in the city attorney's
office is working on a comprehensive Parks Department ordinance --
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Siddoway: Ordinance revision. Uh-huh.
LeClaire: -- revision. And I think this process ghat we have had of giving her good
feedback on what the needs will be on a future park and we are going to make sure
she's involved along the way, too, to make sure that any changes we need in any of the
city's ordinances will fit with this park and governance-wise.
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I was just going to ask there from time qo time has been discussion about the
property to the west or at least a portion of tha property, so that there would be a
connection to McDermott Road. I didn't see that in~the three choices. Is that dropped or
out of range financially or --
i
LeClaire: No. We didn't -- what -- we are trying t I work with what's there and so that I
think there are our opportunities as this park dev~lops that there may be somethin to
g
do there. Steve knows better than I, so -- but there is -- it's not -- we won't have it, so
we are not planning on it, so --
Zaremba: Thanks.
De Weerd: Okay
Draper: One of the things that we talked about --
De Weerd: If you will just state your name.
Draper: Brian Draper.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Brian.
Draper: One of the things we talked about was doing a -- possibly a park permit also to
-- where you purchase that to have usage of the dark, because we also don't want to
block out the surrounding cites where they can pay~additional funds to use the dog park,
too, because we like to go over to Nampa, because we don't have the full facility here.
We kind of want to stress that we really do have a I,vital need for this and the place that
we are currently at is not going to work out for velry much longer, because it is a K-9
training facility and we are kind of like second clads citizens there and, you know, we
have made a lot of requests for some things and -t and it's not being done and it can't
be done, a lot of them, because of what it is. And ~t was just ashort-term solution for a
problem and we need to get something done on t is and I think what's -- I think what
they are asking for today was, basically, the Counci needs to write a letter to the county
telling them that someday there will be sewer and vjvater out in that area and I think you
can do that. There is a real need for what we havq here and it is more than just for the
dogs, it is for the people, too. If you go there life Sunday there was 20 cars there
Any other comments from Council?
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constantly throughout the day and I think there isl more people than dogs, but it's a full
time year around use park, it's not something -- ~rou saw us out there all winter. We
went around to some of the other parks on Super Bowl Sunday and ours was the only
one with people in it and the only other parks ghat had people in them had people
walking dogs in them. So, we have a need and w~ appreciate your help on this. Thank
you.
De Weerd: Thank you. Well, I would like to thank the committee for what you have put
together. Certainly, Tom, for your leadership and the rest of the commission that's been
involved as well. We know that parks -- there ark different components that speak to
different people and we have a lot of parks that ajddress our youth athletic needs and,
as you mentioned in our vision statement, the families sometimes are not kids, they are
dogs, and so we have to be a comprehensive perk system that addresses all of our
citizens needs. We appreciate your attention to phis, Tom, and bringing together this
PowerPoint and look forward to hearing what th 'commission's discussion points are
and certainly Steve will work with his -- with his budget enhancement request or with the
CIP and we will see how we can work this into shot and long term plans.
Siddoway: Madam Mayor and Council, some feedback that I would like to be able to
take to the commission meeting tomorrow night is t is just one in general is that -- is the
Council supportive of us continuing to pursue an~1 look into the dog park idea at the
site? Is it a nonstarter for you for any reason? And, then, on the financing side is there
-- you know, are there any of those options that ~ou would like us to just take off the
table right now or would you like us to continue exploring, you know, all of those and
whatever else you can come up with? ',
De Weerd: Council?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Never quit exploring possibilities and pl nning funding. That's important. In
terms of advancing this, I would like to see a step t ken to -- if it moves forward and on
this location that the compatibility with this proposal and the future concepts for the
Borup property be melded together before it advan es too much further. I don't want to
be in a situation to leave another Council with the job of having to negotiate out of or
around something that we decided, when a future ouncil decides that the Borup Park
is going to be something else. !,
Siddoway: And I agree. We will be back before ypu with those overall concept plans,
because, we agree, the more permanent they can ~e and the less that would have to be
removed with the ultimate design and construction t e better.
Rountree: And my final comment is that even molving forward we don't want to build
false expectations. In other words, there is probab~y folks in the room this evening that
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 13 of 59
think in a year and a half from now we will have a dog park or two years we will have a
dog park.
Siddoway: And some hoping it will be this year.
Rountree: And some probably hoping by fall. Tlhe reality is it's probably not going to
happen. There is a lot of things that need to be done, not the least of which are the
financing.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I agree, Steve. You know, we need to lookjforward, keep continuing to see how
we can finance it. I think the Borup property is aniideal location for it, but I want to see
the concept. I think we have got the layout -- I don't want to leave a mess for some
other Council to straighten out, but I -- I think we cajn look forward to -- it definitely has to
leave with the --
Siddoway: Yeah.
De Weerd: Council, any other comments?
Zaremba: I would comment that in a perfect world it would be more centrally located.
The Borup property almost to McDermott Road, f-jowever Meridian grows, that will be
the end of the city. We are not going to cross the''county line, even though it's legal.
think we have all agreed that that's not desirable. ~fhere is a lot of headaches involved
in working in two counties, so -- I don't know. Bud, even so, it's still not very central in
the city. Well, those who want to use it it's pretty good size facility and it would be
perfect for this use and I think that's great. The ides that was brought up of saying, hey,
we are probably going to get as many people from Tampa in there, some way to charge
a user fee that isn't just Meridian residents, should ~ontinue to be explored.
De Weerd: So, do we do that in our regular parks j-- I don't know how you can do that.
And certainly I use other cities' parks or go to venues there. I don't know. I just -- I'm
not going to be the police for that. ',
Zaremba: We are doing nonresident fees on -- j
De Weerd: On our athletics, but this is -- this is open space. This is different.
Zaremba: Yeah.
Siddoway: It wouldn't be possible if we were -- if it's just open to the public and we are
not doing a dog park permit. If we did a dog parr permit you could have nonresident
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April 13, 2010
Page 14 of 59
and resident dog park permits that it's going t~ be -- it would be an enforcement
headache.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Well, if you could discuss that, too.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council?
De Weerd: Oh.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, orne thing for the Parks Commission to
consider as well, if you were going to charge fees] or have that disparate use condition
of that, that your recreational immunity is going t~ go away if you start charging for a
separate fee for use, so -- and that liability woulq be a significant concern in a park
setting. So, just something to consider as they ~o through this discussion on how to
fund it and such, but the recreation use might be ~ concern for how you want to -- how
you want to do that.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, just a quick comrrpent to kind of wrap this thing up.
know we got to go out there for the special event, I~ut, you know, what Mr. Nary pointed
out is true, but don't let that stop the Parks Comrr~ission and the folks on the dog park
task force to look at all those options and just see i that an idea and if we like it how do
we overcome that or how do we get around it and ~hings like that, so -- and if there is a
will, there is a way, so I think we will be able to mare it work.
De Weerd: Well, we love the park that you have tried to look at it -- or think out of the
box on some of this and that's going to be appreciated as we try and crunch the
numbers and see how we can make this happen., I'm sorry, I do have to recess real
quick.
Rountree: Give the man a question.
De Weerd: Sir, did you have a question? I'm sor
your name one more time.
Tucker: Dave Tucker.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Tucker: And my question is I believe that they wa
and that was it. But until this is ready we won't
Police Department?
you'll have to talk in -- just state
the area that we are in now for sure
e kicked out of that, will we, by the
De Weerd: No. I think that they have -- they have tried to find a balance with the limited
use to make sure that we can serve both needs.
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 15 of 59
Tucker: So, I guess throughout the summer it will still be only open on Friday, Saturday,
Sunday, Monday, it won't be open every day.
De Weerd: That's correct.
Tucker: It will stay the way it is, but we will always have use of it until this is ready, as I
understand it.
De Weerd: Yes. And we are waiting to see how the grass grows back and see, you
know --
Tucker: Well, I have been out there a few times, it's never been aerated and I don't
know if it's been fertilized and there are some sandy spots, but the dogs love that.
De Weerd: I know and that's the problem. But if -- if we can just get any additional
comments off line and this Council is recessed, so I think it will take five minutes to
shave his head. Thank you.
Recess: (6:49 p.m. to 6:59 p.m.)
B. Parks Department: Lions Club Rodeo Conditional Use Permit
De Weerd: Okay. We will go ahead and bring this meeting back in session. We are on
Item 5-B and I will, again, turn this over to Steve to introduce our next item.
Siddoway: Thank you, Madam Mayor. The next item is regarding the Lion's Club rodeo
use that is on the same property out at the Borup property on McDermott. As you know,
the Lion's Club rodeo has been out there for the last several years and every year they
have had to go through a temporary use permit process with the county. As -- they
have been notified by the county that they no longer want them to go through the annual
temporary use permit process, that if they intend to be out there in the coming years
that they would need to get a Conditional Use Permit and just allow the use year after
year while it's in the county. Doug Beehler is here tonight and will make the
presentation, but just by way of introduction we have been working together and with
Ted Baird from the legal staff to put together a Conditional Use Permit application that
they would like to receive approval tonight from the Council to have signed and
submitted to the -- to the county and as we work together we have taken all the
language out of that regarding, you know, long-term commitment to promises and
what's on the table today, basically, says that current use that's out there is what we are
proposing to be allowed to continue into the foreseeable future while the property
remains undeveloped and in the county. With that I'll turn the time over to Mr. Doug
Beehler.
Beehler: Thank you, Steve. My name is Doug Beehler. 556 Knobhill Court, Eagle,
Idaho. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, basically, as Steve said, our only
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April 13, 2010
Page 16 of 59
purpose tonight is we, obviously, have to get the Conditional Use Permit application
turned into the county. My understanding of protocol now is in order to do that the
Mayor has to sign on the application and in order for the Mayor to sign the Council has
to approve it. As Steve said, we don't plan on doing anything different this year than we
did last year, for example, as far as the rodeo is concerned, we just need a Conditional
Use Permit and one of the things that's been brought up for quite awhile is we could use
that property for more uses in the area if we had a Conditional Use Permit rather than a
temporary use permit for one weekend a year and we are trying to get into that
direction. We submitted the Conditional Use Permit a few years ago and we hit a
couple of stumbling blocks and we had to pull the application off the table, because if
we hadn't been we wouldn't have been able to apply for a permit like we did before. So,
basically, what we are here today for is just to get the Council's approval to submit the
application to the county. We did have a neighborhood meeting last fall after the
weekend of the rodeo, so that the neighbors could see everything set up and in place
ready to go. No -- no problems there. Neighbors were in favor of everything we are
doing and -- but, unfortunately, that neighborhood meeting has run its course. We have
to be within six months of the Conditional Use Permit application and so we had another
one scheduled for Saturday, I received calls from the neighbors that -- two calls from
neighbors that said we are in favor of what you're doing, we don't -- we can't attend, we
are going to be out of town, and that's the only response I have so far, but the meeting
was scheduled for 2:00 o'clock on Saturday and this is the third one we have had out
there and I don't expect any issues or problems, but we will be there to answer any
questions.. So, at this time, basically, I would ask you if you have any questions of us
and the rodeo or any of the paperwork that was submitted to you as far as the
application is concerned.
De Weerd: Thank you, Doug. Council, any questions? Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Doug, the last public meeting we had, how many folks attended?
Beehler: If you don't count the Lion's members that were there and attended, we had
one neighbor and we had three from the city. This week we had one member from the
city and myself and whoever present talked to me for the next 20 minutes.
Rountree: My reasoning is correct. Thank you for verifying that.
Zaremba: There aren't actually that many neighbors, though. I mean that's a pretty
good percentage. Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I do have one question. I maybe could find it in the packet, but I assume that
you carry insurance that indemnifies the city or lists the. city as a beneficiary or
something like that?
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 17 of 59
Beehler: Yes. We have Lives International provides liability insurance, plus we have
purchased additional insurance due to the sale of beer on site, so we have two different
insurances and every year we have been out the city has received copies of their
certificates.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. Doug, you have been aware of the -- you heard the
presentation earlier and you have been aware that we are looking at the dog park out
there. That might change some of the access points if that moves forward, this moves
forward. Can you make that work for your facility down the road?
Beehler: Yeah. Right now what we have is a one time a year use permission from the
neighbors. I mentioned Mrs. Anderson that owned that section of land between
McDermott and the city property. And so we -- we have been working every year
helping build up that road and they allow us to use that for our contestant entrance with
the big trucks and trailers. Any other use we have out there we don't intend on using
that entrance and they do not want us to use that entrance. If a dog park opens as
planned and we need that entrance, then, we will have to work with the dog park and
work on another entrance probably off of Cherry Lane, which I think long term we would
have to do anyway and I think it's great that the city's able to loan money to the dog
park so that we could develop one of those, so we will be able to work together with that
as well.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: What does the funds that you raise off of this rodeo support in the Lion's Club
now?
Beehler: Well, all the funds go back to the community, so we don't have a big bank
account, obviously, but we -- everything we raise goes back into the community in the
form of sight and hearing, diabetes awareness, drug awareness and so we support the
Idaho blood bank, which is in Boise, as well as international type of things, but
everything we make goes back to the community.
Bird: Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
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April 13, 2010
Page 18 of 59
Rountree: Do we need a motion? I would move that we approve and authorize the
Mayor to sign the application to the county for a Conditional Use Permit for the Meridian
Rodeo.
Zaremba: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you,
please, call roll
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Thank you, Doug.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: I hate to bring this up, but I would be negligent if I didn't. This is reminiscent
of -- of things that happened a number of years ago. It was before the Mayor's time, it's
before Mr. Nary's time and it's before Mr. Bird's time. We owned a couple parcels
outside of the city limits and every time we went to make a major improvement on those
parcels we had to go through this process with the county and pay all the county fees.
One of those facilities was our wastewater treatment facility. I, through a number of
years of encouragement, finally got the city legal staff and planning to move forward
with the zoning -- annexing those properties into the City of Meridian, even though they
were not touching and we have no annexation path, utilizing the language in the state
statute that says contiguous properties and by Webster contiguous does not mean
touching, it's means adjacent to, but not necessarily touching. We did annex those
properties into the City of Meridian before there were annexation paths. There was not
a comment raised by anybody at the city, at the neighbors, or the county. That saved
the city thousands of dollars in application fees and building permit fees, et cetera, et
cetera, that we had paid for years every time we made an expansion to our treatment
facility. I would suggest that we look at doing that with this outlier as well and see if we
can't do that, so Meridian rodeo does not have to go through this hoopla again and if the
dog park becomes areality -- or maybe even the park becomes a reality before we have
an annexation path, we can make it part of our city. And Ihope -- I'm not asking for
discussion, I'm just bringing up that for history and let's move on with the agenda,
because I don't want to be here until midnight.
De Weerd: Well, I see Mr. Nary copiously taking notes on looking into that. Steve?
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 19 of 59
Siddoway: Madam Mayor, my final comment would be that as we go through the
county's process that any required improvements that come from the county would be
the responsibility of the Lion's Club as the applicant. We will work together with them,
with the county to try and get that down to, basically, be what's out there now, but if
there does come up issues with the county engineer, others requiring paving, that may
or may not coincide with the long term plans, we don't know, as you pointed out in the
last presentation, then, we will have to talk about those separately. But tonight's action
will at least get it in front of the county and allow us to have those discussions.
Rountree: Yeah.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Siddoway: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Doug.
Rountree: And, Bill, if I'm wrong you can send me an a-mail.
Nary: We will look at it, Councilman Rountree.
C. Planning Department: Transit Priorities -Discussion on
Transit-Related Priorities and What the Vision for Public
Transportation in Meridian Looks Like
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Item 5-C is our Planning Department. Transit priorities.
Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Mary Barker is here again
this evening to talk transit with the Council. She came to the transportation task force a
couple weeks ago and presented I think a lot of the same information you're going to
see tonight on some of the communities in the west and what they provide for
transportation and she also has a brief survey that she would like to have you partake of
real quick and we will discuss. So, with that I will turn it over to Mary Barker.
Barker: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council Members. I took Caleb's word to heart that
this was a working session, so I'm going to put you to work a little bit and before I bias
your answers, what I'm passing out is a quick little prioritization questionnaire. There
are three quick questions. These questions will help me work with Caleb and the
transportation committee in furthering the planning process. On question one, if you
just read it quickly, and prioritize those things one through five and answer these as if
you feel your Meridian constituents would answer them, not as you would as an
individual citizen would answer them. What do you think folks in your community think
is most important. Question two, again, if you would rank one and, then, two. And,
then, question three answer as an individual and just pick the one that most -- most is
applicable to you. I do have other copies if other people would like to participate and --
Council Member Zaremba, I do have your answers from last week, so --
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 20 of 59
Zaremba: I changed them. I cheated last time. I changed them this time.
Rountree: I created a new category.
Barker: Oh, you have. Council Member Rountree is going further than you did.
Zaremba: Uh-huh.
Barker: You just answered multiple ones the same number. And I will collect them at
the end. You can hang onto them while we have our discussion. Everybody get a
chance to get pretty much through? The reason that I asked these questions is that as
we begin to look at transit options for Meridian, it's important, one, to realize that we
can't all at once put the ideal system in place. We have to start with a smaller system
that can be added onto and built onto over time and so the -- the problem that we can
run into when we start small and build big is when we start small and try and do
everything at once, because, then, what you do, typically, not successful, it's going to try
and meet all your goals, chances are you're going to fail in all of them, as opposed to
find one or two of the main priorities and start designing that and, then, design a system
that you can build onto to address those other priorities. So, that's why it helps me to
know from your perspective whether moving people around within the City of Meridian is
more important than moving people from Meridian to outlying other cities or to move
people from other cities into Meridian. And that's kind of the design of that first
question. Moving people around within Meridian benefits your residents. Moving
people from your community to other communities helps your residents, but it's typically
a different population. It's a workforce population that's going someplace to work and
back. Moving people from outside Meridian into Meridian is more business oriented.
It's bringing people to work within Meridian. It's bringing people to shop and eat within
your city. And so those are kinds of goals and objectives that if I can get some direction
from you and from the transportation committee, it better helps me figure out which
piece of the puzzle goes first. And it doesn't mean that you don't have to put the whole
puzzle together eventually, but you got to put one piece on the table to start with and,
then, build around that. So, just as a quick feedback, which was most important to you
in terms of how to move people?
Zaremba: I still have Meridian -- within Meridian as number one. I changed the other
ones from --
Barker: Yes.
Rountree: I have move Meridian folks to Boise.
De Weerd: That was mine, too.
Bird: That was mine.
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 21 of 59
Barker: That was yours, too? How about --
Rountree: Mary, I guess this one comment. I could -- I'm at that spot on this that it
seems to me that the last two scenarios on this are somewhat the same as that,
because if it's moving from another community to Meridian, you still have to move back
to the other community. So, to give some of both, depending on which emphasis --
Barker: You do get some of both. It gets kind of to the nuances of timing, am I working
or getting people from Meridian to Nampa in time for work or am I working on getting
people from Nampa to Meridian in time for work. So, it's not -- that question doesn't so
much impact where the bus runs, but timing of buses, so that we know, you know, what
the -- what the timing objectives are. But, you're right, it's a nuance that -- that can -- it
isn't mutually exclusive in terms of benefit.
De Weerd: Well, my second one was to move Nampa and Caldwell residents to
Meridian and back and I know I get a lot of requests from employers when I go out on
relationship building that says they would really like to see a transit that would be
something their employees would be willing to participate in.
Barker: And Ithink -- I think from the perspective of building business, you hit right on it,
because when you look at housing affordability, the housing afford abilities are from
Meridian further west, as opposed to Meridian further east. So, if the objective is to
build business within the city, that's the direction you want to -- you want to target.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. That was a hard one. I gave that a lot of thought. I ended up
flipping bus routes designed to move Meridian residents around as number two and,
then, number three Nampa and Caldwell to Meridian. Yeah. I mean we are building an
infrastructure of good employers in this community, which is a good thing, and so there
is that need to move people from outlying areas of the jurisdiction in, but at the same
time, you know, a lot of people live and work and play and with their dogs in Meridian,
you know, so that's -- that's a tough one to balance. That's not a -- there is not an easy
or right -- immediately right answer on that one.
Barker: And there isn't. And -- and it doesn't mean that we can't build a couple of
different scenarios to look at, but it helps me to kind of know what to emphasize and to
deemphasize. Number two kind of gets at the same question from a different direction.
Is service during the middle of the day, moving people around during the middle of the
day, more important or those peak commute times.
De Weerd: Peak commute times.
Rountree: Commute times.
Hoaglun: Peak.
De Weerd: Air quality.
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 22 of 59
Barker: Air quality is a huge issue. The other thing is if you want to build a system
that's going to have higher ridership to demonstrate success sooner, those peak times
will -- will achieve that for you faster than the mid day. Mid day tends to be more your
transit dependent riders, which are an important market to serve, but it's a very different
market than -- than your peak riders and they tend to be -- you tend not to get as many
riders during those middle of the day service hours as you do during the peak hours. I
think the interesting thing with this timing on -- on going through this process was two
fold. One, we are looking not at how to build a transit system in Meridian in the next two
months, we are looking at what does the transit system in Meridian need to look like five
years from now, ten years from now, and how do we build back to get there. The other
thing that this dovetails with is we are in the process right now of doing a -- a media side
service change in the city of Boise, mostly to -- to observe some efficiencies and to take
some funding away from routes that aren't being very heavily used and put more
funding into routes that are -- that are overcrowded. We are going to be starting that
process in the next couple of weeks with the Canyon county cities. There are a couple
of reasons, primarily budget -- budget reasons and census. reasons. After the data from
the next census is completed, which always takes the federal government awhile to get
there, but the Nampa urbanized area will -- will shift from -- from a small urbanized area
to an urbanized area. We are -- COMPASS is pretty sure that that's going to happen.
Which means that the Nampa-Caldwell system right now can use federal money to -- to
supplement its operating cost. It's 50-50. Fifty percent comes from local, fifty percent
comes from federal. Once Nampa-Caldwell moves to an urbanized area we can't use
federal money for operating costs for a Nampa and Caldwell system anymore, so we
are starting to look at that. We are also in the process of hiring a new contractor to
operate that system, their five year contract for the vendor that's doing it right now is --
is running up. We anticipate that that cost is going to go up. Fuel cost has gone up.
Other costs have gone up since that contract that we have in place now was put in
place five years ago. So, we are starting to have those conversations with Nampa and
Caldwell, Middleton, Star, in terms of what their service might look like given these
different funding scenarios that are going to be coming down the pike for them over the
next two to three years and so this dovetails right into that, because, as you say, Mayor,
you are right in the middle. Technically you're in Ada County, but region-wise you're as
connected to Canyon county as you are to the city of Boise and so what happens in
both of those communities and both of those discussions impacts Meridian, as well as
what your discussions do will impact what happens in those communities. I'm going to
be going to the Meridian -- or the -- the Nampa city council and the Caldwell city
councils and having these same discussions with them, pull all that information together
and we will come back and discuss that. But this -- even just this amount of feedback
helps me to take to the next step of what is -- what is the minimum transit service in
Meridian start to look like and the next thing we need to do is take a look at that and,
then, kind of talk about what the planning horizon looks like. You know, are we looking
at a system ten years from now, are we looking at a system five years from now, are we
looking at a system two years from now and I know that budget costs will impact that --
that timeline, but that's something that I need you guys to start thinking about and the
transportation committee to start thinking about is how far out in this time frame are we
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 23 of 59
looking at wanting to -- to plan a system and if it's -- if it's 15 years out, then, it's 15
years out, but that doesn't mean we don't start having those discussions and planning
and finding those budget line items. So, that's -- that's some guidance that we are
going to need, maybe not today, but in the fairly near future, is what kind of time frame
would -- would we be looking at. The other thing that -- that I presented to the
transportation committee -- and part of this we presented and part of it they asked me to
put together afterwards and I always hesitate to pass out two-sided things, because
people peek at the second page before we get there.
De Weerd: Thanks for the idea.
Barker: Yeah. I shouldn't have even told you it was back there; right? The first side
looks at other cities around the west that are similar size as Meridian and just kind of
gives us a snapshot of how much service they have. This -- the particular -- the top
chart we found from Carson City when they were doing a similar kind of analysis. So,
didn't pull these numbers together. I, actually, just pulled it right out of a report that they
did from -- for their -- for their city in terms of looking at how they are doing compared to
other cities of a similar size and we looked a similar size by population, not so much by
service area, and that may vary widely.
Hoaglun: Can you explain Fairbanks on the service area?
Barker: Yes. Because they are out in the middle of nowhere. So, you can know that
most of those buses are not running around Fairbanks, they are taken from Fairbanks to
the nearest town, but it happens to be a heck of a long way away.
Hoaglun: Okay. That's fine.
Barker: Yeah.
De Weerd: Well -- and also to make sure you're comparing apples to apples is are
there in a TMA area? They are?
Barker: I don't think Fairbanks is, but some of the California cities that are on this list,
yes. And, then, what I did is the trunk that Carson City pulled together does not have
ridership numbers, so went out to a database that I have access to and for those cities
that do report their ridership numbers to this national database, I tracked those down
and that's the bottom chart in terms of what- their avenue monthly ridership is on these
systems and I put Nampa-Caldwell on there as well. Nampa-Caldwell has about 14
buses in service at peak and that's kind of compared to that number on the right-hand
side.
Bird: Where is Idaho Falls, Montana?
Barker: I'm not positive. I'd have to look that up on a map.
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Bird: I've never heard of it before.
Rountree: It's Idaho Falls, Idaho, I'm sure.
Barker: There may have been a typo on their part. It may be what I put in.
Rountree: You made a mistake.
Barker: I did make a mistake. That's probably not the first one I have ever made.
Bird: I can't believe that anybody would want to have another Idaho Falls.
Barker: No. The interesting thing about Idaho Falls is they have federal money that
they can't match, so they leave money sitting on the table and run less service than the
federal money would allow them to, because they don't have enough local money to
match it.
Bird: Who runs the buses to INEL?
Barker: They do. INEL does.
Bird: They run their own buses. Yeah.
Barker: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Bird: Because I think they come out of Pokey and go all the way.
Barker: Yes. Yes. And they run their own. So, this just gives you a snapshot of what
the other cities are doing and kind of how much -- how much they are doing is a fairly
basic system. All right. Now you can flip it over. The transportation committee asked
me to put together some budget big picture, so what the top chart is is in our region the
population -- the amount of money that these different jurisdictions give to VRT and,
then, basically, it's just how much that is per their population. Now, things to bear in
mind are that Nampa and Caldwell, their service is operated 50 percent federal and 50
percent local. The city of Boise their system is operated a hundred percent of their
operation is local money. So, it's kind of a different level.
Bird: Like on 340, Caldwell actually only puts 170 in, where -- and, then, they federal
match it to the other-170?
Barker: No.
Bird: That's what Caldwell puts in is --
Barker: The cost to actually operate the system for Caldwell is twice what they are
paying. So, this is what Caldwell is actually putting in is 105,554 --
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Bird: Or Nampa --
Barker: Or in Nampa it's 281,660.
Bird: $3.40 cents per --
Barker: Per resident.
Bird: And double that is what --
Barker: Is what it actually costs to operate it.
Bird: Okay.
Barker: Right. And so the numbers down the road, we just looked at what it might be to
operate a system that had three hours of service going at a time. So, it would be -- I'll
call it three bus routes, but for a city like Meridian what we would probably look at is
what we call a flex service, which is a bus circulates through a neighborhood, but can
vary off it's route to pick people up. If we were just doing service within the City of
Meridian -- obviously, if we are only doing service in and out of Boise it wouldn't be that
way. But I'll call it -- I'll call it a route. But the difference in these costs are that the top
cost Nampa and Caldwell are at 50 percent local, 50 percent federal. The bottom costs
are at a hundred percent local. Because you guys are in Ada County, which is an
urbanized area, right now some of the service that we run through you we actually run --
we start it in Nampa and run it through Meridian, so we are able to run it at the Canyon
county rates, but that is going to change when Canyon county bumps up to being an
urbanized area themselves. So, we could make the numbers look a whole lot better if
we used the current Canyon county numbers, but they are not going to be realistic in
the next year to two years, so -- so, this is really rough. You know, it's buying three
buses when you really do need to have a spare. There are other kinds of things that
when we get down to the details that will fluctuate one way or the other, but Council
Member Zaremba had particularly asked that -- I did come up with something to say,
okay, here is a ballpark and how -- you know, what does this look like to the City of
Meridian in terms of is this ballpark doable in the next five years, ten years, is it -- is it
not doable. It just kind of helps in the planning process. When we get all done with it, if
the number comes out to be exactly that, then, I'm going to ask my boss for a raise. But
that just is a ballpark of what -- what it would look like and this would be three -- three
buses operating at an hourly schedule, either in and out of Meridian or around Meridian
would be pretty minimal. If you look at those comparable cities, seven is about the
minimum that they have out at the road in their -- at their peak time. That doesn't mean
that they are out all day, all seven of them, but at their peak time there is seven.
Hoaglun: And, Mayor, real quick. Can you give me a perspective on what a ballpark of
cost to that rider in Meridian, whether it's going to Boise or within Meridian. What are
they looking at for a fare?
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Barker: Right now our fares are a dollar each way for what we call our local service
and, then, our inter-country service is two dollars each way. And the fares are -- are
interesting to try and figure out where to balance them in terms of if you raise them too
much, then, you just lose ridership and you end up getting less out of it. We have
raised the fares in Canyon county about a year and a half ago to match Ada County and
we anticipated a shift in ridership and we actually saw an increase in ridership. But at
the time the gas price was going up and some other economic factors and the bus stops
coming in and so we didn't experience that dip that you typically expect when you raise
fares. But fares -- by the time this service would be in place fares will be higher than
they are now. How much higher I'm not -- I'm not sure. That's one of the discussions
we are going to have to have when we look at what Canyon county is going to do and
it's actually a regional discussion, because our goal is to keep the fares at least for local
service. the same all the way across the region, because it's just a whole lot easier
customer service wise to explain to somebody that you're taking a local trip, no matter
where it is it's X amount of money. So, that's -- that's a discussion that we are going to
have to have in the next -- in the next six months is what we do with fares.
Hood: Maybe just two quick points. One, for the fare box, on average nationally it
seems like about ten percent of your fare box covers the operating costs, so you have
to factor that in and if the rider -- if you're looking at user fees, the user only pays about
ten percent of that service being provided, the rest is subsidized. And, then, capitol
costs you have on here, capital is a little bit different than operating. Mary talked about
50-50 operating. Particularly recently VRT has had a pretty good loss with some of the
stimulus and stuff by purchasing buses. There are still some pretty good opportunities
at the federal level to get 80 percent or 92 or 93 percent of your capital costs covered by
federal grants and things. So, this is primarily -- at least right now in the state of Idaho
under our current system local governments are responsible for funding essentially
service or operating, but capital costs are still --
Barker: And the capital costs of the vehicles does -- does -- that's just the local cost and
that's at 20 percent. It's actually 17.8, because if can have your list on your vehicles
and, then, you get more of it paid by the federal government. But, you're right, Caleb,
and no matter what happens to the population of Canyon county, that 80-20 split for
capital will remain the same. And every once in awhile, like with the stimulus funding,
the opportunity for a hundred percent capital from the federal government does come
up and we jump on that whenever we can.
Zaremba: Operating cost, is that bus and driver or does that include maintenance
and --
Barker: It includes maintenance, it includes fuel, the driver --
De Weerd: It depends on what kind of funding Boise uses. Do they have -- can you
use Community Development Block Grants for transit? Or is it always housing -- what
kind of dollars are they using?
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Zaremba: I think it's just straight general fund.
De Weerd: Is it?
Zaremba: I'm not absolutely certain, but I'm pretty sure.
Rountree: General fund and a little bit of fare funds. So, half a million, a little more.
De Weerd: Any other questions? Council, we have an agenda ahead of us, so --
Zaremba: Well, I appreciate the work that you have put into this, I know I get calls from
citizens asking where is the bus and I get a-mails and I think the Mayor probably does,
too. I don't know if the other people do. But I think it's helpful to have a ballpark
estimate of the cost and since it didn't turn out to be ten million dollars, I'd like to see the
discussion continue. It would have been ten million dollars, I'd probably joke and say
we are done. But I think it's an important service that our citizens are asking for and the
ability to both improve the air quality and to save people time, to save wear and tear on
our highways, that a transit system involves and to get our citizens around is something
I'd like to continue to explore. So, I guess what I and Mary are looking for is should she
keep working on this or is it a dead issue.
Hood: And let me add that if the answer to that is, yeah, keep exploring, you know, it's
not dead in the water, the transportation task force will see this over with VRT and the
subcommittee -- that has a subcommittee that will continually report any progress or
road blocks that we incur. We have talked about things, you know, we are kind of
getting to the point we have other things on the agenda, but we have talked about
maybe partnership with the school district on buses. We have talked about business
partnerships. Is there somebody that can sponsor a bus or subsidize a certain bus that
works at a call center that has odd hours or things like that. So, we are kind of thinking
outside the box. You know, it may not be ten million dollars, but 800,000 dollars is a
pretty big number to swallow. So, if there is some other way that we can come up with
making that less and less of an impact to the overall budget -- depends on where the
money would come from. But we are exploring those options. Again, we just see if it's
something that's feasible to do. Maybe not this fiscal year or maybe not next fiscal year,
but whatever, the Council will choose to explore that, so --
Zaremba: My personal opinion is I'm sure it's not available for fiscal. year'11, but I'd like
to see the discussions be serious for fiscal year'12.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further?
Zaremba: Am I the only one expressing an opinion?
Rountree: No. I would say that we continue on and I have talked about something
similar with Kelly in terms of what do we get for -- for this and this is a good start and we
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need that to be able to answer questions. We need to have to make a final stab at do
we do something or do we not and I think it's good to have some of this in place. I don't
know what the next transportation will be, nobody does, since it's really not being talked
about. We are in the state position pretty well, at least on the finance committee, and in
both the house and the senate to maybe give some special treatment and I think we
need to keep this on the burner, but I don't see us doing anything in the next couple of --
at least the next fiscal year.
Hoaglun: And my comments are -- are similar. I don't know if we will get something
done. It will probably be later as opposed to sooner, but we need to keep pushing on
this and keep it in front of us, so we can advance it. If we put it off to the side and forget
about it and there is -- people bring other priorities and this is -- I think it's a needed
priority.
Bird: Fine with me.
D. Planning Department: Transportation Overview -Presentation
by City Staff on Recent Involvement with Various Studies,
Construction Projects, Working Groups and Committees, and
Interim Intersections
De Weerd: Okay. Okay. Caleb.
Hood: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the next item on your agenda is my all
things transportation update and realizing that we are only halfway through the agenda,
will try to be brief. Although I do have a couple things that I need some direction on,
so it may make this a little bit longer. The first one is in the memo that you should have
all received regarding this item, the other meeting that the Transportation Task Force
has had in recent weeks, we discussed interim intersections and some of the discussion
last year they were putting together a priority list to ACHD saying here are the high
priorities we asked them to look at in their five year work plan, maybe putting some
interim improvements in, similar to what's out today at Ustick and Meridian. The
Transportation Task Force has a list of four top candidates that they would like the
Mayor to send a letter over to the director over there to have them -- before you vet
those intersections through the process and say, hey, are they good candidates or are
they not good candidates for interim improvements. Those four intersections are
Overland-Linder, Eagle-Amity, Locust Grove-Victory and Ten Mile-Victory. All of those
intersections are south of the interstate. There are some parameters for ACHD when
considering to do interim improvements and real quick I'm just going to give you some
of those parameters. They need to have the right of way, so they have to purchase
additional property to make the intersection happen. Utility conflicts must be minimal or
none. So, if Idaho Power has two power poles, probably a deal breaker or if there is a
huge drainage issue or water route, they are probably a deal breaker. Left turn lanes,
they need to be able to build in left turn lanes or else it's not going to really do an
efficient -- function any different than a stop controlled intersection. The project should
not already be in the five year work plan, so they don't want to build an interim
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intersection and, then, two years later build the real deal, they want to get a pretty good
life span out of this thing, even though it's interim. And, finally, the warrants need to be
met, so it needs to be a fairly congested intersection. So, the four intersections that I
mentioned, real quick I want to give you just a snap shot in time of where they lie today
to ACHD.
Zaremba: I think the one other piece is that this is not removing anything that is pretty
certain to be happening, like Ten Mile and Ustick or -- I mean there is some important
intersections that are already on their list.
Hood: Right.
Zaremba: We are trying to add these, not replace those.
Hood: Right. And so these ones are projects that are out in the horizon at ACRD that
we believe there is already a problem there. I mean they are already congested
intersections, maybe not top 25, and so not in a plan to reconstruct, but if they have
extra signal hardware laying around, maybe they can spend some money on those.
Just to give you a ballpark, in 2006 when ACHD put in seven interim sections and,
again, Ustick-Meridian was one of those, they spent about 112,000 dollars on that. So,
you know, they are looking to get about seven or eight years out of that intersection, so
certainly we are talking about air quality, certainly helps the air quality when we don't
back people up a half mile or more at a stop controlled intersection. But, again, real
quickly, so Amity-Eagle Road is shown in the CIP and for construction in 2019 to 2027.
So, ten to 30 years out -- or ten to 20 years out. Excuse me. Overland-Linder is in the
CIP for construction in the year 2009 to 2013. So, that would be in the current cycle.
However, it does not show up in a five year work program, so it's not currently
programmed. The Victory-Ten Mile intersection is shown for programming in 2014 to
2018. So, that one, in theory, would be moving into a five year work program in the few
years, but it still meets the other criteria listed. And, then, finally, Victory-Locust Grove
is not in the five year work program or even in the CIP. So, it's not even listed in the 20
year horizon plan for improvement. So, that one is way out. So, that gives you a little
bit of an idea of where those intersections stand today. Again, we are -- the
Transportation Task Force asked me to come and present this list of potential
intersection improvements to you all and ask that you authorize the Mayor to send a
letter, which I would compose, asking that they evaluate these four intersections or
others if you have them, for potential interim improvements.
Hoaglun: And, Caleb, just a comment that they are looking at the intersections based
on -- on today. I mean when that Ten Mile interchange goes in, the impact to Overland-
Linderand Ten Mile-Victory will even be more significant. You know, we are still --
Hood: And that's, again, taking from a context from when we had the discussion about
our priorities that, hey, there are intersections on Black Cat that aren't on anybody's
radar right now, but you have got an interchange going in and all that draw when traffic
starts to flow out there, so, yeah, that's one of the reasons we are bringing this now is,
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hopefully, they can do something with it in the next 12 or 16 months to correspond with
these.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I would -- I would recommend that we get a letter drafted up and -- for you to sign
and send it to ACHD with these four intersections.
Hoaglun: If that was a motion I will second it.
Bird: That was a motion.
Hoaglun: Okay.
De Weerd: Any discussion on that?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor, I just would be very careful that it's worded in such a way that
we are not removing anything that's currently on the list.
Bird: This is add.
Zaremba: Yes.
Bird: I made a motion to add.
Zaremba: Yeah. I'm just saying the wording on the letter needs to not leave any doubt
about that.
De Weerd: Okay. You know --
Rountree: What we have is a priority list and this would be extra.
Hood: And we could word it where if there is cost savings -- cost savings from other
projects, if they can move these into the -- into the hopper -- we are not giving up other
projects to make these happen.
De Weerd: Okay. All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Hood: Thank you. So, moving on, in the memo as my guide, the Eagle Road
resurfacing, the medians and we talked about that here a couple months ago. That
project -- the first phase, anyway, I-84 to Fairview, is expected again next month and
take about two to three months to complete. So, keep an eye out for that or if you get
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calls on that, that's what's happening, if you all recall, as part of the resurfacing project
that IT is going to be putting in the center medians on Eagle Road, at least on the first
mile and three quarters up to Fairview from the interstate.
Rountree: Caleb, did we ever get anything, from ITD -- at one point in time it was just
going to be a curb and, then, there was something -- maybe they would have a raised
median all the way across. Do we know what --
Hood: That's -- I haven't seen the -- I'll see what I can get and Iwill --
Rountree: Okay.
Hood: But, no, I haven't seen anything since shortly after our last discussion.
Rountree: We talked if they had a little extra money to do a little more, so --
Hood: The other one that may take a little bit more time and I need a little bit more
direction on is Three Cities River Crossing project.
De Weerd: I don't know if that takes time
saying we support a no build.
In my opinion we should just write a letter
Bird: Amen.
Hood: That makes my staff report very easy, if that's what you all want to do.
Rountree: Yeah.
De Weerd: Yeah. Just thought I'd save you some time there.
Hood: Thank you. I just don't know what you all have heard and what you haven't,
so --
Rountree: We could suggest that that be paid for by private developers. They are
going to need access to that for their property.
Bird: Or Eagle in Boise out of their general funds.
Hood: Okay. Moving on, then. Eagle Road and Victory Road, Ridenbaugh Canal. The
project is expected to start construction as early as May 3rd. The entire project is
expected to take about a year to complete and this topic is one of the headline topics, if
you will, for the town hall meeting, so --
De Weerd: For the town hall. Which I think it will be second to garbage. It will.
Hood: So, that project is moving forward and I'll correspond within a couple weeks.
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Bird: They have let the contract already on that, haven't they?
De Weerd: Yes, I think so.
Bird: I think so.
Hood: If they are going to start May 3rd, then --
Bird: If they start May 3rd I'm sure they have.
Hood: I don't know who the low bid was or who it was awarded to, though. Chinden-
Linder is not on either memo, but that was a recent development this last meeting. I did
receive a memo from ACHD that was presented to their commissioners. I don't know
how many of you have been in the loop on this project. Stop me if you have all heard
this before and I won't go into this background information either, but ACHD commission
in '08 and '09 directed their staff to work with a developer on proposing a cooperative
development agreement for improvements at the Chinden-Linder intersection in
conjunction with that Fred Meyer development that's proposed on the northeast corner.
That intersection would be improved to a seven-by-seven intersection. It would widen
Linder back towards Cayuse, so it will improve the whole mile between McMillan and up
to Chinden. So, the commission had already given the thumbs up to ACHD staff to go
ahead and work with that developer on this potential project. What's changed is the
developer asked for a little additional money from ACHD. They are -- the developer is
proposing to up front all the design and construction costs, with ACHD purchasing the
right of way required in FY-11 and, then, the developer will be credited two million
dollars in impact fee credits as their building permits come on line they would be
reimbursed. So, there will be about 1.2 million dollars out of pocket to ACHD in FY-11,
'12 and '13, so about 400,000 dollars per year that ACHD would be required to put
towards this project and, again, the two million dollars would be credited back, so,
essentially, losing that, but, you know, from the cost of the project. And it will be
constructed through the summer fall of 2011 and the ACHD commission did give their
staff and this developer the thumbs up to continue on with that bump in funding -- before
it was about 330,000 -- 316,666 per year and they bumped that up to 400,000 dollars a
year, so --
De Weerd: Well, as long as that money doesn't come from a Meridian project. They
can take it from Eagle, but, you know, I -- what I don't want to hear is they say, well,
you're getting this intersection improvement and, then, we lose a project because of it.
Hood: Madam Mayor, what I can share with you -- it won't be project specific, but we do
share the service area -- an impactive service area with Eagle and it would come out of
that northwest area -- and I realize this scale is small, but this is Eagle Road and, then,
the interstate. So, every project that's impact fee eligible gets paid from impact fees that
are collected in this area. So, that reimbursement -- the two million dollar
reimbursement, even the right of way costs, will come from impact fees collected in this
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area, so -- but will delay construction of the project, because they only have so much
money, essentially, in reserve or coming in through impact fees to pay for it, so --
Bird: But our three corners of that out of the four corners -- if the Fred Meyers project is
going to get repaid in impact fees, so should our three corners get -- if they are taking
any money out of them, then, they should get paid back.
De Weerd: And in particular because that one corner has refused to make a four corner
plan with the other property owners, you know, and we are very much opposed to the
access that they have received short of having a plan for those four corners. I'm
speaking for myself.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
Rountree: I have said that before --
De Weerd: Okay.
Zaremba: I don't remember where I heard this, but haven't -- hasn't that northeast
corner approached us about being annexed into Meridian instead of Eagle? I have
heard discussion somewhere. I don't remember where I heard it, but --
De Weerd: Originally.
Zaremba: -- could we solve the problem by having all four corners be in Meridian?
De Weerd: Well, I think that the developer of that immediate corner has already gotten
permission from ITD to have afourth -- a quarter mile access, which --
Bird: I thought it was an eighth. I thought he had an eighth. Right-in, right-out, isn't it?
De Weerd: It is. It is. Even closer to the corner than a fourth.
Hood: I don't know if that's been fully through all of the appeals and -- I haven't kept up
with that. I would doubt, though, that that's been put to bed and a final decision
rendered on that yet, though: But, you're right, I mean there were -- that's what the --
there was a lawsuit filed, but I don't know where that's landed.
De Weerd: Maybe we also need to send a letter to ITD again stressing before any
access short of the half mile, a four corner comprehensive access plan should be
created.
Bird: I think the developer threatened Eagle that he was going to come to Meridian, but
don't think --
De Weerd: He did.
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Bird: -- it is contiguous -- I don't think Wilson went along with him. Maybe Wilson is --
Hoaglun: Depends on your definition of contiguous.
Hood: Okay. Thank you. And, then, the final thing I have is updates from COMPASS,
ACHD, and ITD and I saw you all got that. I didn't know if you had any questions. That
was from last Friday. But if there aren't any questions or comments on -- on that
information. You also have a status report in that memo of where our projects are.
Generally things are progressing essentially as planned, but that concludes what I had
for you tonight, unless there is any questions or comments.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Rountree: Question for the Mayor. I heard -- and I don't know if it's true -- Meridian
interchange is not in the STIP and it was at one point in time. It had to have been in the
STIP in order for it to be submitted for TIGER funds. What happened?
De Weerd: I don't think it was ever in the STIP to get TIGER funds.
Rountree: So, we couldn't use TIGER funds --
De Weerd: Yeah.
Hood: Councilman Rountree, I think they were going to amend the STIP if they
received the TIGER funds. I think it would have been something -- oh, we got these
funds, we need to put it in the STIP so we can spend them.
Bird: I understood, Mayor -- and you correct me if I'm wrong -- but I understood if they
had some money left over from the five year funds, that they could use it, Charlie, but
that was never approved for TIGER funds.
Rountree: No.
De Weerd: No, you're --
Rountree: It's not --
De Weerd: That's GARVEE.
Bird: GARVEE I mean.
De Weerd: It was in the GARVEE plan.
Rountree: Yes, it was.
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De Weerd: And they on the record removed it. So, to say it was never on the plan is
just wrong.
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: I had another word for that, but -- but, yes, we still are trying to gain
approval, at least policy-wise, that if there are GARVEE savings, that GARVEE savings
can and should be used on the Meridian interchange. And, unfortunately, we thought it
was going to be on the board meeting next week, but it's not, and so they think it will be
in June when the board is in Boise. If not, then, in September after they have had
something -- I don't know what they were waiting for to determine that.
Rountree: It's kind of a tough argument to make, though, if a project doesn't have
enough priority to be included in the TIP and the STIP.
De Weerd: I just think that COMPASS would need to push, but it needs to be in the
STIP.
Hood: It doesn't add a whole bunch of value to the overall interchange rebuild not being
in the STIP, but there is -- I think it's 1.3 million dollars and the resurfacing project for'12
or '13 and that's coming up. They are going to throw more money at the current
structure if something doesn't change here pretty quick, so --
De Weerd: It's on staff comments, if you will remember to note that.
Bird: Well, I'll tell you what, our interchange -- Meridian overpass interchange needed
more work than Garrity. Garrity has just been done about four years ago and because
they didn't plan ahead isn't our fault. Now they are throwing more money at Garrity and
for half the money that they are throwing at Garrity we could redo ours.
F. Finance Department: Finance Update
De Weerd: Okay. Moving. Thank you, Caleb. Item 5-E is being put towards the end
and -- right? And so we are up to Stacy. Stacy, if you will just sit in front of -- you can
still do a PowerPoint.
Kilchenmann: No. It would be so far away. Okay. Well, I kind of did an analogy --
Ron, don't laugh, you're interrupting me. This has been -- we kind of make the analogy
that -- to start the presentation to tell you that I'm going to go through it quickly, that
nobody really wants to hear about finance, unless something breaks, and, then, we
become interesting. And since the City of Meridian so far is not financially broke and we
are not I know terribly interesting, so just kind of the slides of our vision that we talked
about yesterday. Now, these would be bullets that would fly across the screen. Use
your imagination. But public accountability and transparency. Information decision
making. sophisticated planning to use our scarce resources. Complex accounting
structure. Regulatory for requirements and city government growth are kind of what our
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-- our vision is as a department. As you know our professional finance and account
staff has grown. We now have myself, a controller, accounting manager, account and
purchasing manager, and a billing manager. And our technical staff consists of a
payroll administrator, the single most important person in the city. An account specialist
who does accounts payable. A buyer. Two billing administrators. And, then, the four
billing accounting clerks. So, just to go kind revamp what our major projects were that
we accomplished last year and what we did with the enhancements received. As you
know, we received the accounting position in 2010 and we let no grass grow under our
feet and we hired her in November 2009. So, some of the things that we have been
able to accomplish are we have segregated some duties for additional control. One --
back to that payroll clerk, an important thing that we are doing is cross-training her in
payroll. We realize we don't really have anybody that can do payroll, it's gotten fairly
complex and it would be a sad day if Barb got hit by a bus in more ways that one. So,
Jenny will start that and she will -- we figure it will take about four months and, then, we
will always have this position for payroll backup. She also -- the general ledger now --
the reconciliation, she's our grant financial manager and she is now in the process of
learning how the budget works and assisting Todd with that. We have a big project
that's not really visible, but it's taking quite a bit of time and it's a partnership with IT.
We are revamping our electronic time sheets where IT is -- this is an IT word, okay, and
I have some questions about that. There is a change in the platform, so that it's capable
of handling more data. Our payroll system is fairly complex, because we have so many
different ways that we calculate pay. So, this will allow expansion and changes and it's
also going to have a lot more information on employees and supervisors, so people --
well, supervisors can look at their vacation history and employees can look at their
vacation history, sick leave history, more information for employees on what different
deductions mean, because we just have the MIT fairly abbreviated version, so just more
bells and whistles to make it more informational and more friendly, hopefully, easier to
fill out. This is a big one. The General Fund capital improvement plan is almost done.
It is on the cutting edge. And this is unlike -- we have done CIP plans in the past, but
they haven't really been realistic, they have kind of been wish lists. This is what we
wish we'd like to do. And so we have really been working to come up with one that we
feel we can actually fund and put it through the five year -- what we really think we can
fund with a fund forecast and, then, we have gone out to ten year projects that will be
coming up, that we want to present to you and have you kind adopt it. Obviously, it's a
moving document, funding changes, things change, but we want to give you something
that we can all agree on. This is our five year -- this is where we think we want to go
and that capital improvement plan, obviously, will also drive a lot of our operating
expense. So, it's kind of going to put us out of in the future more than we have been.
We also want to do this with the Enterprise Fund, we will formalize their five year model,
put it down, look at what we are actually budgeting, and do that same kind of thing with
them and the financial transparency reports, I think you know about those, you have
probably seen them on our website. We have a lot of information out there and we
always wondered does anybody really look at and so we had Terry go in and he looked
at February and the page was actually viewed 145 times, not by the accounting
department or anybody in the city. So, the people are looking in it. And, then, our
Intranet site we feel is pretty sophisticated. I think it's the way people read reports now.
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We did an internal survey a few months ago and we asked people how they got their
reports and we learned that most employees do get their reports using the Intranet site.
So, it's got a lot of information, forms, payroll, et cetera. And, then, fund forecasting.
That's something we talk a lot about that we need to do financial planning and I think we
are finally getting there with the CIP plan, because we have finally -- we have got that
five year revenue forecast and same thing with the Enterprise Fund and the modeling
and the working up forecasting the fund balances. I think Todd has a report in there for
a year and we want to, of course, do that for five years. And, then, as I mentioned, we
did the financial reporting survey and implemented suggestions. And the things that we
are looking at that we are working on right now -- so, the FY-2010 audit, we have two
new GADBS. Fifty-one is valuation of intangible assets, which that will definitely be the
complicated one, because that's like water rights, easements, everything the city has we
need to identify, record, and value. So, that's going to be a big project. And the
GADBS 54 is establishment of fund balance designation. So, right now we just say CIP
or we say General Fund, unrestricted General Fund, and this is a requirement that we
go in and make designations for those funds. So, it's kind of similar to what we are
doing now, it's just alittle -- it's more formalized and there is more audit review of how
we came up with that designation. Why we put the money in the fund and, then, we
spend the money in the fund for what we said we would spend the money in the fund.
And, then, just kind of overall work on long range planning, keep working on financial
reporting tools. We like have a drill down to make our -- for example, make our
transparency site even more friendly and easier to use. And, then, always policy
updates, which are really exciting, but I'm going into them. On the purchasing side,
some of the things that Keith has done and has going on. He had an event called how
to do business with the city that he invited vendors to that was popular and he's going to
do that again in the spring, and, then, it will become an annual event. You all know
about the new purchasing policy very well, so that's accomplished and he's done
standard procedures that he's working on training the departments individually with. A
lot of those standards are in a form. This one we all knock on wood, no successful bid
protests. He has implemented case management that he uses to track all the
requisitions and so forth that come in. He's also working on certification of a public
purchasing officer and he is -- has a -- is an officer in the state purchasing -- it's our
public purchasing organization for state employees, so he gets a lot of feedback with
other cities and state, et cetera. And some of his future challenges are the grant
procurement projects are fairly complicated and in some cases require a higher level of
standard than we have, so he almost -- he is working on developing kind of the double
second policy with more stringent requirements for grants and I don't know if you knew
that we are having an audit coming up in the early part of May, a Graham audit. Then,
another -- this is an IT -- it's on IT's list, is to have a process so when we have a bid
open --opening we can just automatically zing it out to the vendors. So, all vendors can
sign up as of interest in this and we can automatically notify them. Okay. Utility billing.
You know, we have got an additional position in 2009 as an amendment and this -- this
position -- Perry went through, Perry completely reorganized the department, I think
they increased quality control, really reduced errors, but the Mayor's office will
remember all the billing errors we had when the bills went out wrong and we haven't
had any of that. We now have two billing administrators, so they are crossed trained, so
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one does one cycle and one does the other, so if somebody's on vacation or leaves, we
have that covered. We made some changes in customer service. Some things that
had just been done because they had been done forever, one of them was that you
really restrict with payment arrangements and now that -- as long you have kept the
current payment arrangement, you can make a new payment arrangement. We used to
have -- you know, we have talked about kind of always a problem with our system
setup, just bill those with the homeowner and now every increase in the number or
rental properties there is conflicts with. We used to not let -- the new renter had to pay
the total bill or whoever owned the house had to pay the total bill before we turned on
when someone new moved on and now -- in and now we just -- which is kind of unfair to
the renter, because the homeowner would only have to pay the delinquent amount. So,
now we are treating renters the same as we treat -- excuse me -- homeowners, just the
delinquent amount has to be paid. And this -- I didn't even realized, but if you start --
mean after hours service you only get one a year. I think the water department
originally instituted that and now we say, no, anybody who calls and pays can get the
unlimited after hours service. Probably one of the biggest and most successful changes
we have made is the pay by phone payment option. That has really been popular. And,
then, the Meridian Cares program -- I e-mailed you. We have upgraded that. We
increased the amount available and we are going to do more advertising to let people
know that it's out there. Some of the things that they are looking at in the future is --one
of them is real time turnoff and that's where we increase our communications so staff in
the field can be notified that somebody's in the office paying. I think that will eliminate --
that's another big area of customer service heartburn. We want to enhance our online
payment system and we are always kind of looking at the latest technology, making it
easier for people to use, working out the bugs, just making it more customer friendly.
And, then, our pay by phone system also has some bugs, like if you're -- or if you're on
a cell phone, you know, it doesn't always pick up as well, it might pick up clutter. So, we
are also working on making that easier to use. Here are some little stats and figures
about utility billing. The average turnoff number for a first turnoff was 148 in 2007 and
so far in 2010 it's 149. So, it really hasn't changed a lot. That's good. The highest
phone volume, like 2,400 phone calls in December, which is the month we didn't have
turnoff, so that's probably well. We did about an average of 125 renter billings
directives. A couple of challenges that will probably drive up our phone contacts in the
near term, and hopefully that will -- we hope that that will die off, of course, with the
change in the SSC rate structure. And every time there is a rate increase, in general, if
you can imagine, we get more disgruntled customers, so we work through that. And
wanted to talk -- and these are -- these are just little tid bits. I'm going to talk about what
-- what our results were in 2009, even though I know you read that management
discussion closely with a fine tooth comb. I want to talk about a little bit about where we
are now and a little bit about where we are going. So, kind of 2009 the economy
crashed and we, actually, improved our financial position. I'm going to just look at a
couple of the government wide statements, because those are the statements we only
see once a year when we do the audit and those statements are government's attempt
to be a private business or looked at compared to private business. So, we report
capital assets -- or capital outlays, assets, amount of expenses -- expenses and we
record depreciation for the General Fund. So, we are beginning to treat the two funds
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as equal, so we can combine them for a city wide statement. So, we also recognize
certain long-term debt and, of course, the recognized accrual -- the accrued property
tax, instead of recording them when we get it cash and we -- a big difference is we
recognize donated capital revenues. So, that can make ayear -- like last year we had
Adventure Island Park -- or in 2008, that makes our revenue just shoot up. So, that's
kind of important to know when you look at these statements, you know, from the
General Fund. So, the next one you can't read, but it -- I know, it's all squished
together, because it's taken off our report. But our increase in net assets for the
governmental -- what we think of as the General Fund, combined with Development
Services, was 4.8 million, with business at 6.8 million, so the total city, the city as a
corporation, we can say we increased our net assets by 11.79 dollars. We are not
increasing our capital assets as rapidly, but we still show an increase. So, although it's
not as big as during our big growth years, I think it's still very good for -- considering
how much the economy slowed down. It kind of tells us we have a model that isn't just
growth driven, that we have a -- that we are at a level that we are sustainable. So, the
next one is a statement of assets, which if -- the one I just showed you, we think of as
an income statement, the second one we stated this is our balance sheet. And so,
again, it just shows what are the city's assets as a whole and if you looked at the
change in the unrestricted -- or in the assets you could find that 11.7 million dollar
increase. So, that's --- that income statement balance sheet. Next one you also can't
read very well, but that's a look at our Governmental Fund balances and the Enterprise
Fund balance. So, you see our total fund balance for all the General Fund type funds
decreased by 925,000, which considering that we are finishing the City Hall and some
of the projects we did, that's -- that's pretty admirable. And, then, the Enterprise Fund
actually increased their fund balance by almost three million dollars. So, the next one
just kind of gets off that corporation -- corporate kind of look and looks at the fund as we
normally look at it as a governmental fund and I'm not going to go through this, you can
look at it, it's in the audit report and it explains why these increases happened. It's just
kind of a look at our major departments and how they have changed on the base side.
Just all the increases. The next -- and the next one's the same thing for business type
activities. It shows the change, operating expense went up six percent last year and 15
percent in comparison to the two years before and the size of the department, because,
obviously, wastewater is by far the largest of their three departments or their three
divisions as we look at it. The next one is the Enterprise Fund capital acquisitions, just
reinforces what we know, that we went through this big growth spurt while we were
building our assets, growth dropped off. The purple are the developer donated lines,
again, peaking at around 2006 and, then, rapidly dropping off in 2009. Plus donated
water and sewer lines. The next one is one we don't look at a lot, but it's an important
one, it's really -- I think it's really vital from the Enterprise Fund and as the statement
changes in cash. So, you can see that we -- we are doing pretty well on the cash flow
side. That big jump is when we had high connection fees, so we were bringing in a lot
of money from that and, then, we went negative and now in 2009 we have gone up to
the positive side again.
De Weerd: Almost.
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Kilchenmann: Just barely. So, that's kind of a look back at where we were and now
looking at where we are right now in 2010. No surprises. There is no surprises so far,
except for our legal fees for the building, but we can handle that. So, the first one is the
Enterprise Fund looking at where we were at the end of February. You can see that
revenue is out tracking -- well, it's a little below budget, but the budget number doesn't
take in the seasonal water variance, so, actually, if you look at the yellow column and
the pink columns -- so, you're looking at the two years, this year and last year, since we
are doing much better than we did last year. If you look at personnel, it's slightly up
over last year, but well below budget. And operating, slightly over last year, but, again,
well below budget. And just looking at this next chart is the capital construction, so with
the black is the construction cost or what we have in the budget right now and the
yellow is how much we spent. So, there is a big difference. And developer
reimbursement revenue, we are well under where we budgeted we would be and
assessment revenues were under budget, too, on that. A little bit above last year,
though, on assessment revenue. The next one is Development Services. So, the first
department is the Planning Department and you can see there personnel has actually --
they are actually under their budget. I think they just added apart-time -- or filled a
vacant position with apart-time person, so that might change that a little bit. When we
-- when I look at the fund as a whole, actually, their revenue is better than we budgeted,
but we have -- commercial is lower and residential is higher, which is bringing us about
into even. So, the forecast for the fund is still on track to break even. So, I think -- I'm
sure it -- when I look at March, we -- year to date we sold 298 building permits,
residential we had only sold 184 last year. So, it's interesting that our contract expense,
it's only about 3,000 off budget. So, we are pretty close there for the inspection
contractors. And the building department, you can see they are a little below in the
revenue. That's almost equal in the operating and, then, economic development they
are quite far below budget, because we haven't had anyone in that position, so -- and,
then, finally, the General Fund, if you look at right-hand revenue -- or right-hand graph
for revenue we are like almost exactly where we budgeted. The differences are just so
minute you can't really see them. If we look at the first graph, it has the operating cost
in it. We are under budget for personnel and under budget for operating, so both of
those are under budget. Okay. So, that's where we are now. Now, if we look ahead to
five -- or FY-2011 -- and (just -- I just put some thoughts in here that I have had as we
are going through the budget and I'm developing the revenue forecast. And if we look
at this last decade that we came through with this boom and, then, bust, we really came
through in excellent shape. We grew our service levels. We definitely did. And we will
do that when I talk about some of the growth ratios we have had. But we are still
financially stable. In my opinion I don't. think the next few years will match the growth of
the last decade and I don't think we can probably expect to grow the size of the city as
much as we did in those boom years. Again, when you look at these increases in
operating and personnel, we have functions now that we -- that didn't even exit in the
city at the beginning of the decade. So, like it says, we remained stable and viable
throughout the entire decade. Now, some of the things to think about when we look at
the budget -- one is our fund balance and I -- you know, it's hard to say this, but you can
actually have too high of a fund balance, because, then, you look to people like you're
just accumulating fund balance and we want to show that we are using that money to
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increase services. So, it's a balancing act and you don't want it too high, you don't want
it too low. Capital construction projects, when we look at the capital -- the CIP plan we
have to remember that some projects can mean substantial operating costs, so when
we have done a capital improvement plan, we have also done an operating forecast
with it and I just give some examples, like a fire station, the ladder trucks can be about
1.8 million. An urban park is about 350,000 annually and if we add -- you know, as we
add amenities that increases the operating cost. At the City Hall our FY-2011 base
budget is 600,000. And when we were leasing -- the last year we were leasing in our
old City Hall budget, leasing the Planning space and Public Work space, it was 263,000.
So, just things to think about. Like we look at a firing range and et cetera that we have
to remember to budget and plan for the operating costs. The average eight year
General Fund base growth has been 20 percent and that's why I wanted to be sure to
mention that we have functions that we didn't ever have before. And another thing that
we have been -- the benefits committee and we are forecasting benefits, we have to
think about going into the future, just the thought of thinking about health care costs,
what will happen to health care costs. The next one is what I estimate are property tax
revenues for 2011 -- and it's all squished together, but I have good numbers for --
know what new construction is, I know what it is, I do not know what the market value
will be. I don't know what the assessment will be with market values. So, this is based
on the assessor making no change in market value, not decreasing or increasing it. So,
that -- I do know our changes in property tax revenue will be about 1.2 million dollars
additional. The levy rate, which you can't see very well, but I think FY-2010 is like
.000349 and it goes to .00359. But, again, that -- that I -- is a guess. It's just saying that
they don't make any change in valuation. And the next graph is just some history. A
sampling of 2009 assessments in Meridian, just taking homes from all over the city, they
dropped valuations about 18 percent. So, obviously, when you have that huge of a drop
in your property -- in the market value, it just forces your levy rate back up. So, these
graphs just show -- the second one shows a change in incremental property tax. You
can see how we were getting these big increases in property tax and how that -- those
chunks are slowing down as we come into the less growth and the change in the market
value. And the big question is how they value property in 2010. Will they leave
people's property the same? I'm pretty sure they won't increase it, but will they drop it
again. So, then, switching from property tax, our biggest chunk to General Fund
revenue is looking at sales tax revenue, which is our second biggest chunk of revenue.
And this graph is the state of Idaho monthly sales tax and it's a three year history with
the bright yellow line being the most current year, being right now, and you see it follows
a trend, just how the spending occurs. But also 2010 has dropped off dramatically. So,
there is a lot of detail on this graph about our growth, the state's growth, et cetera, but
the main -- the main point of the graph is that I would not be comfortable increasing our
sales tax revenue in 2011 over what we have right now. So, that I don't plan to increase
in the revenue forecast. We are tracking under -- slightly under budget right now. But
we don't really know until the end of the year and the big quarter comes after the end of
our fiscal year. So, finally -- almost at the end. Think about for the Enterprise Fund, I
think we have to think more globally about capital construction. We need to think about
how much is in the current budget, but also how much have we spent and how much
will we spend in the future. So, that's something we are going to work -- work on getting
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more documentation, more reporting in a user friendly way on that opposite, as we work
on a capital improvement plan for this General Fund. And, then, as we all know, what is
the public tolerance for rate increases as we look forward. And, then, just some facts
about their increases from 2010 to 2000 -- from 2003 to 2010, 2010, their PC costs
increased 80 percent and their OE cost increased 120 percent. And, then, this graph
shows that a big chunk of their cost is in their OE, which, of course, you have to
remember part of that includes depreciation expense. And, finally, the last fund, the
Development Services Fund, and we have kind of cleansed this fund. We have
removed city dues and street lighting and we transferred the three planning positions
permanently to the General Fund. I think if the model we have of the contract
inspectors has just absolutely saved our bacon. I think it's a great model and I think it
helps us to keep the base low, it's helped us ride the ups and downs in the economy.
Even though our residential is doing better -- doing much better than last year, I wouldn't
be comfortable budgeting a big increase in revenue for 2011. So, that you probably
won't see a big change. And no yawning. So, there are changes in the -- stop that -- in
the base budget from 2003 to 2010, their personnel costs doubled and -- I mean we
have two or three planning people. Not very many people in building. But their
operating cost now equals their operating cost in 2003. Well, that's why I just think they
are such an excellent model. that we go back to the -- those building levels, the
operating costs go back to those building levels. Okay. So, that's it. Are there any
questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird.
Bird: I don't have any. Just another great report from you and your staff. Appreciate it.
Kilchenmann: Thank you.
Bird: Thank you very much. Avery good report.
Kilchenman: I think it's -- it's not really us, it's really the --
Bird: Well, it's the whole city.
Kilchenmann: Yeah.
Bird: But we have to have a leader and your department is a leader. You keep
Anderson honest.
Kilchenmann: I got voted the biggest loser at the department -- and it wasn't weight
loss.
Bird: Anyway, thank you very much. It was a very nice report.
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De Weerd: Yes, it was.
Rountree: Thank you, Stacy, your staff, and all the departments.
Zaremba: You keep us in good shape.
Kilchenmann: Thank you.
G. Fire Department: Fire Department Update
De Weerd: Thank you, Stacy. Okay. We are at the end of our agenda and the short
timer, if he will remember, is a short timer.
Anderson: All right. Yes, I am the short timer. This is my last Council meeting, so you
guys go ahead and feel free to take all the pot shots you want. I think I can handle it for
one more night. Mark and I are going to tag team this tonight. It's kind of -- it's kind of
hard to do a strategic planning session when you know that you're only going to be here
another two and a half weeks and so my strategic plan would probably only be one slide
long, which is probably what you guys would like to see, but Mark is going to be here for
several years to come, so we want to leave him with a good foundation and things to
build on. So, we are going to go through our presentation. We have got 15 slides total,
so about half as many as Stacy had, so it shouldn't be quite as long and we don't have
a bunch of numbers in there for you. Obviously, you guys know what our mission
statement is, we protect people's lives, property, we try to do that as efficiently and as
effectively as possible. Next slide. And our vision is very similar to that of the city's.
Next slide. And Anna made this slide for us last year and these are the city's strategic
focus initiatives and so we are just going to talk a little bit about how the fire department
fits in and contributes with each one of those. But before I do that I always like to go
back at this point and kind of give you guys a reminder of just what the fire department
is, where we are at, all those kind of things. So, next slide. If you will recall, we protect
54 square miles of area. We have a combined population in the city and the rural of
about 85,000 people. We now have five fire station locations. We also have a fire
safety center, which is off of North Locust Grove there, and we also have our training
facility now, too. We have 57 full-time firefighters. We added three new firefighters in
the last fiscal year. Those were budgeted starting in October, but due to some delays in
getting our training officer on board and all those kind of things, those folks won't
actually be starting -- they will be starting this month -- on April 19th they will be starting
their recruit academy and they will be going through a 12 week recruit academy. In
addition, that last year at this time we had 14 part-time on-call or as the term we used to
call them was volunteer firefighters, but we had to call them part-time on-call because
we pay them for each call we go on, but we don't pay them the rest of the time, but we
have increased that number up to 20, which, if you will recall, five years ago when I took
over this position, those ranks had whittled down as far as we only had three of those
part-time on-call folks left and so now we are back up to 20. So, that program has been
very successful, it saves the city a lot of money, provides a firefighter on easy company
on a regular basis and those are folks that a lot of them are aspiring to be new
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firefighters. In fact, one of the three new firefighters that we are hiring right now is a
gentleman who joined us about a year and a half ago, put himself through paramedic
school and is now working himself into the position where we are hiring him as a full-
time firefighter. In addition, the command staff is a fire chief, three deputy chiefs, a fire
inspector, a public education specialist, and our new training captain and, then, two
administrative assistants. We operate four engine companies and one truck company
on a daily basis. The truck company is cross-staffed so depending on the type of call, if
it's a medical call they jump on a fire engine, if it's a structure fire, they jump on the truck
company and go. And we have three reserve engines, one water tender, two brush
trucks, and we have responded to about 4,200 calls in the last year. Next slide.
Overview of the various divisions that the deputy chiefs oversee. We have the
operations division, which entails oversight of the engine companies and the truck
company on a daily basis, as well as training and the part-time on-call staff. The
prevention and education that is Deputy Chief Silva's division and they oversee plan
reviews in the rural district. They also are in charge of all the company inspections, all
the public education, those things that we do in that area. And, then, Deputy Chief
Niemeyer, who oversees the emergency medical, working with our medical director, the
training, and all the other EMS providers in the county and you will see the command
structures there in the org chart. Next slide. At this point I'm going to turn it over to
Mark, we are going to do the tag team thing, and he's going to talk about how our
services meet demands.
Niemeyer: The official star of Abbott and Costello right here. As far as services meet
demand, got to meet the city's objective there. One of the things that we have worked
on very hard over the last four years is response times. There is a national standard
that we try to achieve. Five minutes is that standard for 911 emergency calls. Over the
last four years we have seen our average response times drop. We are under the five
minute mark. Certainly there is also input to track our response times, so that's a little
bit higher calculation. Try and meet that five minutes 90 percent of the time. We will
certainly continue to look at trying to achieve that. One of the things we also talked
about is not only how quickly do we get there and efficiently do we get there, but, then,
once we get to the scene how effective are we and how efficient are we. That's the
other half of the response that's not quite talked about as much as it should be. So,
that's -- kind of bounce around here -- is the high quality training provided to all
personnel and certainly with our training captain, he has been doing a terrific job of
making sure that we are meeting our benchmarks that we are setting for ourselves now.
So, not only when we have the second response time, we will have a very efficient and
effective team as well. Second bullet point. Recruit higher and train firefighters in time
to staff new stations. We certainly want to stay ahead of the curve, recognizing one of
these days we will have to be able to, through our company process, making sure that
we are hiring the most qualified individuals to fill those needs. And, then lastly, insure
the updated fire code are updated and enforced throughout the service area. As you
may or may not know, we are operating under the 2006 fire code, the 2009 is out, we
will be bringing that before the Mayor and Council for discussion and adoption as well.
De Weerd: You found an old picture.
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Niemeyer: Yeah.
Rountree: They are reminiscing.
Zaremba: Uh-huh.
Anderson: Station 31. Okay. Looking forward on the strategic growth -- easy forme to
say. One of the primary things that we have to do is to figure out where we need to build
future fire stations and sometimes it feels like you need a Ouija board for that. As you
guys know sitting on the Council if you knew exactly where all the next growth was
going to go, that's where you would plan all your infrastructure and all your parks and
your schools and your water lines and sewer lines and all those kinds of thing, but we
don't know and the city tends to spread out in all directions and it's usually just driven by
the development community. So, one of the things that we try to do is try to project
where we are going to need those future fire stations. I have here a picture of our last
fire station, Station 5 that we built out on North Linder Road and that's the one that you
guys are talking about at the intersection of Chinden and Linder and Eagle -- city of
Eagle, possibly allowing the Fred Meyer building on the north side of Chinden. Well,
that's still -- even though that will be in the city of Eagle, that will be served by the
Meridian Rural Fire District and that will be in our fire district that will be our first
response area. So, when that Fred Meyer opens it will be our responsibility. Next slide.
So, we have a map here that shows the Meridian Rural Fire District and future fire
stations. The ones with the red box around them are future fire stations, the ones with
-- that has the little building with the flag pole are the ones that are current fire station
locations. So, as we look at the growth in Meridian, you will kind of see on the screen
here where you can kind of see the subdivisions that are outlined with all the roads that
are in fill in there. And you will notice that our fire stations that we have right now
correspond where most of those roads are. So, there are parts of our city that have
been developed, been subdivided, and lots of folks live in those areas. You will see the
areas with -- where we have the future fire stations planned where you don't see that
kind of spider webbing or network of the road system. And if you look into the future,
you're looking at this intersection at Ten Mile and the interstate as probably being a key
area for one of the next fire stations, because we all know when you put -- what
happens when you put in an interchange at the freeway you will get a lot of commercial
development around it and, then, around that commercial development you're going to
have a lot of residential. People want to have that easy access to the interstate, so we
know that that area is going to take off. We know that it's also one or two years now
before that's going to be, you know, open and flow probably within the next year we are
going to see a lot of development applications associated with that and the fire
department needs to be ready.
De Weerd: Hey, Ron?
Anderson: Yes.
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
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De Weerd: You mentioned the -- the north -- the northeast corner of Chinden and
Linder, just like that corner and other areas in the county, as the county is also looking
at being a part of economic development, that means developing in the county. Are you
going to -- we need to have a look at charging an impact fee for those commercial
ventures. They have different service needs and demands and there is no reason that
city residents or businesses are the only ones that should be absorbing those impact
fee costs. It -- have you explored that or had any discussions about it?
Anderson: We have had a lot of discussions about it at the time the city implemented
their impact fees and, unfortunately, fire districts cannot implement impact fees, so the
only place we could do that is if we could go to the city of Eagle, like in the corner at
Chinden and Linder and get the city of Eagle to implement impact go fees for us. They
are not likely to do that unless they are also doing that for Eagle Fire District and I don't
know where Eagle is at on that and in the county, obviously, we have the ability to
implement impact fees, too, but we -- we haven't seen that much commercial
development outside in the county at this point, because they don't have the
infrastructure, they don't have the water and the sewer available to them. So, it would
be something to keep an eye on and if we start to see development outside the city
limits in the county area, then, that's something that Mark could approach the county
commissioners on and see if they couldn't get some impact fees for those.
De Weerd: Yeah. I think the commercial development just with the Fred Meyer and the
surrounding plans are pretty intense. But primarily retail, if that has an influence.
Anderson: Yes. And I think with that particular development with our Station 5, we are
well suited to service it, other than if the buildings start going taller than 35 foot, then,
we may have to look at a ladder truck.
De Weerd: You know -- and just not to get off point very far, but to our police chief as
well in looking at the numbers that Chief Lavey gave us today, one of our highest
service areas is probably petty left and retail and that Fred Meyer is going to -- I think
they are going to have to be put on notice this is a county, that we will not service their
shoplifting and I hope that that's not contemplated- in mutual aid. But that could be a
heck of a service strain on us policing the city of Eagle's.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Ron, the same thing on this -- I mean if we -- if we was to take something in the
city limit, our fire goes with it, but Eagle, not having their own fire, and having an Eagle
rural fire district -- fire district, that don't go within their city limits?
Anderson: Right. State law changed -- back it up three or four years ago.
Bird: Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought.
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De Weerd: I think it's still a little bit under attack.
Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. Some people weren't real happy that it changed. Still working
the same -- so, back to the future fire station. This right here, again, is what we are
targeting. We -- our partners, the rural fire district, have identified a piece of property up
there that fits our needs, they, actually, have a purchase agreement drafted up. They
are hoping to close on that piece of property by the end of this calendar year. That will
be contingent upon the developer meeting certain milestones, so --
De Weerd: Don't count on it.
Bird: Good luck. I was going to say --
Anderson: The other areas that we have talked about is right over here. This is
Fairview and Eagle. This is an area that it's just outside of that mile and a half boundary
that we strive for to maintain our five minute response times. It's, actually, about two
and a half miles from Station 1 and it's about two and a half miles from Station 3, but we
also know that -- how busy Eagle Road is and with the Crossroads Shopping Center, it's
also one of our highest call volume areas. So, we respond to that area a lot and we
have extended response times. We also know that with the Kleiner Park being
developed and with the Center Cal development that's going to go in there, that if all
that development takes off within the next couple of years, the call volume is, again,
going to increase substantially in that area. So, we are trying to identify pieces of
property now that may work for a future fire station site in that area. We worked with the
Parks Department hoping we could get a piece of land along with Kleiner Park, but that
didn't -- didn't pan out and so we will continue to explore options, but that's another area
where we are going to need to look for -- for future fire stations. And, then, last area is
right down here on South Meridian Road, because that area is continuing to develop.
As you guys are aware, we only have one fire station currently south of the interstate
and that fire station's call volume is picking up significantly and so as development
continues to press south of town, we are going to need to get an additional station. So,
all three of those locations that I identified, the one at Fairview and Eagle, the one on
South Meridian Road, and the one at Ten Mile, the interchange, any one of those three
stations could be the next one that needs to be built, again, depending on where
development goes in the next two to three years. So, in that capital improvement plan
that Stacy talked about, we agree with her that growth will probably slow in Meridian. In
the last ten years we have built five fire stations. We believe in the next ten years, from
2010 to 2020, we may only need to build about three fire stations instead and that that
would be contingent upon the growth. Last two years we have seen our call volumes
stay consistently the same, about 4,200 calls. In the three months of this year gives no
indication that it's starting to take off yet, we are still holding our own and so we may see
three years of no growth there. But once it finally picks up and the growth picks up
again, that's when we suspect that we will probably have to build that station. Right now
in that capital improvement plan that Stacy's working on the next fire station will
probably be built in the year 2013 is where it's projected at and it will most likely be
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April 13, 2010
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bought and paid for by the rural fire district, who, again, you guys will recall they have
been great partners who signed a joint powers agreement with them back in 1999.
They have built the majority of our fire stations, own several of them outright, but the city
owns 50 percent of Station 1 and 50 percent of Station 2 and the rural district owns the
other three fire stations completely outright. They are included in our impact fee from
back about two, .three years ago. So, Station 5 is eligible for reimbursement. We can
reimburse the rural district when we collect enough impact fees for Station 5 that they
paid for and they will probably use that money for the purchase of Station 6 when they
get ready to build that. Again, the impact fees, though, cannot be used for refurb'ing fire
engines, can't be used for buying replacement fire engines, it can only be used for new
fire stations that we would build that are attributed to growth and the fire engine or the
truck that goes in those. So, if you would go back to the PowerPoint slide, please. Next
slide, please. On the economic excellence, one of the things that happened last year
was that the class three rating, which was a major milestone for the City of Meridian.
We lowered our insurance rating from a class four to a class three. We believe that
helps the city significantly in their -- achieve an economic excellence, because it helps
recruit new businesses to our community by having lower insurance premiums. They
pay less. It also helps our citizens who pay lower insurance premiums for the most,
depending on their insurance carrier. We also are going to take that the next step
further, both to -- I don't know if you can read that far away and with that color font, but
it's -- we are going to initiate the process of fire accreditation and that's a very involved
process where you go through a self assessment process and, then, you submit to the
national accreditation and they send an assessment team in and they look at everything
that your fire department does, very similar to the survey rating bureau, only in much
more detail. The other thing that they look at is are your people not only trained, but are
they certified nationally. So, it's not just that Meridian fire says we got his firefighter, it's
how do they stack up nationally against the other firefighters and not just firefighters,
with driver operators and fire officers and our fire inspectors and our fire marshal and
those folks, too, will have to achieve national accreditation certification. This is about a
two or three year process. It involves some funds, so when we -- when you see our
budget request this year you will see an enhancement request for that fire accreditation,
so we can get that process started. We also measure our department success by bullet
point three and what the department has set as a standard is that 90 percent of the
property that we respond to that are on fire we intend to safe 90 percent of that property
and keep the losses to ten percent or less and how we do that is by being good at what
we do when we get there. It's not enough just to get to the fire scene quickly, but to be
able to determine the right size of your package and to be able to confine the fire and
cut the fire off and minimize the .damage that's done by that fire and so that is our
measure of success and so you will see that in our monthly reports that we provide to
you. You will see them on annual reports whether we are meeting that goal or not.
And, then, work with new businesses that want to come and locate in Meridian to make
sure that we can protect them and that they are going to be good partners in our
community and won't be something that the community later on says why did we ever
have a business like that come in here, if we can't protect them when they are not going
to be good neighbors to our citizens. So -- next slide. This one is Mark's.
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Niemeyer: The chief thought I would be good to talk about technology. Some people
think I'm a techno geek, but the Mayor knows I can't work an Outlook calendar, so -- we
do know, however, that technology can help us in the fire service to be more efficient
and effective. One of the things we struggle with is -- in our training, for example, we
know that some training has to be hands on, so we need to bring the engine companies
to the training tower on Station 1 to do that. When we do that we try and work
effectively by moving other engine companies around the city to maximize our
coverage, but we also know that we can -- we can have a great benefit by doing online
training and so we know that in the future that classroom type training -- Chris can be
sitting at Station 1 and our engine companies can stay in their district and their station.
We know that has a huge significant impact on response times, but it still gets the
training accomplished. There is a lot of great programs out there. Certainly as we
move forward we are going to be looking at how do we make that happen. We know
that to do that we need to have fairly fast connections or internet speeds, so we will be
working with Terry in the IT department to figure out can we best accomplish that. We
have been told that the best way to accomplish that is through fiber optics. We are
going to have that in Station 1 and it's there now. We will be able to get those ACHD
camera feeds there, so we have it there, how do we get it to those other places. That
will be the challenge that we will have. We also want to keep our website updated and
enhance our website. We want to make sure that the public is readily accessible to us
and we know that -- one of the ways that happens with the younger generation and
those folks that are internet savvy is to go through the internet and try and contact us
that way. We certainly won't get rid of that face-to-face time, but -- and the phone time,
but we also want to provide that service, so things such as car seat inspections, we get
a bunch of those. CPR classes. Scheduling patient tours, et cetera. We want to make
sure that we have several different means for the public to get a hold of us. And, then,
we talked a little bit about fiber optics and keeping those crews in their station. Go to
the next slide. And, then, prepare employees to meet their career goals and prep them
for promotional opportunities within the department. This is certainly something that we
have a great opportunity right now to do. As you know, a lot of our department is
younger and, then, we have some great senior staff as well and so I just got off the
phone this evening with Chris Amenn our training officer. We have a great opportunity
to send folks back to the national fire academy to fulfill some of this course work that
some of the talking points that Chief Anderson discussed with the accreditation program
and getting them that professional certification. The national fire academy is a great
opportunity, because they pay for it and so, certainly, for us that's a benefit. So, we are
going to work this year on getting a few guys back for leadership classes and we will
certainly continue to do that as we move forward. We also want to be able to offer EMT
and paramedic certification to our part-time on-call staff. They provide a great service
for us and we will certainly continue that in the future. So, if we can enhance their ability
to perform by offering them an EMT class and possibly a paramedic class in their future
that benefits the city as well. And, then, last, recruiting policy access to the workforce. I
think we have been very fortunate, we have hired some outstanding individuals. We
certainly will continue to do so. I think one of the things that we have in place that
allows us to do that is a fairly strict testing process and so we put those applicants
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through there and they have to pass it and that's produced a lot of very high quality city
employees for us.
Anderson: I think that you guys have set the standard, you have set the bar from -- as
long as I have known the city has always said that we are in the business to serve our
customers and I think we are -- Keith and Tammy and I don't know if it was Charlie or
Glen Bentley at the time, but we all dressed up as a waiters and waitresses and served
the customers as we were going through the parade, but the fire department really
exemplifies that, customer service and customer care. I mean I can tell you story after
story after story about the firefighters and the things that they have done that really drive
home the point of customer care from the gentleman who was mowing his lawn and
suffered from a heart attack, the crews responded, rendered medical aid to him,
transported him to the hospital, went back, finished mowing his yard for him, locked up
this house, took the keys back to the hospital, you know, just because it was the right
thing to do, not to leave the guy's house unlocked and things not taken care of. Or the
gentleman who went to the store with his -- his neighbor and bought all his groceries
and came out and started having breathing difficulty and same thing, he gets
transported to the hospital, he was the driver of the car, his neighbor needed a ride
home, they took him in the fire truck, they unloaded the groceries and put them away in
the cupboards and noticed that the front step was in a state of dilapidated repair and
could possibly cause an injury, to go buy materials out of their pocket, go back and
rebuild that front step for the elderly person. Those are the kinds of stories that I hear
constantly and those are the kinds of things that the firefighters do and exemplifies to
me that the customer service and the care, along with all the things that the city does
from the survey to the care cards, all those kind of things, town hall meetings, the one
next week you will see the fire engine from Station 4 will be out there at that meeting
trying to answer questions to the public, even though they don't have a clue what's
going to happen with the road in front of their station, they will be out there trying to
answer to the best of their ability how they are going to get to the people and how they
will still provide those services. Next slide. The public trust. I think if anything over the
last ten years the fire department has really tried to demonstrate a good stewardship of
the funds that are entrusted to us and we don't come in and we don't ask for things that
we don't absolutely need. We try to be cost effective. If you notice, all the designs of
our fire stations are exactly the same, so we don't pay for new design costs every time
we do a fire station. We don't build big elaborate fire stations like I just happened to see
a new Whitney fire station this weekend out on South Cole Road, it looks like something
you would see in Sun Valley. We don't build those kinds of fire stations. We buy
equipment that suits our needs. The other thing that we started a couple years ago is
instead of coming to you after a fire engine is getting some wear on it and saying we
need a new fire engine, we started a process of refurbing those fire engines. So, we try
to keep a fire engine ten years as a frontline fire apparatus and, then, we do a refurb on
it, which is a pretty complete rebuild of the pump, if there is anything wrong with the
engine, the transmission, the lights, the wiring, all that kind of stuff, we redo it and we
send it back to the factory, they rebuild it for us, and we get another five to ten years out
of it, so Meridian gets 15 to 20 years out of a fire apparatus. There is not too many
cities that can say that they do those kind of things. You will see in our budget request
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this year, again, you will see two of those fire engines are being scheduled to be
refurbed and that's, again, something that's in the capital improvement plan. So; that's
how we try to take care of the public trust, but we also try to put it back on the
individuals within the fire department and we have several of the fire department
members themselves, who are responsible for different portions of our budget and they
are given the numbers, they have to be accountable for those, they have to manage
their budget, we have somebody who, for example, purchases our EMS gear,
somebody who buys all of our bunker gear, somebody is assigned all the janitorial
supplies, somebody who does all the office supplies. So, we preach the accountability,
we delegate it out to people, and we make sure that they adhere to that. So, with that
next slide.
Niemeyer: The last -- last slide, taking a look at our budget challenges. We talk about
budgets being tight. Certainly everybody at home has felt the pinch. They have had to
look at their spending, look at their savings. We are no different in the city and within
the fire department we have had to look at that, making sure that we are hitting the
needs, not just the wants, and I don't think that's a bad lesson to learn moving forward
either, even in good times, is to make sure that we are still being very accountable. We
know that in the fire department there are some costs that we can control, there is some
that we can't, the vehicle maintenance that Chief Anderson just alluded to. So, we will
continue to monitor those budgets, making sure that we get the things that we need.
Training continues to be a focus area for us with EMS. We have Chris, our training
captain, who has taken on the special fire operations. We know that we will need
somebody to fill that role as an EMS training officer as well to keep our guys trained.
We have state requirements and national requirements in order for our guys to continue
to do what they do. Technology updates. We talked about that a little earlier, making
sure that we can link those stations to decrease those response times by keeping folks
in their district. In the future additional personnel will be needed to staff an engine
company at Station 1. This is certainly something we will just keep an eye on. As you
know, we have the cross staff truck and engine. At some point that truck is going to be
going out on more and more calls to where the engine is no longer available to respond
and so when that point comes we will certainly do our due diligence in making sure that
request has some teeth to back it up. We may need to have additional staffing for the
engine company and, then, the line acquisition that Chief Anderson alluded to, and
certainly by demand, but we will be keeping a very close eye on that and stay in close
contact with the Council on those issues. With that, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Ron, you talked about staff accreditation -- national accreditation. Is that
something that has to be negotiated into the contract or is that a management decision?
Anderson: I believe that's going to be a management decision. We may get alittle -- a
little push back from the union, depending on how difficult it is to achieve some of those
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April 13, 2010
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national certifications and accreditations, but clearly in our contract right now it states
that management has the right to determine what those standards are for all the
positions within our department.
Rountree: So, is it -- accreditation based on knowledge, skills and ability -- and when I
say ability, the ability to do their job, which would include the. physical abilities as well.
Anderson: When it comes to the different levels of certification, they don't really
necessarily address physical condition, is that what you're -- you're talking about in --
Rountree: Want to address it, that's part of the --
Anderson: That is more addressed in NFTA standards and what we have been doing
the last two years is we have a medical doctor that does our entry physicals and he
compares it to those national standards and he's actually turned away a couple of our
candidates that we wanted to hire, but we make sure that the firefighters are fit when we
hire them, we give them time on duty, we give them facilities to exercise. The stumbling
block has always been with the union is they -- I worry about anything that could be
punitive to any of their members. They don't disagree that being physically fit is
important, but so far they have been unwilling to step to the plate to say, yes, we will
hold our members accountable and they will have to meet national standards.
Rountree: It's probably from the national standards you get those members and it's just
as well. We get the same argument and pushback, I suppose.
Anderson: Yeah. And those are part of the issues that I'm sure will come up in the
negotiates again this year, as they did last time.
Rountree: Last year one of the enhancements was the new training captain, who has
been hired, and I know he's not been on staff a long time, but what's transpired since
he's been with us?
Anderson: A couple things. I reported to the rural district last night and I'm -- we just
got the monthly report together yesterday, but we saw almost a doubling of the training
hours that the crews are doing and, then, the other thing that he's doing is he is putting
together certain skills that firefighters need to be able to perform, whether it's setting up
the ground ladders and advancing to a roof with a chain saw or to the second or third
floor of a multi-story structure with an inch and three quarter line to attack and confine
the fire. Making all of the companies come to the program, the training grounds,
perform these evolutions, and comparing how they stack up against national standards
-- for example, the advancing inch and three quarter line to the second floor and doing a
fire attack, nationally that standard is about three and a half minutes. What he's found
so far is that Meridian firefighters are remarkably well trained and they have been doing
a lot of this training on their own and as he ran all of our companies through that
evolution, our standard time was three minutes and two seconds. So, we were a little
ahead of the three and a half minute national standard. So, those are some of the
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April 13, 2010
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things that he's trying to identify, get some standards and some measurements out
there, and how we stack up against fire departments across the county. So, we are
really pleased with the results so far. Like I said, we have only been on the job I think
two and a half months how to assess and he's making some substantial headway, in
our opinion.
Rountree: Mark mentioned the need for EMS training as well. How are you going to
contemplate getting that done when you have got so many specialized in fire operations
and now there is kind of a void there.
Niemeyer: Yeah. The Mayor and I discussed this a little bit. I think moving forward
what I would like to do is put on an EMS training captain and not necessarily fill my
position. I think having a background in EMS that I do I can fulfill some of those
requirements as far as the meetings and whatnot. The focus for me, really, I think will
be the training. That's where it all begins as the foundation of what we do, so that's
going to be my -- my goal moving forward.
Rountree: My last question, Mayor. You mentioned that you're going to offer
paramedic -- EMS and paramedic certification to on-call and part-time folks. Is that
available to the full-time folks as well?
Niemeyer: It is. Currently all of our firefighters have to be a member of EMS.
Rountree: EMS.
Niemeyer: There is an intermediate level in there, it's called an EMT advanced. They
can perform more skills than an EMT, but certainly not as many as a paramedic and
that may be an option worth looking at as well.
Rountree: And that's in your training budget or is that going to be paid for with their own
time and money?
Niemeyer: That's something we would have to look at to be sure.
Rountree: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Question. You talked about the training officer and looking at the standards
and running some tests and better than national standards. So, tell me, again, this
national accreditation, what does that get us in terms of -- for us? I mean, yeah, you're
going to compare them to others across the nation. We think they are pretty well
trained and things like that, so they are well trained. What does it get us by going
through this extra stuff?
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Anderson: Well, it was interesting, because about six months ago, eight months ago,
the Mayor put all of the department directors through an exercise and she said I want
you to go out and find the best practices in your particular vocation and if you are the
finance director you would go find cities that are comparable size and you try to find the
best practices out there. Same with the fire chief, the police chief, the parks director.
And so as I started researching -- and probably researched probably in the
neighborhood of 12 to 15 different cities around the country that were identified through
reading and through the Internet as these are -- these are the cream of the crop, these
are the best departments, these are the best practices. They are listed in all kinds of
different articles about being creative, innovative, all those kinds of things and the one
common thread that I found with all those departments is the fire accreditation process
and what it does is it really makes you take a hard look at yourself and analyze your
strengths, your weaknesses and, then, do something about those weaknesses. So,
what we hope to gain out of this fire accreditation process is that we know Meridian is a
good fire department right now, but we think we can be better and we should always
strive to be better. And so if can identify what those weaknesses are and improve, the
most likely result is not only will we become a better fire department, but you probably
will see our ratings improve again at the next go around of the survey and rating, as
that's one of the things that I found, too, is that most of these departments that have
gone through this process, actually, improved again in their next rating process.
Hoaglun: Puts a lot of pressure on the new guy, you know.
Anderson: Well, he will have to get with it one of these days, so we may as well start
him off right.
De Weerd: It will be really different in his --
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further from Council?
Rountree: Thank you. Good report. Good job.
Zaremba: Yeah. Thank you.
E. Award of Tie Bid #CW-10-10084A City Wide Alarm Monitoring
De Weerd: That's great. We appreciate that. His swan song. Okay. We are at the
end of our agenda. I know John and Eric weren't here just for -- just hearing those
reports. I hope Keith told you he was putting it at the end of the agenda.
Watts: We had a -- a tied bid, which is the first since I have been here in my four years.
We did the fire alarm testing -- the fire alarm monitoring services bid and we had six
responses and two of them non-responsive and I have talked to those vendors as well
and understand what their lack was and that left us with a tie between Crane Alarm and
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April 13, 2010
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Simplex and I searched the statutes for what to do on a tie bid. I knew there was a
statute on construction and I was unable to find one. I don't know if Bill and his staff
were able to find one either on a service or goods bid. So, our best practice is to go by
what we would do in a tie bid for construction and, essentially, it says the governing
body shall choose whichever contractor it would like to go with. So, have got Eric to
answer any questions about the two. I know we have done business with Crane and we
have done business with Simplex and Simplex is the state contract holder for this
service. So, we had such a demand from local contractors to bid on this -- and we put
this out to bid, rather than just go with the state contracts. We ended up with this tie
and Eric can answer any questions that you may have or try to fill you in if you have any
questions.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: A question for Mr. Nary. Are we limited on the kind of question we can ask?
Nary: Maybe.
Rountree: Maybe. I knew you were a lawyer.
Nary: All I wanted to say is that Keith is correct, Council Members. The state doesn't
really -- or the statute doesn't give us any guidance as to how to select -- in fact, my
initial thought was, well, can we flip a coin, because that's usually what we end up with
in the Idaho Code at some point. But in this particular case there isn't even that
directive. So, I do believe that it is reasonable that you could select whoever you wish.
De Weerd: Nice attorney's answer.
Bird: What was the alternate proposal, Keith?
Watts: That was a wireless proposal.
Bird: They were the only ones that --
Watts: They were the only ones that offered that wireless and after talking with the chief
and Eric this wasn't -- we weren't ready to move in that direction at this time.
Rountree: Were references required as part of the bidding process?
Watts: It was not. I do not believe it was. No.
Bird: There is references on the deal with state for Simplex.
Rountree: Are there any that are local businesses?
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April 13, 2010
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Anderson: By local do you mean Meridian or --
Rountree: Meridian.
Watts: I don't believe either of them are in Meridian.
Rountree: Idaho?
Watts: Yeah. They are all in Idaho. They are both Idaho. Yeah. Nampa and Boise.
Correct.
De Weerd: It's both sides of us, uh?
Watts: Yes. One of the things you might want to think about is a report for future items
as well.
De Weerd: Well, Keith, do we usually not ask for references?
Watts: On just general bids we don't. A proposal or construction contract we would.
Hoaglun: Keith, what is per point monitoring?
Watts: Eric, you want to take that? I know what it's alluding to, but I'll let --
Jensen: If you will look at this map, this is our room that we are meeting in here right
now and we have fire devices located throughout this room. If you will look right there
on this --
De Weerd: You need to talk in the mike.
Jensen: If you look right up there, there is a fire alarm device right there and if you look
on this map that one there is M330. That's what will come up on your enunciator out
there in the foyer or down in the basement in the fire panel or the other -- or the one in
the IT area. And that's a proprietary system with the Simplex that the city purchased.
And this kind of is where -- I'm not sure where I can say too much about -- the dealer
proprietary system, the only one that sees this signal is Simplex and so, for example, if
this. system -- if this -- if this fire alarm -- if this goes into alarm, Simplex would contact
the fire department, tell them that there is a fire at City Hall and it's M330 in the Council
chambers, which pinpoints the point of -- that went into alarm. And so that's kind of
what sets them apart from the other monitoring.
Watts: Crane would be able to acknowledge the alarm. The difference is Simplex
would be able to tell you it's that one. And we actually paid for that in the construction of
the building for panel to have that ability.
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Bird: That's what I thought. I think Simplex put that in, didn't they?
Hoaglun: The question for the chief, though, on that -- if you -- if your firefighters come
in, you know there is a fire at City Hall. Is there another panel you can look at to say it
identifies it -- the source?
Anderson: Right there.
Hoaglun: It's when you come in. So, it's being on site versus getting the call saying it's
here.
Anderson: And normally we wouldn't get the detector -- when they call, they don't call
us directly, they call Ada County dispatch and they would dispatch us to a fire alarm at
Meridian City Hall and we wouldn't necessarily get a detector number at that point.
Hoaglun: So, that basically negates the -- any benefit from the knowing that --
Bird: Chief,. can I -- Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: Chief, have you worked with both Simplex and Crane in the fire service.
Anderson: I have. Both reputable companies.
Bird: That's what I'm asking.
Anderson: But I can tell you that I don't think the city has facilities right now that are
monitored by Crane, but we do have several that are monitored by Simplex, if that
makes a difference to you.
Zaremba: And you would renew those contracts?
Anderson: Yes.
Watts: And they are all up right now and that's why we are trying to consolidate and
determine what direction we are going to go.
Jensen: The other thing with the Pierpoint monitoring, if I can continue on with that, is
when you are working on the fire devices in the building, most of your panels -- you put
the full panel in test, which makes it so when they are working on something, if an alarm
goes off the fire department isn't called to respond. With the Pierpoint monitoring you
could call them up and say I'm going to work on M373, putting bypass on the panels
and you could know it's coming from an alarm and not signal the building. The full
building is projected, except this one that you're working on, so you have full coverage
of the building, except for the devices to be worked on at that point. The other thing is
Meridian City Council Workshop
April 13, 2010
Page 58 of 59
it's -- probably the chief doesn't really see it in the Pierpoint monitoring is when you get
trouble and -- trouble and supervisory -- when you get a call on that they are able to tell,
you know, like myself, you have a supervisory on your panel and a fire control room and
so low pressure on the sprinkler, for example, or something. I'm trying not to be too
biased, but, you know, that's the facts of the Pierpoint monitoring, it is the more
expensive panels they put in here and it does have all the capabilities and I'm not sure if
that is why it was selected or if that's -- but that is what they have here.
De Weerd: Well, Council, I guess the question here is do we want more than one
provider if it -- if it's a tie, we already have a relationship with one of those companies
that already monitor other city buildings. It seems that there is --
Watts: I believe we are renewing all of them at the same time, correct? They are all up
for renewal, is my understanding.
De Weerd: Oh, so this isn't just for City Hall, it's for --
Bird: It's the whole city wide and they have already had some of our -- some of our
buildings under contract.
Rountree: Do we need a motion?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: Yeah. I'll make a motion. I move that we approve Simplex Grinnell for 260 dollars
per month.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call roll.
Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Thank you for staying with us all evening. Above and beyond. So, we do
try and make it so -- Council, we are at the end of our agenda and I would entertain a
motion to adjourn.
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor? All ayes. Motion carries.
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April 13, 2010
Page 59 of 59
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:33 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
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