HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002 02-12Meridian City Council Regular Workshop February 12, 2002
The regular workshop of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:44 P.M. on
Tuesday, February 12, 2002, by Council President Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Keith Bird, Bill Nary, Cherie McCandless, and
Tammy de Weerd.
Others Present: Bill Nichols, Kenny Bowers, Gary Smith, Brad Watson, Stacy
Kilchenmann, Shari Stiles, Tom Kuntz, Mike Worley, and Will Berg.
Roll Call: X Tammy deWeerd X Cherie McCandless
X Bill Nary X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
De Weerd: Okay, I will go ahead and open this meeting. It is 6:44 P.M. Welcome
everyone who is here. We’ll go ahead and do Roll Call. Mr. Berg if you would do that I
would appreciate.
Berg: Thank you madam President Roll Call.
Issue #1. Written Updates
Issue #2. Discussion of Landscaping / Common Area Lot for Medimont Subdivision
with John Barnes.
De Weerd: Thank you. We started something new. You have written updates and we
do have a place. Issue Number 10 to follow up on, if there is anything you would like to
have pulled off there, we can put it onto Item Number 10. Is there anyone who would
like to add to Number 10 for any further information? I’d like to thank staff for the
written updates. They have been following up on issues that have been brought up in
other meetings as well as workshops. It is a good way to update us without having to
put it on the agenda. Any comments? We’ll move to Issue Number 2. Mr. Barnes is
here with us today. I appreciate you coming John. This is a result of an application, a
CUP that we received. We did go ahead and make a decision on that, but the issue
has come up a couple times on the landscape and how that planting strip is. If its really
accomplishing what it’s supposed to accomplish to soften what is built in that
subdivision. I guess John we’ll start with Shari first.
Stiles: It will take me just a minute to get this up. David McKinnon did go out to the site
and took some pictures. The original approval for the Conditional Use – it wasn’t a
Conditional Permit, it was an annexation and plat, required the 20 foot planting strip to
be planted with six to eight foot Scotch pines at, at least 15 foot on center. Yes, it looks
pretty good doesn’t it?
De Weerd: I haven't seen that part of town.
Corrie: No wonder the people are hollering.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 2
(Inaudible)
Stiles: No it’s all by riverboat. David McKinnon walked the entire length of the planting
strip. This tree, there is one dead tree on the site. It is directly behind the Smith’s
house. There were three trees that were not at least six feet, in addition to the dead
tree and these three trees that were under six feet were planted adjacent to one
another. They were located just to the east of the Smith property. I guess that is where
some of the problem comes. There were three instances where the trees were spaced
more than 15 feet apart but at no time did they exceed 18 or 19 feet on center. It
appears that at least one of the trees could not be planted 15 feet on center due to a
tree located on the adjacent lot that would have over hung the pine tree. The property
is in substantial conformance. The three trees that are under six feet should be
replaced and the dead tree should be replaced but it will eventually be a pretty nice
buffer. It doesn’t show up very well here – these are all on the adjacent property
owner’s property. Is that the Weatheralls? I am not sure whose home is on the other
side of this. Either the Weatheralls or the Robinson’s. It’s showing you can see in
some places there are actually three trees deep. This is showing one of the four trees
that are less than six feet. The fence is six feet. This is showing all of the trees looking
east from Medimont Subdivision. I guess that is it. With the exception of those four
trees, the rest of it is in compliance with the Conditions of Approval. They have -- I
have been informed by Jim Boyd that a new landscape company is going to be taking
over the maintenance of that planting strip, ensure that it is kept mowed and any trees
are replaced if they die. It would probably also help if they were fertilized to enhance
the growth of those trees, make them grow a little faster. I don’t know if Mr. Barnes has
anything to add. That is all I have, thanks.
Barnes: Madam President, Mayor, City Council, John Barnes, 1034 Justin Place,
Meridian. First of all I would like to say I am sorry that you guys have had so much grief
over this. As you remember, we had a lawsuit over this originally by the neighbors, over
your decision to annex and give me the zoning to do a business park. We worked hard
to try to make this buffer work for Mr. Smith and all of them. You can see its all grass
down through there. It’s all sprinklered. We thought we had all six-foot trees, but
maybe we missed by a few inches, and if you want us to, we would take those out that
aren’t exactly six, but they will be six by summertime. We will take care of the dead
one. I would like to submit a couple pictures. This might help you. Take a look – its
just going to take time for those to grow up and give Mr. Smith and the neighbors there
the kind of buffer that they had in mind. You can see that the trees are three deep down
through there and like I say, we are going to work hard to keep it mowed biweekly. It’s
all watered and we’ll fertilize the trees. I would like to not replace the three that are just
under six feet but if you’ll give me a little grace there. I will replace the dead one and
we’ll work hard to take care of them. Any questions?
Nary: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 3
Nary: Mr. Barnes, how long have the trees been there, and the ones that are under six
feet, that’s an angle I can’t tell. That looks significantly under six feet but it may just be
the angle of the fence. How long have they been there and how much under six feet
are they?
Barnes: Well, just a few inches. The ones that are there, maybe that one could be a
foot –
Nary: That looks like a foot. It’s more than a few inches.
Barnes: We planted those in two different phases in that buffer, because we did the
strip in two phases. Those have been there about a year and half now, these trees
here.
Nary: How big of caliper, how tall were they when they were planted?
Barnes: I bought them as six foot trees and evidently I was shorted on a couple of
them.
Nary: Is it all residential that borders this area?
Barnes: Old existing residential.
Nary: The entire strip of it is residential?
Barnes: Yes sir.
Nary: How much would it cost to replace the three trees that are below six foot? Since
it’s been a year and a half and they are not there yet – I am not a tree surgeon but I am
not sure they are going to be there by summer.
Barnes: Probably about 80 dollars apiece. If that is what you want me to do, I will do
that but I am sorry you guys have had so much grief. He has given me a lot – I have
got a lot of grief from him all along there. So the battle still goes in their minds over the
approval, but any other questions, I would be happy to answer.
Bird: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Mr. Barnes, who maintains this? We were told that you had an association out
there that maintains this buffer zone.
Barnes: We have Boise Lawn & Pond.
Bird: No, I mean who is responsible for doing this? You?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 4
Barnes: We are turning it over to the association soon. We haven't gone ahead and
elected –
Bird: You have an association?
Barnes: Yes we will have an association.
Bird: Okay, because I have talked to a couple owners that have places out there and
they didn’t know anything about an association.
Barnes: Oh yes, it was part of our Development Agreement with the city. So there is a
property owners association that we’ll be turning it over to, elected –
Bird: As far as the one six foot, we can take a tape out there, and if they are only
inches off, we can get six foot out of them.
Barnes: Its whatever you want to do.
Corrie: As long as they are not 20 inches too short.
Bird: As long as they are not two or three feet short.
De Weerd: Any other questions, Council? Mr. Barnes, I appreciate you coming down,
and I am sure you will replace the dead one. When you see the side of a warehouse
that is just enormous and they are saying we have three-foot trees out there and this
isn't the first time that we have heard landscaping issues. We just wanted to make sure
that we brought you in and address this and had specific recommendations of what
needed to be done. Thank you for coming down.
Issue #3. Discussion with Meridian School District about Co-Locations for Parks and
Schools.
De Weerd: We will move onto Item Number 3, discussion with the Meridian School
District about co-locations for parks and schools. I will go ahead and let Mr. Kuntz open
this up. Tom if you would like to do that and ask Wendell. This is one issue that is
going to be very important in the north corridor. In meeting not only goals for school
sites but also for a community sized park. This is an issue that the Council has been
interested in. Mr. Kuntz.
Kuntz: Thank you President De Weerd, Council, and Mayor. I think we just wanted to
have some open dialogue with the School District tonight. I know Wendell Bigham is
here to represent them. On future co-location of parks and schools. I know it’s an
issue that has been address by the North Meridian Planners who we heard from
tonight. It is addressed in our action plan, which we will be talking about later in the
meeting, and we have made some addendums to the section addressing neighborhood
parks and how they can co-locate with school sites. I believe there are some security
issues that the school district has had in the past, and still has that would need to be
discussed. With
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 5
that I would just say that staff is certainly supportive with siting parks and schools in a
contiguous location.
De Weerd: Wendell? We are usually sitting at the table.
Bigham: I was here last night so I am familiar with this arena. Madam President, Mr.
Mayor, Councilmen, the School District is desirous to work with the city for joint use
facilities where applicable. The where applicable is probably a stumbling block, but it
creates the greatest challenge in our working together. I think, to get you up to speed on
a number of things. I will just touch bases on the concerns in the past, and where we
might go in the future. It is definitely and always needs to be at the forefront of the
discussion where practical. First and foremost, safety at our school sites is paramount
to us. We deal with that issue when we talk about arterials, collector streets, whether
we have subdivisions up against us or streets on two sides. At the end of the day, what
we initially look for is a fenced in area. We don’t like to lose children at recess time and
quite frankly, we like to fence the general public out of the school area during business
hours – I think you are all aware of that concern. The first hurdle we come to on a
school and park site is where does the fence go? Certainly, the public has every right to
enjoy the public parks during 9:00 to 3:00 during Monday through Friday, and the public
certainly deserves to have their children safe during that same time period. That is the
age-old problem and is not unique to hear. We are currently trying to solve a similar
situation with Boise City Parks on a joint school parks site. From there, we may get
some insight on where we can go together with the City of Meridian. Fencing is a
problem. It does seem logical that the common area for parking would be mutually
beneficial. It certainly, during the majority of the daytime, the people who park in the
parking could access some type of play structure. How much area do you need for the
park? I don’t have the answer for that, whether it’s a small neighborhood park or a
regional park. I do know that a joint park site in conjunction with a homeowners
association within a subdivision would probably be a very difficult arrangement for the
school district to enter into. So, the next step up from that might be a city park and a
school site. How big is the acreage you need? We need 12 acres for an elementary
school, 40 acres for a middle school, and 55 to 58, 60 acres for a high school. The real
question there is how much land do you need and what is the use you’re trying to
serve? Again all three of those instances, the parking is a very interesting thing to look
at. We always tend to concentrate our efforts on parks between, at an elementary
school level. I think there may be an opportunity to look at parks adjacent to the middle
schools or high school levels. We are not as concerned quite frankly about losing
middle school or high school students. Our challenge is quite frankly is to keep them on
campus as opposed to losing them. They tend to locate in different parts of the
community. Elementary schools try to go in neighborhoods, middle schools generally
on the periphery of a neighborhood, and a high school ought to be out on its own if
where practical or in a commercial center because there is so much driving associated
with it. Our current plan and for the near future I would say we will stay with it, and that
is the school sites will contain all of the athletic fields necessary to support the mission
of the school district. In other words, any partnership that we may enter into would not
be at least in the initial pass, gee, we need your land for soccer fields, or we need it for
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 6
baseball fields or something like that. We are trying very much to do our issues on our
own. Safety. Location I have touched on. Timing and a Development Agreement may
be one of the most difficult things for us to enter into. We both have similar and
dissimilar funding sources. Our planning efforts in the case of the North Meridian
Planning Area, that 10 square miles, round numbers, we are talking somewhere
between 10 to 11 elementary schools. One per square mile. Every .92 square miles at
18,000 residences in that area. Three middle schools located within those 10 square
miles and two high schools. The high school is about 2.2 high schools in those 10
square miles. We currently are in the negotiation process and hopefully will be closing
in the near future on a high school site. Buy the big chunks of land first, that is the way
I approach this. We are aggressively looking for a middle school site, and we have I
think five or six elementary school sites tentatively shown within either Preliminary or
Final Platted subdivisions that have come before you. We are trying to concentrate our
schools in the areas where the initial growth is going. That does not preclude
discussions of park/school sites at future locations. However, I believe our schools
siting is probably more geographically sensitive than a park. When you look at the
need of an elementary school every square mile, you really don’t have a very big circle
in which to move that school around. Hopefully that would work for a park to built
where practical. Timing could be a real problem when we decide that we are going to
put a school site in a bond issue. Initially, how do we join forces to select the site and
acquire the land together? We may deem it feasible to buy it and one or the other of us
may not have the money to step up and partner it at that time. Assuming we get past
that hurdle, what are the Development Agreement and the triggers within that
agreement look like. My fear would be that the day after a bond issue passes and the
committee has met, I would not like to call the city and say we need you in five and half
months to come up with a substantial amount of money to participate on your seven
acres or six acres of an elementary school site. Things that we can work through but it
does require us to be looking out there quite a ways and our timing issues are a bit
dissimilar, I think, in terms of the priorities and how we select our sites. Again, it’s
something to work – that we can look at and of course any Development Agreements
that might go along with that. That really probably would cover my concerns. I think I
would answer any of your questions that you’ve got. They’re all open to discussion and
I think it’s fruitful to have those discussions but it’s not as easy as we always think. I
have fought this discussion for 10 years with the City of Boise. Not an adversarial fight,
its just how do we pull the various parties together in agreement that really doesn’t
prejudice one or the other. With that I would gladly answer any of your questions and
would look forward to the opportunity to looking at the Comprehensive Plan in the siting
of our schools.
De Weerd: Council, do you have any questions?
Nary: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Mr. Bigham, what I think I am hearing from you and what I think I heard from Mr.
Kuntz is that we both agree that it is a good idea. What is your thought as to how to
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 7
make those things happen and what do we need to do to implement that good idea?
Obviously, if you are looking at a school, you may be ahead of us in acquiring the sites
and looking at sites. Obviously if you need a certain acreage for the type of schools, we
would want to have the input to say well instead of looking for the 12 acre site, you
need
a 15 or 20 acre site so that we can attach a park to that portion of the property. What
mechanism do you think we need to do to kind of get that process moving along?
Bigham: Madam President, Mr. Mayor, and Councilman Nary. I think we’re very close.
I mean the parks I believe have a better Comprehensive Plan than the school district.
We are working aggressively on a site acquisition map and it encompasses the entire
district of course the North Meridian Planning Area was the departure point for that
planning effort. We hope to make that plan available once the Comp Plan by the City of
Meridian is adopted so we know kind of what we need to finish our plan up on. Having
said that, I think we could look initially at where a park and a school could co-exist. I
could do that today within that greater North Meridian Area. I could certainly do that
today and even to some extent the southern part of the community to see if there is a
logical alignment of your asterisks, if you will on the Comp Plan and our asterisks or
school sites to see if there was something logical. The next step would probably be
trying to get to the development community early, early, early on in the pre-planning
efforts so that they are aware of our joint desires and needs. The difference seems to
be at an elementary level 12 acres for us or 14 acres if it's a joint school park site. We
could somehow enter into the partnership to acquire the land. That requires both of us
to have a substantial amount of money to invest in land. We’re trying to aggressively do
that quite frankly to get our land inventory up. I do believe if we’re talking small
neighborhood parks in the, I don’t know, six acre range that would all that would
augment a 12 or 14 acre site. I may be at odds with where you guys are from. I look to
what will bring the development community and the school district together in the
earliest practical time to partner on that process. Quite frankly, it's economically driven
as far as I’m concerned from the developer’s standpoint. Is there some type of
incentive that could be provided to the developer to talk to the school district
separately? To talk to the City Parks Department separately or talk to us collectively in
a way that makes economic sense to them. I’m certainly no expert on the landscape,
the greenscape, the open space requirements, five percent, and then percent
depending upon the nature of the development. If there was a mechanism in place that
would encourage that development that somehow the school, the park, or the combined
school and park site could contribute some mutually agreeable amount to the developer
so that he wasn’t confronted with the five percent or ten percent set aside. Then it's the
school site and then it's the park. There's no good formula by which we could do this. I
think it's by and large a staff level decision. Is it half? Is it 50 percent? Is it two
percent? I don’t know what that percent would be. You would have to look at it in the
context of what the overall development looks like. I think one of the things that could
be done -- this is something I’ll be advocating on the Comp Plan in just a general way
I’ve advocated it in a specific way for the North Meridian Planning Area that Mr. Wardle
is -- we believe this to be a viable tool. The school site and certainly a park goes a long
ways for having preserved green open space. We also concur that all green space
should not be 12 acres in the center of a sea of houses. Is there some latitude in
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 8
there? To date I think the development community feels that that’s a viable way to do it.
The next step would be somehow that the school district and the City agree on a future
date upon which the school will built. We could, with good planning, indicate where the
building would be and where the seven acres of grass would be on a school site and
possibly the park and that landscaping could go in ahead of time. That’s not particularly
expensive. I really think the answer to your question trying to identify the sites and then
look at when we both need the sites to come on board and what kind of an agreement
that could be developed that gives us both the out that we need. Hopefully that
answers your question.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Cherie do you have anything? I guess I have a couple of things. Now with
Spaulding and Cecil D. Andrus, you don’t have some of those areas that are considered
the City park site fenced off or your school grounds are not totally enclosed. You’re
thinking about doing that now?
Bigham: Madam President, Mr. Mayor, and Councilmen. That is correct. Spaulding
this is where we’re looking through our future working relationship with Boise City parks
to see if we can pull it off again. Spaulding is sited by the freeway and a pretty busy
street on one side and the park is on the front side of the school site. It works. Andrus
works up against the park behind the Y. It’s a little difficult for way finding for the
public’s use. At the end of the day, the discussion is more one of appropriateness.
Yes, you’ve done that in the past but why would you elect to do that again for the safety
of our children? It's a very subjective discussion but it's the discussion that we will all
have to address that just because we did it there are we no longer concerned about the
safety of our children. Really in my mind in response to the parents turning up the
volume if you will for accountability to the school district for kid’s safety. It doesn’t
preclude looking at it. It is just the single first biggest topic of discussion in any of our
co-site locations that we would have to address in a way that we could all quite frankly
defend either through the hearing process or through the operational process.
De Weerd: So, if you -- I get back to Mr. Nary’s question where if you purchase a 12
acres and we purchase an eight-acre park that would abut that. Part of your 12 acres
you would close off, or you would close off the whole 12 acres and then would you open
it up for public use? Would the partnership then be that the city would help maintain
that? How do you see that partnership working?
Bigham: Madam President, Mr. Mayor, Councilmen. Our 12-acre site is self-contained.
It contains all the play areas that we need. So, we would never be using the park next
to us. I wouldn’t see that fencing off an eight acre Neighborhood Park up against a 12-
acre neighborhood elementary school would present a conflict of interest other than we
would have the ability to share the parking lot. There's approximately, oh, give, or take
a little bit, three to three and a half acres chewed up by the combined landscaping and
the parking lot. If we could somehow share the parking lot and the park and the parking
lot were situated on the Parks Department, the school district would only have to be
looking at buying nine acres give or take to support or entire elementary program. Or,
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 9
inverse of that would be if we worked an agreement where we were going to share the
parking and it resided entirely on the school district’s property, would the City be
desirous of buying eight acres or five acres? So, it really gets down to how much land
do we want. The problem is about those six acres of grass that’s behind the building.
That’s the very difficult piece to share, or it's just impossible to share September
through July 8:00 to 3:30. After hours our schools are park systems and green open
spaces. They are available for the community. Did that answer your question?
De Weerd: After hours then, do those fences open up? For example, you have
Chaparral where it's totally enclosed. I don’t know if that fence is ever opened.
Bigham: Madam President. I guess one could look at putting a gate in there but,
generally the parking lot and the front of the school does not necessarily have to be
fenced off from the neighborhood park. So, the ability to communicate between the
park and the school district property is simply a matter of a short walk around. We try to
bring the children up to the main or the wings. Once they go behind they wings, only
the kids go back behind there. The front scape of the school we generally fence our
side lots if you will clear to the street only because that’s the right thing to do. If that
was with a park immediately adjacent to it, we would not need to bring those fences
forward because when the kids go out on recess they’re told to go out and back if you
will or away from that space. In the final analysis, if there was a gate to communicate
between the park and the school site it's just a matter of who locks it and unlocks and
how you deal with that. That would not be prohibitive to try to look at that if that other
walking distance was determined.
De Weerd: So, from the public site you would have the joint parking so your Little
Leaguers or your PAL Soccer or whatever could all park in the same way and it's just
which direction do you go the school open ground or the park open ground but it's all a
common gathering place?
Bigham: Madam President. That seems to be the most logical thing. Those uses do
not compete with each other at the same time. Generally, those kids that are there for
sports are coming from the school or the neighborhood school so they’re not joint use.
There are certainly days of exception that we failed at meeting -- if you choose to be in
the park on Thanksgiving or Christmas or any of the special event days that the school
has for programs. As you well know there's, you couldn’t build a parking lot big enough
to hold the people for those two or three events each year. Other than that conflict, we
design our elementary school parking lots approximately 100 to 125 car parks. We
have something under 50 staff at the school. On a day-to-day basis there would
certainly be, I would think ample parking or the ability to up the parking just a little bit
depending upon what the parks need for the parking. Again, notice in the discussion
we’re concentrating on the elementary schools.
De Weerd: Yes.
Bigham: The greater good may be looking at lands adjacent to the middle school or the
high school sites just -- I don’t know maybe it's the massing of similar interest or age
groups but I think it's something that we would like to look at. Again, all of our concerns
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 10
would be by and large the same but I don’t know. It tends to speak to larger community
resources.
De Weerd: Well, in your traditional calendar when you’re using the parking lot, certainly
parks traditionally aren’t using the parking lot. A year round school it wouldn’t be as
conducive to working together. You’ve provided some clarification I think, for certainly
me and I don’t know if it's helped Tom. I think there's a lot of potential in particular with
the shared parking and maybe even looking at some of the middle school or possible
high school site for really, furthering the taxpayer dollar. Bottom line, that’s what it all
comes down with. We all come out of the same pie.
Bigham: Madam President, Mr. Mayor, and Councilmen. I do believe it's worthwhile to
look at. I would be willing to meet at Tom’s earliest convenience. I would like to have it
known though that we are very aggressively pursuing those sites in the North Meridian
Planning Area. As long as you don’t drop the density down to two houses per acre, we
won't have over purchased in that area.
De Weerd: I don’t see that happening.
Bigham: We are in communication constantly with the developers. If you have, an area
that you would wish to look at I would certainly take that under consideration and try to
move those areas of the community up in my thinking process. Right now, I have way
more opportunities than I have money to –
De Weerd: Just like the rest of us.
Bird: So do we.
De Weerd: It would be advantageous to get together and see where they could co-exist
and where a logical alignments can be made especially with this North Corridor
Planning going on. It's an ideal timing to be looking at it in this way. Anything further
Tom?
Kuntz: Just a couple quick comments. One is I would be available to meet next
Thursday Wendell. Two is the way staff is looking at this and it really is referenced in
our parks action plan is we see partnering working the best on elementary school sites
and neighborhood parks and sharing parking. The way we’re hoping that that would
develop, you talked about the timing is that we‘re hoping that the developers, if there's
enough incentive would actually provide that five to seven acres as part of their
development plan in exchange for open space or a portion of open space and be
responsible for at least the greening of those areas. The timing that you talked about
when the schools go in and when the park could be developed, it really we don’t think is
that big of an obstacle. We feel like community parks and middle school sites or high
school sites could co-exist. As far as timing there, we would be depending on impact
fees or exchanging impact fees in exchange for the property and or developments. I
think the timing issues and having the money to pay is not a matter of the city having
cold cash to make that happen but getting with the developer far enough in advance,
planning far enough in advance where the park site could be located in relationship to
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 11
the school to make the parking and the green space work. If I could, we’ve got one site
that we’re working on right now, which is part of a plan that will come to you Cedar
Springs in the near future. People in the audience I apologize if you can't see the front
of this.
De Weerd: Tom you need to be speaking into a microphone.
Kuntz: Thank you. I have this map upside down. That’s the way I operate. This is
actually Ustick Road here. This is north. It looks like south but it's actually north. All
right. (Inaudible). Slide it down your way. Keep going your way. That’s good. Okay.
This is our future 58-acre park. Underneath here you can see it calls for a second
parking lot in phase two which would be adjacent to this future school site. So, one of
the things that Wendell and I have talked about, which they’re starting the preliminary
planning of this site would be somehow to work out where we could share this parking
lot and develop a formula that would work so that the cost would be shared also.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
Bigham: We’ll use this as an example (inaudible). One of our concerns would be on
this -- we laid this school out in terms of frontage of the school to the street access. If
we look at moving the parking lot to the back of the school, are we talking a public
street through our property to serve the City’s parking lot? I’m not sure that we’re
willing to become a facto driveway to a jointly shared City park. It's kind of a public
street if it goes through our parking lot. That road access issue, this would be a good
school to look at that and what that cost-sharing mechanism might actually look like. It
may simply be a matter of rotating the building and looking for the access. Again, I
think you can appreciate if we came in with a development that said we want to go
through Kmart’s parking lot to get to our elementary school site. It just doesn’t quite feel
right. We would have to have that same liability concern but I think this is a good site
that we can look at something like that. We have more ground here than we actually
need.
Corrie: Madam Chairman.
De Weerd: Yes, Mayor Corrie.
Corrie: Madam President, excuse me. Tom, in relationship to what he just said, were
you thinking about using the school property to get to that parking lot?
Kuntz: Mayor Corrie, Council. We certainly were not.
Corrie: Okay.
Kuntz: I guess what we were hoping again I’m not an engineer. If the traffic could enter
into the school property here since the primary playground is here, continue past the
school and then have a parking lot here. Again part of out parking lot that could be
used by staff and or parents. Again, I mean there's all kinds of options that this is
probably not the right forum to discuss in. I think it's a matter of if we put our heads
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 12
together and we make it a priority so that we’re using taxpayers dollars wisely, I think
we can make it work.
De Weerd: Speaking as a parent of the Christmas musicals that would be really cool.
Kuntz: Or pathways from our parking lot to the school. I mean, there's all kinds of
(inaudible).
Corrie: I can see where he’s coming from though.
De Weerd: Yes. Well, yes that would be a good first project to discuss and see if
there's a way to make it work to your advantage as well as the City.
Bigham: Madam President, Mr. Mayor, and Councilmen. The few times that I’ve
actually looked at this, we have to stop thinking about our site as being a rectangle and
your park is a rectangle (inaudible). What you ultimately need is almost an L shaped
piece of property where by you come to a natural break in the school as a 12 acres lobe
here and the park is here. You may or may not totally be connected. They (inaudible).
Every time I tried to do it in a rectangular or square you’ve got to kind of shift those
(inaudible). Then it starts having some interesting (inaudible).
De Weerd: Yes. Good. Is there anything further Mr. Kuntz that you need? Well, we
have a possible partnership out by the high school too with our little Neighborhood Park
and shared parking perhaps.
Bigham: (Inaudible) Madam President, Mr. Mayor, and Councilmen. I delivered to
tonight to Mr. Kuntz a letter from the school district stating that we have no intentions of
exercising our option on that 2.2 acres and that you’re free and we wish you the best of
luck in negotiating with Far West Developers, (inaudible) to build your approximate five
acre park. I have reviewed the high school layout with David Moser our Athletic
Director. Again, we go back to we have all of the elements necessary to support our
school on that location. We did voluntarily elect during our design phase to stub water
and sewer from our property into the park at what we all hope is somewhere close to
where those services might be desired. Mr. Kuntz and I are going to sit down here in
the near future and look at what that park layout might look like. Again, parking may be
the biggest issue. I don’t know what you guys have in mind or what the City Parks has
in mind for the parking for that park. The high school would be one of those examples
where it would very difficult during business hours, which at the high school seems to
be 6:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night or something like that. That the school
property could really be used in an effective way for parking at the park because you
would be coming three eighths of a mile through our parking lot to service a
neighborhood park. Having said all of that I’m really looking forward to sitting down
because it's a big improvement to the overall neighborhood if that area behind the high
school gets (inaudible) up. We’re looking forward to that (inaudible).
De Weerd: I’m sure you don’t want another access into -- I’m sure the neighbors don’t
want you to have that access into it at that point either.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 13
Bigham: The neighbors are concerned.
De Weerd: Okay if there's nothing further Council? Thank you for joining us.
Issue #4 VIATrans Presentation by Kelli Fairless
De Weerd: Okay. Our next item is the VIATrans. Kelli thank you for joining us.
Fairless: I have copies of the presentation so, if you want to take notes, (inaudible).
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
Fairless: I apologize for that. Madam President, Mayor Corrie, Members of the
Meridian City Council. Thank you for the opportunity to come and share with you some
of the work we’re doing at VIATrans. I also had the pleasure today for the first time in
many months to get to walk to a meeting. We’re now located over at Generations Plaza
and have settled in very well over there, really enjoy our Meridian, downtown Meridian
location. I wanted to let you know that was something I haven't done for a while and
really enjoyed that. We’re going to look today at the past present and future public
transportation in the Treasure Valley. You want to do the next slide Shari? There's some
–
*** End of Side One ***
Fairless: -- statement for VIATrans. Really the critical component for this mission
statement is moving people. For so long our policy at all level, federal, state and local
have really been in terms of transportation about moving automobiles, moving instead
of moving people. We found lots of inefficient ways of doing that to some degree.
Nationally, where transit is supported by local policies, by funding, we found increases
in ridership that have been to levels of around World War Two. I mean they’re seeing
some real significant increases in ridership throughout the country. Some of those
systems are rail systems. Some of them are bus systems. A lot of it has to do with some
creativity in terms of how systems are marketed and how communities have learned to
embrace their transit system as a part of their infrastructure and a service that is
provided to the community. Okay. Our goal to figure out how do we get to that mission.
VIATrans is involved in several planning efforts right now. Our transportation
Development Plan, the TDP is a project that we’ve been working on for about the last
six to eight months. We did an intensive public involvement process. We asked people
what they wanted to see in a public transportation system. The bulk of my presentation
today will be what we heard from the community and what that conceptually looks like.
So, I’ll go into that in a minute. We’re also involved in the rail corridor evaluation and
looking at the rail corridor we are putting out an article that we’ll have back by the end of
this month to hire a consulting team to look at the rail corridor. One of your members,
Malcolm MacCoy is on our technical advisory committee. We’re looking at the rail
corridor not so much to do a feasibility study but really a technical look at the corridor
and what the hardware is that’s there. How does that need to be changed in order to
make it viable for public transportation and for transit services and what would it cost to
be able to do that. So it really is a very technical document. It gives us a marker for
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 14
future planning efforts in terms of the rail corridor. We’re also going to be involved this
year in a strategic plan and organizational development process. Once we’ve
understood now what the community is looking for in terms of services, we need to look
at what VIATrans should look like as an organization to be able to provide those
services. Next slide. I love showing these pictures of our public transportation system of
the past. I don’t know if everyone knows this but Treasure Valley had a very viable
interurban system that went all through the Treasure Valley. It operated for 38 years,
went from the Natatorium all the way out State Street to Middleton, and then back in
through Meridian to Boise in a huge loop. They carried 1500 passengers per day on this
system and ridership decreased with the introduction of the Model T. so, when we
started to get more convenient types of transportation we noticed that the ridership
decreased. Next slide. We also have found through some research that the interurban
provided a very strong catalyst for economic development and agricultural
development. If you look out State Street, a lot of that early development was along the
rail line. People located their businesses along the rail line and also served the
agricultural areas throughout the Treasure Valley. That’s how people got their goods to
the City centers. It was affordable and it provided mobility for the first time to the
average citizen. They didn’t have to go by horse and also through muddy streets. Then
in 1928 motor buses were introduced and you see that the ridership, again reached a
peak in World War Two. That was in part due to policies related to gas rationing. There
was during World War Two there wasn’t access to cars and there wasn’t access to a lot
of the materials that were required to operate and auto system. The services ran 24
hours a day at a 15-minute frequency. That’s a level of service we haven't seen in this
community for many, many years. I wouldn’t even venture to guess when the last time --
. I think it was right after World War Two when that ended. Next slide. The other thing
too while this is coming up. The system was totally funded by the private sector and it
wasn’t until subsidies were made available to the automobile to encourage automobile
use that we found ridership on the private sector wasn’t able to support to that system
and no private sector entities have been able to support a transit system in this country
since that time. Nationally we’re looking at the benefits of public transportation. We’re
not proposing that everyone will be able to give up their cars and take public transit.
But we think it is an essential part of a balanced transportation system. It's one of the
key components to giving people choice so that they may not use public transit every
day but they can at least think about whether they’re going to use it on a particular day
or a couple days a week. Actually in terms of traffic congestion reduction, if I use transit,
if everyone uses transit one day a week you’re reducing your traffic congestion by 20
percent. Also it has the benefit of improving overall mobility. A system that works well
for commuters also works for the seniors, for people with disabilities and people that we
call transit dependent that don’t really have the choice. Next slide. The other social
benefit that are not going to surprise anyone is the air quality improvement. Also, transit
supports community livability. Again, mobility of seniors and disabled. Studies are
showing too that it's improving the overall health of the community. People experience
less stress when they’re riding a public transit. There is also the issue of more physical
activity, somebody walking to a transit station versus getting in their cars. But there are
some health benefits as well. Next slide. We’re also focusing on understanding more
about the economic benefits. That slide indicates that an average passenger on public
transportation in the Treasure Valley is paying $326 to $1,000.00 per year. The average
cost on a car -- COMPASS gathered this data for us – is $6900 to $11,200.00 per year.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 15
We’re not suggesting that you get rid of all your cars but you could maybe reduce that
cost and be able to have that money for other purposes. Also, overall public transit has
been shown nationally to be good for the economy and that it provides access to jobs
and systems that are investing in public transportation they are seeing a six to one
return on that investment. Those statistics are related to rail transit and other kinds of
services as well. Next slide. This is our current service area. We are serving right now,
or we’re planning to serve two counties. Both Ada and Canyon County and 14 cities
within those counties. It creates a challenge for us. How do you develop a system that
serves all those interests? I think we’re moving in the right direction through -- do you
want to do the next slide – through our transportation development plan. The purpose
of the plan really is to give us a description of services so we understand what it's going
to require. What kind of ridership do we need to meet community goals? It also creates
linkages between and within communities and the implementation is staged over time.
So that the investment is gradual and done over time as the community support is there
and the resources are available. The next is what we based our alternative assumptions
on. We looked at, some of you have heard this before because we presented this at the
regional transportation summit. We looked at what would it take in order to reach the
goals in 2020? The COMPASS regional plan for the year 2020. We looked at for five
percent on transit, twelve percent on ride share and then this translates into 22 million
boardings that is needed by the year 2020 to get to the five percent goal. And that also
the transit system really has to serve everyone in the VIATrans service area. Next slide.
This is what it looks like, Westland Research a transit consultant from Seattle reviewed
other peer groups, other transit areas that are similar to Boise, some that are to the
Treasure Valley, some that are a little beyond where we’re at today and some that are
smaller than we are but are further along in terms of their transit investment. They also
applied our community goals that we reviewed just a second ago and took input from
several different opportunities that we had for public involvement. We went to the
communities in Ada and Canyon County and asked people what it would take for them
to ride on public transportation or use a public transportation system. Go ahead to the
next slide. These were the alternatives that they have presented to us. Actually Shari if
you want to go ahead and go to the next one. We’ll do it more detailed in the next one.
The first one is the premium corridor. This is a service similar to the Treasure Valley
Metro. It serves a major corridor, could serve a rail corridor and or an interstate like the
I-84. The transit stations are hubs and over time, those transit stations are built. They
are built with more temporary stations and as the system grows then the transit stations
are developed into more permanent type structures. The service is very frequent. The
goal really is to try to get people out of their cars. The service has to be and compared
to it as convenient as an automobile trip for commuters and other folks who would use
the service. It would operate seven days a week and have a limited number of stations.
So, it's a little more like an express type service. Next slide. Under the primary routes,
those are the links between communities. I have some examples of corridors or arterials
that this kind of service would serve. Fairview is an example. State Street, Chinden,
Nampa Caldwell Boulevard, and also Ustick is another example. So, you’re connecting
communities, serving two or more hubs. This is very expansive service running to the
beginning and the end of the day depending on what that level is. I believe in the
Westland plan it would run service up through midnight. It would be seven days a week
and your stops are spaced a little farther apart. Next slide. The secondary services are
those types of secondary routes are more community oriented, neighborhood oriented
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 16
routes. They’re going to be serving neighborhoods. They operate at a less frequent
basis. The connections have to be timed similar to the way Boise Urban Stages and
Treasure Valley Transit run now because your frequency is less your timed stops have
to be coordinated. You have more frequent stops. Another type of secondary route
service would be a downtown circulating shuttle. That’s something that, for the City of
Boise that’s in the Capitol City Development Corporation plan is to look at a downtown
circulating shuttle that really serves a very small area, a much smaller area with some
frequent service to try to relieve some of the congestion in the downtown corridor. Next
slide. This is the rural services are really what’s more unique about this kind of plan. We
have because of the diversity of the two counties and the need to serve rural patrons
with public transportation; these services really are more flexible. The demand
response is somebody would call ahead of time and schedule it. They could deviate
from their routes and also you would do flag stops rather than a designated stop. The
point of this type of service is really to serve the more remote areas and to try to do that
in the most cost-effective way. Also, with the rural services you could build to a more
fixed route type service over time through a vanpool program and other kinds of
alternative transportation services like carpooling and vanpooling programs. Next slide.
Special services are those kinds of services specifically for persons with disabilities.
The ADA paratransit requirement is that any community that provides fixed route bus
service also has to provide complimentary paratransit service. These services may
serve a hub. They operate based on the clientele. So, there isn't necessarily a
designated start and stop time. It's based on what the needs of the market is in that
area. Then the next slide demonstrates the express ad commuter services. These really
operate just in the peak period. They operate serving major employment centers and
HP, Micron, large employment centers. Also they could include the vanpool and carpool
services. These have very, very few stops because again you’re trying to compete with
the automobile, get people to make a different choice when it comes to their work
commute trips. Next slide. When Westland proposed this plan they looked at based on
the ability to achieve the transit goal of five percent and the ride share goal of twelve
percent. They divided the alternatives out by minimum to maximum with light rail. The
minimum alternative is the lowest probability of achieving the goal all the way up to the
maximum alternative. Light rail has the highest probability of achieving the transit goal.
Next slide. This is hopefully, not going to frighten you too much. This is actually the
capitol costs in millions in today’s dollars for each of those alternatives. It's a little hard
to see but the color, the 17.9 million goes all the way through to the bottom row and any
addition is just on top of that. To get to the moderate you would increase your
investment to get to 26.3 million annual costs. Then you add to that to get to the
maximum to get to 32.4 million and add to that what you need to get to 51.9 million.
This is total costs. This isn't factoring in any (inaudible) or local contribution. Next slide.
We did the similar slide for the operating costs so you can get a sense of what those
costs would be. For the operating costs for the minimum 16.4 all the way up to 61.2
million a year for the maximum with light rail. Next slide. This is really, this slide depicts
what we’re all the most interested in. this is going to be the local costs. What new
money needs to be found in order to provide these services? The darer shade blue
represents the operating costs. The lighter shade blue represents the capitol costs. The
reason the operating costs are so much greater than the capitol costs is that when
Boise City goes over 200,000, the Boise urbanized areas goes over 200,000 there
won't be any federal money, the way that the law is written now, there won't be any
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 17
federal money available for operating. There will be funding available for capitol. So,
some of the operating costs. This takes out all of the fares and all of the federal,
anticipated federal contributions to the system. You start with a minimum of 16 million.
The moderate would be 24.2 million a year all the way up to the 49.4 million for the
maximum with light rail transit. In terms of the phasing of implementation there would be
a span of time in between in each of those phases to, at the end of the twenty years to
get to the maximum of light rail, again depending on community support and resources
that are available. The next slide. We took the funding for the minimum alternative and
calculated it by household to twenty-five cents per household per day, which is less than
a can of soda. Sometimes I don’t know if some people see the investment really is on a
per household basis fairly minimal to have that minimum level of service which is I
would say about three or four times more than what we have right now. For some
communities it's significantly more than what they have right now. We’re asking
everyone what are you willing to do to support this? We’re going through a process at
VIATrans. We’re looking at how do we build a coalition for public transit? We’ll be the
center of that effort over the next couple of years to try to develop a strategy for seeking
funding for public transportation. I have a newsletter that we produced for some public
meetings that we’re going to be doing. We’re going to go out and talk service groups,
what we’re calling our speaker’s bureau. We’re bringing the message to the people
because we know it's hard to get people to come to public meetings and tell, especially
where we don’t have a real controversial issue here. I’m sure if we said, we’re going to
increase your taxes so come talk to us about public transportation people would come.
But right now there's no threat of that happening so it's hard to get people interested. I
look forward to future dialogues with the members of the Meridian City Council about
public transportation and as we add to this presentation and get more information, we’ll
definitely hope to be back and have that chance to do that. I’ll stand for any questions
now that you might have.
De Weerd: Kelli, what is when, if you even achieved your maximum with the light rail
what kind of impact does that have on the traffic? Is that your 20 percent goal?
Fairless: Yes.
De Weerd: Reducing it?
Fairless: It's combined with --. The twenty-five percent goal, which is in the Ada
Planning 2020 plan, is a combination of transit, which is the five percent, 12 percent for
the ride share, such as vanpool, carpool programs. Then the remaining is
telecommuting, other travel demand management type things. Telecommuting, biking,
walking, those sorts of things. In order to keep from -- I can use the I-84 corridor study
as an example because that’s the most current information. If we’re able to achieve a
25 percent goal, using alternative transportation on the I-84 corridor you’re able to
decrease the need for that additional lane which in the corridor has some significant
fiscal impacts because of each of those interchanges and the bridges that would have
to be reconstructed. So, the cost of adding the alternative transportation component to
that plan significantly decreases future expenditures. I am working with an economist
right now whose developing a project for us to actually get at some really hard numbers
because I think that that’s definitely we need to be able to talk to people about.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 18
De Weerd: If you have a 300 million cost to improve the infrastructure if you don’t find
alternative transportation, how does this compare to what you would save if you did
have it? You know, what would be still needed? I would be interested in seeing how that
three million dollar price tag is reduced and in what proportion.
Fairless: Madam President, Mr. Mayor. That’s really what I’m hoping to get at with the
economist that we’re working with because I think it's a really important piece of this
dialogue. I think it's the part that people have the least understanding about in terms of
what does it mean in real terms if we don’t do this? What's the cost of not doing this, is
essentially what we want to get a better answer at.
De Weerd: Council, do you have any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: No?
Fairless: I’m going to leave a copy of our newsletter for you to look at.
De Weerd: Thank you so much for –
Fairless: Thank you.
De Weerd: -- doing this. When will you find out the results from the summit that you
had and some of the feedback from the participants?
Fairless: Madam President, Mr. Mayor. I believe that the COMPASS has been working
on that. I’m not sure where they’re at. I know that have a final document that they were
fine-tuning. I’m not sure if they’re bringing that back to the COMPASS board. That was
my understanding was that the COMPASS board was going to get that eventually.
De Weerd: Okay.
Fairless: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Issue #5 Sanitary Services Company Annual Report Presentation by Steve
Sedlacek
De Weerd: Okay. We’ll go ahead and move onto Item Number five, which is the
Sanitary Services Company annual report presentation, Steve.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
De Weerd: Did you change the spelling of someone’s name or what?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 19
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
De Weerd: I might note that you should have changed the spelling of my name if you
were going to redo this.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
De Weerd: It’s little ‘de’ space --
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
De Weerd: I had to give you that comment last year too. I just thought I would be
consistent.
Bird: It's fine.
Sedlacek: I believe last year I was here and I misspelled everyone’s name. This year I
only misspelled half of your names.
De Weerd: Yes. Nary and Bird are kind of hard to mess up.
Bird: Yes. If you misspell bird, you’re (inaudible).
Sedlacek: The more elected officials we get with four letter last names the better off I
will be.
Bird: Yes.
De Weerd: I don’t know if I like that criteria.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
Sedlacek: Nothing personal. Mr. Mayor, Madam Chairman, Members of the Council.
Thank you for giving me a few minutes to talk to you about the solid waste collection
system in the City of Meridian. Throughout the year, we’ve been giving you quarterly
reports. We intend to keep doing that. At the end of the year though, we give you this
annual report which kind of wraps up all of the issues and things we’ve been working
on. I apologize I didn’t get it to you sooner. I know that you die to see this report in
January. It's probably the highlight of your first month of the year. We met with the Solid
Waste Advisory Committee yesterday. We got a number of comments. I added those
comments, or changed some of the text today. That’s why I had to take your older copy
there Council Person McCandless. A couple of apologies. I do apologize for misspelling
your last names. You would think I would learn. But anyway I’m getting better. Also,
Councilperson McCandless had to sit through the same discussion yesterday so I
apologize. Hopefully I won't drone on and on. If I could just take a few minutes and hit
the high points of the report and then stand for questions that would be great. The first
page of the report it shows just a general overview of waste generation raised in the
City. Last year there was 74.3 million pounds of waste generated within the City, which
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 20
is a generation rate of about 5.5 pounds per person per day which is slightly more than
the US average. We had a discussion about this yesterday. Apparently the citizens of
Meridian tend to use a little bit more water than the national average. I think we just
have bigger property, lot sizes here. We generate more grass and yard clippings. That
al goes in the waste stream.
De Weerd: It couldn’t be lot sizes.
Sedlacek: It couldn’t be? I’m not advocating smaller lots by the way. But year over year
there was a fifteen percent increase in the waste stream. We felt like this year was a bit
of a slow year for us. We’ve been experiencing 20, 30 percent growth rates year over
year and this was only 15 percent. So it was like kind of a break for us. That was kind
of nice. One of the good pieces of good news, out of those seventy-four million pounds
we were able to recycle five and a half million pounds of waste. Three and a half million
from commercial customers. Two million from the curbside recycling program that we
have had for the first full year this year. Moving on to page two, we say a six percent
growth rate in the number of residential homes. Basically we’ve gone to four full time
trucks picking up residential waste. Moving on to page three, that system generated
thirty-three million pounds of waste. That was the largest waste stream we had if you
look at residential, commercial, and roll off services. If you just consider the number of
homes and people in those homes, they generated about two and a half pounds per
person per day. The prior number of 5.5 takes into account the entire waste stream
from commercial and roll off customers. This is just the homes that are generating about
two and a half pounds per person per day. Which is similar to last year. Okay,
commercial collection we saw a fourteen percent growth rate. This is one of those --
commercial collection is starting to catch up to -- in the past years it has caught up to
residential. Five, ten years ago there was tremendous residential growth and the
commercial growth is coming behind it. We’re still seeing good growth rates there.
Basically eighteen and a half million pounds of waste were generated, 86 pounds per
business per day. That’s not unusual. We’ve gone to two full time front-loading trucks to
collect all that waste. We haven't changed that fleet too much in the past year. Page
five starts the roll off refuse collection. These are the large construction boxes, 20, 30,
40 yarders. We were seeing almost 50 percent growth rate in this system year over
year. We were busily buying trucks and equipment to service it. With the economy, this
is the first place we see -- when the economy heads towards recession -- I hate to say
that word – this is the place where we see it. Where construction just comes to a
standstill or it gets much slower. Nonetheless, we saw a 10 percent growth rate, much
less than the 47 percent we saw in the prior year. We still generated seventeen million
pounds of waste in that system. Any questions about any of those? Going on to
recycling services. This was the first full year that we had residential curbside collection
of recyclables. We maintained all the other programs, the phone book collection, the
Christmas tree collection, the fall leave collection, used oil collection. All that stuff
stayed in force and grew over the year. We collected two million pounds of waste, or
recyclables on the curb. That commodity value is worth $29,000.00 to the City. After we
pay for the household hazardous waste collection program, which we will get into in a
minute, that netted the City in excess of $21,000.00. That’s money that I believe the
City is going to be using to purchase park equipment for new parks, which is that’s a
great deal. Hopefully what we’re going to do in the future is have a sign at those parks
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 21
that relates the equipment to the recycling. We’re going to say, you know because of
your efforts as citizens to recycle, this is what you get, you know a new playground.
That builds the interest in recycling and keeps people doing it. It's a great deal. The
recycling participation stayed at 70 percent pretty consistently throughout the year. It
started rising toward the end of the year. That’s very consistent with the questionnaire
that we handed out a number of years ago when we started the recycling program,
trying to find out who would be interested in it. We found out seventy percent were
interested in it. We had the lowest recycling month in September, right after the terrorist
attacks. People just didn’t put out their recycling bin. I think things kind of ground to a
halt there for a little while. It was some of the lowest recycling days we’ve had. Moving
onto household hazardous waste collection, this is probably one of the most popular
programs we’ve got. 19,000 pounds of hazardous material were taken out of the waste
stream, which before would have either ended up in the landfill or in the sewer system
or your storm sewers. We had a very successful promotion in the middle of the year
where we recycled, or exchanged thermometers, mercury thermometers. St. Alphonsus
took part in that, the City of Boise, Ada County. It drew a lot of people into the system.
They brought in other stuff with them. The household hazardous waste collection
program, when the, of course when the curbside collection went monthly, or went on a
daily basis, household hazardous waste went on a monthly basis. The fourth Tuesday
of every month. We were doing it every quarter so this is the first full year where we say
a 12 month collection. We did skip in December because the fourth Tuesday of
December was Christmas Day so we didn’t collect in December but we still had a great
year. Phonebook recycling continues. There's more and more people making phone
books now. There's Impact Directories, there's US West Dex, --
De Weerd: Where do you put them?
Sedlacek: -- McCleod makes one and so now we’re recycling phone books year round
pretty much. We’re about ready to end US West Dex collection this week. But basically
we decided that we’re just going to donate collection services to anyone that wants to,
you know whether it's McCleod or Impact Directories, we’ll put a container at a
Jackson’s Food Store and collect it periodically at no charge to them or the City. Used
oil collection continues to get better and better. Since the inception of that program
we’ve collected nearly 10,000 gallons of used oil. Last year we collected about 3700
gallons. That material is collected on our trucks at curbside. We take it to a 500-gallon
holding tank at our shop. Then we give it to environmental oil out of Nampa and they --.
The question came up what do they do with that Gary Smith was asking yesterday.
They burn some of it for heat and then they re-refine some of it for oil. So it's a
combination of both. Thanks. Fall leave collection increased dramatically. It went up 50
percent year over year. I think the trees are just getting bigger in the town.
De Weerd: They’re finally growing up.
Sedlacek: Councilperson McCandless put out a tremendous amount of leaves
apparently. Also the rotary works with the Boy Scouts to find elderly families that can't
get their yards raked. The Boy Scouts rake them, we come pick them up to free so
that’s becoming a bigger program also. As these programs become more ingrained in
the –
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 22
De Weerd: And the Kiwanis.
Sedlacek: The Kiwanis?
De Weerd: Yes. The Kiwanis and the Rotary.
Sedlacek: Okay, I apologize.
De Weerd: Just thought I would –
Sedlacek: I knew there was a number of service groups doing that. As these programs
become consistent year over year people will get used to recycling their leaves, doing
the first full week of January and those sorts of things. So, these programs continue to
grow as the City grows. Participation in the Christmas tree recycling went up 6.7
percent, which was good. That covers basically the residential recycling side. Moving on
to the commercial recycling. As I said three and a half million pounds of waste were
collected form commercial establishments. Those are basically compactors that from
businesses that segregate their cardboard, Fred Meyer. WinCo, Wal-Mart. They all
have dedicated compactors and the material is taken to Western Recycling and they
receive some money for that based on the weight. Just as the City receives some for
their cardboard portions in the curbside program. So it has value to the people
generating it. We’re simply the hauler. It reduces their disposal costs. It's a good
program. Also we took in seventy-five tons of loose cardboard. These would be
customers that might be stocking a store and they’re going to generate a whole gob of
cardboard. We’ll just give them a container and they will put only cardboard in that.
We’ll haul that to the recycling center for them. We started late in 2001 with a smaller
three-yard container program for smaller commercial accounts whereby they can
reduce their solid waste rate by recycling cardboard. Now we have to have a dedicated
cardboard container at their property. I believe the people that are doing that are right
behind the Cherry Plaza. The dollar store over there generates gobs of cardboard
because they’re unpacking stuff every minute of every day it seems like. Are there any
(inaudible)?
(Inaudible discussion from audience)
Sedlacek: So, that’s a program that will grow next year. Wood waste, again some
customers --. We can identify them that generate maybe large amounts of pallets or
strictly wood, they’ll get a dedicated container for that. We’ll take it to the landfill. Instead
of being charged $5.00 a yard to come in its $1.00 and a half a yard. So, they save
money. Then that material is ground up in a tub grinder and it's used for cattle bedding.
It's taken off site. So it's recycled. Jabil Circuit has a bunch of recycling. This was the
one category that did worse in 2001 than 2000. Jabil isn't recycling as much as they
used to because they’re not working as much as they used to. It's an economic deal.
Just moving on to the next page, we’ve got another list of programs we’re involved with
and we provide services or donations to in terms of money or time throughout the City.
It's a pretty complete list. There's probably some things missing. Again we appreciate
being part of the community. We know you have a choice of who you can hire to haul
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 23
your waste. We want to be part of the community for a long time. On the last two pages
we have a couple things we wanted to talk about. These are new programs or new
issues. Maybe not new. One of these was in here last year. Current issues. Some of
you might have seen our spot on channel Seven where we are going to be part of the
bio-diesel program in the County. The State of Idaho had a grant to subsidize bio-diesel
purchase, bio-diesel fuel purchase. We’ll be in the program. Treasure Valley Transit that
runs buses in the City of Meridian and Nampa and elsewhere will be putting some of
their buses on bio-diesel. The GSA that runs the federal fleet will be putting some of
their cars or trucks, whatever they run on diesel on bio-diesel. Bio-diesel as we will be
using it, it is 20 percent vegetable oil, 80 percent diesel. It's vegetable oil with the
glycerin removed. You can run trucks on pure vegetable oil with no modification to the
engines at all. So, we can grow our own fuel but it's kind of expensive right now. The 20
percent bio-diesel costs 15 to 20 cents more a gallon. That difference will be paid by the
state back to us. We would like to continue the program after it runs out of money. We
expect that we’ll be able to run the trucks for about six months before the funding runs
out. We’re going to run all of our residential trucks and our recycling trucks anything in a
residential neighborhood would be on the bio-diesel program. We want to see how it
effects the performance of our vehicles. If it changes our maintenance schedules.
Obviously before we were to go full scale we would want to try it out on these six trucks.
The good thing about it is it meets the federal sulfur requirements for fuel that are going
to be implemented in 2006 that we’re going to pay for anyway. Emissions are reduced
20 to 30 percent. We don’t have to modify our trucks. It's safer because it's less
flammable. So it's safer to store in our yard. It something that we can grow. It supports
the American farmers and it reduces our need to import oil. It's motherhood and apple
pie. It's everything good. Nothing bad other than the cost. Most of the cost to get to that
15 to 20 cents is to get the bio-diesel product to us. There's only apparently two or three
refining plants in the US. One in the Midwest, one in San Francisco. I’m not sure where
any other ones are. So, to get it here is the problem. If there were a refining plant in this
area, if there were a market for them to sell it this is something that we could do all the
time. It's something for the future and we would like to try it out. The second issue of
course is we need a new shop and office. I know you know -- you’ve heard all sorts of
discussion about that. We at this point are looking at a number of properties. The one
that has come down the pipe first obviously is the one on Ustick and Ten Mile. Our
position on that is if you –
De Weerd: We don’t want to hear it until the 19th
.
Sedlacek: Okay.
De Weerd: Your position on that particular site.
Sedlacek: Well, we won't be there on the 19th
. We’re just going to do whatever you
decide is best for the City. We’ll go and we’ll take that and run with it.
De Weerd: Okay.
Sedlacek: Or go elsewhere with it, whatever you decide. Is that all right? I didn’t break
the law did I? Okay. We obviously don’t want to alienate any of our customer base.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 24
We’re just looking for a piece of light industrially zoned property somewhere in the City
or near the City that we can move to in the near future. Obviously the number of trucks
we need is directly proportional to the number of people in the City and at 20, 30
percent growth rates we’re adding trucks so often that we’re running out of room. We’re
anxious to work with the City on any piece of property that’s out there. That’s about all I
had. Do you have any questions?
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
Corrie: I’m glad to see you using that bio-diesel. Even though they say it smells like
french fries going down the street.
Sedlacek: The source of this bio-diesel would be soybeans, soybean oil. If you do use
(inaudible) from waste lard from McDonald’s it will smell like french fries. I’m not sure
what soybean will smell like.
Corrie: (inaudible).
Sedlacek: I did want to say one thing. We really don’t want the Council to find out about
programs going on in the City of Meridian by watching the news or reading the
newspaper. We hope you hear from us first. If that news flash got to you before we did I
apologize for that. We should have gotten to you a little quicker. It did come upon fast
upon us.
De Weerd: I heard it at COMPASS. That was very exciting. I would add my sentiments
to the Mayor’s. I really acknowledge your forward thinking and taking advantage of the
subsidy right now anyway.
Sedlacek: Right. I think it will be a good thing for the community and us. It's a win-win
situation we should pursue it.
De Weerd: Okay. Well, there were no questions, staff?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: You’ve been awfully noisy over there so you must have had something. No?
(Inaudible discussion from staff)
Sedlacek: We’ll share all of our experience with bio-diesel with City staff at the end of
the program if you want to convert any of your vehicles to bio-diesel.
De Weerd: Thank you Steve.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 25
Sedlacek: Thanks for your time.
De Weerd: Thank you.
(Inaudible discussion amongst Council members)
Corrie: -- that just came in from ACHD (inaudible).
Issue #6 Discussion of Ten Mile Interchange Sewer Study (Gary Smith & Brad
Watson)
De Weerd: Okay. Moving on we have issue No. 6 discussion of the Ten Mile
interchange sewer study, Brad.
Watson: I’ll turn this on now. Sorry about that. At the January strategic planning
workshop we went over several options and gave you a recommended option on the
Ten Mile study that JUB Engineers has been doing. We were instructed at that time to
go back and look at including the main Black Cat Trunk in the study and for JUB to
come up with some preliminary cost numbers on that. Tim Haener from JUB is here. He
has brought along a map exhibit that pretty much matches what is on the screen. He
has also handed out a cost summary. We tried to simplify this a little bit and summarize
the whole study into basically two sheets. This is showing only what we at least
perceived to be the recommended alternative at our January meeting. We don’t have a
lot of new information to present other than the cost figure for the Black Cat Trunk
proper that comes down Black Cat Road and then traverses southeasterly to Ten Mile
Road to serve the southern part of the so called subject property. We would be happy to
entertain any questions for either me or Tim or Gary.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none. I need to look it over.
Nary: Yes.
Bird: It's very nice.
De Weerd: I think we need to digest the information. But as you look at this, this is going
to be the total project cost? Not just the cost to the developer that’s looking at going in,
in that interchange area? That kind of first sponsored this initially?
Watson: Madam President, the figure in the first column, the 7.68 million would be the
total cost of all the lines shown, all the dark heavy black lines, solid black lines shown
on the exhibit including the pressure sewer from the lift station to the wastewater plant.
De Weerd: So, the developer who sponsored this study originally would be the 1.390?
Okay.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 26
Watson: Well that’s just broken out on a proportionate flow basis. Tim has taken what
that subject area would contribute flow wise and apportioned it out to each of the
improvements. In other words that subject area takes up 16 percent of the flow that
would be served by the Ten Mile Diversion Trunk. The subject property takes up three
percent of the capacity in the Black Cat Trunk and 4.7 percent of the capacity in the lift
station and pressure sewer.
De Weerd: Brad, this is a permanent solution, not necessarily a temporary?
Watson: Madam President that is correct. It could be a permanent solution. It would be
a permanent lift station south of what's known as English Gardens or Blackstone Coral
Creek subdivision in that general vicinity. It would still be a permanent lift station as
originally planned on the master plan in the –
*** End of Side Two ***
Watson: -- correct.
De Weerd: Second priority is the South Slough? You have sewer going in over there at
Overland and Eagle Road. Where does this fit in --? I mean, we understand staff can
only do so much. Is this something that is doable or is this something that we should be
looking at in the next year or two? What kind of timing is reasonable on this?
Watson: Madam President. I think that’s the direction we’re looking for. The study was
done at the request of the developer. We have facilitated that and worked with J-U-B to
make that happen. As far as budgeting and timing that’s what we’re wanting to get from
Council through this whole process is how important it is to you and whether we should
be laying the groundwork, getting some more in-depth engineering done. Anything is
possible given the money.
De Weerd: Well, yes but you can only spread your time so far.
Watson: Correct. A project of this size would be --. Obviously we’re not going to design
it in house. We would be farming it out.
Smith: President de Weerd, Mayor and Council. It's a big project and I think it's evident
from our last workshop meeting that are interested in this project. When I say interested
I don’t know whether that’s just of interest or if they are interested to the point where
they can take the checkbook out and help finance the project. I don’t know. But I think
one of the next things that we need to is to get those folks together and see what that
interest is, how genuine that is. I think that Tim did a timeline on --. I don’t know if it
included this project or not Tim, this amount of the project or not as far as getting it
designed and getting it constructed is concerned as part of his initial study. He’s
indicating that he did do some timeline on that. So, I’ll maybe let him speak to that. Eric
Davis is here this evening representing Eastbourne Development. Eric tells me that they
are ready to move forward with their project and their project I believe hinges very
closely on the construction of the Ten Mile Road interchange. In terms of that timing, I
think optimistically Eric has related to me that three years would be a timeline that he
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 27
was looking at for his developer that he represents. I don’t know anything about building
interchanges but I know three years doesn’t sound like very long when you have to deal
with all the agencies through the federal government and the environmental clearances
et cetera. But again I haven't been down that path so I can't say for certain. I think
based on the information that Tim developed earlier that if the three years was a
reasonable timeline for an interchange development that the engineering for this project
could be accomplished and the construction I believe Tim within that time period.
De Weerd: Even getting the easements? I think we already saw how long the light took
with the easements.
Smith: I think the attitude that the public works department has as far as obtaining
easements is quite different than it was on the White Drain. We’ll approach it in a totally
different manor.
Bird: Madam Chairman.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I thought we were going to put permanent lines instead of the temporary lines in
up to the point of there where we’ve got the slash line on up, from the Ashford Greens
on down? We’re going to build a semi-permanent forced main. Is that -- why would we
double pay?
Watson: Councilman Bird, Madam President, Mayor, and Council members. I think
that’s just a typo, that semi-permanent within the force main call out. The pump station,
again just -- it could be, well not very long term temporary but really it could be
permanent.
Bird: What does the price? Does it reflect a semi-permanent pump station or a
permanent pump station?
Watson: Councilman Bird it's the same thing. It just means that fifty years from now if
you want to move that lift station say to the west and pickup everything in the
McDermott area, it would be engineered to do so. But if you don’t want to do that it's
permanent.
Bird: Okay. Let me -- one other thing. I also thought when we discussed in January we
were going to take that red line that’s up there on up to the regional pump station and
get that taken care of at the same time instead of cutting back over and then coming up.
Watson: Councilman Bird let me do something on the screen just so I make sure I’m in
the right --
Bird: Yes come on down Brad. Okay, from your corner there.
Watson: Right here?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 28
Bird: Right there, go on up to where your – we’ve got a red line on our deal here. I
thought we were going to take that and make that permanent. I thought we were going
to set that all in at the same time. I could have misunderstood.
Watson: This recommended alternative wouldn’t preclude that happening. It would just
be a separate cost where there would be a much smaller than originally planned
permanent lift station right here in this Five Mile drainage area. There would be a very
small, maybe 10, 12 inch sewer line coming up here. This whole north area would just –
the scale of that project would just be –
Bird: Let me throw out another suggestion here.
Watson: Okay.
Bird: We’ve got the White Trunk then the South Slough which we’re working on right
now which should be completed this year I think, the last time I heard. Then we’ve got
the north channel and we’ve got this. Is there anybody in the utility division that you can
hire construction managers that can take all this workload off of the staff? I mean we
hire engineers. We can hire private people to go get our easements. A construction
manager --. Is there a construction manager in this type of stuff? Like schools use a
construction manager to build all their schools. They go do 90 percent of the work,
usually get it cheaper. We used a construction manager on the police station. If they
give us the plans (inaudible). They went and got the bids and took care of all the work
for us.
Watson: Councilman Bird I’m unfamiliar –
Bird: That’s why I’m asking Brad. I don’t know.
Watson: -- construction managers on architectural projects. I think Tim’s nodding that
there may be in this type of construction. Really when we hire the consultant like Tim’s
firm to do say, the South Slough. His firm is procuring easements and they are doing
the plans. They’re doing the interagency contact.
Bird: And they’re doing the construction management then? Overseeing the
construction.
Watson: To a certain degree but there's no way that in this type of project that we are
totally cut out of the loop because there are on going questions that whoever it is
whether it's a construction manager or engineer needs to have answered by us.
Bird: I have no doubt on that. But at the same token you don’t have to be down there
on a day to day basis. And you don’t have to do the preliminary engineering and stuff.
Yes you have the final overseeing look but you don’t have to be --. What I’m trying to
say is it's possible to do two or three trunk lines at a time.
Watson: Councilman Bird. That’s correct. We are doing three right now.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 29
Bird: Okay. That’s what I mean.
Watson: We’re finishing up one. These guys do function as our construction manager
other than our inspector having day to day contact. For example, the Five Mile Relief, I
am involved in that maybe once a week when a question comes up. His engineer in his
office and our inspector handle everything until it gets really bad.
Bird: That answers my question. I thought that’s the way it was handled.
Watson: Okay.
De Weerd: I guess though what we need to look at is in addition to staff time is budget
and how we can budget this and manage three to four major expansions at the same
time as well as managing the land use that would result from this type of work. We do
understand the importance of the Ten Mile interchange to the community as a whole.
That’s one factor but we did have this on our joint workshop agenda with P&Z the end
of May but this might not help with a budget presentation, or a budget preparation for
this next budget year. Mr. Mayor maybe we need to look at really sitting down and
evaluating this on a more, on a specific workshop and getting a little bit more detailed
and understand the what ifs and the costs and the time constraints on staff.
Smith: Madam President.
De Weerd: Gary.
Smith: Mayor and Council, when we started this investigation, Eastbourne
Development was the only player on the table. They were represented by another party
at that time and at the time that that study was started, it became apparent that we
needed to look at a bigger picture for this area. Eric Davis has related to us that
Eastbourne is very serious about continuing forward with development. I guess now it
is a pretty serious situation where we need to decide what to do to move forward. It is
my contention that what we have presented to you this evening is what we should move
forward on – that we need to serve a larger area. I think that we would be criticized if we
didn’t do something similar to this. So from that standpoint, I think again its important
that we try to get some indication from the other land owners just how serious they are
about being a partner in this sewer project. Perhaps we can get some information back
to you along those lines in the very near future. You are right in terms of budgeting, if
we are going to be involved in this project then we need to get involved in it right away
because – in this coming budget year, because the Eastbourne Developer or at least
his representative has related to me that they are serious about moving forward with
this project. Their project, excuse me.
Corrie: Eric.
Davis: Hi, Eric Davis, Retail West Properties, 805 W. Idaho Suite 302 in Boise. Thanks
President and Mayor for allowing me to talk. I hope to keep this brief. I am attending
the meeting to emphasize Eastbourne’s commitment and wanting to move ahead. The
three year – I was asked for a schedule, briefly, on how long do you think it will be until
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 30
the interchange is done and an optimistic forecast is two and a half to three years. To
do that we would like to have – to charge ahead on an interchange project and then find
out that the sewer is a problem – we would like to have an agreement that would say
okay, if certain events occur we can go to the first stage of design. Then another event
occurs and we go to a construction manager, sign it out, and get the word going – every
step of the way the commitments from the developer climb, I mean it’s the standard
type of development agreement. We could figure it out. I think what we are looking for,
we are looking for right now, what is the result of the study and is the city interested in
pursuing it and to what extent and like a proposal come to Eastbourne and say this is
what we are willing to do if you are willing to do this. Then we’ll take it from there. If we
could do this in the next month or two it would be great. We haven't seen the study yet
and its been explained that they wanted to fine tune things and I can understand that.
But it’s a critical link to the site – we’ve got everything else pretty much figured out. We
met with ITD after our meeting last time and there has been a revised study by Earth
Tech and the interchange concept report. I listen with interest tonight about the Black
Cat discussions and I am here to answer questions and get down what I can.
De Weerd: Gary, what kind of time frame are you looking for to get all the property
owners together and report back to counsel.
Smith: Madam President, Mayor, and Council, I think we have quite a few names of
folks that were here at one of our past workshops. I don’t know that we have all the
property owner names out there right now but we can certainly get those.
Bird: That mile between Black Cat and Ten Mile coming across there, there can’t be
over a couple of owners.
(Inaudible)
Smith: I would guess that within a month that we could have some information back to
you. And maybe sooner than that, I just don’t know. I guess I would have to think about
it a little bit. My past experience on getting property owners together to partner when it
comes time to write the check has not been very good. Unless they are very interested
in developing. There was some indication that some of them are, but again, speculation
is something different that sticks and dirt. I don’t know – we can make the contacts and
see what kind of feedback we get from property owners and or their representatives. I
know there are some property owners who were here at the workshop that own
property there that would probably have their property for sale rather than for
development. We’ll just have to find out and get a listing of all those property owners
and find out what their status is, what their situation is and what their intentions are.
De Weerd: Our workshop next month is pretty full but we can schedule you for that
workshop and maybe you can give us an update on the 26th
of this month and let us
know if you are arranging that meeting and give us a better idea.
Smith: I will get as much information as I can by then.
Davis: If you wanted to have a public meeting or whatever, call me up.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 31
De Weerd: Any other questions, Council?
Bird: Thank you.
Smith: Thank you Tim.
Issue #7 Update on “Project Care” (Gary Smith)
De Weerd: Item number seven. Back in December we had a request to look into or
maybe its been longer than that, but we had a request to look into a utility share
program. Gary has done some research on that. Would you like to give us an update
and we’ll field any questions if Council has any.
Smith: Thank you President De Weerd, Mayor and Council. You are correct. Toward
the end of last year, I think her name was Marianne Christman, came before the
Council and presented some information to you on her concern about citizens within our
community that may have some hard ship in paying their utility bills – sewer, water and
trash utility bills. I contacted Ken Harward at AIC to see if he had any information in his
files on this subject. He did not but he commissioned one of his assistants to conduct a
survey among Idaho cities to see if anyone else did. As a result of that survey, five
cities responded to Ken. They responded directly to me, but as a result of Ken’s
request. City of McCall, City of Lewiston, City of Soda Springs, Sandpoint, and
Pocatello all have some form of assistance program. I think you have in your packet a
summary of the programs that are available at these five cities. The concern that – and
actually I was talking to Stacy tonight and I failed to contact Leslie in the Municipal
Billing System office to see how this would impact her department in collecting funds for
this project. Right now she collects funds for Parks through round off of the utility bills. I
don’t know what impact that would have on her as far as accounting goes. There was a
concern from Stacy and the finance department as to allocation of these funds that it
would be very difficult to make a determination within the city of who should receive
help and how much they should receive. I think you can see from the five cities who
responded to the survey, that the majority of them have that service by an outside
agency. Which I think is appropriate. So that is kind of a thumbnail sketch of what I was
able to obtain. I am not sure where you want to go from this point.
De Weerd: Council, any thoughts? Have you had time to absorb what other
communities are doing and care to pursue any particular direction on this?
Bird: Madam Chairman.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I think the collections through that thing is going to be a real nightmare. I hate to
see the city get into something like this. I would sooner see a service club or some
organization do something like this and some being help. I don’t know how you set the
standard at who gets help and who don’t get help. That is my concern. I am afraid we
are going to hurt some people and some people won’t come forward that really need
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 32
the help and other people will be in wanting help all the time. If they deserve it, that’s
no problem, but –
De Weerd: Gary.
Smith: President De Weerd, Mayor & Council, I think that Idaho Power has a program
called Project Share and I believe the gas company, Intermountain Gas Company has
an assistance program but I am not certain of that. I am sure they would have
guidelines as to how the money is allocated and how much and on what basis. If you
wanted to pursue this further, I can get that type of information. I apologize, I should
have had that for you as that would be very relevant and pertinent in making a decision,
which you cant do tonight any way, but I will get that for you to help you in deciding if
you want to continue and do anything with this.
Bird: Madam Chairman.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Gary we are talking about two different things. We are talking about a public entity
doing this kind of stuff and two private entities that already have it.
Smith: Yes sir.
Bird: If we take taxpayers money to help someone, what is the person who is barely
getting by and won’t ask for help going to think?
Smith: President De Weerd, Mayor, and Council, Councilman Bird, I guess that there
would be two parts to this, one that the money would be a donation by the citizens. So
its up to them, up to each citizen or each account whether they want to round off their
utility bill and have that money go into this special account or not. Secondarily, I guess
there will always be folks that don’t feel like they want to ask for assistance. There is
the other side of that spectrum, there are folks who will ask for it anyway. Its just a
decision making process that there has to be some guidelines that even though we are
a public agency versus the private agencies, there still has to be some commonality
there between how that decision is made I would like.
Bird: Gary I think that you have got a – this money that comes in , I agree. Where do
you allocate that and where do you put it under. The end of the year you have collected
a thousand and you have paid out fifty dollars. Most taxpayers think they are getting
over charged now, and if we come up with sums like that, I think its something that I
would like to see it done but I think we need to get a Kiwanis Club or somebody like that
to do something like that for us.
Smith: I do know that Stacy was concerned about accounting.
Bird: I have a real concern about accounting and where you allocate it to and how you
show it.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 33
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I was noticing that the City of McCall has this write up sort of program and that
has certainly an accounting impact but it doesn’t have the same level of administrative
impact. There you are only creating a policy and some criteria. Some sort of hardship
criteria that a department or the Mayor and Council can decide whether or not the
people meet that criteria for some sort of relief, whether it’s a partial relief, temporary
relief or a fresh start – something like that. I don’t know what the fiscal impact of that
would be. I don’t know but there isn't an administrative function because we are not
collecting any voluntary money and we are not taking taxpayer dollars on the front end
and there obviously is a loss. The collection issue on the other end, I understand that.
But that is a business decision. We have to write off losses on occasion as a business
decision any way. So I think if we are going to still consider this issue, to me that would
have less a fiscal impact on the front end or it may not, but at least to me that would be
an avenue to consider something. And it may not be the most viable, but at least its
something that is different, that at least McCall is the only one I noticed in here that has
something like that that is a little bit different that having a check box or having to collect
funds and put it in the right accounts and then come back and account for it all and
those types of things. That is basically just creating a policy and a criteria for it and then
allowing someone to make that decision whether or not you meet that and what the
benefit of it is. I don’t know what the rest of the Council thinks of that. But if we are
going to consider this at all that may be a more viable way to at least consider
something if anything else.
De Weerd: But I think a write off would impact the taxpayers, the user fees. In just a
different way.
Nary: Oh I wouldn’t say there is no cost to it, but what I am saying is business-wise, we
may always have some we have to write off that you cannot collect. So you do have to
– you do at some juncture in the bookkeeping scheme of accounting, I think we saw it in
our last monthly accounting, that we had some we had to write off. So I know we do it. I
was just saying maybe it’s a different option to look at, that doesn’t have at least a direct
administrative cost up front. There certainly is a cost to our users on the other end.
Anybody you write off is getting absorbed by the system in some way, I realize that. It’s
just another avenue that might allow us to at least to continue to discuss the possibility.
De Weerd: When you contact Idaho Power and Intermountain Gas, they must have
some kind of overhead, I don’t know if they take that out of the amount collected. I
noticed some of these other communities pay the community action some percent to
administer it. And with our impact fees, we take a ten percent administrative fee. I don’t
know if that is something we can build into something like this, so its not really on the
backs of the users fees or taxpayers ultimately, but that might be something to consider.
If they have that kind of information on if they take out an administrative fee to do this
kind of program or what have you, that would be information that would be helpful in
making this decision. As well, we need the information from Stacy as well as to what
kind of impact it would have on the finance department.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 34
Smith: Madam President, Mayor and Council. I recall seeing a newsletter from Idaho
Power not too many months ago that address project share, well during the beginning
of the winter. They actually subsidize, Idaho Power subsidizes Project Share. They
don’t collect enough funds from citizens to pay for the demand that they have on that
account.
Nichols: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Nichols.
Nichols: Just a couple more thoughts before we move onto the next item here. First of
all, Idaho Power and Intermountain Gas are for profit companies. They are regulated by
the Public Utility Commission. The PUC reviews their costs and so forth and
determines what is a reasonable level of profit for them. They also mandate in the PUC
Rules how much, for example, they do have to do some things in terms of some one
who is behind and has a medical emergency and ability to spread out that delinquency
over ten months or whatever, so there are some rules there. They have profits through
which they can help administer these programs as part of the regulations. The city in its
water and sewer charges, is mandated by state statute to provide the service at the
least cost to cover the different expenses of administering it. There is no profit in the
water and sewer departments. That is a distinction for you to understand here and look
at in terms of is it going to actually cost the city to administer the program. the other
thing that the finance department should look at is if it costs something, is that cost less
than or equal to the cost of pursuing some of these delinquent accounts that come
about through these circumstances of indigency to where it would be a push or maybe
the city is in a better position, that rate payers are in a better position, there are less
uncollectables and so forth because of the donations from other rate payers which help
pay those bills. So those are all financial issues they would have to work out.
De Weerd: You packaged that very nicely. Is that something you can bring back to us
Gary?
Gary: Yes ma’am.
Corrie: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Gary, if you can get that, we are not at a point yet where that is a big problem,
but once we get into it, it will become a problem. So we need to look at it with a very
close eye because like I said, we have only had one or two, and you are on the three
member panel on water and sewer, that it becomes a fiscal nightmare for us. Just to
keep a close eye on it in Council’s viewpoint.
Issue #8 Discussion of Parks Master / Action Plan (Tom Kuntz)
De Weerd: Is there anything else on that item? Mr. Kuntz. Item number eight. We are
going to be having a public hearing on this on the 26th
, so this is just an opportunity to
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 35
get some of the history of this and to make sure that Tom knows what kinds of
questions you would like to have answered at the Public Hearing in his presentation.
With that said, Tom.
Kuntz: Thank you, President De Weerd. I don’t want to take a lot of your time because
of the lateness of this meeting. Other than to tell you that the Planning and Zoning
Commission, last Thursday, recommended approval to the City Council. They did have
some very good items that they brought to our attention. You should have in our action
plan, a one page addendum that we have put together so far and we will continue to
make those kinds of recommendations for changes through the public hearing. We do
have one of our Planning and Zoning Commissioners here tonight, who was part of that
process, Commissioner David Zaremba. In the back of our room, our Parks
Commission President Bruce McCoy, who has spent a lot of time putting this together
with staff and I just wanted to acknowledge both of those individuals. We would like to
get a feel if there are questions the Council would like to have answered before the
public meeting on the 26th
.
De Weerd: Council, do you have any specifics that you would like to have presented
during the public hearing process? Mr. Bird?
Bird: Thank you, Chairman, but I will ask my question in the public hearing.
De Weerd: Well I don’t want you asking questions right now but can you give him any
direction on what you would like him to present in his historical overview of this or why
they came to a certain recommendation?
Bird: Just bring the same thing forward that he did at the other public hearing. That
would be my suggestion.
De Weerd: Council?
Kuntz: Thank you.
De Weerd: You did hear a little bit of it in the north Meridian discussion. I think there is
still lingering questions on the neighborhood parks and perhaps the co-locations and
how that open space requirement on the landscape plan might be able to help
development as incentives and those kinds of things. Certainly not takings but
incentives.
Kuntz: President De Weerd, Council and Mayor, we put our comments together this
week, or excuse me last week on the north Meridian plan and I did fax those or email
those on to all of you. If you didn’t receive them would you let me know? Thank you.
De Weerd: Did everyone receive those comments? Okay. Will –
Berg: I am sorry Madam President, Mayor, and members of the Council. A question I
had is if you wanted to have this public hearing on a special meeting or on the fourth
Tuesday?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 36
De Weerd: I thought we were going to have it on the 26th
of this month. That is a non-
land use meeting.
Corrie: You can have it on the 26th
if you want it on there.
De Weerd: I just assumed that is what had been discussed.
Corrie: What does the 26th
look like right now? Do you have any of that yet Will?
Enough time to notice it?
Berg: Well I think I am a day short trying to get it noticed, that is my problem. We do
have on March 6th
, a Comprehensive Plan.
Nary: I thought we had moved Comprehensive Plan public hearings to those
Wednesdays—
Berg: We have it scheduled the 27th
, and March 6th
and possibly March 20th
if you
needed to extend it. It is only a suggestion, don’t shoot the messenger, I know the
Planning and Zoning Commission did take an hour early to have the public hearing for
the Parks Master Plan.
Corrie: How did it work out? Okay?
Berg: It worked out fairly well. They accomplished it within an hour. They did have
some public testimony.
De Weerd: Well, we may want to do it before our meeting the 5th
instead of confusing it
with the Comprehensive Plan because they are two separate documents.
Corrie: Can’t we do it on the 5th
at 5:30?
Nary: Can we notice up a public hearing – we could also do it on the 12th
? Do it early if
it only took an hour? Then we would have to prepare for a regular meeting and on the
12th
we could notice up the hearing.
Kuntz: What time?
Nary: Mr. Wardle brought pizza this month –
Bird: The police department can pay for the pizza.
De Weerd: That is one way to get your attention.
Nary: But if you did it on the 12th
, you could notice it up Will, with plenty of time.
Berg: Special Meeting at 5:30 agreeable? We will arrange it according to that. Tom it
is 5:30 on the 12th
. Thank you very much.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 37
Issue #9 Follow-up Information on Skate Park Project (Tom Kuntz)
De Weerd: Thank you for bringing that up. Moving on. Issue Number nine. Follow up
on the Skate Park project.
Kuntz: President De Weerd, Council, and Mayor. We had our first meeting with the
students and adults last Wednesday at 5:00. We had approximately 35 individuals
here. We have a follow up meeting tomorrow at the same time. The plan at this point is
to go out and solicit cash donations for the park. We had a two-hour plan review with
the Land Group. Three of the youth who were involved in designing the park, our skate
park consultant Ryan Neptune, and did some design modifications to cut down the cost
of it. We had a lengthy discussion at the end on what things really could be provided as
far as in kind and we narrowed it down to three or four items. Concrete being one of
those. But eliminated some of those which were not real good in kind contributions
including the excavation since its a labor cost. With that said, tomorrow we plan on
starting to develop a list of possible contributors. I am drafting up a contribution letter
for the committee to look at tomorrow. With the Council’s consent, we plan to go out in
the community to start raising funds to offset the thirty-five thousand dollars that we feel
we need to build the park. We will re-bid the project the first part of March and hopefully
award the first of April and start building it. I will stand for questions.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Tom, what is going to say that as we do drastic changes we are going to get a
cheaper bid?
Kuntz: We have a contractor who works with Ryan Neptune who has looked over our
plans with some of the changes that we have agreed to and he feels that it can be built
between 150 and 160,000.
Bird: On the same token, it goes out for public bid, there is no guarantee that he is the
low man. He might be at 165 and someone come in at 160. When we turned this down
I thought we were going to construction manage it and not take it out for bid again,
when we turned those bidders down. But I could have misunderstood.
Kuntz: Council member Bird, we certainly would be in favor of construction managing it,
but given the dollar amount, I don’t see a way to make that happen and I am open to
suggestions.
Bird: I am not doubting, but I don’t see unless you take a lot out of the plans, that you
are going to get it down. You have dropped twenty thousand from what the last bid was
at your estimate of 165, of top, 165 for this contractor. That is still leaving us 62,000
short from what we have actually got. We have got 104,000, that leaves us 61,000
short. so these in kind donations from concrete and stuff, is that going to be put out in
the bid that so and so is furnishing ‘x’ amount of yards at so much per yard?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 38
Kuntz: Council member Bird, we will call out in the bid specifications that owner will
provide the concrete by such and such Lowe’s Redimix, per specifications. That is what
we discussed with our attorney.
Bird: That is the only kind of donation you have got so far, right?
Kuntz: Yes sir. And the way that we are computing this is that if we can build it for one
55 for example, we have 104, 10,000 dollars in concrete donated, that brings us to 114.
We have 2,500 for March for Parks, with a strong possibility of another 2,500, that is
5,000. That brings us almost to 120. So we are estimating, guestimating that we need
to raise between 35 and 40,000. This group feels like it can be done, whether we go out
and get 1,000 dollars from 30 people or 500 dollars from 70 people. They are excited
to make it happen and it really helps the youth buy into ownership of the project. Now I
am not going to tell you that if we come up short 5,000 dollars that I am not going to
come back to City Council with a request to fund that, and I will identify where those
funds will come from. And I know that is not your first choice.
Bird: Let me ask you a question Tom and this is a thing that really concerns me. You
say you are going back out for bid the first of March. When are you going to shut the
bids off?
Kuntz: We close them in time to award at the last Council meeting in March.
Bird: Let me ask you a question. The bid comes in at a hundred fifty. Between what
you have got budgeted and what has been raised, you have got 130. There is no way to
get the other 20. Are we going to refuse all these bids again? These other contractors
who went through the motions of bidding for something that isn't financed?
Kuntz: Council member Bird, my request at that point would be to come to you with a
recommendation of where the additional funds from the city could come from.
Nary: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
***End of side three***
Nary: Councilman Bird’s comments Tom, I do agree with you, I think having you and
interested parties that want to participate in this and raise the money to assist in the
building of this park that they want to use, that’s my assumption, I think that is a great
opportunity for people in the community. Before we go back out to bid, why don’t we see
what they can raise? Because I agree with what Mr. Bird is saying, they may have the
greatest intentions in the world, and may or may not be able to collect it right now, there
are a lot of issues out in this community about giving funds for a variety of reasons – the
economy and a variety of other things. If these folks work really hard and raise 5,000
dollars, and we are 25,000 thousand dollars away from it, we – not that that isn't
admirable and that we shouldn’t keep working at it but the time table just puts us behind
a crunch and we are just going out to bid and we’re rejecting again and doing all that.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 39
Why not say lets start the fund raising process and do that for 30 days and see where
we are at and then make a decision as to whether or not we are ready to go out to bid
now because we are looking really viable. I don’t know what the rest of the Council
thinks. Certainly if you have a group that raises – does a lot of work and raises 35,000
dollars and they are 5,000 dollars short, we might be more interested in wanting to
finish it up that if it’s the opposite numbers. So maybe that is a better way to get them
interested, showing, another way to show the people in the community are wanting to
go out there and work for it. That might help with in kind donations, it might help with
other donations from larger groups as well with showing that. But maybe we just need
to hold off on these bids so that we don’t end up behind the eight ball again in rejecting
them again and starting at ground zero every time.
Kuntz: Council member Nary, staff would certainly support that and I think that is wise
advice and we certainly pursue that if the rest of the Council would support that.
De Weerd: Tom, I am in total agreement with that.
Kuntz: Okay, that is what we will do then.
Corrie: Madam President.
De Weerd: Mayor Corrie.
Corrie: I don’t want to belabor this but we better get a skate park or we are all in
trouble.
Bird: I agree with you one hundred percent, Mayor.
Nary: I would suggest we keep it on our agenda, next month, and come back with a
report whether its in our one or an update or something kind of where are we, so that
we know when we are ready to go out to bid that we have got a little money in the bank
and some idea of what is really working out there.
Issue #10 Follow-up Information on Written Updates
De Weerd: Thank you. Thanks Tom. Follow up on written updates. Is there anything
on the written updates that Council wants clarification or staff wants to add? There was
one thing that the Kiwanis Park proposal -- Tom as aggressively out there pursuing
partnerships. I think it is very important to keep Council in the loop so we don’t have
another skateboard issue as we are looking at different locations to put different things.
I know there have been a number of requests for partnerships for the 56 acres,
partnerships with the police department property, with the Thousand Springs acreage,
but it is very important to have Tom pursue those. If that is not going to be of interest to
the Council, or if you have Tom, five different people trying to make use of that same
piece of ground, before you pursue it with any one different thing, you better be meeting
with the Mayor and working with your liaison to know if its time to bring it up to Council
to know if we’re on board with you or not. I guess that would be – and Tom did bring
this up to our attention before that Kiwanis starts any investments in the design, and
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 40
that sort of thing, so I appreciate that – that that would be since property is at a
premium and everyone needs it especially the youth organizations and adult
organizations. We need to be cautious of where we are going and if we are all wanting
to go there. Any other comments?
Nary: Madam President, on a different one –
De Weerd: Okay.
Nary: On the Street Name Change, I wasn’t clear, are we simply going to have a
resolution of some sort, is that the plan Mr. Nichols? Bring a resolution back to get that
moving along?
Nichols: Council Member Nary, President, Mayor and members of Council, I talked with
the City Clerk about perhaps, it may be necessary to have a Public Hearing. For
example we have that issue of double signage of street names that was recommended
by the Commission and I don’t know if ACHD will do that. I don’t know that, I don’t know
the answer. It could be that they will and perhaps they won’t.
Nary: That was the information we were provided. Now whether that was old and it
changed, we may want to make sure that is in writing. That was the information that
was provided at the time, that they were willing to do that. But we may want to make
sure that is confirmed before we do that.
Nichols: Assuming that its confirmed, there is not a necessity as I read the city code
that you have to have a public hearing. Its just one of those things that it may be the
best way to do it just so that somebody has a chance to throw their two bits worth in it,
on an issue that may cost them money. Since the Commission did not actually adopt
the change, but instead recommended the change, it would seem that – I suppose you
could go forward without the public hearing but Will and I had talked about having a
hearing. In my mind that would be done by a resolution. I believe that the clerk has
something to say.
De Weerd: Mr. Berg.
Berg: Thank you, Madam President, and members of the Council. Not to add anything
further to what Mr. Nichols just said but just as far as a date and time for the Public
Hearing. We had discussed possibly one of the fourth Tuesdays if there were not any
land use issues, putting it on that type of agenda and trying to get it out to the
businesses so if there are one or two business owners that really have a concern, that
they can come out and voice their opinion.
De Weerd: So if we’ve got it on March 26th
, they would have plenty of notice?
Berg: That is kind of the time line that we were looking at.
Corrie: I will put the names in an envelope and seal and I bet you I would come up one
hundred percent right.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 41
(Inaudible)
Nichols: Excuse me, Madam President.
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Nichols.
Nichols: President and members of the Council and Mayor, there is an issue that I think
needs to be decided and its relatively minor. The Council would need to decide
whether it’s Main Street South and Main Street North or North Main and South Main.
It’s a minor thing but its something Council would have to decide. The Commission
simply recommended a midpoint, they didn’t say which way you should do it.
(Inaudible)
De Weerd: Lets not discuss it now, but then.
Bird: We have been discussing it for four years that I know of.
Issue #11 Discussion of Future Topics
~ Tree City USA Ordinance / Compliance
~ Water and Sewer Fees / Rates
De Weerd: You can discuss it at the Public Hearing. Is there anything else?
Bird: I would move that we adjourn.
De Weerd: Mr. Bird, I think Mr. Nichols wants to talk, and I do want to make sure on the
future topics.
Nichols: President De Weerd, on a future topic, one of the things that was raise at
previous Council meetings was an individual had concerns about the way water shut
offs were done and gave us a copy of the Public Utility Commission rules and wanted
the Council to take that up and look at it and discuss it or review it and so forth. So that
needs to be on an agenda. As to what you would like to change if anything about the
way water shut offs are conducted, how notices are sent out and its probably the kind of
thing that ought to have Leslie, or perhaps Gary, somebody describe what happens
when there is a delinquent bill. How is notice sent out, what the steps are. The Public
Utility Commission rules are much more restrictive than what we do. They call for a
whole lot more work that what we do.
De Weerd: Was there a letter that came out about that?
Nichols: Madam President, I don’t remember a letter but I do remember him handing
us the materials at the meeting. I would have to go back and try to find those. There
was essentially a printout of the PUC rules for what you have to do before you
terminate service. His name is Rich Nesbit. I have got his phone number.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 42
Corrie: Do you have that material?
Nichols: If I can’t find it I can reproduce it.
(Inaudible)
De Weerd: Sorry, those will be inaudibles. Did he really hand it out to all of us? Sorry
didn’t want to mumble. Next workshop I have been compiling this as I have been
talking to all the department heads. We have the – and I will get that out. Shari and I
look over it at the beginning of each month, but department heads should let us know if
we are still on target with some of these. The Tree City USA is going to be in April.
Water and Sewer Fee rates – is that something still Gary that we will look at next
month?
Smith: Madam President, Mayor and Council, Brad said we would have the rates to
you on the 26th
.
De Weerd: In public hearings? Just for discussion?
Smith: Discussion.
De Weerd: For the 26th
of this month?
Smith: Yes. I think the fees he said would be at the next workshop. He is compiling
some information for J-U-B to finalize that for us.
De Weerd: And that is on the trunk line assessment fees?
Smith: Yes Ma’am.
De Weerd: We have the dust abatement ordinance. Who is working on that?
Smith: Madam President, Mayor, and Council, I talked to Planning and Zoning a little
bit on that and they have compiled some information on dust control ordinance.
COMPASS has, is developing a multi-county ordinance I guess you would call it,
between Ada and Canyon counties so I guess it will need tie into that endeavor by
COMPASS also.
De Weerd: Maybe you can let the Mayor know what kind of time frame – if you can
contact COMPASS and find out what kind of time frame they are working with.
Smith: All right, I will do that.
De Weerd: We have the business license ordinance. I know that Gary has been pulling
some information together from all the department heads. Will, are you and Gary
working on that?
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 43
Berg: Madam President, Mayor, and Council, I don’t know if Gary and I are working on
it but I did ask AIC to gather some information from other cities on their email address,
so I am waiting for that information to see what other cities in similar situations are
doing.
De Weerd: Does it seem reasonable that we can have this in front of us in a month?
Berg: Yes.
Smith: Yes.
De Weerd: Mr. Nary, did you have something to add?
Nary: I wasn’t part of this discussion. Is this the general business licensing? Not for
specific types of business?
Berg: Madam President, Mayor and Council, Councilman Nary. This was for -- started
out to be for enforcement of some sewer issues, grease traps and things that were
going on in business – so we can help regulate some things. But then it became a
general information license for us to know what that business is doing and help regulate
when a new business comes in. sometimes we have no idea what the business that
comes into the city is doing because there is no remodel, no inspections, nothing of that
sort. So, it was kind of, I wanted to say it was information for city use type of license.
We have had a lot of discussions in department head meetings what we really wanted
to gather out of this, but not really a fee generation as much as information generating.
Nary: I don’t think there's a problem with that, to me, but is there a problem on
enforcement end if people don’t comply. Do we have capabilities of enforcement? We
seem to have a problem already with Code Enforcement. Are we going to basically
create an ordinance that we basically don’t have the means to enforce?
Berg: And I think that is why we are trying to gather some other information, to see
what other cities are doing and how they do acquire that information. Gary may have
some other things to add.
De Weerd: Unfortunately you will always have the minority that abuse the system. I
don’t think if – we have discussed this at a Council workshop before and it was the
general consensus that it wouldn’t be all businesses. That the department heads
needed to come back and compile a list of specific types of business use that they
would have an interest or a reason to track.
Corrie: Madam President, I think police and fire has some interest in this as well. I
keep going back to my old days of fire commissioner – fire down here on East 1st
Street, walked up to the building and the building exploded right in front of me and they
didn’t even know it was a cabinet shop in there. It’s the safety factor.
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 44
De Weerd: Or a meth lab in a garage. They would have to obtain a license, right?
Stacy is going to have a budget process to present to us for 2003 and 2004. Tom had
asked to discuss the park impact fee increase. Is that something you want to do then,
Tom?
Kuntz: (inaudible)
De Weerd: That would be February 12th
– I mean March 12th
. We have Kenny, is
Kenny still here? I will ask him. Pauline wanted to do an update on the policy manual
and we have the update on the trunk line assessment fee. We did want to get an
update on the employee of the quarter program that is currently being offered in three of
our departments.
Corrie: Madam Chairman, or Madam President, excuse me. Who doesn’t have the
policy manual update that we were working on? I will get a copy made for all of us and
put it in your box so you have it. That is the one we worked on.
Berg: I don’t think that even the department heads have a final copy of what Pauline is
taking to make some changes.
Corrie: I do.
Berg: I thought we were going to have a discussion –
Corrie: A workshop and everybody go through it and some of the major areas, so I will
make sure you get a copy of that.
De Weerd: One last thing, that is what I have on the agenda for next month in addition
to what we just said for the Ten Mile Sewer trunk line. In the written updates, we had
the old fire station property. What is the status on that, Mayor Corrie?
Corrie: I would like to have an executive session on the 19th
.
De Weerd: Anything else Council? Mr. Berg.
Berg: Thank you Madam Chair—Madam President excuse me, Mayor and Council,
AIC has their annual conference in Pocatello and they are already trying to get room
reservations and we need to get onto that and I don’t have any information other than it
is June 25th
through 28th
roughly.
Corrie: If you would contact my office, Anita has all the information and numbers and
hotels and everything else there.
Berg: The information was in the AIC bulletin but we need to get the reservations in
there or we won’t get –
Meridian City Council Regular Meeting
February 12, 2002
Page 45
Corrie: I just got some as (inaudible) – No, you don’t have to, just call Anita and we can
make them for you or we can give you the number that you can if you want.
De Weerd: Thank you, Will. I would entertain a motion.
Bird: So moved.
Nary: Second.
De Weerd: It has been moved and seconded to close the meeting, all those in favor
say aye.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 9:30 P.M.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
/ /
ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE APPROVED
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK