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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2002 03-04 Joint Ada County & ACHDMeridian City Council Special Joint Meeting March 4, 2002 With Ada County and Ada County Highway District The special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:30 A.M. on Monday March 4, 2002 by Ada County Commissioner Judy Peavey-Derr. Council Present: Mayor Robert Corrie, Keith Bird, Bill Nary, Tammy de Weerd, and Cherie McCandless. ACHD Commissioners Present: David Bevins, and Judy Peavey-Derr. Staff Present: Shari Stiles, Gary Smith, Ken Bowers, Mike Worley, Tom Kuntz, and Will Berg Others Present: Kent Brown, Dave Yorgason, Frank Varriale, Jonathan Hennings, David Turnbull, Elaine Clegg, Don Hobbs, Sherry McKibben, Wendel Bigham, Ashley Ford, Christy Richardson, Kelli Fairless, Charles Trainor, Patricia Nelson, Don Kosteler, Nichole Baird Spencer, Matt Schultz, Jeff Patlovich, Steve Arnold, Jonathan Brunt, Eric Davis, Greg Johnson, and Terry Little. Peavey-Derr: Lets get started – we are going to turn this right over to Mr. Wardle. Wardle: Thank you very much. Like you, some of you at least, probably got up early this morning and read about us on the front page of the paper. The only complaint I have is that it talks about Wardle’s plan. And, Shari gave them that information. (inaudible) Wardle: Sometimes they don’t try to (inaudible) when they write articles, they just write articles. And information, sometimes between quotes is even different, isn't it? Sometimes we think we have said – the point I simply wanted to make. The effort that we have done thus far is really the effort of a lot of people who have spent time and provided thoughts and most of all, I have been a facilitator to take some of those ideas and put them on paper. But I can’t claim that I created or conceived most of those ideas. Now, depending on how successful the email system is, most of you should have received a copy – and I put some additional down here in case you didn’t pick them up. We emailed out the agenda and an activity report and comments that we have received as a result of the January 30th open house. In addition, at each place in the room today, there is a yellow sheet that contains items that came in outside of that, that include the city comments, comments from the school district, comments from Ada County Planning Commission members, comments from the Parks Department and the Transportation Department, all of which will be incorporated into the process as we go along. On the table by Charles Trainor, this is only for – if you do not have it, you can pick one up as you go, but the basically the last draft which is January 30th , of the policies formulation concepts and the draft foundation report. Those are at that table along with just a little brochure that kind of explains the process that was also handed out at the January 30th open house. Our purpose today is to bring you up to speed on where we are and what remains yet to be completed. Jonathon, I had somewhere here a sign up – Peavey-Derr: I have it coming around – Wardle: Dave lets pull one off there and lets start around the outside as well. Peavey-Derr: I got ahead of you. Wardle: No you are fine. Actually we have already got you on the system, so only if you –just put your – if you are already on the list and have given us your information – if we don’t have you on the list, put down your email address or your fax number. I do have some additional agendas and comment sheets if you didn’t get those off your email system on Friday. We have a very active period of time in January especially in dealing with information gathering and preparations for an open house. We have 56 participants from the area, including elected officials and appointed officials. But there were a number of area residents that came out as well. We received comments from those folks and those are all contained. We had two forms of comments that night. One was a sheet that people would fill out – was at the very last station as they went out the door. They didn’t have to stop and fill one out but that was all there and it was kind of a last thing they could either do at that point or take and respond. At each station we also had sheets that allows people to make an instant comment. So all of those are contained in this item that we sent out to you by email and also on the table today. In quick summary, there was – I am going to characterize it as general support from about half of the people who actually gave comments or some neutral. But many people like the idea that we are going through a proactive process to try to deal with growth issues as long as infrastructure issues. There were some people who questioned the process. I am not certain that they really liked the idea that urbanization was coming out into that area. There were some people who were still focused on concerns for what is happening in Section 34 where the Waste Water Treatment Plant is and the question of industrial uses versus the original or existing Comprehensive Plan that had open space and so forth around it. There were several interesting comments about the transportation system. But frankly not that many people looked at the transportation system as much as they did the land use. In going through this process now, I will have to also confess that during the month of February, we essentially kept the comment period open until the middle of the month and we received – well we actually had a meeting with city staff about the 20th of the month and received some comments from them. We have not incorporated all of these items as yet. That is what is going to happen over the next two weeks and tentatively I put it on the calendar up front here, next Thursday, the 14th , that in this particular room to bring back all of the technical folks who have been involved in this effort to really go back into the questions of the land use and the facilities and to come up essentially the final recommendation. I am not saying they will definitely get everything hammered out at that point, but on the 14th at one o’clock p.m., in this particular room we will be looking specifically and we will actually go through the draft policy recommendations before them and have them redlined so that people can see what the comments were. But its my hope that we can come to grips with the concerns the city staff has, and they have actually given us comments that I think have merit in order to qualify how some of these facilities will be in place and where they would go and the magnitude of those that we definitely need to deal with. We still will have something that is different however from the comprehensive planning effort that the city is undergoing right now. I guess I want to stress the fact that we were taxed originally to think outside of the box. Both land use issues as well as the provision of infrastructure, and that is what I believe we have done. The city staff comments deal with school siting issues and that is one that the school district has concerns with as well. Parks has come forward with some comments that we will look at furiously. Transportation issues, the question of Black Cat Road, the Chinden frontage, the collectors, bike lanes, all those elements will be factored into the land use concerns. Then of course the question about the land use issues and the mixed-use concept. I want to reiterate to everybody that when you look at the concepts here, the intent is not to suggest that these bubbles and large bands are commercial. They are mixed-use areas with the flexibility depending on market conditions and determinations made by the private sector, of where major facilities could go. And if they go there, what qualifications there are on the uses, both residential in terms of density as well as the magnitude of any services or retail activity that would occur there as well. So I realize that our perception some of these is clouded by what we see typically on a map of a large area designated something different from residential to being canvassed purely mixed-use. So we have got to reconcile that question on how we carry it forward from a paper concept – staff offered a very important suggestion that we have to bring forward the standards together with that map so when we get the ideas in front of the elected officials that have to implement, that they know precisely what they would be implementing. One of the things that – when we met with staff, the real question was, how do we encourage – we talked in the past about incentives – how do we encourage what the community would really like to have as compared to what we have done up to this point in time? Obviously the process is the key. So one of the things we are going to be looking at, and we have already started gathering the information from national resources. Certainly there are a lot of people around who have thought through some of these issues, but the question is simply, can we create an alternate code? This was a term that was applied to an individual who recently came to town, who was talking about drainage and so forth. But he talked about the way you encourage what you would like to accomplish, is have an alternate code that would enable people to, if they comply with that code, go through the process much quicker that somebody who does just the standard, by the book zoning and development program. so we have started to gather this type of information. We have got a lot of the resources ourselves and we want to be certain that it fits Meridian, Idaho, however, we cant just take something from any other location and say that it will work here. We have to be sure that the terminology and the concepts really fit the reality of what roles will be in this region. One thing that I did agree with in the newspaper article this morning was that under either scenario, the city’s plan or this plan, much of the development will be the same. I think the difference will be the flexibility that is proposed in one versus a little bit more rigid process to modify that embodied in the other. So we had some other comments that were kind of important. They came from folks in the area, of north Meridian. One obviously, the residents issues and concerns need to be addressed and anybody that participated and signed in will receive information from this process from this point forward, if they were willing to give us names. We also have to recognize that there are existing developments. Some of them are acreage types. But it still goes back to the same question that almost the – the article suggests that a decision has to be made, of what north Meridian is. Will it be an urban community with services, schools, parks and all these elements combined with the infrastructure in a more concurrent manner or will it be a semi-rural area? In fact it was interesting, I don’t see any county Commissioners here but Ada County Planning Commission members, several of them, expressed the desire to have a rural environment in north Meridian. And I am not certain that that planning determination by the elected officials some time ago that this is in fact an urban service area and an area of city impact. But that decision is long gone. Where we are then, it is confession time, because we had anticipated that by this meeting that we would have these concepts passed out and formulated (inaudible) we would be almost ready to hand it off into the process. But as noted we went through a comment period and there are still some items, and I wont put the bad mouth too much on ACHD staff because I haven't been bugging them but there were three things that came out of the last transportation workshop that we had with ACHD. One was to help identify a little bit more closely the standards for the arterial system so that we can minimize the number of lanes, make certain that we didn’t end up having more asphalt than what was necessary, and that we accommodate drainage in a more mobile manner. The third element, the drainage being one, the standards the second, the third one was how we deal with the question of getting those improvements done in a concurrent manner with development. And Todd Brokoff (sic??) indicated he would do some analysis and get us some information on LID’s and so forth – again, I have not frankly been bugging them to provide that information, but it needs to be done and I have talked with Bond Council that deals with local improvement districts and other such facilities throughout the region. The comment that was made to me, if I can find my notes, was that, as I recall, that an LID format is procedurally intensive but its doable if the parties sit down first and create the structure that probably differs from what you would do if you simply imposed an LID on an area. In essence, you could make the decisions up front on how that structure would take place. I have a meeting scheduled this week with that same individual to talk about, is there any other opportunity under state law to deal with creation of another entity or method by which infrastructure can be funded outside of an LID process. I don’t the answer to that question at this moment. The other, lets go back for a moment to the land use question, I also had a discussion with land use attorneys to ask the question, can we structure an alternate code under state law that would allow us to have a different method of approval. And I didn’t ask you Bill, but I guess you are going to be faced with the question at some point. The answer was, state law does not preclude creation as long as you through the process of putting that into effect the public hearing process and make certain that the codes and all the standards and so forth conform. It probably would have to be area wide, but it could also be focused for, at least the initial stages of testing on a north Meridian area. that is a legal issue that is going to have to be addressed down the line, but clearly the question is do we go through the exercise and find ourselves unable? But I think that we have the ability just as you have the ability right now to adopt any ordinance that deals with subdivisions, zoning and so forth and create a standards based or performance type program that would in fact create a different process and perhaps some incentives. So we have two items of significance really to deal with in order to draw this to a conclusion. I am going to suggest and I have already looked at the calendar at the front desk, that we come back on the 22nd of April at this same hour and we will have at that point, certainly out ahead of that, all of the framework completed, taking the terminology draft off documents with recommendations and process ease that would enable us to actually now move forward. I think that will occur close enough to the same process that the city is currently involved with in its comprehensive planning, but many of these elements can be discussed and perhaps adopted at the same time. But we will have to look at ordinances, at standards, it is going to take a fair amount of time to do that. That is my commitment to the development community and to the elected officials to get this finished in a timely manner. I have anticipated that we would be there much closer to this date, but in addition to the effort we had this month, I took some time off and went to the Olympics. Peavey-Derr: Are there any – does anyone at this time have a problem with the 22nd ? Wardle: Monday the 22nd . (inaudible) Wardle: This map is a result of , lets take one step back – ACHD funded a study through the Washington Group that dealt with the question of what growth patterns would be, and they used the numbers we have seen before to generate a map that shows how many lanes would be required on the infrastructure system in north Meridian based on this, what they call a 20 year build-out scenario. The modification that has been made here is they identify both Linder Road and Ten Mile as the key links north and south. Looking at the system and the reality anticipating that the Ten Mile Interchange will occur and it is possible in the future with Robinson Road, we also looked at and concluded that the length to the Emmett highway up and back that is one of the objectives, made more sense on the Black Cat alignment that it did on the Ten Mile and at least wanted to get that on the table. As a result, we are saying that if that were to occur, instead of a five lane facility on Ten Mile, that would occur over on Black Cat and essentially create a four square mile area here and here that would have at least some closer relationship and not be as separated by the transportation system. Now that is a decision that obviously has to be made through the long-range transportation process. It involves not only Ada County Highway District, it involves the State Transportation Department. One of the comments that we received at the open house on the instant comments sheet was that don’t preclude even the possibility of a Black Cat interchange, and that is not even a consideration from our perspective and frankly a statement was made that others will have to deal with. But we are going on the assumption that issues were already determined on where those interchanges would be and simply looking at how that would affect north Meridian. Peavey-Derr: Terry could you speak to the tech committee recommendations? The reason I ask the question is that some other information has come out, and you may want to merge your thinking with COMPASS and the tech committee that – could you speak to that? Little: The transportation connections study, the two county look was trying to develop some projects that would take the congressional delegation, and indicated that if we come up with (inaudible) there were several different elements to it, and so four projects that came out of that, one of them was to look at the extension of Highway 16 from Emmett Highway and Highway 44 down to either Black Cat and Ten Mile via either Ten mile or Black Cat, so it left out that whole two mile or one mile corridor, either Black Cat or Ten Mile all the way and including possibly the Black Cat interchange. Peavey-Derr: and if I am incorrect, please tell me, but it seems to me as though there was more weight for the Black Cat interchange than there was for the Ten Mile – from ours – Wardle: I don’t have any idea. Little: For the interchange, Black Cat is more desirable from the corridor standpoint because Ten Mile is locked in, that mile from particularly from Cherry to Ustick is only, is not a five lane section there, you can get about four lanes without a bike lane, its pretty tight. So certainly the corridor along there, Black Cat is much more open that you can still use something like is shown there where you come across and use the Ten Mile Interchange. Corrie: Madam Chairman. Peavey-Derr: Yes. Corrie: We are, the City of Meridian is still dedicated to the Ten Mile, very very seriously. Not Black Cat -- we would like to see that come in. If you want to come in Black Cat due to the people and everything that is on Ten Mile, come down and connect to the Ten Mile Interchange. But the Black Cat Interchange is probably twenty to thirty years off if at all. Ten Mile is much, much closer. Unless I am mistaken from the Council’s viewpoint, we want Ten Mile. Wardle: and I want to clarify, just reiterate that our intent was not to try to provoke any decisions but to simply talk about the impact of a system improvement on north Meridian knowing that if that were to be the interchange, that you could still get there. it is really just a question of where the traffic desires are. Peavey-Derr: Mr. Turnbull. Turnbull: I think the input we have got through this whole process is number one, the Black Cat aligns better to the State Highway 16 and two, corridor preservation is much easier (inaudible) how – those decisions somebody else has to make and we are not pretending to make them for them here, but that is kind of the input that we have received. De Weerd: It was great seeing that map, and that is one thing I really appreciate, seeing how that would line out. We are very committed to Ten Mile and I know that the interchange corridor study has never mentioned Black Cat. Peavey-Derr: This was just on the funding proposal with the Feds, so they were looking at choices, that is all they were doing. Just for the study. De Weerd: Well we don’t want to muck the water up, so we can knock the Black Cat off of there. But it is true, most of our land development, Ten Mile is really complicated to do anything like that – Black Cat makes much more sense. Peavey-Derr: Any other comments? Yes, Mrs. Clegg. Clegg: Mike, whomever, comment to me about Linder versus Meridian Road. I know I have heard some concerns that Meridian Road hooks up again with the interchange on the freeway. This process, we have looked at Linder because of the bridge and the connection to State Street. But I am beginning to hear from people in Meridian, that they believe Meridian Road actually has a lot more traffic in the City of Meridian because most people will be going south to access the freeway rather than going north to access State Street. Wardle: Shari, if you have a comment, help me find that, it might have related more to a land use question than that issue, that Elaine just raised, but it was still a question between Meridian and Linder, which is on page three – Clegg: I guess it relates to land use in terms of where would that community center in the larger neighborhood centers be located. Wardle: And that is the question that is on the third page before that the city staff raised on item number two, in terms of a mixed-use community scale which we are showing right now on Linder versus Meridian Road, and that is an issue we need to talk through and see what does make sense. The reason we were looking at Linder, frankly, was simply acknowledging what Washington Group had done for ACHD in looking at the transportation as it currently exists. My own personal perspective, it probably still is the one that – you know Meridian Road does make that alignment, it may not be the one to carry the most traffic but I don’t know what the counts are. Turnbull: If you go from three to five lanes on Meridian Road – (inaudible) I think that makes a lot of sense, that the further south you get in the north Meridian planning area, the more traffic will be heading towards Meridian, up north three lanes is probably appropriate because you will get some split, you will get a lot going to Chinden. Wardle: And these again, these numbers with the exception of Ten Mile and Black Cat are the numbers that came out of that Washington Group study. I also wanted to stress that one comment we received was the schematics that we showed for the arterial roadways, we actually show two lanes except for where the third lane was necessary for turning movements on a controlled environment. The same thing with five, so, we are also hoping that in the design that we don’t have the mile long center turn lane at either, where the two lane is all that is really required or the four lane versus five so that we – Turnbull: Do you have that schematic here? Wardle: I honestly did not bring it – it’s a big roll schematic. I need to have it chopped down and did not. But the intent there was, what has happened, lets control our access to a point that we don’t have the extra lane, the extra asphalt, the greater drainage and in fact, gives us some room to put some of the drainage features into the arterial system on site rather than collect it, convey it and deal with it on a reasonable basis. That is one of the issues we need to really deal with your staff. Turnbull: That is also a key to the land use, as well. People see this map and they fear strip commercial all the way along. If you have the access control, that would be large measure of control of where commercial goes. Like Mike said, those are not intended to be commercial anyway (inaudible) mixed use. Peavey-Derr: David. Turnbull: I have a couple three questions. There is a little confusion on the area on the scope here, are we talking five square miles, or ten square miles or twelve square miles? This one shows ten -- this one show ten and that one twelve. So do we go clear to McDermott? (inaudible) To me it’s a little confusing and even though (inaudible) maybe we should clarify that, and I guess that one includes the area from Locust Grove over to Eagle Road. Wardle: Yes, because that was the transportation system issue that came up. Dave, really the reason we focusing on the ten square miles here is – we are not ignoring the other section on hand but Boise’s area of impact comes into section 29 and takes up half of the area east of Locust Grove and then there is some differences here, but there has also been a lot of development committed to that area. so this had the I guess, more open opportunity ahead of it. Certainly the city is probably going to apply these standards across the board out here but we were just looking primarily at this ten square mile area. Peavey-Derr: Dave? Bivens: Another follow-up question relative to the Ten Mile and Black Cat. I serve as a member of the Ad Hoc committee that worked on this back in ’99 or I think it was ’98 and ’99 that we worked on that. Ten Mile was the one that was identified as one that would help relieve the congestion in the Meridian area, that and our overpass at Linder and Locust Grove. It is my understanding that ITD has Ten Mile interchange on their radar scope right now. I think if we were to change courses in the middle of the stream, so to say, we may delay what is needed for the opportunity to move that ahead. I would agree with what Terry is saying along Ten Mile. You do have some definite restrictions in there that are going to make it tough to go down Ten Mile. So, the proposed plan you have here makes some sense and it should be. We have got an overpass in both of those and that should be allowed to access and accept traffic either way. Peavey-Derr: Mayor. Corrie: Madam Chairman, a congressional – or senator’s office and also the representatives are very aware of what we want at Ten Mile and they are working with that as an assumption and it will be at Ten Mile, from a congressional standpoint. Every time I go back, when I come in the office, they know exactly what I am there for, and they have pretty much agreed to that as well. Peavey-Derr: Any other comments or questions? Is that about it? Wardle: That is all I have on my list. But I wanted to stress that we are going to, over the next six weeks, get this done so that Meridian can deal with it, hopefully and deal with your Comprehensive Plan adoption, but also get the comments that have been provided. It gives everybody the opportunity to make some decisions. I will be calling up your staff too, to get some of these other (inaudible) so that at least we have a recommendation to provide. It will largely fall on your (inaudible) rather than the City of Meridian with the overall concern of getting the facilities in place in a more conformed manner, is the objective. Peavey-Derr: Bill (inaudible) Wardle: (inaudible) Bill deals with land use – (inaudible) I guess we are going to have to put a task force together on that. Little: Just one question on the traffic numbers. If you get anything – when we last look at it, we assumed Ten Mile was going to be the main thing. Did you get any kind of supplement to verify that you can shift it to Black Cat and (inaudible) to get by on Ten Mile or anything? We can’t just assume that the main route is there. Wardle: It is an assumption at this point. I don’t know – there was a subsequent or a follow up report, I don’t know if that is being incorporated or not. Was that coming from Development Services, the additional work from Washington Group? (inaudible) Was it purely the economics? They perhaps have not been tasked to even look at that one, Terry. Peavey-Derr: Yes? Bivens: I guess this is for Terry or for the others on the committee, relative to the two different concepts here, the access transportation needs in each one of them – maybe Terry can answer this, do we need to identify which one we think is the right one or should we develop what we feel is needed in each concept and see which one would help? Maybe that would help to bring forth the agencies. I have only sat in on one of those with you folks. Wardle: The city is grappling with a lot of that right now so I am not sure if this group has the time or ability to deal with the needs of it – I think all we are tasked to do is to bring forward a concept that everybody at this table, the elected officials of all three jurisdictions obviously will have some process involvement. Peavey-Derr: David. Turnbull: I guess from my perspective, we have been going down the road now for eight months. And each step along the way Mike has put up the concepts that have been developed in conjunction with every body at this table, and so we are a long way down the road and if anybody has any different input I would hope that they would say, hey, we don’t agree with this. But so far, nobody has said that, so from a transportation standpoint, I think that these are the numbers that we have taken from ACHD and put on the map. I don’t see how any of those probably would change between one or the other anyway. But I guess my point is, we haven't heard anyone saying, hold the bus here, we are off target, so I have gone forward with the assumption that everybody likes what -- this is an assimilation of everybody’s input. Peavey-Derr: Okay, is there – Wardle: Judy, just one last thing, again there are items on the table over in the corner if you don’t have the last version which is January 30th – either the policy formulation or the foundation report. A week from this Thursday, on the 14th , technical group, we will get this out over the email or fax, will meet here to really go back into the question of the land use and facilities issues, and then on the 22nd of April, the culmination of this forum will be presented at 8:30 a.m. Peavey-Derr: Terry, did someone have one last question? Little: We still have questions on the precise number of lanes, what the intersections will look like – I don’t say hold the bus, we have got to move forward carefully and refine this, and I don’t know that we are at odds on anything but there are still questions as to exactly how those numbers fall out. You can’t move a river crossing a mile and say yes, we will just move the numbers. It does take a little more looking on that. Peavey-Derr: Okay, if there are no further comments, we are going to be kicked out of here folks, so I have to push you along. Sorry about that, but thank you very much Mike, you have done excellent (inaudible). We are adjourned, thank you. Meeting Adjourned at 9:13 a.m. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: / / ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE APPROVED ATTESTED: WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK