HomeMy WebLinkAbout2003 07-17 BudgetMeridian City Council Special Budget Workshop July 17, 2003
The Special Budget Workshop of the Meridian City Council was called to order at
8:05 A.M. on July 17, 2003, by Mayor Robert Corrie.
Members Present: Robert Corrie, Cherie McCandless, Tammy de Weerd, Keith
Bird and Bill Nary.
Staff Present: Bill Musser, Stacy Kilchenmann, Bill Johnson, Kenny Bowers,
Barb Hohler and Will Berg.
Item 1. Roll-call Attendance:
X Tammy de Weerd X Bill Nary
X Cherie McCandless X Keith Bird
X Mayor Robert Corrie
Corrie: I will open the City Council Special Budget Workshop on Thursday July
17, 2003 at 8:05, City Council Chambers. Roll call vote Mr. Clerk.
Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda:
Corrie: All right we have adoption of the agenda, which is the presentation and
discussion of the city proposed budget.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we adopt the agenda as published.
Nary: Second.
Corrie: Motion has been made and second to adopt the agenda as published.
Any further discussion. All those in favor say aye. Opposed no? All ayes.
Motion carried.
Item 3. Presentation and Discussion of the City Proposed Budget:
Corrie: We are now officially in the proposed budget hearings. Stacy.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and Members of the Council. To start the hearings off I
want to briefly run through the revenue projections for FY 04. We have numbers
for June in so I’m going to update you on what the General Fund is looking like.
Then if there are questions we can talk about this again tomorrow morning. So
just briefly I’m not going to spend a lot of time on the Enterprise Fund. There’s
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July 17, 2003
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two the basic components the Water and the Wastewater Treatment Plant. Plus
we also have public review fees. As you know they changed the way, they
calculated water and wastewater rates last year and we discussed that last year.
Basically, if we look at the actual and projected utility revenue you can see it’s
pretty much on a straight increase up and that’s due to the increase in the
number of accounts and water has dropped below sewer, which was what Brad’s
intention was. Assessment fees are basically the fees we use to build out line
and so forth and we charge a flat rate for that. The increase in those again is
due to the increase in the number of accounts because the actual rate charged
does not change. That’s kind of a brief picture of enterprise fund revenue. We
just project that it will steadily increase. Latecomer’s fees are a little hard to
predict so we predict them at a low flat rate. One thing that I did want to mention
with the enterprise revenue as I think its important that we start to pay a lot of
attention to the fee development and that we start to involve the Finance
Department a little more. Brad and I both worked on when he redid the fees last
time but I think it’s important that we look at those every year basically because
they have a pretty aggressive capital construction that will take a lot of money.
As the city grows the faster, it grows some more of that, construction plan is
going to be impacted. I think we need to start paying attention to including the
cost of capital construction in our fee structure. We want to try to avoid
borrowing at all costs because borrowing has there is a cost just fees to do the
debt financing plus interest and so forth. That’s something that we will probably
be talking about more in the coming year.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Stacy on that I think you had mentioned something before about the
costs of borrowing and the interest. It doesn’t quite look like the deal that it is. Is
there any way that you can put that on paper?
Kilchenmann: Yes in fact for the Police building it probably costs us over a
million dollars to finance it the way we did because we paid bond issuance costs.
Then we paid interest and plus we now are paying property tax because we don’t
own the building. When I added it all up and I can put that on paper for you and
show you the components, it was about 1.4 million additional costs to do that
type of financing. I think when you do the utility financing we wouldn’t have to
pay property tax. It’s just something if we can avoid I think we should try to
avoid. That I think will be an area that we haven’t spent a lot of time on. There
is a capital construction plan in your notebooks for the enterprise fund and it
compares Public Works plan to what we’ve actually done so that’s something
we’ll probably be talking about a lot more in the upcoming year. On the special
services side just briefly its driven on permit revenue and that definitely is a bright
spot in our financial picture as you can see by looking at the growth in residential
permits 2003 actual continues to exceed the two prior years. Commercial
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July 17, 2003
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building permits they are up. They are hard to project so we pretty much project
a low flat rate for them because they are all over the up and down and all over
the board. That’s just a look at Building and Planning and Zoning revenue. Now
we get to the General Fund and this is a summary and it’s also in your revenue
manual. It breaks down property tax revenue into the basic property tax, the
amount from new construction and annexation. Then it gives a projection of the
levy rate. We’ve talked about this quite a bit. If we look at this on a graph that’s
what the different components look like. New construction has stayed pretty
consistent with the base gradually going up that three percent. The other basic
components of our general fund the biggest one is revenue sharing. This one
has been hard to project its usually done by AIC, they do the projections.
There’s a possibility that it could – it actually has exceeded what they projected
for the current year. That spending didn’t drop off like it was predicted to. We
are going to get to this other worksheet and I’ll talk about that a little bit. It could
potentially be about 75,000 dollars less this coming year then AIC projected.
The other one, court revenue, has actually decreased. It could be about 15,000
dollars short of what we had predicted it would be for FY 2004. Another big area
are the utility franchise agreements, which are Idaho Power, Intermountain Gas,
Cable and Sanitary Services. This one has been really hard to predict because it
depends on rate changes it depends on the weather. Cable depends on the
competition and how their sales do. We try to call ahead and talk to them and
figure out what its going to be and it actually has dropped this year over the last
year for the past maybe three or four years it just showed a steady increase and
now this year its fallen off as rates have gone down, we had a mild winter. When
we get to the final sheet, I have revised the projections to downward to be even
more conservative then I had originally had it. We just have to hope that rates go
up and we have a really cold winter.
De Weerd: That’s out of our pocket.
Kilchenmann: But you’ll be glad that you are helping the city out. Then our other
bug-a-boo is interest income. This is kind of a summary of that you see in your
financial statements of where interest income has gone. One bright spot was
this in June the pool went up quite a bit, it went up to like 3.73 percent so if that
continues that would be great. That would really help us. Apparently, there is
talk of them lowering interest rates again which would not be good. When we
get to this other sheet, I have revised interest income down slightly. This impacts
the enterprise fund too because they have a fairly high amount of interest income
so this is going to impact them as well as the general fund. This just kind of
shows the two sources of income property tax and non property tax revenue.
Non property tax revenue stays fairly stagnant, it doesn’t really increase very
much. Now that’s the chart that we look at that shows how much of our revenue
that is taken up by the base budget. Restrictive revenue that little red spot on
the top those are park impact fees. The yellow is the revenue that we have left
for new programs, new people. On the other sheet that I gave you its just like an
excel spreadsheet. It says FY 04 revenue analysis compared to actual June 30,
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2003. I’ve taken the basic categories of general fund income and I look at this
every quarter and change the estimate depending on any indicators or actual
and so forth. I have highlighted on Rural Fire the budget for 2004 we actually,
we were able to increase it over what I had initially have when I first did the
revenue manual. Kenny has warned us that the percentage that rural fire is
going to pay is actually going to drop a percent to 25 percent versus 26 percent.
The 895,000 is taking Kenny’s actual base with his new firefighters in it and that
would be 25 percent. Then interest has been revised downward again so I have
it at 300,000 and then the franchise fees I revised downward. When I totaled it
up to what I had originally projected in the revenue manual and based on the
latest figures there is only a difference of four or five thousand dollars. It didn’t
change significantly because we were able to increase the amount contributed
from the rural fire. As we go through our discussions and so forth today and you
have a chance maybe to look through these materials more, if there are any
more questions we can address those first thing tomorrow morning. I just
wanted to kind of give you a basic idea as you listen to the presentations what
the revenue picture looks like. Are there any questions right now?
Corrie: Don’t have a question but I hope is not a business decision. I hope that
we have the money but sometimes its not there.
Kilchenmann: I’ve tried to be very conservative.
Corrie: You are thank you.
Kilchenmann: If things turn around we always have the opportunity to re-look at
this during the next fiscal year. Okay then, I will turn it over to the Police
Department.
POLICE DEPARTMENT
(Inaudible discussion)
Worley: Mayor and members of the Council. Thank you for the opportunity to
present the 2004 budget for the Meridian Police Department. Since Chief
Musser is going to have to live with this budget I’m going to let him present it.
Nary: Hey thanks for stopping by Mike.
Musser: Well good morning and thank you for inviting us. What we are going to
start off with today is just basically run through where we are at with our initial
enhancements that we put in and then of course into the Mayor’s priorities and
then line out some strategies that we’ve developed in conjunction with the
budget proposal. First things that we are looking at doing is with gearing in
where we are at with the Police Department we are doing our budget so that we
focus towards our mission statement in particular our last items on there through
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our education prevention and enforcement activates that are continually ongoing
within a department in order to meet our strategic plan and fall into compliance
with the cities strategic plan as well. Capital replacement to get that one out of
the way. We started with 136,000 dollars basically only to replace four marked
units at a total of 34,000 dollars a piece and that’s all we have slated for this year
on it trying to hold the line a little bit but we do have four units that are due for
that area that’s between 85,000 to 90,000 three of those are pushing the 90,000
or at least two of them have exceed it all ready at this point but they’ll be well
within the confine by October one. Moving on to our enhancement requests. We
submitted a total of seven requests, which totaled up to 722,913 dollars. In
meeting with accounting Stacy and Reta and going over some of that, we were
able to delete some of the miscellaneous off as we were moving through and
looking at what we can potentially work on within this current budget year. We
were able to drop that down a little bit for the final submittal that went in for the
Mayor’s review. As a result, with the Mayor’s priorities on it, this is pretty much
what happened with what we were looking at and our first and second priorities
remained in tack bringing us down to a grand total of 367,388 dollars. Those first
two priorities has we move into of course are personnel ones that deal with six
police officers we are looking at three of those plus a car for a full year so they
would be coming in in October and then three again following in April at the half
year point within the fiscal year to provide us a little bit of savings and also to
allow us access to be able to get the officers up and trained through the year and
then out into the field. As we move into that for explanations on where we are at
with the first one we are looking at October of 03 for being able to implement
this. It would be three officers with one car, which is the standard we have been
trying to make the approach on when we are hiring. If we have three officers we
do like to request a car within that packet so that we are able to spread it out a
little bit more on the vehicle usages. Again the strategic planning issues that we
are addressing within this is again compliant with adequate staffing for our
growing city trying to impact crime rates and the traffic issues that we have and
also this is the third year that we have been requesting for additional patrol
people in particular on this and we feel very confident that we need it at this point
and that’s why we had those listed as number one and two on our priorities and
we were very happy with the Mayor concurring with us on that on his priorities.
The second one we have here is a follow up. This is the half year one which we
had looked to implement in April of 04 so half way through the fiscal year which
does drop us down to an expenditure of 148,490 dollars and again three officers
for one car and again with the same strategic plan issues being addressed within
those confines. One thing that this will do for us in terms of patrol out on the
field, the six officers will augment each one of the squads and we have basically
two full teams a weekend team and a weekday team comprised of squads that
work each one of the shifts a day shift a swing shift and a graveyard shift. These
six officers would allow us to put one officer additional for each one of those
squads so everybody gets one officer on each one of those shifts to be able to
increase our overall coverage’s in the town. Priority Number 3 was a school
resource officer for Mountain View High School. Initially we were looking at
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76,335 dollars on that. One of the items that we were looking at on that again is
manpower related to investigations, remaining proactive in our policing
programs. Our SRO program has been a very good proactive program, a very
collative program as well with the school district and as you all know we do have
that new large high school coming online out there at Millennium and South
Locust Grove area off of Overland. In meeting with the school district their also
concerned they are facing the same type of budget crunch as we are and they
didn’t feel that they could include this within their contract this year which lead us
to look at some alternatives and we do have an alternative to be able to propose
today and that alternative encompasses only using 17,305 dollars. That’s what
we would need to set aside in order to do alternative funding through our cops in
school grant which we’ve already made an application for and which we have
brought before this Council in order to get authorization for the Mayor to sign on
that application. We did have that application go in we are waiting for award
notice on that. We probably won’t know until sometime around October which is
why we are presenting this as an alternative. It would be a total of 125,000
dollars from the Federal Government over the next three years. It would take a
commitment on our end of it to at least 17,305 dollars available should we
receive the award. That’s why we are putting it up here now because we do
have the potential to get that and we should be in pretty good shape to continue
this program and add to the school by putting another body in. We have
discussed this with the school district as well and the school district is more then
willing to continue our partnership at the end of the three years where in the
fourth year we have to assume this officer and the school district believes that
they will be in a better position at that time to be able to absorb it within their
contract as well.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: If I could ask. Bill I don’t know how we could open that school without an
SRO over there. I just absolutely don’t know how and this alternative plan if it’ll
work its fine if not I don’t know how we are going to dig up the 76,000 but we can
not open that school without an SRO officer over there. I feel those are some of
the most important people we got in this department because of the relationship
they get with the kids and stuff over there. I mean this is a nice big high school
coming on board and everything and to be without a SRO. Somehow we’ve got
to get that in and get it taken care of and this alternative plan is a good one but
we better have something back up to make sure that we do have an officer over
there. That’s my personal feelings.
Musser: Mr. Mayor. Councilman Bird, members of the Council. I appreciate
those sentiments and believe me we are in a position where we can pull up our
bootstraps if needed and Mountain View High School will be covered. However
in an attempt to put us in a better position if we can, that’s why we did apply for
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the grant. We did want to point that you know this is a significant savings if we
get the grant award. I do feel fairly confident that we maybe able to do that
because we have an excellent track history with the cops program for the eight
officers that we brought on in prior years. The only problem is I can’t give you an
answer as to the absoluteness on that award at this point. We probably won’t
know until October possibly even after. One of the things we were looking at for
being able to set this aside though. In discussions with Chief Worley and looking
at where we were at. We’ve had a part time crime prevention position, which
was approximately 19,000. We haven’t been able to fill that position we do have
some alternatives in regards to that one that will be coming up shortly but there
is some money available from that position which could be reallocated and set
aside within this budget if necessary on it. However one of the things I went
through and was looking at when I was reviewing the current salary settings and
placements on that it appeared that we no longer had that within the salary
placement so I don’t know if that was an adjustment by finance or not because
the position hasn’t been filled for two years. That was one thing that we were
looking at where we had potential monies in the base that might be set aside say
in the Mayors budget as an administrative one, which we would have it, available
then. It could be reallocated at the end of the year as we amend budgets and it
could specifically go towards this but that would be the Council’s choice.
Bird: I just feel that we’ve got to open that school with a SRO out there.
Musser: We do have a plan, they will have a SRO come August. I believe its
August 14th
when we initiate the SRO contracts back in there. There will be a
body at the school Council member.
Bird: Thank you Captain.
Corrie: Yeah Bill one of our jobs is going to have to be to convince the school
that they do need that and they better really look hard at it. I know that we
discussed at how we could cover it but we want to make sure that the school is
on board with that.
Musser: At this point based on our negotiations we have had with them and
talking with them on the contract. They feel that there wouldn’t be a problem at
the end of the three years being able to commit so we can retain this person and
it would become part of the contract. We are all facing some of those financial
woes right now.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I agree with what Councilman Bird has said. I was at a meeting
yesterday, it was regarding The Boy’s and Girl’s Club, one of your officers has
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July 17, 2003
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been hanging out at The Boy’s and Girl’s Club on a regular basis, they only know
him by Gary, and so I have my suspicion who that is. Apparently and the reason
for this story is to underscore the importance of having the officers in these
schools is the relationships that he has made at The Boys and Girls Club while
he’s out on patrol now the kids recognize him and call after him. He has a
different level of respect with these kids, that are so important, and merely those
are the ages that are important to reach the kids. The presence in our schools
has got to be one of our priorities and I appreciate your department looking at
how we can make it happen because it is vital. It is a crime prevention type of
thing. I guess it’s very important also looking at your crime prevention money as
maybe supplementing some of this. I think we all appreciate your concentration
on making this happen because it ahs to be one of our priorities.
Musser: Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman De Weerd, members of the Council. I
appreciate those sentiments and that is part of our goal. Like I said at the
beginning we take our mission statement very much to heart at the department
and you can’t do it all through enforcement. It also takes us being proactive and
moving out into that community to do some educational type things and do some
direct interaction and hopefully here as you move into priority four we’ll have
some more for you in lines for that.
De Weerd: Just to wrap that up, do you know who this Gary is?
Musser: I believe I do. I only know of one Gary that we have and I’m sure he
probably has a dog along with him.
De Weerd: I am assuming so too but if you will please pass along the
appreciation and that its been noted publicly in the community because it did
come up at a meeting yesterday of the appreciation of The Boy’s and Girl’s Club
for as well Kenny for Scotty and his crew they hang out there too. I think its just
phenomenal, what a great statement your departments are making to those
youth.
Musser: I will pass that on for you Councilwoman De Weerd.
Nary: She meant hanging out in a good way I think.
Corrie: Yes. Also, tell him good luck this week.
Musser: Moving along to priority number four, this is one where we had initially
submitted in for a Crime Prevention Specialist and Public Information Officer.
We wanted to move the Crime Prevention Specialist position to a full time one
and also incorporate Public Information Officer functions with that position to
justify that full time aspect. As a result it included 64,998 dollars most of which
was salary related and benefits. There was a portion that was related directly to
operating costs and some associated capital. What we were looking to do with
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that is continue in our bridge building within the community, something that we’ve
been working to do for the last two years but with the part time position we
haven’t quite got to the point we needed. We’ve had a number of applicants,
we’ve looked those applicants over and to be quite honest they weren’t the
people that we needed in order to represent the community of Meridian. There
were some issues and after discussion in sitting down and looking this over part
of what we were seeing that may be problematic with the part time position was
just that it was part time. Therefore we went getting as good of an applicant pull
submitting in for that position so we were going to make an attempt here to go
full time on this. Then coupling in the Crime Prevention along with Public
Information it allows us to disseminate better reports and that type of thing and
get thing out to the community so we can enhance our partnerships. Again, the
strategic planning issues its non-traditional staffing and also research and
development of planning. As I just noted there this is a move from the part time
position to a full time one. Based upon the 19,000 we had currently approved in
FY 03 the overall increase would actually be about 45,998 dollars. However, this
was not one of the chosen ones on the Mayors priority so we have also provided
an alternative on this one. On this one, we are looking to do two full time
positions, the Crime Prevention Specialist position full time and then also a new
elementary school resource officer and this is part of what we refer to as the PSN
grant. This is the Projects Safe Neighborhoods grant, which I presented to you
at a Council session. I think this figure right here speaks highly of what we are
able to do with the monies available here. This would cost the city 5,900 dollars
investment for this first year on this grant. What we are looking at here on it is
that we do have the Projects Safe neighborhoods grant. We did receive an
award, which has been accepted by the city as authorized by this Council, that
total amount for the next two years is 256,500 dollars. The grant is like I said for
two years, we currently have 127,422 dollars budgeted on our outline to the state
for how we were looking to spend this in FY 04. That leaves us a remainder for
next of 129,079 dollars for use in Fiscal 05. The grant proposal would allow for
the full time crime prevention – I’m sorry.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Bill just a question. When we received this grant has those monies
already been included in the revenue projections?
Musser: No.
De Weerd: Okay, I just wanted to verify that. Thank you.
Musser: Your welcome.
De Weerd: Sorry.
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Musser: And again to reiterate full time crime prevention position along with the
full time elementary school resource officer on that. The needed allocation of the
needed 5,900 dollars from the city is for expenses not covered by the grant. In
particular reference the officer we have expenditures such as uniform, belt, the
holster, hand gun, those types of things. They don’t cover those out of these
types of grants so we would have to look at that. They also don’t cover direct
overtime. However, they will pay the benefits towards it but they won’t pay the
direct overtime. Those were the costs included in that 5,900 basically
equipment, uniform, allowance and direct overtime. Before I move on with that
one also in conjunction with that Safe Neighborhoods Grant just to give the
Council and the Mayor an update here on it. We did have a meeting last week in
which we were able to bring Saint Luke’s Meridian to the table along with the
school district and BSU who is potentially doing some follow up review on this
program for us. We were all able to come in and everybody seems to be very
excited about the program and what we’ve initially outlined in our abstract and
we are keying it directly back into looking at our youth in particular the
Elementary and Middle School children. Incorporating classes that go into more
then just firearm safety but also awareness and expanding out what we do inside
the schools through that elementary school resource officer. Our Crime
Prevention person would also help coordinate through businesses and also
through civic groups in town here to help us to this. The Crime Prevention
position will also be involved with helping develop a curriculum that’s acceptable
to the school district and incorporates what Saint Luke’s is currently doing with
some of their programs so that we can get to a much wider target to a group of
our youth. One other aspect and I believe that they were probably tied up that
day but The Boys and Girls Club of Ada County is also excited about this
because we plan on continuing this educational format into the club itself here in
town. However they were tied up and weren’t able to make it to the meeting but I
have met with Curt a number of times and he’s very excited about the possibility
here of having additional officers become involved down at The Boy’s and Girl’s
Club as well. So this is another community outreach program that we’re really
excited about that brings in a whole lot more partnering between some major
components in the city. These are some other items that we had. Priority
number five was a traffic emphasis personnel enhancement. We were also
looking at replacing motorcycles at this time. The motorcycles can probably
survive another year and I notice we do have them projected out for replacement
for next year so these 147,490 dollars was to specifically address traffic issues
and also to help us meet variance in our objectives from FY 03 in relations to the
strategic plan. We do have three officers now assigned to the traffic squad and
they have become very active in doing a number of things in town besides
enforcement and we’ve had a lot of collaborative efforts between Ada County,
Idaho State Police, Boise Police working a number of different types of traffic
task force. Such as on the Fourth of July we had a combined DUI taskforce
going again for holiday driving under the influence and we’ve also done a
number of corridor traffic enforcement activities along Fairview down on Eagle
Road all the way through on the corridor there at Eagle Road and also in
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conjunction with the interstate. It has been fairly successful and our officers even
helped Ada County with Highway 16 on the way up to Emmett because there
has been a lot of speeding, accident problems up there on that roadway as well.
It has been paying off I think overall for us. Priority number six an additional
personnel enhancement for reserve police officers we were looking to increase
reserve officers by four on the department we currently have six. However we
also had to look at the issue of equipment for those officers. Where they are not
paid we do provide the uniforms and the handguns and that type of stuff to them
and that would cost us 18,780 dollars. At this time the reserve officers are the
only officers that are not issued a department issue handgun. We took care of all
the other officers. They do carry similar handguns to what we have. They all
carry glocks but what we were looking to do was issue them a department
handgun as well rather then a privately owned. This also was a result of a
numerous contacts both Chief Worley and I have had reference people wanting
to become involved in our program so we were looking to increase it to a base of
10. It does have costs associated with it.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Can you tell us on your reserves what kind of impact they have?
What kind of duties they perform and what kind of impact they have on your
staffing?
Musser: Mr. Mayor, Councilwoman De Weerd and members of the Council. One
of the biggest things that our reserves are able to help us out with was right at
the beginning of the year when we had two very tragic episodes in town here that
involved first a homicide suicide and then another homicide. We had to contain
scenes, which meant we had to be able to control them utilizing officers to do
that. Our reserves became very valuable for having somebody in uniform with
authority that was there to be able to control the scenes while at the same time
keeping our overall overtime costs down a little bit because as you all know
during that period we did have a lot of officers out. We had a lot of ongoing
expenses related to overtime but we were able to utilize our reserves to help us
out with securing those scenes. In past years they have also performed that
function with us. On parade days because of the amount of traffic we have in
town the need for doing traffic control and also doing crowd control. The
reserves are an iatrical part in being able to help us out with that. They provide
us additional manpower on those days. Again it helps reduce some of the
overtime and they become involved with it. All of our reserves we encourage to
attain their level one reserve certification. We do make available for them
attendance at the southwest Idaho reserve academy which one of our reserves
at this point Craig Rohm is a coordinator over at Post 4. By helping, them do
that and providing some of the funding that’s needed there in making our officers
available that makes them that much more trained for us as well. I’d say
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probably the biggest thing though to help augment us at times when we need
two officers in the cars on nights when staffing may be a little bit low. They are
out here on the weekends to help us out so that we have two people in the car
so that we have a car that can respond just as a single unit with two people in it
to say a domestic call or something like that and it doesn’t take two cars out of
the field then. We do have a back up in that manner. However with the growth
and everything else that we’ve been experiencing and need to put officers on
they do occasionally get bumped because we are busy also trying to run a
number of officers through our field training program right now. These gentlemen
bend over backwards they don’t receive any compensation whatsoever they
willing come in when we need them and when we call them as we did at the first
of the year. They adjust their schedules to be able to cover a sitting for a whole
night out in front of a house without much of anything else to do except just keep
an eye on things for us and make sure that things stay secure. They are
dedicated citizens and the only way I could really compare them it’s the same as
our citizens that are in the National Guard that voluntarily give up their weekends
and part of their summer to be of service to their country. These gentlemen are
being of service to their community through the Police Department.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Corrie: Bill. I came from Boulder who had reserve officers. They had 125
officers but they got paid when they worked but they didn’t get their uniforms paid
for or their guns. They did all that on their own. They did get paid when they
came to work or fill in. Have you looked at that as a possibility rather then giving
them all their equipment and that to let them be paid? Because an officer would
have to be doing that if they weren’t there and you would have to charge for that
and looking at it another way can they get paid by the people that’s asking that or
what they need for that. It’s an idea but it would be less cost but yet they would
still be being paid for what they were doing and you can kind of get a trade off
here. I don’t know, we can talk about that a little later but it really worked well
back there and the merchants and the people didn’t mind paying for that and it
would also help augment their uniforms and their time that they put into it. Just a
thought that you might want to look at it that way. There’s lots of different ways
to look at reserve officers so.
Musser: Mr. Mayor members of the Council. We have looked at the option of
being able to provide them some payment. Garden City for example utilizes their
reserves as part time employees and they are able to pay them when they need
the additional staffing and all. However given where we are at with some of the
budget crunches that becomes a question for us as to where do we get the
additional monies when we need them and yes it may be less then the overall
equipment. However I don’t have a good measure at this time but I certainly will
look at that so I can provide you an answer in the future.
Corrie: Okay. Thank you.
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Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Bill I guess I should ask when you talked about capital improvements and
the vehicle replacements. You said three of the vehicles were near the 90,000
mark. I’m assuming that’s the 97 and the two 98 vehicles. I just didn’t know
where the 2000 vehicle was since it’s in the replacements as well.
Musser: Mr. Mayor and Council member Nary, members of the Council. I would
have to double-check those figures again. I know two of the vehicles were ones
that we’ve kept on for an extended period because they were assigned to one
officer, they were both canine vehicles and that’s why their mileage got up and
we were able to run them a little bit longer. One of the 2000’s and I believe it
was a 2000 came on and has been running around the clock until we got other
vehicles on so it picked up a lot of usage when it first came on that it started to
slow down a little bit. I didn’t grab the current figures on it because I didn’t go in
to the station this morning but I will get that information over to you because we
do track that on a monthly basis now an update where the mileage is on those
cars.
Nary: Thank you.
Musser: Priority Number 7 was a miscellaneous grouping of items for us. It
included LCD monitors for records. We were looking about 2,400 dollars on that.
However we have found some means to be able to get most of this taken care of
at this point for us. We were also looking at record storage in our record section.
We do need another center shelving storage unit to purchase and put in there.
That’s going to cost us 3,817 dollars for that unit and get (inaudible) but would
allow us to keep our three years of reports available there within as we rotate
them through. At this point we are going to fill up the current shelving units that
we have. An additional one we were looking at involved building security both
perimeter within the temporary holding facility or the holding cells down at the
Police Department. That is going to be 28,675 dollars, a majority of that cost
over 13,000 of it is related just to the multi-port digital recorder that’s necessary
for all the different camera hookups. That’s the single most pricey item within
that whole project and something we will have to evaluate as we move down the
road. Another issue we were looking at is also trying to reduce overall liability of
the city by having the officers record all of their stops and contacts. We were
looking at what Boise City did with conjunction with their –
***End Of Side One***
Musser: - and because micro cassette recorders have a tendency to break down
and with the advent of digital recorders we are also finding that there are not very
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many people making micro cassette’s anymore, the individual cassettes
themselves. We were looking at being able to purchase and issue out to all of
the officers a digital recorder along with an extra memory stick so that they had
one that they could use, pull it out if something happened have another one to be
able to go with. These would download directly right into our computer system at
the station and we could record these out, make copies of them right to a CD,
rather then have to continue to have to transcribe tapes and remain with bulky
tapes and that type of stuff. We can go right to modern technology and get them
done a heck of a lot faster then what we do now. However in looking at where
we are at with it we were able to say that you know we can fix this one here with
the monitors, that ones in process right now and we think we maybe successful
in going ahead and completing what we were looking at there. Our records
personnel were the key issue in order to provide them some eye relief by using
the LCD monitors. The building security with the cost overall associated with it,
that’s another one that we were looking at. As much as we would like to have it
bottom line is the majority of the cost is going to be the unit itself right now so it
would take a commitment in order to get it. We could do it in phases if need be
but buying the recorder and then hooking up primarily the holding cells number
one so that we can videotape when the officers are in there with a person for
utilization of the intoxilizer in there. It provides them a little sense of security
when they are in there by themselves with a prisoner. Then expand that one out
later. The digital recording system didn’t make it to the priority list as well either
when we received the paperwork back from the Mayor on it though we all did
concur that it would probably be a strong liability issue but it does take 13,000
dollars to commit to that. The only one then we have left is that we would like to
consider or have strong consideration on is the shelving unit for records in
particular because there is a definite need for it they will have to have it in this
next fiscal year and it is 3,817 dollars, probably one of the cheaper ones that we
had submitted overall. As a result, our revised proposed budget for FY 04 for the
Police Department consists of priority, one and two which is the six officers
equipment and vehicles for 367,388 dollars. Priority 3 is an alternative was the
Cops in Schools grant in particular the SRO for out at Mountain View High
School which would need a funding set aside incase we get that grant award of
17,305 dollars. Priority number four again an alternative provides us two
positions from the Project Safe Neighborhoods Grant, there would be one
elementary school resource officer and still provide us that full time Crime
Prevention position with a commitment of 5,900 dollars from the city. Priority
Number 5, the records storage cabinet for 3,817 dollars which would bring the
overall budget proposal from the Police Department to 394,410 dollars. I did go
back and gage this in against the revised budget information and numbers that
we did receive from accounting and I did notice while we do not have a whole lot
to play with or anything else there was approximately a projected 58,000 that we
might have. I tried to keep us within the confines of that by still not trying to jump
on everything there, utilize it, and then also find additional alternatives such as
potentially that past Crime Prevention position as potential funding that may have
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been out of place that we could utilize as well. I would stand for any questions
from the Council at this point.
Corrie: Well I want to commend you and the chief and your department for what
you’ve done here. You realize that you’ve cut out 300,000 dollars about out of
your budget and I commend you for that. I know it’s very hard, it’s difficult but I
think you’ve done a real good job here and what you’ve asked for is really
definitely what you really need. Not that you didn’t the first time but I do want to
commend you and your department for doing that and you did exactly what I
wanted you to do. Go back and look at it so you did a good job.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Musser: Thank you.
Bird: I think the whole Council will like all those sentiment for a job well done.
You guys have been first class the last couple years of realizing what the city
situation is and this is all departments have done it I believe that everybody has
tightened their belts and worked cooperatively and get this thing taken care of
and we certainly do appreciate it. You do a lot of the work for us that we would
have to do it and by your priorities and alternatives and all that stuff working out I
think really helps and I think the Mayor and Council’s very appreciative of what
you guys are doing and –
Musser: Mr. Mayor, Councilman Bird, members of the Council. Thank you very
much for your comments and I would just like to mirror that I felt it was very
worthwhile for us to be able to sit down and meet with the Mayor to have the
Mayor establish our priorities and lay them out and then see what we can do be
able to provide alternatives and this year I’ll be quite honest we’ve been very
fortunate in particular with the Project Safe Neighborhoods Grant which was a
very last minute thing and we receive the only award for a law enforcement
agency off that grant and things just fell together pretty well for us.
Corrie: Thank you Bill. Very nice presentation. Chief you are leaving good
hands there.
Worley: I think so.
De Weerd: Do we want to take a few minute breaks?
Corrie: Chief I also might commend you for being the one helping Bill in doing
this. You’ve done a lot for our department the last two years. Thank you. Yes
lets take that break.
(Recess)
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FIRE DEPARTMENT
Corrie: Chief Kenny Bowers, Fire Department.
Bowers: Thank you. Mayor Corrie and Council Members. We were talking
about the Boys and Girls Club and I think kids like Scotty, BZ, and Drew just kind
of come together down there. They all run in the same pack I think. It’s working
real well. I hope you’ve received some of those thank you’s in your boxes and
stuff. A little bit of recognition for them. I really appreciate what you guys are
saying.
Corrie: Kenny I might add that when I go down there. Every time there seems to
be more and more kids that want to be Police and Firemen and I think the Fire
Department has the edge right now. Thank you guys.
Bowers: That’s good because we need that for the future. We do. It’s going to
work out good. Mayor Corrie and City Council members I appreciate you inviting
us here today to present our budget request for the year 2004. As you know it’s
been a very busy year. Councilman Bird kind of gave us a bad time last year
about not having PowerPoint so we are going to try that this year. I already went
backwards twice with it so we are learning. Our Number 1 enhancement was a
thermal imager and in the past, the public has helped us out tremendously with
the prices on these thermal-imaging units. In the last several years, the Meridian
Firefighters Association has helped us out. So far this year the Meridian
Firefighters association has decided to put all their monies towards the safe
house that we are moving over to the school. We thought this would be a very
good enhancement for the city and the Rural to purchase one. These are the
units that we use on an everyday shift. I mean we go out to homes that have hot
wires or hot walls, hot plug ins. We were able to zone in on the correct wire or
the correct plug in without tearing the whole wall out. We can go into commercial
businesses and check which balance is bad without taking down every light and
looking at the balances. We’ve also used it in the past as grass fires going out
after we’ve thought we had the grass fire out. We go around the perimeter with
this to see if there are any hot spots still. We believe that each station should
have one. It cuts down on the time that a fire crew has to be on a location. Also
where they come into account the most of is assist with search and rescue,
finding victims. Several years ago as you heard Caldwell Fire was able to go
down in the basement and pull a person out of a fire there. They work
tremendously. They really show the heat from a body, from a hand, from a foot.
That is the most important part of this unit here. We use it daily, I mean it is an
important tool for us, right along with a defib. It is a very important tool. The cost
of that was 12,000 dollars. They have come down from 25,000 when they first
come out so they are getting a little better in price. Our next enhancement was
our new fire engine for fire station number three. The engine that we have now
in back up 304. That picture right there is 11 years old. It has somewhere
around 86,000 miles on it. As the age increases in vehicles the maintenance
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cost goes up. The down time of the trucks, taking them to Boise to repair and
work on them increases. This is going to be a – station three is going to be a
very important part of our district. It’s going to run on many calls, so we are
going to need a first-rate engine out there that will withstand the riggers of the
calls. If we do not purchase a new engine this year we will have to approach you
guys next year which then it will be a year and a half before we get it on scene.
Also, we would only have one backup reserve engine so if anything happens and
we have an engine go down with a problem we would be able to fill that position
but we wouldn’t have any other extra trucks. Councilperson de Weerd and
myself, we believe we heard some good news Monday night from the Meridian
Rural Fire Protection District that if things go has good as it has with the new fire
station three they would be able to put in their 24 or 25 percent of this engine.
That would be around 90,000 dollars. I believe that’s what both of us heard the
other night and I think they are probably going to be able to back that up.
De Weerd: We have it on tape.
Bowers: We have it on tape, correct. That would help us out tremendously too.
Our next enhancement and we didn’t have a picture of an office. We should
have had Greta or somebody sitting in an office. Anyhow, we would like to bring
in a part time office assistant. Able to fill in for vacation time, able to fill in for sick
time when Greta is gone. Four hours a day turns out to be 19 and a half hours a
week. The ability to have current assistant work on more details. We would be
able to have a little bit more help on our projects. We wouldn’t have to pay a little
bit of overtime when we have a big project come up and we need Greta to stay
afterwards. That would be able to help us out in that and we still haven’t slowed
down much on the transmittals from Planning and Zoning and the City Clerk’s
office. It hasn’t slowed down much so we are trying to get a person to help us
out in this area and to do purchase orders for us. This would be a part time
position 8,544 dollars. If I could go back to the fire truck, that 380,000 was truck
and equipment. The truck we just learned several weeks ago, diesels now have
to come out with emission check system on them now for the emission, which
will cost 10,000 dollars per diesel truck now. That will put the price up 10,000
more dollars just for the emission stuff. That’s scary. Our next enhancement,
mobile data terminals. This is basically a laptop like you guys got in front of you
that sits in our Captain’s position of our fire engines. We get information from
dispatch of the address, what type of call it is, where we are going, and a map
section. In the past Ada County Sheriff’s Office has owned these and divvied
them out to each department. They will not be doing that anymore. We will have
to start replacing our old units that are starting to become unreliable from all the
bouncing that they get in the fire trucks. The new units that we would be looking
at, Terry Paternoster believes that we will have better performance with the new
ones. We will be able to put maps that we can pull up a map on our MDT’s. We
will be able to program when a bridge is out or when a road is closed, we can
program that right into the computer to pop up as we get into the truck and head
to that direction. The cost for two of them would be 7,500 dollars.
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Corrie: Kenny would the money that you got the other terminals from the
dispatch, do they come under the title 31 money?
Bowers: Yes they sure did.
Corrie: Why are they not doing it again with title 31 money? I’m on the ECAB
board and I asked that question and nobody seemed to know. Maybe you guys
might know this because I’m going to fight for them to give each one of those fire
trucks and the Police as well out of that title 31 money because it’s from the
government and we should be able to use it. I don’t know can you tell me?
Bowers: I cannot Mayor Corrie at this time and Council. Let me ask Deputy
Chief Johnson to see if he knew.
Johnson: The report to us at PSCB which is the Public Safety Communications
Board the user board from the Sheriffs office was it was just getting too costly to
take out title 31 dollars and continue to do the upgrades to the communications
system, such as the new radios that they put in. The updated CAD system, we
took a pretty good hit when we went to New World and then back to PSI. So
some of that cost, and that was a proposal that came out of the Sheriff’s Office
directly driven by the Sheriff’s financial folks. They just went to PSCB and says
we aren’t going to do this.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: My understanding, its been for awhile now that has been – it was a policy
change by the Sheriff’s office has well as – before the board configuration has
changed a couple of times it was just a policy choice of basically they paid the
initial cost. Then they’ve only done the replacements or the replacements have
been done by the cities now. Certainly, that’s something that can be revisited.
Corrie: Yes I’ve been talking with the County Commissioners and they are also
asking the same question. Why? Whose decision was it and it wasn’t really
exactly – they’ve changed people too but they are looking at that possibility but
we still need to look at it here in case they don’t.
Bowers: Thank you.
Corrie: Thank you Kenny.
Bowers: Our next enhancement is opticom. Basically, it continues to upgrade
the traffic signals in Meridian. This gives the green light to the Meridian Fire
Department apparatus when responding to alarms to improve the safety for the
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citizens and the firefighters. We are looking at two intersections, and the cost
would be right around 9,000 dollars.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Bowers: And I just got call from Ada County Highway District yesterday saying
they are going to do two more intersections this next two months. I didn’t know
anything about, Overland and 5th
and Overland and the school.
Nary: Chief I was going to ask on one of these enhancements here is Franklin
and Locust Grove and I didn’t know if that intersection – is that going to get built
in 2004?
Corrie: We think so.
Nary: I guess I was thinking that it went with the extension of Locust Grove north
before they would rebuild that whole intersection.
Bird: No that’s part of the Franklin Road widening deal.
Nary: Okay.
Bowers: Yes. Mayor Corrie and City Council members, Councilman Bill Nary. I
believe that’ supposed to be this year, I mean this coming year when they come
in and start moving the bridges, the canals, the ditches. Just kind of put that
intersection in.
Corrie: Kenny are they going to wire it and everything and ready to put out to
come in, right?
Bowers: Yes.
Corrie: So that 9,000 dollars is just the opticom (inaudible)?
Bowers: Yes.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: You need that. Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Kenny there are continuing talks right now at the chiefs level isn’t
there about the costs of opticom and how that cost is distributed?
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Bowers: Correct. Mayor Corrie, City Council members and Councilperson De
Weerd. We are getting very concerned, the fire departments in the area are
getting concerned that we are having to pay for all the opticom in the
intersections where we believe that should go under Ada County Highway
District when they put in an intersection. Ada County Highway District’s concern
is they are only into moving traffic, they are not into stopping traffic or helping fire
departments get through intersections. That’s what their biggest concern is they
want to keep the traffic moving. We have. The Fire Chief’s Association has got
together with Ada County EMS and we are sending letters to Mayors, City
Councils, Ada County Commissioners, everybody that basically has anything to
do with intersections and trying to plead to them with our concerns of why we
have to put the monies up for this. There are some talk and you guys will
probably be seeing that in the near future, these letters that we will be writing to
you guys.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess just to circumvent the need to write our own city. Hopefully
maybe we can take a little bit of a proactive approach on this. About the opticom
also why is it that the City’s continue to be the only ones that pay for the
installation. Since its also utilized by the EMS the you know – yes. So that
would be another one. Kenny if you can come up with a suggestion on what you
would like to see the Mayor and City Council do in response in letter writing, what
the Mayor can do on the various boards that he sits on to be an advocate for
this. We certainly can do it because it needs to change.
Bowers: Thank you. I really appreciate it. Yes it does. We’ve even discussed to
Ada County Commissioners on how we could pass this cost on to some of the
developers again. There we go again another addition to a permit but you know
there’s got to be some other way of paying for these and we keep shelling it out
every year.
Corrie: The EMS Board is in conjunction with the City’s. They would like to see
the County Commissioners pay for some of that. However they are in the hole
too. So –
Bowers: Exactly.
Corrie: They are in between a rock and a hard place. That board is making the
recommendation to the County Commissioners do pay for some of that through
EMS funds.
Bowers: I’m not sure how it worked out in the Boise City. They just updated their
lights downtown, I believe it cost them over a million dollars for opticom. I don’t
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know if that was all funded by Boise City. I’m sure it probably was. There’s got
to be some other way to do this. Thank you. Oh and Councilman Nary. One of
those intersections there, the I-84 and Eagle eastbound, we’ve already done that
one. That one sprung up on us a couple months ago. We will just put another
intersection in there.
Corrie: Go ahead Kenny. I’m sorry.
Bowers: Electric key locks. Each building in our district that has a sprinkler
system or an alarm system in it, we have them put a knox box on their building.
What that is is a key that we get out of that little box right there on our dash, we
go to the building open up the knox box, get the key out and go inside the
business with Meridian PD not just by ourselves but with Meridian PD there. To
either shut off the alarm, to turn off the water if we’ve got a broken sprinkler head
before the RP gets there. Our concern is we are getting so many knox boxes in
our district because almost every building now has an alarm system or a
sprinkler system in it. That we would like to update our boxes to electronic box.
We realize that if we lose a knox box key out of our truck. We will have to go
around to every business in Meridian and recyclinder, rekey their box. These
electronic boxes will go in the truck. We will need to punch in a code that will tell
us what day and time it was opened up and there’ll be a big blue light? Red
light, green light on top of this so that our people will know that it is open. We
would like to update this in our six engines at this time. Right now that box up
there is just a combination box lock. We don’t know when it gets opened, we
don’t know who opens it so we would like to update our knox box keys in our
trucks.
Corrie: Kenny don’t you have somebody that’s in charge of that key box there
like a Captain or does everybody have access to that box?
Bowers: Every fireman has access to that box. Our first out trucks, the captains
are responsible for that box. Our backup, our reserve trucks, it could be a
volunteer, it could be a part time person that’s taking the truck out. We want to
make sure that we do not lose a key anywhere.
Corrie: Okay. Thank you.
Bowers: Stacy and myself talked about this quite a bit of where we should put
this plan reviewer and inspection contract laborer. We didn’t know if it would
need to go in to the base budget under contract laborer or put it in an
enhancement. We kind of decided that since this is kind of a new thing to us, it’s
a pretty good chunk of money that we probably ought to bring it into the
enhancement and bring it for the Council. Right now we do have our Deputy
Chief which does all the planning’s for all the buildings in the city and then the
Rural we would like to bring on a part time person or a contract laborer to do the
sprinkler systems and fire alarms for our district. Since there’s being do many of
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them at this time. We came to last year I believe and asked for a fulltime position
on this and we thought that there would be a better way of doing it so we’ve
come back with a contract laborer person. This also allows to use this person on
the needs and demands, if it’s for some reason a slow month or a busy month
we can both work that out with him. He’s not getting paid every month like a full
time person would be.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Wasn’t this the discussion we had recently about the fee increase and it
was for this type of purpose and we sort of held off on that pending a little further
study? Because would this be basically reimbursed out of fees?
Bowers: That’s correct. That’s how we thought we would be able to pay for part
of this or all of it would be out of those fees. You betcha.
De Weerd: All of it.
Bowers: All of it. That was all of our enhancements that we have presented to
you guys. The Meridian Rural Fire Protection District. Rich Greene had an
emergency today he wants to give you his apologies for not coming today. HE
had a tooth problem and had to go to the dentist this morning and of course
Steve Elliot and Terry Leighton is out on vacation. They appreciate everything
you are doing for them too. We discussed the budget a little bit Monday night
with the Rural Commissioners and they are whole-heartedly backing a budget
that we have shown you guys today. There were several questions on each
enhancement also. They understand what we are doing here too. Also to pay
ourselves little bit on the back too. If you haven’t heard, we received a 29,000-
dollar grant for our fire safe house. The rural has set aside a few dollars to help
out on that grant. We will be able to buy chairs tables, VCR equipment and
remodel one of our bedrooms into a sprinkler room. It’s going to help us out
tremendously and as you’ve, guys have talked about and we have talked about.
We believe that we need to start with our kids showing them fire prevention,
showing them fire safety when they are cooking. Giving them a little bit of first
aid training. That is going to help out tremendously too. Mayor and Council do
you have any questions?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Just to add to that Kenny there is only a 10 percent match required
on that grant which I didn’t suggest that the other night.
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Bowers: Oh you have told them? You have mentioned to them that we got a
grant?
De Weerd: Yes.
Bowers: Great. Wasn’t knew news. I thought I was going to get a chance to pat
myself on the back Tammy.
De Weerd: Well we have already patted you.
Bowers: Oh good. Thank you. I didn’t know it.
De Weerd: Really hard to –
Bowers: All right. Any other questions that we can answer for you guys?
Bird: Thank you for the presentation.
Bowers: Thank you for giving us the time and we got through the PowerPoint
without going backwards.
Bird: You bet.
Bowers: Thank you.
Corrie: Moving forward. Thank you Kenny and nice presentation.
Bowers: Do you guys – will we need to come tomorrow for anything? For any
questions or anything tomorrow that you know of?
Bird: I don’t know.
Bowers: Okay I didn’t know if we did or not.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess I do want to make sure that we got an update on our
revenue. If that money from the rural is also included in that? Is it Stacy?
Kilchenmann: The grant money?
De Weerd: Yeah their portion for the engine, for the fire engine.
Bird: No it hasn’t gone in.
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Bowers: No.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bowers: Mayor Corrie and City Council members, Councilperson De Weerd. No
that was not put in there. We felt the City would have to pay for that whole thing.
So it did not show up in the revenue from the rural.
De Weerd: Okay and it is in their published document they are having their
public hearing next month and so that number is in there. Stacy if we can modify
our revenue analysis one more time to include that.
Bowers: Thank you very much I appreciate it.
De Weerd: Thanks Kenny. Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess I would have a question on our fire inspection fees and really
how we want to best deal with that and I don’t know if the budget hearing is
where we want to have that conversation or during the fee process as we are
considering the those fees. We do want to know how we do the accounting to
make sure those fees go directly to offset this cost.
Corrie: I think that would be in the public hearing so that you can make sure that
it gets on the record too.
Bird: Would it be during a public hearing of the budget or we’ve got to have a
public hearing on a fee deal. That’s where it would come forward at and at that
point I think when we pass the resolution, which on the fees we just have to have
resolution if we just make sure that that’s where it goes – it pays for itself by
revenue.
Nary: Right.
Bird: And once you get it in the resolution then I don’t think anybody can change
it.
De Weerd: I just want to make it a special fund similar to our building fees so it
doesn’t get lost.
Bird: That section has got to just be self-supporting and all the fees comes in
stays there.
De Weerd: And doesn’t move till (inaudible).
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Bird: And doesn’t go into anything else.
Corrie: Okay any other questions of Council?
De Weerd: Nope.
Bird: I have none. These reports have just been so first class Mayor and I’m
very very satisfied with them. They are very very first class and I think this is a
reflection on you and Stacy and the work you guys put into this too.
Corrie: I would like to explain a little bit about the priority that I put on things.
You’ll notice that in the Fire Department a thermal imaging unit was not in the
priority list and it wasn’t to the fact that I didn’t think it should be number one. I
thought that perhaps with a little help from the Mayors office and what have you
we could generate that amount of money from donations and I would be willing
to spearhead that and I think that they would be able to get that amount of
money that wouldn’t have to come out of the budget. They’ve done an excellent
job in what they have done here and asked for and to cut down on an awful lot
and I think that if we work with them on the fire truck we might be able to reduce
that even more but I really feel that that thermal imaging unit can be taken care
of by donations and that. I’ve had a lot of people already say they’d like to do
that. We may half of that already.
Bird: I can vouch that a couple organizations I know who would be glad to
donate towards it.
Corrie: Yeah and we may even be able to pick up two for that price because it
ahs gone down.
Bird: I think that truck is very important.
Corrie: Definitely.
Bird: I think we ought to get that thing ordered right now.
Corrie: And I think we have ways to do that and really work on it.
Bird: I think there’s ways we can do that but that truck has got to be ordered.
Because that isn’t something you just go buy off the lot. Don’t just go drive
home. We got to have it ready to go.
Corrie: And I’ve talked to Kenny about that thermal imaging and I definitely
agree that they need it. It’s just a matter of how we are going to get it.
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Bird: I think every station has got to have one but I think we can get it through
donations just like you said.
Corrie: Thank you anything else?
Bowers: I think we brought in a pretty conservative budget. If you take the fir
truck out of there I think it’s been very conservative. That was a very good
discussion between Stacy and I and the Mayor. What are we going to do are we
going to take that fire truck out of our fire truck fund or are we going to pay for it
through city funds? We pretty well thought we would take it out of the fire truck
fund this time but we still are going to have to start putting money back into that
fund one of these days. We can’t forget that, we need to start –
Corrie: With what we have been talking about by the time you’re ready for
another truck you’ll have that much amount of money again if we do that. I was
looking over a 700,000 dollar deficit and from my standpoint I was trying to find
some ways to widdle that down and still get you as much as you can and that
was one of my reasoning with the fire truck was to rather then – we’ll explain that
why I came to that conclusion but I think everybody the department heads and
that have done an excellent job and you’ve come in and the Police Department
the two big ones have done an excellent job and I commend you as well chief
and deputy chief.
Bowers: I do know that the Meridian Rural Fire Protection District wants to meet
with you guys again and discuss our future plans and keep talking about that
with Tammy at our meetings so and I didn’t get to thank before the crew left. I
want to thank the fire guys. Thank you guys. Station one and Station two for
showing up today.
Corrie: Very good. Thank you guys.
Bowers: A little late but that’s okay. Thank you.
Corrie: Thank you Kenny, thank you Bill.
Kilchenmann: You are scheduled for a break at 10:15. I think maybe we’ll just
squeeze Will in here while Terry’s still here. Terry is going to have Lasik’s eye
surgery so hopeful we won’t have our IT staff using brail at the end of that. I’ll
get Terry and Will if that would be okay with you.
Corrie: Okay.
Bird: Sure.
Corrie: I think its fun to squeeze Will.
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Kilchenmann: We just have one administrative enhancement request so.
Corrie: Okay very good.
CITY CLERK
Corrie: Hi Terry.
Paternoster: Hi Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: When are we going to get those new codes that I have to put in my
computer to get on it? Is that coming up?
Paternoster: Codes?
Corrie: I’m trying to think of what my password is going to be. I got to change it
every 60 days. I don’t think I’m that smart or not to think of a new one. That is a
good idea I’m glad you are doing that. Go ahead.
Bird: Go ahead.
Berg: Thank you Mayor, members of the Council. Hopefully you read through
your manual and if you had any questions about the budget itself in my
department you could ask me now or ask me later. I handed out a sheet that
went through the one enhancement that we are requesting and its in conjunction
with getting information out to the city dealing with our website. We are in the
stages of trying to keep our records electronically. Scanning them and putting
them in files as you can see the laptop project from last year I think is working
successfully. We are retrieving documents electronically, emailing them to
people. This is one of those unique software situations that when you continue
with the same firm you have to upgrade with the system. Fortunately or
unfortunately, that’s there business and so this is an upgrade to the Laserfiche
system. It will enhance our ability to hook up into the website. I think everything
is pretty well self-explanatory on the enhancement page. I tried to put it in pretty
much easy terminology what we are trying to accomplish with this upgrade and
Terry is here. He probably has some answers to your technical questions. I’ll
kind of leave it at that.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: This enhancement, the Laserfiche upgrade. Will you know its only 24,000
dollars but we are going to see a savings of better than that by bringing that
enhancement in. I think it’s something that we’ve got to do. If anything its
proven out, these laptops for us and stuff is just to me and I’m the dumbest
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July 17, 2003
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computer guy here but it has been a real blessing to me to have the things and I
think this is something that we certainly need to move forward on this
enhancement. I don’t see it has even being a questionable item myself.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I’d just like to make note that Mr. Bird is now supporting a computer
enhancement. That’s very good.
Corrie: He’s getting smarter.
Bird: I feel that’s just an upgrade in the city period.
Nary: I would concur. I think you’re absolutely right.
Bird: I know Boise City is down on that Laserfiche down at their building
department and you talk to developers or builders and stuff and they love it.
They think it’s the greatest thing that’s every happened and I believe that also
and I think that’s what it will do for us too Will.
Berg: Thank you. Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Also just to point out our
Police Department is also in Laserfiche system scanning their documents and
filing them electronically. Just to make sure I point out that Sharon Smith has
spearheaded and kind of made sure these things are trying to get organized into
our electronic system. Our whole staff has really liked the concept of being able
to retrieve documents, at least our current documents electronically and emailing
them out to people. That has been a real asset. Everything is pretty much done
electronically from getting comments from our staff to us and then us getting it to
you and to the rest of the public and developers of the projects. It is going to by
far save cost for personnel and storage. Not to say that we don’t need a new city
hall, but we do need a city hall. Did we –
Corrie: Okay any other questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess Will you have the new sound system in here somewhere
don’t you?
***End Of Side Two***
Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop
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(Recess)
PARKS DEPARTMENT
Corrie: Come out of recess and we now have Parks presentation. So Doug you
are on.
Strong: Good morning Mayor members of the Council. Not having done this
before, I’ll just kind of shoot from the hip. I don’t have a formal presentation and
I’m prepared to answer questions primarily. I think just in summarizing our
budget request I hope fairly straight forward. We have essentially two new things
we are asking for in our base budget and that’s a maintenance position and a
one ton utility truck would be the two enhancements there. Then the rest of what
you see is in impact fees. The primary focus of what we are looking at in our
request with impact fees is to get moving on master planning and construction
document work for many of the parks that will need to be developed. Essentially
our undeveloped parkland so that we can keep progress moving along with
those and contribute in that way to in some cases partnerships. Not all cases
are there partnerships involved with the master planning. An example would be
the Autumn Fair neighborhood park that I think it’s identified to start master plan
documents. There is no partnership identified for that park yet. In order to keep
progress moving along with the land that we currently have we need master
planning and construction document work done. That’s what’s identified with
most of the impact fee amounts. With that very short introduction, I would stand
for questions and staff is here also to answer questions that I can’t.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Doug could you talk about this truck a little bit. This 42,000 dollar request
for this service truck and –
Strong: The intent behind the service truck is that our staff person that does a lot
of maintenance in the parks when something has to be repaired in the park. This
truck would be essentially self-contained. Everything that we would need to go
out to a site and operate remotely would be on it, welder, and air compressor
things like that, all the tools. It would prevent the running back and forth to the
shop to do many of the tasks that are encountered in the repair of play
equipment or things that have been vandalized in the building things like that.
For everything that needs to go on the truck, it needs to be a fairly substantial
truck to do that so it’s a utility truck.
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Nary: So its not replacing something this is essentially a new item that you are
looking at and its basically sort of takes the place of a couple three different other
ways that you have been doing it currently? Is that the way that you –
Strong: Right now we have tool boxes on pick-up trucks and we have some of
what we need typically for a job on site and then we often encounter where we
have to run back to the shop to weld something or to use a cutting torch. To get
something done where if we had it on site it would save that trip back and forth.
As we have more parks developed. Where the need to be out and mobile to
increase our efficiency and just staff time becomes more apparent and that’s the
intent of this truck is to help us be more efficient and when we go out to a site to
repair something and Elroy can add to that.
Huff: Thank you Doug. One other thing on that. In the department right now we
have the one-ton dump truck that we use quite a bit. It’s the one that’s heavy
enough to pull one of the two trailers that we have. My three quarter ton truck
does not handle those in a really safe manner when they are loaded. This truck
in addition to that would give us an opportunity to pull either one of those trailers.
If we are using simultaneously well then that truck can be as well as a tool truck
we can tow one of the rigs somewhere which a lot of times Brad does with the
skidster and the loader and the truck all at one time. That would be handier even
yet. Instead of having, to always have that truck he can take that truck and that
equipment, go, and we can still use that other truck. Sometimes we lose a little
time by having to split out how we trade out time on those. That would be a little
more efficient having another vehicle that has capacity to take whatever we
need. If we have to go rent a piece of equipment, which occasionally we do
sometimes, it comes to with a little bigger trailer and the truck can handle that
too, we don’t have to have them deliver. That saves us a little bit.
Strong: Thanks Elroy. Maybe just to add on why we are asking for new is that
we are typically very content in inheriting pick-up trucks that other departments
give up. This particular piece of equipment is not available by hand me down
process. It’s kind of specialized and unique to that specific need. The best way
to acquire it is new.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I had a question regarding your groundskeeper. Last year there was
a request and it showed kind of acreage per employee that you had. Maybe I’m
out of line you probably already have this in your request form. What are your
average acres per employee and what kind of impact would this one position
have?
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Strong: I’m going to let Elroy address the majority of that question I think. To
lead into that as we look at the staff positions that we currently have in the
department I think its important to understand how many of the positions that
have classified as groundskeepers have been used. That we take out of the
formula for people that actually do grounds keeping work. Brad whose kind of
our maintenance technician. We have Terry Whipple who’s a fabrication person
that we just redid a classification on that position so rather then groundskeeper
he’s identified has maintenance technician part time. Elroy often has been
counted as part of you know a person on the ground but as park superintendent
and with administrative duties it’s not appropriate to fit him into the mix for how
many people we need per acre. We’ve tried to identify in our description of
staffing the people that really aren’t full time groundskeepers and then the
number of acreage that we have to take care of to address that so. Elroy will talk
about the acreage per person and some of the standards that we came up with
for that.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Huff: Just something that we were working on. I’m finding myself a little bit more
administrative. I do go out and take care of some things that are absolute
necessities. Late in the afternoon some of our staff is already gone, I do get
pulled into the everyday work but the percentages is smaller all the time mainly
because of the amount of construction that we have going and different things.
Just looking at the acreage compared to last year we really are at the point now
of about 90.6 actual developed acres of parkland. We are still out there with 117
acres of parkland undeveloped that we do some maintenance on in order to
keep it looking halfway decent. We get pulled around quite a little bit so if you
get to looking at what we really actually have in groundskeepers is about three
times groundskeepers. We have Dennis and Rick and Spence those are the
three. Then we have summertime help that jumps our staff up for those
anywhere from three months to six or seven months and that brings us up to
where our standard of maintenance is 18 acres per person at this time. The
national average is about 15 it depends on what amenities you have in the park
denotes how many people you have to have. We are putting more stuff into ours
all the time and as the more amenities we put in the more required labor that it
takes to take care of those things. I’m looking for some kind of a happy medium
of where to stop at so we can handle it. We really are struggling a little bit with
the manpower issues. The other thing that we want to be able to make sure that
the Council understands is we are very frugal about is that if we do end up with a
person to go on staff for full time we probably won’t bring them on in October we
may bring them on next spring when the workload increases. When we get
ready. It’ll depend a little bit too on what our construction projects look like they
are going to shake out to next year. We could very well have some acreage get
close into things going on with it this summer and during the winter if it allows a
little bit. So sometime next summer we could have more acres to take care of
then we now have. I’m looking down the road and then trying to figure out when
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we would implement our needs. If something happens and we don’t implement
the needs then we just won’t do it. We are trying to make sure that we’re not just
jumping out there and dragging that person in here to go to work when we’re
running just kind of so so. We are actually behind personnel wise but we’re
willing to do whatever we can do to help in the budget and to not bring that
person on until we really need them so we are good that way. It’s a challenging
time and we know that we have all the right acreage out there undeveloped and
now we are going to get some more acreage and we just want to make sure that
we don’t get snowballed in the process of it. It’s the same thing where we got
things coming up with pathways, we have developers that want us to take over
some of those pathways that we worry about being able to take care of when we
take them over so we are trying to make sure we don’t take more then what we
can budget for. At this point, Doug and I have discussed that at length about
what are standards might be on taking that over because that is going to
increase our needs and our manpower and our staff and our base budget. We
want to soften that up over the next several years as soft as we can especially in
the budget crunch, we are in. We don’t take over more then we can handle and
then impact the city in that way too. We want to be careful of that.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Well while you are there and Doug’s here. Kind of let the Council know
about this 8th
Street footbridge. We discussed it in our meeting and I’m
determined that maybe we could be 100,000 dollars saved there for this year
and kind of let them know what we were thinking on that.
Huff: We had a really good discussion on the 8th
Street footbridge. We didn’t get
as much solid information on that as I would of liked to. I still think the 100,000
dollar figure is a lot, especially if we went with a about a four foot wide bridge.
But there is always that geotechnical stuff (inaudible) and different things with I
think its Water Resources that gets involved with that creek down there when
you start doing things with it. Same similar things that we run into when we work
with that other bridge that we put in by Tully Park. You know connecting that
bridge with asphalt paths affects the cost of that entire project. The bridge itself
is probably not overly expensive but connecting up to it with pathways adds quite
a bit to the cost of whatever it is per square foot of asphalt and then bedding it
and everything else to get it there through the park over to the end of Chateau
that then on around to the end of 8th
Street. Those added quite a bit of cost to
that and gets you up into that high number range. We still feel like its something
that we would like to do and need to do. Its just when to do it that’s the best time
and we kind of felt like maybe we could skirt by on that for a little while if we had
to.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop
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Nary: Elroy you know on the groundskeeper issue. Is there any opportunity or
has there been any look at either two seasonals rather then a full time
groundskeeper and a part time seasonal that you’ve asked for and whether or
not that will self fill the bill for you. Or the other alternative I guess what you are
talking about for some of that work is what it sounding to me like was really
ground maintenance and have you looked at costs for contracting for that service
rather then hiring employees to do that?
Huff: I have not looked at the cost of contracting. Generally I don’t look at that
so much because I know what I have a good feel for what those costs are and
what service you can get from that. The problem that I have sometimes with the
size of our parks which range most of the time are going to be 18 acres or 20
acres and we have Settlers which will eventually be 58 or 56. The problem that
we get at seasonal help is that I will usually will turn them over a lot of times and I
spend a lot of time in training and if I can get to the point where I can keep a
certain number of full timers that I have trained that I can depend on and know
what they are doing it makes it a lot easier in day to day business. You’re part
timers you can use for lots of different things but its not necessarily some of the
technical stuff that I’m going to need them for coming on. Because I turn them
over too much and then I’ll have to start back in if they go on to college or don’t
come back the next year. I spend all year working with them on certain things
and then I don’t get them back next year so then I have to look for somebody
and start that over again. I don’t mind having some of the part timers, the ones I
have now are all good guys but they are doing things that if they don’t come back
next year it won’t adversely impact the department. I can train other people to do
the things I got them doing but as our acreage increases that’s where I need full
time help that can get trained and I can count on being there day after day and
year after year.
Nary: And some of that maintenance that you are talking about I guess if I
understand what you are saying is that contracting for some of the more base
type of grounds maintenance mowing the lawns and trimming up the parks and
those kinds of things. Its cost prohibitive to do it through a contract that you are
better off hiring seasonals to do that rather then just contracting that service out.
Huff: Generally I think the contracting service would cost me more then the
seasonal would cost. That’s in my past experience, I haven’t run those numbers
recently I figure those would hold true.
Nary: Even by putting out an RFP or something like that just seeing what the
markets out there and whether or not you got people out there –
Huff: It’s an interesting thing to do. I’ve done it before in years past, it’s been
some time since I’ve done that but it didn’t pencil out (inaudible). Like I say you
do add a lot of things in there if you bring them in and they are not using our
equipment, if they use their own. You add to their cost so you are not just
Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop
July 17, 2003
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dealing with labor and we are trying to deal with whatever equipment we already
have and stay within those bounds and if that works out okay then my part timers
work pretty well. I am just limited on what I have them do so that I don’t depend
on them so much that when they leave it causes problems. I don’t like hand an
18-acre park over to the part timer unless he’s really sharp because then that
means that next year I don’t have somebody else to staff that area. Those things
get to be a little tense there sometimes. I hope I’ve answered your question right
or not Bill.
Corrie: Tell me or tell us I guess tell us about that 20,000-dollar Bear Creek
tennis court. I initially cut that one out in the priority but I come to realize that
maybe half of that 40,000 is paid by a developer, is that correct? How does that
-
Huff: Yes. Bear Creek LLC or Greg Johnson I guess if you want to put it that
way are still interested in developing some amounts of that park. They had an
estimate that it would cost about 40 to do lock stock on the tennis courts. They
asked us if we could think about budgeting for half of the cost and they could pay
for the other half. They are more then willing to do that depending on how we
budget. I’m assuming that that park is what we call not all the way developed so
that we could still use impact fee money on it I would think but its something that
we think in that part of town would be a good amenity we don’t have anything like
that out there that we do have some space for.
Corrie: They haven’t discussed doing it at all have they? Help sell their homes
out there.
Huff: We discussed several things in the past but they have been staying about
half half. I think they are smart enough to know to do that. I wish they would
come across with a couple other things but.
Corrie: That helps them sell homes out there. I believe that the tennis court will
help some. I really believe that all the amenities out there between that and the
playground. Those are the two that would.
Strong: I’d like to jump in for a minute and add to the discussion about the
seasonal versus full time staff. I think there is another issue that we don’t want to
overlook here and it relates to the park ordinance that we are working on
currently and once that park ordinance is in place, we will establish rules for
different areas of parks. One of the things that’s identified in the park ordinance
is who can enforce those park rules and working out agreements with the Police
Department there is many things that can be dealt with on site by city staff or in
this case park staff. That’s best handled by either full time or trained seasonal
staff. If there’s something going on at the skate park or something going on at
the playground where rules are being violated they would have authority to
approach that situation and deal with it to the extent of actually writing an
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July 17, 2003
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exclusion notice of the person that needs to be expelled from the park for a
period of time. That I think is going to be a continued and growing issue with
parks as we build more parks have more activities in parks is how we control the
activity in the park. I mean what we are talking about with groundskeepers
typically is just taking care of the green space the open space but we are going
to have more of the challenge of dealing with the behavior issues that come up
with space that we provide for citizens to use and manage in conflict or potential
conflict in parks so. As we look into the future, we are going to be looking at the
potential for positions that might have similar orientation to the recreation
facilities person that we brought on board this summer to deal with the issues at
the Tully Skate Park. Particularly to add other active use areas like the
adventure land playground area, which could be very inviting to a large number
of people including disabled or handicapped population. If that helps any.
McCandless: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. McCandless.
McCandless: Tell me about that Bear Creek bleachers and what its for? Do you
have a soccer field out there or something?
Huff: Yes we have two softball fields out there and we did not look at the seating
at the same that we did at Tully Park there is big bleachers on four on each side
of the field over there. There are two on each field. What we did on this park is
we put some room back there for one bleacher behind each field behind each
field right behind the backstop. That’s a limited amount of seating because there
is enough space out there in the long fence runs and things we did for people to
bring their lawn chairs or just sit on the grass. We’ve tried to soften that up so
the amount of bleacher space that we would need would be less.
McCandless: So that’s for softball.
Huff: Yes.
McCandless: Okay.
Huff: We discussed not doing that. I can’t remember now how much the
bleachers are but we were trying to just hopefully that everybody would come
and bring things. They do like to do come sit in their lawn chairs and watch
games and things so we had that pretty well set up that way. We know there’s
always a need for some bleacher space but I think the seating for each one is
only about 50 or less they are not really large. That makes them pretty easy to
work around if we had to move them or something we could they wouldn’t be so
hard to move around. If we had to coast a little while longer without those that
wouldn’t be the end of the world.
Meridian City Council Special Budget Workshop
July 17, 2003
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McCandless: Thanks.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes. Mr. Nary.
Nary: On that one Elroy on the bleachers and things. Has there been any
discussion with some of the leagues that use that? Whether or not some of
those you know making that part of the fees for the leagues to help off set some
of the cost for some of those kinds of things. No there hasn’t been discussion
with them on that partly because we weren’t sure when we were going to do that.
We haven’t made that discussion. That is a possibility to do something like that
and plan ahead for that that is possible. The other thing I was going to ask was
on the groundskeeper you said that that wouldn’t probably be an October start.
That would probably be a spring start and the seasonal I would assume would be
the same thing. Something in the spring or late spring.
Huff: Usually our seasonal vary from depending on the weather a little bit I’ll try
to not bring them not until I have to but they run anywhere from mid March to mid
April. It’s better for me if I bring them on about March 15th
and run them through
till October. We usually suffer some bit in October and November after they are
gone and there has been a couple times I’ve saved enough money where I just
used a little bit in the next years budget and kept one of them on through the
month of October mainly because I was short manpower after October 1st
because they are usually gone about then.
Nary: Are the dollar figures here reflective of that (inaudible) or would it be less
then what’s requested here.
Huff: What you see there is the dollar figures for – are you talking about part
timers?
Nary: Well both yes, the groundskeeper at 41,453 and a seasonal at 15,306 and
I didn’t know if that was an October one beginning of the budget year amount or
whether or not it would actually be less then that.
Huff: That’s beginning of the budget year groundskeeper on the 41 that’s if we
ran him all year and put him all full time. The other is from March to the end of
September. Anyways there’s some things that I think are the first things that I
see that are going to happen with us manpower wise is I believe that in the next
six to seven months there are going to be some interesting happenings to the
west side of Settlers Park. Looking now already at 26 acres developed there
and that other side is probably going to develop so when it does our grounds
keeping needs we get a little upside down again. That’s what I’m looking out for
and it’s pretty hard to really have one person out there taking care of 58 acres
when we are one person for every 18.
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Nary: I wonder. Has there been any discussion with, I know those groups are
raising money to improve those fields both baseball, soccer and (inaudible). I
wonder if there has been any discussion with any of those groups as well for
some partial assistance on long-term maintenance.
Huff: We have had some lose discussion over that. We are trying to get things
to if it works right what we are maintaining out there from the Parks Departments
is everything related to turf and irrigation and we won’t do baseball fields for
games. They take care of all those kinds of things we don’t have to prep those
like we do some prep at Tully now for our men’s leagues and things like that. We
won’t be involved in that prep. There’s some other things there we are trying to
figure out a way to minimize our impact. There are other things that we will still
be responsible for out there and other amenities that go into the park plus
adventure land playground. Those things are all going to take some serious
maintenance time, I just got a feeling there is not way of getting out of that.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: This is for Councilman Nary. On these bleacher s we seem to have a hang
up on 4,400 dollars I can tell you that the cost of those that’s probably for two
sets of bleachers. We happened to purchase the ones that went out at Harold
Cox’s field and I think the set of bleachers out there was about 2,600 bucks we
paid for that. Most of the cost of that is government restrictions and safety things
that come along. Its something I think you need to have behind everyone, I don’t
think its an outrageous deal to ask for that’s two sets to go out there behind the
nice fields that we do have at Bear Creek Park. I don’t know, but that’s where
the cost comes in Bill. I mean back in 87 I got those two big ones that sits at the
Legion Field for 5,600 bucks for the two of them and look how much bigger they
are then the ones sitting down at Harold Cox but we didn’t have the federal
regulations on it at that time. Now we are paying for it (inaudible).
Nary: Well I guess I didn’t have any concern with the cost more of looking
alternative ways to fund it and if we have some leagues that use those fields
predominately then maybe one of the ways to do that is for the fees to off set a
portion of cost.
Bird: With the impact fees we got to be using some of our general fees to match
up with these impact fees too if you look at our impact fee ordinance and so stuff
like that is costs that will do it. At least add 10 bucks on every player’s fee to
register and it’s a fairly small impact to the player but yet that fee can go towards
park maintenance and you know they can maybe do bleachers one year and
maybe do something else another year. Maybe they are going to re-enhance the
dugout or something like that but I was just thinking that kind of discussion would
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be a good thing to have. Same thing with the (inaudible) that are helping
develop the other fields in looking at long-term maintenance to avoid the
taxpayers having to pick up the 100 percent of the tab. That they look at some
long-term maintenance for soccer and baseball and all the other things that are
going on.
Bird: I can tell you that in Boise the optimist, we pay for some of the
maintenance if we don’t do it.
Nary: Sure.
Strong: Maybe a part of this question to is we talked earlier is if we have
somebody that is willing to contribute bleachers for a park can, we count that
toward a match for impact fees?
Bird: You bet.
Strong: And I think that would be a question that would be real helpful for us.
Maybe encourage us to go out had look for partners knowing that were also
helping the match for the impact fees.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I think the Finance Department ‘s looking in to that. I have already
asked them the question and I did ask that they run a report on where we are at
with the impact fees. We still are ahead in our match and I also understand that
the recommendation coming forth from the impact fee committee is to reduce the
matching for the impact fees from the current 50 percent to 25 percent. That will
be a really good thing for the department as a whole. Right now we are about
100,00 ahead. Reta did plug in the current budget year as well. As you can see
most of the requests in the Parks are impact fees. I think we can get on top of
that, it doesn’t have to always go the 50 percent every single year. They just
want you to remain cognoscente of it. I think we should be okay this year and
with the additional information on it if we can account in kind and donations
towards that match we will be well above because then we can go back and look
at what’s been donated and in kind donated to Tully Park to Bear Creek to
Chateau –
Huff: Which we have quite a few on spread out through those three.
Bird: Boy you take the Harold Cox softball field down there, which was
completely donated, and I bet that hasn’t been counted.
De Weerd: But that’s an existing park. I don’t know if –
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Bird: No it was not an existing park. It was under impact fees when it was done.
De Weerd: Oh was it.
Bird: Yes.
Huff: I know some of the – I haven’t looked at it for a while but I know we can
figure out what improvement costs have been donated by the developer at Bear
Creek. We have had quite a few things on that one and then it seems like we
had a little something on Chateau and so we do have some things out there
where people have donated certain things to the park.
Bird: Skateboard Park.
Huff: Yes we have a lot there, which goes into Tully I guess. We have a lot on
skateboard and of course (inaudible) a few other things like that putting things in
to so all those things count. I lost my train of thought.
De Weerd: I’m sorry.
Strong: Something I think I want to come back to if this is an appropriate time to
do that is as we talk about master planning and construction documents for the
parks that we are in the process of developing. The requests here are what it
would cost us to do it if we had put everything out to bid at current market. As
we look at master plan we also have some other ways that we can be efficient
which we will pursue and I want to make you aware of that so that you know in
everyway that we can or that we can find or based on suggestions that come
forward we want to be as cost effective so that we have as many impact fee
dollars available as possible to not just develop parts but also acquire parts. We
have an offer from Boise Parks and Recreation to use their planners for master
planning and the cost would essentially be their salary and benefits. We will take
advantage of that as much as we can and it’s made available to us so that they
can keep their planners busy and keep them on the payroll. Its kind of a win win
for both departments. We will do the same with the completion of construction
documents when people are willing to step up and contribute to some of the cost
of completing construction documents or completing master plans, we will take
advantage of that. We already have some interest in Lochsa Falls from the
developer and the architect that is working next door in Verona Subdivision
because they have a lot of the site work already completed for Verona that will
help for some of the initial planning for Lochsa Falls. Like I say we will take
advantage of much of that kind of contribution as possible in completing these
plans. We feel even if when we are working with partners that this takes us a
step further along in completing a park and actually in some cases can help us
turn a park green as much as a year or so earlier then if we waited for the
partner to go out and get master planning construction document work
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completed where in many cases they are asking for donations of that work. An
example of where that’s worked I think is with Kiwanis park where Pinnacle
Engineering has donated much of the work that’s been done there for that park.
That’s pretty unique I think, an engineering firm stepping forward and being
willing to contribute that amount of work that they don’t make any money on.
De Weerd: I think you can’t say no to Gordon Harris.
Strong: No they have some very influential members in that group. In may
cases those people will jump forward and like we were talking before the hearing
when we just in the work that we’ve done so far on our newly named Centennial
Park all of a sudden we have two local people that want to jump in and put some
money there. I think when people see progress being made and they see
something happening I think people will come forward and help with that. That’s
what we are attempting to do with much of this request is keep progress moving
along on planning for parks so that the bottom line for us that we have a lot of
control over the basic specifications of what goes in a park. Then when we work
with the partners its very clear what’s going to be there and the standards that
are going to met to develop it. Because we will have the task of maintaining it for
the years to come and want to make sure its done right so we don’t have
inadequate irrigation systems and other things that can happen. That was kind
of our thinking as we put this together and the next step as we look at the
expenditure of impact fees is to look for more parkland. That’s something in the
next year or two that we need to look further in how we want to fill out that map in
our Comprehensive Plan for additional park space. Next year when we come
back I hope that we are talking about more parkland purchased too and our
challenge will be to balance acquiring parkland and developing parkland and
using what limited impact fee money we have to do that. That’s our thinking and
I guess we are here to have that thinking modified if you see.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Let me tell you these guys Doug and Elroy has worked hard with the Parks
and Recreation Commission to go with this budget. I think this is a very fair
budget that they’ve brought forward. Very lean. It’s like Tammy said on the
impact fees, most of this purchase stuff is going to be through impact fees, which
thank goodness we have. I know they have worked on it. I’m for one that
doesn’t like to see extra people on board or extra material but they do need the
groundskeeper they do need the one-ton service truck as we get larger and stuff
and we are saving ourselves a lot of money by not having to hire this stuff out. I
know Doug and Elroy have looked at both aspects of whether how you do it and
what’s the best way to do it and this is come up the most cost effective. I feel
they’ve got a very fair proposal before us at this time and I think they’ve just done
a real fine job of presenting it and I know Doug hasn’t had that long of
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experience of how we do it here at the City of Meridian. He’s jumped in and
done a great job for us, I certainly appreciate it, and I think it’s a very fine budget.
It’s a class act on their part.
Strong: We’ve also proposed some places where if we needed to cut things out
where we would recommend that. I think that’s in the Mayors budget as well so.
If there are places that we need to cut and the 8th
Street Bridge has been
discussed as one place that we can save a lot of money in our budget request
there and we can find other ways to maybe either fund that or just delay it and
see where we are next year. We are willing to work with that.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: Doug is there for a pathway connection for a bridge where there not
be some grant money available for that? I know you worked – Elroy is probably
shaking in his boots over there at that suggestion since they had to fill with it on
the five-mile path. I would imagine that there should be some grant money
available out.
Strong: I think there is.
De Weerd: Is that correct Elroy?
Huff: I know that it’s out there and I’m not a grant writer and I know it’s out there.
Doug is a lot better on that then I am. I think that’s a good addition to our
department the fact that Doug has done grant work before and that helps us out
a lot.
De Weerd: I think in particular these kinds of projects are a lot more prime for
that kind of grant writing.
Huff: The only thing that you get into with that especially down there on that
creek is where we’ll come back to some of the same issues that we dealt with the
Five Mile Path and the bridge and I guess if we have to deal with that we have to
–
Corrie: One of the things that we are looking at of course is an organization that
we might be belonging to here and will work on grants and help us with that
writing and that’s particularly what they do and when we find them they will help
us get those grants written. I think grants are out there and if we don’t take
advantage of them we are really missing the ball really because we pay for it in
the long run.
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Strong: I think a project this size Mayor is looking at grants. Smaller projects
and I’ll just throw out an amount and say 10 to 20,000 dollars are often not worth
writing a grant for because of the administrative costs of dealing with it but of we
are looking at 100,000 plus project like this one’s been identified at this point
then it is worth while to look for grant money but there are some expenses that
go along with it in the sense of record keeping, staff time and some of the other
things that are often required to complete the grant. Depending on where it
comes from but that would be worthwhile I think in this case.
De Weerd: I think with SAGE this is ITD money that I was thinking of as far as
the grants and they are very familiar with that can help write it and I believe they
even help with the administration of it. It’s just another help for you and your staff
in pursuing those funds.
Strong: And we will do that.
Corrie: Any other questions of Parks? Okay very good Doug. Thank you and
Elroy and I think we made an excellent choice in Parks Director and we want to
keep that going good and thank you very much you’ve done a great job. Elroy
the whole staff really, congratulations to the staff as well because they’ve worked
hard and they are coming along really good so.
Strong: Great thank you.
Kilchenmann: Mayor and members of the Council. You may now break for
lunch.
Corrie: Oh okay.
Kilchenmann: And please try to return at 12:20 and then we will do and discuss
SAGE and MDC and so forth.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I was just going to ask you know. I guess I didn’t notice until we’ve been
sitting here but I know they didn’t necessarily ask for any enhancements but we
are not having discussion with the Building and Planning and Zoning
Departments about any of – its just because they are not asking for
enhancements? There is one thing on there but it looks like it was off set by
some other revenue for a building inspector or something like that.
Kilchenmann: Gary will talk. He will be discussing that this afternoon and the
Public Works and Planning and Zoning is not scheduled for presentation.
Actually that was one thing I thought we should talk about. I did put in here have
them turn in their variance reports from the strategic plan. I’m thinking that I
don’t know if we want to do it in conjunction with the budget or a different time
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but we should maybe have annual presentations from each department as it
relates to their strategic plan.
Nary: I guess that’s what I was thinking but I realize they didn’t ask for any
enhancements but last year they asked for a minimal enhancement and we had
a whole lot more to talk about. I guess I just thought it was odd that we didn’t
have any presentation at all.
Kilchenmann: What we could do is actually incorporate that as part of the
hearing maybe in the future. Like have them spend 20 minutes on their
department and their strategic plan because it’s not taking a complete hour for
them to present their enhancements. Would that work?
Nary: Yes and like I said and I don’t necessarily have something in mind but I
guess I thought like I said we’ve had discussions with other departments about
other things. There wasn’t and like I said I just didn’t notice until I was sitting
here that they don’t have any time scheduled at all for Planning and Zoning and
its such a significant department of the things that go on here that it was sort of
surprising to me that we wouldn’t have any conversation a bout it.
Kilchenmann: I could actually ask them to come in tomorrow morning.
De Weerd: And Bill just wanted the opportunity to really drill them.
Nary: I don’t think so.
Bird: You just wanted to get after on them again.
Corrie: One of the things that we want to make sure is if you got questions, if
Council has questions we want to get them asked. If your not sure of something
you want to ask and find out and if something’s not being done here don’t be
bashful. I mean lets talk about them because it’s the city’s money and that’s
what you are in charge with.
Kilchenmann: I’ll ask them to drop by at eight because we are going to be
finishing ahead of schedule and we already did the revenue discussion so they
could drop by.
Nary: Okay.
Corrie: Okay well back at 12:20 is that what you said? 12:20? All right we will
recess till 12:20 then.
(Recess)
(Return from Recess at 12:47 P.M.)
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***End Of Side Three***
PUBLIC WORKS
Smith: Ladies and Gentleman of the Council. For the record, I am Gary Smith,
Public Works Department Director. It’s my pleasure today to introduce to you the
supervisory staff of your Public Works Department. These folks are instrumental
and efficient in compliant operation of this department. First of all, Brad Watson,
our City Engineer. Len Grady, Len is our Staff Engineer. He spends a lot of time
out in the field so you may not of seen his face as often as the rest of us. Daunt
Whitman is going to be here. He is our Building Official as you now and he
hasn’t made it yet. Rick Clinton out Water Superintendent and his assistant,
Chip Hudson, is ill today so he’s not available. Don Case is here and Don is our
Chief Water Operator for the Water Department. Jon Shawcroft our Wastewater
Superintendent you all know and Danny Higgs is John’s assistant superintendent
and Brent Grover is the Chief Operator at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. We
as a Public Works Department are pleased to present out budget to you today for
fiscal year 2004. I will discuss the one enhancement that we have for the
Building Department and Daunt said he was going to be here to make a few
comments to you also. Brad will present the budget enhancement for the
Engineering Division and Rick will present the budget enhancement for the
Water Division. Brad and Rick will answer any questions you may have
concerning the enhancements or any other areas of the operations of our
Department or the Water Department. Jon will present the budget
enhancements for the Wastewater Division and again Brad and Jon will answer
any questions you may have concerning the enhancements or operations of that
department. I take this time to offer a special thank you to Brad for coordinating
and putting this presentation together, it’s taken a lot of work and effort on his
part and we really appreciate it. I had a doctor’s appointment at 10:00 this
morning and it was cancelled at about 9:15 and moved to 2:30. It’s one of those
appointments that has been a long time in getting and I would rather not endure
having to move it to August, which is what the receptionist told me. I would with
your permission if we are still in the process at about 2:15 I need to leave. I
hope you understand. In case these proceedings do go into the 2:00 hour I
respectfully call your attention to a memo that I sent to you on June 30th
concerning employee compensation. I know this is a really tough budget year for
general fund revenues and I very much respect the difficult decision that you
have to make concerning not only enhancements to our city but also employee
compensation. I understand the bottom line. Money in equals money out. My
hope is that employees from all city departments can be treated equally as
regards in any salary increases that are given. As you know the enterprise fund
supports 100 percent of the salaries of all Public Works Department staff. 100
percent of the salaries of all MUBS Department staff. 50 percent of the salaries
of the Finance Department and 50 percent of the salaries of the HR Department.
I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it that our employees are our most
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important assets. Without them the wheels of what we do don’t turn. I know it’s
a time where benefits are under scrutiny and monies are short for consideration
of salary increases and just to pay for a cost of living increase if that is possible.
I support funding salary increases for monies within the enterprise fund for the
departments that I have listed above and I do support the proposal that has been
submitted to you from our HR Department concerning this subject. I’d like to
start with the Building Department enhancement and Daunt isn’t here yet and I’m
hoping that he does come and when he does come I would like your permission
to have him make a few comments concerning that position. This is a difficult
proposal to make from two standpoints. Number 1 Daunt and Steve, his
assistant, have done a very good job in providing inspection services for new
construction and that was very well documented in a recently completed
customer service survey. Secondly, they have been around for a while, they
become friends, and they have contributed to the well being of our community.
They have contributed their services for no cost on special projects. This change
is being proposed because it has been expressed that the size of our city can
support full time employee inspectors in these two position to provide some
additional time for the inspectors in the office and that there would be some cost
savings to the city.
Corrie: Gary just for your information. Daunt did come in.
Smith: Thank you Daunt.
De Weerd: You are late so you need to sit in the front row.
Smith: Daunt is here and he’s obviously very interested in maintaining his
contract for these services and he would appreciate the opportunity as I
expressed earlier to make a few comments to you. I publicly apologize to Daunt
for dropping him out of the loop concerning notification on these budget
presentations and I sincerely Daunt apologize for that oversight, it was not
intentional by any means. That’s all of my opening comments and I guess at this
point with your permission if Daunt would like to say a few words concerning his
position in life at this present time I think he would appreciate that.
Corrie: I would like to hear his position in life at this time.
Smith: Concerning building inspection. Did you want to make any comments to
the Council?
Whitman: Mr. Mayor and members of the Council. I didn’t have a whole lot of
time to come up with anything actually to speak to you about other then I guess
questions I would have would be, what would the expected change would
improve. You know if there were a problem with the service you had been
getting from myself and my subcontractor and or if it was a matter of financial –
strictly financial change. At this point we have some flexibility in when we get
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extremely busy we could fairly easily call in some help to handle on slot of
additional work without putting on anyone has a full time position. It just gives us
some flexibility and the staffing I guess would be the best use of that. And as far
as I know that Gary had indicated to me he’s budgeted for a Building Official and
one Building Inspector and I frankly don’t think that one Building Inspector is
going to be able to keep up with the workload working and eight to five taking an
hour lunch. Because currently Steve Pierce who is working with me. Steve
doesn’t always get here at eight, he gets in usually more like nine, but there’s
days he’s out in the field until well after 6:00. He does what it takes to do to get
the days work done, a lot of times neither one of us stop for lunch we kind of
continue on through just to get what we have to done. Currently I’m in the office
until about 11. I’m back in the office typically by four. Generally can have all of
my phone messages taken care of by five, so I guess I’m just some of it. My
question would be what would be the benefit to the city and if there’s a problem
that we haven’t dealt with? If there was anything I could do to change? Are
there any questions or can I answer anything specific?
Corrie: I don’t know of anything Daunt that reflects on that anything that you
have done. I think it’s more financial than anything else where we are. That’s a
decision that Council’s going to have to come up with and we may continue with
what we are doing and it’s really a financial thing rather than you doing your job
because you are you know that, you are working hard at it. They will have to
make that decision and we’ll let them see how they want to go and what they
want to do but I wanted to assure you unless there’s something that I don’t know
about that your not doing your job, you are and I think you are doing a great job.
Whitman: And I guess as far as the financial end of it. I wasn’t able to get any
kind of numbers as far as what kind of percentage of total revenue is spent in
support of the Building Department. I know I’ve talked with Dennis Davis over in
Nampa, indicated to me that his department spends 40 to 45 percent of all the
revenue that’s come in to staff the 14 some odd people that they have in their
department. I guess some of it, I had some contact earlier this summer from
George Clomp who is Idaho Falls, and he indicated Idaho Falls is considering
going to a contract basis partly for the flexibility of staffing. They have some
different condition where their winter months are much slower over there
because their winters are much more severe. They were looking at trying to be
able to not have full time people sitting around playing computer games.
Corrie: Well we are pretty close to that 40 percent anyway so. You got a good
point there too.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Bird.
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Bird: Daunt I think the biggest thing is we just – I for one felt that it was time we
went ahead you know. You are a subcontract employee and if you decided to
pull out or something we could be in hot water. I think its just time Boise by doing
their things I think if by having their survey here five or six years ago and getting
theirs turned around is definitely as set kind of a cap of how it could be done and
I realize there’s pro’s and con’s. I like the subcontract in a lot of ways but I also
think that looking out for the city we need to be looking ahead and I think right
now at this point is where we need to start bringing our own people on board.
Our own inspectors and stuff, now whether its going to be as efficient I can’t tell
you that’s going to be something – its like anything else its going to depend on
who you get in there and who’s running the deal. You guys have done a
tremendous job I’ve absolutely never heard a complaint on you. I feel that we
have got to the point where we need to for our own protection and stuff that we
need to get on with it and get our own department of that deal going. That is
mine and whether it’s right wrong or different I can’t tell you. It might prove to be
something that we shouldn’t have done but I don’t believe it is. I think you can
do like some of these other entities and let your departments get out of hand.
We’ve done that in some of our departments, not very many of them because we
don’t have that much money to work on but you can look over at some of these
departments in some of these other cities and right hand doesn’t know what left
hand is doing. As conservative as our people are I don’t think that’s going to
happen around here. I don’t believe we are going to allow that to happen. That
was my reasoning behind it.
Whitman: Any questions from anyone?
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess Daunt at this point it’s just on the table for discussion. I know
that idea has come up for the last couple of years and so we –
Whitman: How about the last 10 I think.
Corrie: I faintly remember about ten.
De Weerd: Before my time. It has nothing to do with service.
Whitman: Good. Well thank you.
Corrie: Thank you Daunt.
Smith: At this time ladies and gentleman I’ll turn it over to Brad Watson and he
can start through the engineering section.
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Watson: Thank you Mr. Mayor members of the Council. Hopefully I can lighten it
up a little bit here. I need to hand something out to you before I start. Are we
ready? I’ll just dive in here. This presentation doesn’t look a whole different from
last year, except has a lot bigger numbers in it. We can go ahead. The Public
Works Department is composed of as you know the Water, Wastewater, Building,
and Engineering Departments. We try to over the last year sort of make a subtle
change in names where we don’t have all these different departments. We have
a Public Works Department with engineering water, Wastewater and Building
divisions. Currently we 62 employees, that is down from last year simply
because MUBS is now under the Finance Department. You’ll see later in the
enhancements we proposed three and a half new full time employees, which
equates to about a six and a half – well about five and a half percent staff
increase. The slide simply shows the mission statement of the Public Works
Department as a whole. It has been for the last couple years and probably will
continue to be for quite some time. One in which we plan, construct, operate,
maintain, be safe, attractive, functional facilities that contribute to the community
prosperity. We now have that up on our wall in our foyer at Public Works. Gary
made sure that everyone knows exactly what we are there for. It looks really
good if you haven’t been over. Now we get into the real numbers of what’s been
going on. I know you’ve seen a lot of plats come before you over the last nine to
12 months. I’m not sure we all stop and count them up at times but these are the
numbers of what’s actually coming through the department as a whole. These
numbers are through the first nine months of the fiscal year. The single-family
building permits alone are up 24 percent from the same time a year before.
Commercial permits almost 50 percent higher then they were for the same period
a year before. And the total permits are about 35 percent. When we look at the
numbers through the Engineering Department its just astounding what’s been
coming through. Just plan review submittals are up over 60 percent. Same for
commercial plans. As you may recall about a year, year and a half ago we
instituted review and inspection fees through I think it was June 30th
it was either
May 30th
or June 30th
we had generated a quarter of a million dollars. All those
fees are based on the number of lots or the quantity of pipe going in the ground.
We had projected a full year revenue of about 220,000 I believe and through
nine months, we’re way ahead of that. In the end that will fund about 35 40
percent of the Public Works Engineering division. The rest of the list there just
shows some of the things that we’ve been doing over the last year. The list
could be a lot longer but I run out of room on the slide. I don’t necessarily need
to bore you with all those smaller ones. Continue to make improvements in our
plan review permitting process. Big one that you are well aware of because you
approved the design contract with JUB is the Black Cat trunk and lift station. It’s
really moving into full swing now as far as design and it’s an exciting project.
The one administrative thing that we did that maybe not all of you know about is
we moved all the new water line construction, inspection to the engineering
division. Previous to that all sewer and drainage inspection had been from our
department and we moved the water line guys, one water line inspector to our
department and they are being cross trained so that they can just take a project
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and see it all the way through and I think we are already seeing some increased
efficiencies because of that. Next slide just shows some of the highlights of the
water division over the last year. Main one to point out I guess is at the top zero
bacteria hits, no boil overs. They’ve increased their certification. Obviously if
we’re approving that many subdivisions they’re adding a lot of commercial
accounts. The one thing on this slide that maybe we ought to emphasize is
somewhat we changed in the way we operate and design the water system.
There’s a long laundry list there of projects that probably don’t mean a whole lot
to you. What we’ve tried to do is reduce the need for new wells. The old mind
set was that we’d put a well at Ten Mile, basically every section corner and as
you look at this map on your left if we were to do that now we would need six to
seven wells immediately. Well we haven’t done that and we can’t do that first
because of water rights second because just the time involved to do it. What
we’ve done is really increased the efficiency of what we do have by optimizing
the well system extending and tying in loops for the distribution system. The
Water Department and Len Grady have been instrumental in doing this. They
enjoy it and I don’t understand at all. It’s getting very very high tech, it’s really
cool we will see a slide of it here in a little bit. Some of the highlights at the
Wastewater Department, first one I guess what everybody is usually concerned
about. Zero permit violations. They have done a really good job out there. All
the stuff that we put on line over the last couple years has really helped. It is
doing what it’s supposed to. Some of you may remember we had what we call a
catastrophic failure of a sewer line crossing over a creek. Well that kind of got us
to thinking maybe we should do something about that. We’ve slipped lined all of
the sewer crossings and make sure that those pipes stay there forever, they
don’t get corroded. You’ll see a picture of that here in a little while. Again there’s
a long laundry list of smaller projects that we’ve completed or are underway. The
two big ones that everyone knows about is the White Drain Trunk and the South
Slough Trunk are completed. The facility plan update, it’s the road map of
everything we are doing at the Wastewater plant. Carrollo Engineers came here
about a year ago almost year ago and gave you a little dog and pony show on
everything we were going to do out there for the next 20 years. I remember that
presentation went really well and everybody seemed very interested in it. Well
its still going and they are doing a really really good job. We are about 70
percent complete with that, should have it wrapped up here in early fall and
eventually that will come back before you because it’s a facility plan. There will
be a public hearing we are required by DEQ to have a public hearing so you will
see that again and see what we’ve been up to and that side of things. There’s a
little bit more to follow up on that with when we get into the enhancements.
Again just some other projects that Johns been working on out there
computerized (inaudible) manual from what I understand is going very well. This
is more of just a summary sheet of major projects that we are doing to expand
the system to meet the continuing growth. One thing I’ll point out for the second
time is that you see five wells fifth line and that seems like a lot but again if we
were doing it the way we used to we would be looking at about ten of them up
there right now. I’m going to give you some more numbers. This one just
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amazed me when we pulled it up. I had Keri Glen in our department go through
and count up every invoice we have charged a review for and add up the footage
of lines. When she first emailed this to me, I didn’t believe her. Double-checked
and that’s what it is 34 miles of water and 24 sewer and then combined another
12 that the city has done over the last year. Total of 70 miles go in in one year.
Like I was telling these guys that’s almost all the way to Cascade, almost. That’s
a fairly long drive. This slide is what you see on the easel in front of you it is a
little misleading on how it reads the right access that goes from 0 to 140 is
adding up the commercial building permits that have been issued over the years.
The blue bars correspond to the left access that goes up to 1,400. The 2003
numbers are simply doubling what’s happened over the first six months of the
calendar year. As you can see we are at the highest levels ever both residential
and commercial. All those plats that have been approved are coming through in
a big way. This is the final statistic I think I will give you. As a matter of signing
plats I track these date in, date of review, date of signature that whole thing. Well
I started thinking maybe I should add up the number of lots as well that are in my
office. Just since January first there have been 1,300 lots submitted and that
doesn’t even include final plats that you have approved that haven’t come to my
office yet. There is another 850 or so. In six months, we are looking at about
2,350 residential lots that are being platted that means they are ready to sell.
Somebody say they are doing really well or there is going to be a lot of empty
houses this winter, we can’t quite figure it out but they are proceeding through.
Commercial is just as crazy. We have over 100 lots in commercial subdivisions
just this year. I guess that wasn’t the last number statistic thing. This one just
concentrates on the North Meridian area. It’s amazing to me that the city can
build a sewer truck and it was like igniting a grass fire out there. This isn’t even
totally up to date because of the subdivision that was approved Tuesday night. I
think it was called Birchstone. Those that have already seen preliminary plat
approval total over 1,800 acres 4,600 residential lots. It’s filling up fast. Those
were the numbers here’s the picture that shows what’s happening up there. The
green are the preliminary plats that you have approved the blue are projects that
they are working with staff on they haven’t formally submitted yet. They are
having pre-app meetings and phone calls that whole pre-design questions.
Again this isn’t up to date because this one withdrew Tuesday night. However
the very next morning this guy called me to talk about how he was going to
sewer it and how he was going to submit that project. I think the next page in
your packet is just a bigger version of that. It’s a little easier to read. What does
that all mean to us in our planning. As Mr. Shawcroft can point out it takes a long
time to build treatment facilities. We thought we were doing pretty well with all
the projects we had done over the last three of four years and with all this
growth, it’s making me a little nervous. Its making John really nervous. We put
together this little sheet to show what we have planned that’s not in this next
years enhancements but will be following in probably 05 06. On the waterside of
things, we do have to do more wells. Just not as many as we would have
previously needed. Of course we have line extensions just to increase that
efficiency. On the wastewater side of things it gets even scarier. We’ve got
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approximately eight million dollars that’s going to need to be spent over the next
three to four years. (Inaudible) not only provide additional treatment capacity but
they will provide some redundancy to John so he can take these units out of
operation and do some really mandatory maintenance on those things. There
are a couple other potential projects that Carollo is looking at as part of the
facility plan update that may be required. The big one I think were all really
worried about is the phosphorus removal. That 2.5 million is a shot in the dark.
And it all goes back to the Snake River Hells Canyon TMDL and how that affects
the lower Boise TMDL. Right now with the lower Boise TMDL all they did is put
limitations on sediment and bacteria and we are fine with that there are no added
requirements but the phosphorus that’s a big issue. If anyone has any questions
please interrupt me.
Corrie: As head of the environmental committee for AIC. On this phosphate
removal are the cities going to be responsible for everything even though they
can’t even know where it’s coming from?
Watson: Mr. Mayor that’s a great question. I think the way they should be
structured and the implementation plan obviously hasn’t been written yet but the
way it should be structured is that there would be a uniform increase across point
sources, which we are a non point sources. Which really equates to AG and
stormwater, which can be municipal, or obviously ACHD. However after that
plan is implemented and if it proves out that its not improving water quality there
is only one place to go and that’s the point sources. Our consultant Carollo
Engineers has been very – it was a very good choice that we made because
they have been working in the Provo, Park City, Salt Lake area on similar issues
and we think we have it bad here on some of these water quality issues. Go to
Park City and I can’t remember the name of that river but it’s astounding what
they have to treat too, but they’ve done it so they know what we need to do here.
They are working very closely with DEQ on that issue.
Corrie: Thank you.
Watson: The bottom table on that slide is something that I just put together after
the little COMPASS summary that came out earlier this week or late last week. It
showed about two and a half years since the census an annual growth of about
eight percent. I thought well what if. That what if is in five years, five budget
years we would be looking 67,000 people. The whole reason we look at this is
because that turns into gallons at the wastewater plant and that’s why we are
trying to bump up our schedule on those improvements. Following slides are just
some typical development around the city. I don’t know if you all get a chance to
drive around very much and see what’s happening. I don’t seem to because
some of these I’ve never seen. Well I’ve seen Cedar Springs, that’s pretty close
in. I think their fourth phase is coming in for plan review now. Havasu Creek,
Farwest project up on Locust Grove Road. They submitted I don’t know how
many phases of this project at the same time for construction, four or five
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something like that. They are going great guns. Just another couple picture of
the Tuscany Messina Hills complex out there that Westpark is doing. This is the
last one I’ll bore you with. This is Bonito Subdivision used to be El Dorado that
Winston Moore Company is doing. Its about 80 acres that’s being developed all
at once for commercial sites.
De Weerd: Why are they always changing the names to these subdivisions?
Watson: I thought that the county did reserve names up front before it was
submitted but –
(Inaudible discussion)
De Weerd: They just want to confuse us.
Watson: I think particularly in Autumn Faire Sub once it got to Mr. Priester’s
office for some reason it was rejected it was too close to something else so the
engineer who is actually a friend of mine, his wife’s name is Tricia, so he was just
trying to get it submitted. How about this? That’s the story behind that one.
We’ll just run through a couple of the wastewater projects. We’ve already
summarized them up front in this report but we have a few pictures to go a long
with the words. This is the central SCADA monitoring screen at the wastewater
plant. We have done some work on that this year that was budgeted. You’ll see
enhancements we are proposing to fund that again to even further refine the
capability of this system. Anything we can do with SCADA whether its water
systems wastewater it all increases the efficiency and reduces manpower and
reliability. Just the on going DAFF project out at the wastewater plant. This is a
bit of a hold over from last year but a year ago we had just started this project. In
fact that picture on the left you’ll notice it’s in last year’s packet, pretty early in the
project. The picture on the right is, the pipe is in the ground, and it went right
along that dirt road by Mr. Cooper’s place who has a bunch of mules I think.
Anyway I just wanted to show that to you. There are stories behind all of these
people. Speaking of stories this is the South Slough sewer and water project.
This is Carols Subdivision after its been completed believe it or not. That’s what
it ended up looking like. Len Grady watched this project and I don’t think I even
know all the stories that he knows out there but we got to know quite a few of
these people pretty well. It was an interesting project, it was very difficult to
coordinate. There were a lot of access issues during construction and I believe
there is an annexation application coming to you in the next month or so for
some of these properties out here. It’s all done and I think 95 96 percent of the
people out there are happy with what finally got done.
De Weerd: Good.
Watson: This is just a picture of the slip lining project that I thought was pretty
interesting what it is is they have this flexible sock for lack of a better word that
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they insert into a sewer line and then it has some resin in it and then they pump
heated water through it that cures the resin. It just conforms to the inside of the
pipe. It’s a material that’s corrosion resistant. It’s really a neat process.
Somewhat expensive process but compared to the alternative its good. You’ll
notice he’s not here in the audience but our collection system manager Fred
Putzier is there in the white t-shirt chatting up the boys. Just a little more heavy
construction going on out at the plant. There’s been very few weeks or days
even over the last seven years since I’ve been here that there hasn’t been
something dug up out there. Just another picture. This is a little more detailed
slide of the Black Cat lift station sewer project. It shows a revised service area
based on what JUB has done already to this point. They’ve determined that we
can serve a little bit more west of Black Cat Road then we originally thought with
out master plan and that’s just based on on the ground surveying. We’re hoping
you’ll see this enhancement in the wastewater section, this is probably the
biggest enhancement you’ll ever see, well that you’ve seen so far for this project.
What we are hoping to do is if you approve that start construction on portions of
that project this winter early spring. We are going to try and break it up into four
or five different phases so that we don’t have to wait for that last part to be fully
approved and designed before we can start the whole project. A couple other
smaller wastewater treatment plant projects they paved all the entrance and the
interior roads out there. They were just so torn up after all the construction over
the years that they were sinking in. So we did that project that you approved last
year. Also installed a standby diesel tank out there that’s half full. No its an
inside thing with Stacy. It’s half full for sure though. A few water projects. Again
this is the telemetry screen at the Water Department that shows instantaneously
what’s going on with all the wells, the reservoirs its getting again from what I
understand very advanced. Len and Chip Hudson and Jaime Allen out at the
Water Department have really put a lot of time and effort in to this. They’ve done
a really good job. This just shows a boring pit, we’ve done a lot of boring over
the last year, we had three of them on the South Slough project and we also
crossed I-84 just recently with a 16 inch water line that will really really help the
pressures in the Saint Luke’s, Touchmark, Silverstone area. It was really needed
and it’s going to be a good addition. I just thought that was a neat picture that
really shows the size of what goes on out there –
De Weerd: That is a neat picture.
Watson: From what I was told on this project they bored really easily about 200
feet all the way through and then they ran into problems. They had to send a
guy on a little skateboard or whatever all the way down so he could weld off the
end of it and weld new driving shoes on the end of it.
De Weerd: Wow.
Watson: I don’t know how much that guy would be paid but it would have to be a
lot. That hole would look like a pin prick that far in. Anyway this is the inside of
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the water tower that was coated and this I think we showed you some of this
about a year ago. It was underway at that time. This was just a neat little
picture, it shows the inside of it. I’d never seen the inside of it so thought maybe
you’d enjoy it too.
De Weerd: So how did you get the picture?
Watson: Len do you know how?
Grady: (Inaudible).
Watson: Standing at the bottom of the bulb.
De Weerd: Cool.
Corrie: You can save these pictures. I have a place for them.
Watson: These are all digital pictures. They are all saved and they can be used.
How many pictures of this do you have? A couple hundred?
Corrie: (inaudible) good thank you.
Watson: Every year we have to show you a well, pump house that’s under
construction. This is this year’s version. Its out at Tumble Creek number 24.
Primary purpose behind this one is to push flow to the north Meridian area.
You’ll in enhancement five under the Water Department that we’ve included
amongst a couple other things money for an additional lot. This well lot was
donated to the city years and years ago and it’s 100 by 100 which used to be the
minimum it still is the absolute minimum that DEQ will accept. We’ve learned
that there are some cases where we need replacement wells right next to the
well house and in even some cases possibly some sort of treatment. This one is
just crammed into this little lot and the entrance off Linder Road is just north of
this one lot. There is one vacant lot between this building and the main entrance
and it’s really not a very good spot for building a house. We’ve talked to the
developer of that and I think we’ve come to at least a verbal agreement on that
but you’ll see some money in there for that. This is a laundry list of non-capital
improvement projects that the department has worked on over the last year.
We’ve updated the standards specifications and drawings last fall, issued those
to all the consultants and contractors that we could get a name for. Again we
continue to streamline plan review process almost, well is seems like daily, but its
probably just every week or two. DEQ completed a state, well it’s an EPA
required source water assessment of our system. This took a lot of time and that
we felt that the assessment they did was very poor. We had a hydrological
consultant draft his own source water assessment, which we were allowed to do
which was very good but they rejected. So we did get this all put to bed and
we’ve required or we’ve complied with both DEQ and EPA. Gary has spent
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numerous hours working with water rights and the issues with United Water and
their integrated municipal application package. That is ongoing that will continue
for quite a while I think. We’ve also started another EPA mandated project it’s
the water system vulnerability analysis and that is required to be done I think
next June. Required by EPA to be done. That legislation or that mandate was in
response to September 11th
incident. We may have discussed this with you
maybe not –
***End of Side Four***
Watson: - you’ll notice there’s money additional money in the enhancements to
do the second part of that project next year, which is the actual safety manual,
which is really a collection of policies, and procedures that we’ll implement. Then
just a couple other minor things. Plat submittal procedure and as you remember
the standardized easement acquisition policy for the Black Cat trunk. Those are
just a handful, there like I said at the beginning we could probably put three or
four pages together but those are the highlights. This next slide is one that you
didn’t see last year and I just thought we’d put it in and it just kind of shows you
we do know what we are doing most of the time. We’ve bid probably 30 projects
over the last couple years. We did have a very very high profile project that had
some bidding irregularities and I’m sure you all remember that because the two
contractors and their attorneys were standing here in a hearing before you.
Other than that we’ve everything has worked very very well, we’ve done some
requests for proposals for professional services, those have all gone very well.
This caught my ear when the Fire Department came up a couple weeks ago that
it sounded like maybe there was a problem with (inaudible) or something. I didn’t
quite understand the whole problem but I just asked Len to put together a list of
all the projects that we bid and see what our track record is. That’s what it is. I
think we already talked about this as a Building Department enhancement. Okay
I get a break. I’m going to ask Rick to come up here and talk to you a little bit
about the Water Department enhancements and if you have any questions on
those either he or I will be glad to assist you and if you have any questions
before I sit down and what we have already done I’ll be glad to answer those.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I really don’t have any questions but I did want to take the
opportunity since a lot of the supervisors are here. First you mentioned the Fire
Department. Public Works I think the Water Department have just been
phenomenal in getting the safe house up and going. They’ve donated a lot of
time in helping pull the plans together, finding donations and all of that. We really
appreciate that it really showed a great collaboration between all the
departments to get that going and that’s such a neat project to begin with. I
appreciate that. Also I know I had sent emails to both Rick and John when you
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sent out your annual reports. I think that the work that the departments are doing
is outstanding and you know I believe that the Mayor said at the time that it isn’t
until we have something fail that we really realize how important the behind the
scene work really is and so that is very much appreciated. With regards to
Public Works I know every time we approve something, we really don’t
understand the implications it has on our staff time. The numbers that you have
pulled together just really underscore how demanding the work is that you all do
and what you pull together and its very appreciated. How you got through the
South Slough and the White Trunk work I think those have been projects that
since Cherie and I have been on have been talked about, its nice to see those
coming to completion and seeing that you get to now move on to the Ten Mile
Trunk or Black Cat Trunk, that’s just exciting.
Watson: Thank you.
De Weerd: Just an appreciation for jobs well done.
Watson: Thank you. I appreciate those comments. There are probably a lot of
people here that should be hearing that that aren’t. That is doing a lot more of
the work then just us.
Corrie: To piggyback on that I just thought about if the Council would be willing is
to have department heads do this twice a year rather then once a year to really
inform us of what’s going on. Once a year is great but twice a year you get
better exposure to what you guys and gals are really doing. I think if the Council
might agree or they might not but I think that’s what – we can take an afternoon
and invite the public too to hear it and see what we are really doing. We got to
toot our own horn a little bit here. You guys are doing a great job and let them
know about it. We get a lot of the complaints but they don’t here the good parts.
Think about that. It’s a lot of work for you but its good (inaudible).
Watson: Well thank you. I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all. The opportunity
rarely arises. I’m sort of sadistic in that I look forward to these to let you know
what’s going on.
Corrie: Good.
Watson: Because the opportunity doesn’t arise to let that.
De Weerd: Well I know that John doesn’t.
Corrie: I don’t know about the sadistic part but.
Watson: I’m dragging Donny and Danny and (inaudible) and all these guys
every time. It is good we don’t bring these things up quite a bit because you
have a lot on your plate. This is kind of fun.
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Corrie: Thank you.
Watson: I guess if there are no more questions I’ll have Rick come up here and
we’ll start going through water.
Corrie: Okay.
WATER DEPARTMENT
Clinton: Mr. Mayor, members of the Council. Thank you Brad. Do we need a
seventh inning stretch or are we doing okay?
Bird: Fine.
De Weerd: Still can’t get used to you without all that hair on your face.
Clinton: Well wait a few months. I’ll start it in September.
Nary: The whole subject has us on the edge of our seats.
De Weerd: No that’s sewer.
Clinton: Well I would like to take an opportunity to first of all to somewhat
capitalize – can everybody hear me okay? Okay. To capitalize on Mayor
Corrie’s comment. If I could ask Don Case I’ve got a visual aid that I’d like to
have send around to somewhat demonstrate the value of the product that we
deliver to the customers. To somewhat put some perspective on price of a gallon
of water.
Nary: We need that for the public record.
Corrie: This is coming from water not from wastewater?
Clinton: Correct. Wastewater will follow.
De Weerd: We hope it was a little bit –
Clinton: That’s for display purposes only?
De Weerd: Rick I hope it’s easier to understand then that letter you sent out.
What all those levels meant. I think it was good. Well Gary’s cover memo said it
was good.
Clinton: In a nutshell with our current rates one penny will buy you 10 gallons of
water.
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McCandless: Clear water?
Clinton: Clear water. It’s probably worth pointing out to that the bottled water is
not subjected to the testing requirements that the drinking water is.
De Weerd: That’s cool.
Clinton: Thank you.
De Weerd: We need to just set it up here.
Clinton: Well what I actually would hope to be able to do is that after this
presentation is I’ve spoke to Leslie about actually placing it as a display on the
MUBS counter so that it somewhat emphasizes and that’s why the display only
disclaimer at the bottom.
De Weerd: You may want to change the water every couple days.
Clinton: Exactly.
De Weerd: Just so it doesn’t turn green or anything.
Corrie: I’m going to ignore that remark. If you would like to put a gallon a week
in my office, I’ll take it.
Nary: Maybe we should be selling that as some way to make money.
Clinton: Well it’s prompted some interest. I guess I’ll start out here with
enhancement Number 1. It’s increasing a part time office person to full time.
Primarily our interest is in addressing additional customer service needs with this
increased comes increased demands on our staff across all aspects. This is just
a way to try and continue to improve our customer service. I’ll keep moving
along and I do recall from last year some interest or appreciation for not dragging
this out so I’ll keep moving if you guys have any questions you can stop me.
Enhancement Number 2. This is a request for an additional work person
position. One thing that’s probably worth pointing out, currently in the State of
Idaho it is now mandatory for water certification and there’s really no place you
can go and take schooling and achieve operator certification to a level two, three
or four. It’s very similar to an apprenticeship program. These work person
positions are very important to us. They are an entry-level position that allows a
good qualified individual to start learning the trade and working their way through
the certification process because there is no real pool of personnel out there
other then the purveyors to provide these operators. Number 3. This is the
capital outlay for existing wells. I think Brad touched a little bit on the telemetry
upgrades. It really came to my attention yesterday through a little bit of an issue
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that our telemetry system is – and the improvements to our telemetry system are
very valuable. We had some flow problems yesterday, we were able to – Len
and Chip and Jaime were able to really key in on what was going on with our
wells because of these enhanced improvements to the telemetry system. If
there were technical questions I’d have to refer them to Len, he’s the man to ask
those questions to but its certainly improving the productivity of the wells or the
efficiency of the wells as Brad had addressed minimizing the need for new wells.
Number 4. Number 4 is consulting. Probably the biggest one is our Ram W
consulting which I think Brad had addressed a little bit earlier. It is a mandate I
think it originally came through the homeland security from the 911 incident.
We’ve got a pretty tight timeline on that and it’s a very significant task we need to
achieve. The safety manual I think Brad addressed a little bit already. One thing
I think is real important to address here is that I’m asking for half of the funds
from Water, John will be asking for the other half for Wastewater and we really
need to balance those so that both ends are funded so that we can achieve the
completion of this manual. I think in one of the past years I was funded, Jon
wasn’t, and that handicapped us. If I can point that out. The last one is water
rights (inaudible). Number 5. Water main extensions are a big one. Public
Works has been very, very, very active in putting a lot of water main in the
ground. There is a very substantial list in your enhancements that there’s a lot of
water main that - I’m very proud of the distribution system that’s being
developed. Number 6 is addition of two more wells. Actually, each of these were
partially funded last year and this is just the remaining funding to allow us to
complete these two wells. I believe that actually concludes the enhancement
request for the Water Department. Are there questions?
Corrie: There was one that you had a homeland security mandate. There are
grants, I mean not grants but payments by homeland security I think we might
look at. I get them every so often in my email and I’m going to send those over
to you and then let you maybe follow up on or if you need my help to follow up on
them. They are asking that they can pay for some of them – I haven’t seen a lot
of money yet, but they’ve appropriated a lot of money but nobody seems to get it
yet. I’ll send them over to you.
Clinton: Okay. One of the critical things with that is the timeline and securing the
funds.
Corrie: Right.
Clinton: Because of our deadline.
Corrie: They pay you back. That’s what we like to have.
Clinton: Does anybody else have any other questions? Thank you very much.
De Weerd: Thank you. Wish I could of given you a hard time but.
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Corrie: Well from what I understand it’s coming later, we want to give you a hard
time. They’ll understand what I meant by that after a bit.
Clinton: I’ll turn it over to John.
WASTEWATER DEPARTMENT
(Inaudible discussion)
Shawcroft: As Rick pointed out it seems like we just did this a year ago.
De Weerd: It’s always good to start with (inaudible), right?
Shawcroft: Well it is my pleasure to present the Wastewater enhancements for
the upcoming budget year. We exist as it says to provide reliable, continuous,
safe and economical sewer service to our customers. We protect public health
downstream water users and the environment, in a nutshell. My first
enhancement is to ask for two operators. One of them being a chief operator
and the other, it says level three but we say that in case we can hire one, it’ll
probably be a level one or a level two operator. That seems to be what will
probably be available. We are doing this – one thing we want to do is to go to a
24 hour a day manning the plant that will decrease our response time in case
something goes wrong. This is because of the complexity of the wastewater
plant has increased over the years. Another thing it does is it enhances the
security of the wastewater plant. As the city has grown the subdivisions have
continued to come closer and closer and closer and so we can see where one
vandal or a couple of them getting in when we’re not there could really screw
things up. With the investment that we have in this wastewater plant, it just
seems appropriate that we take action and protect that investment. Also right
now Rick’s involved with Ram W, the wastewater part is coming down the road
and right now. I think May of this year wastewater certification for operators
became mandatory. Out of the 50 states, we were the last one to give in and
adopt that.
Nary: Big surprise. So John with the two people that’ll put you to being able to
be 24 hours.
Shawcroft: Yes we will be able to rearrange the scheduling of all the people we
have and get 24 hour a day, seven-day a week operation or manned operation.
One of the other things that it will do is to lighten the workload of my present
chief operator who puts in probably in the neighborhood of 55 or 60 hours a
week and has supervises what is it Brent 13 people? 12, which means all the
administrative duties, go along with that as well not just the operation of the
plant. It’s significant. Enhancement two is small wastewater plant upgrades.
These are the small things we like to improve every year. One is a genset
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Number 1 relocation, its generator Number 1 is a 1978 vintage so it’s in the
mechanical building and it currently is in the way of adding any more equipment
into that building. One of the easiest things to do is just move and we do have a
place just outside the building that we could locate it to. Standby digester mixer,
its actually a spare mixer, a whole complete there. We have four of them two on
each digester, one on each side and to get parts and to repair it usually takes
several days. While that’s out then that digester loses efficiency. What we
propose to do is to buy a whole complete one, change it out if we have to and
then work on the other one at leisure. (Inaudible) building air conditioning. Its
not really an air conditioning, we just need some methodology to tone down the
heat inside that building on the hottest parts of the summer we do have some of
our blowers tripping on high temperature. We need to lower that overall
temperature inside the building. Add a digester condensate removal, right now
we do burn our methane after we run it through a scrubber. Because of the high
temperatures that we run our digesters at its 135 degrees a 133 degrees
Fahrenheit we get a lot of water in the gas and it comes over and what it tends to
do is bleed the scrubber media out and reduce its effective life. And when we
run that scrubber and burn methane we save about 4,000 dollars a month on
natural gas costs so it’s well worth getting the water out. We want to enclose a
couple of truck bays. The bays that exist are just open to the atmosphere and
not heated and it would allow us to make sure that in the middle of winter what
we put in there will start. Of course, we want to pave the approach to the fuel
tank and that 5,000-gallon fuel tank is currently being utilized by water and
wastewater in our emergency generators. We figure on a total power outage we
can keep services up and running for about a week if that thing is full when we
start. All right. Enhancement three, consulting of professional services. Here
again is the safety manual that’s the funding for the wastewater half of that.
NPDES permit application is due to EPA April 4, 2004. That’s in this budget to
prepare that. That’s a document that when we send it its about a inch and a half
thick. The bio solids permit is due at the same time, in fact it maybe due just a
hair earlier. The pretreatment program EPA is requiring us at this current time to
revisit our local limits that are in our pretreatment ordinance and that’s going to
require some sampling and some calculations and we need a consultant to help
us to do that. The last two. The ONM manual and the SCADA expansions are in
the professional services part and since they are non capital the monies cannot
be carried forward so we have to rebudget for that. That’s just to complete those
projects that we funded last year. Mobile lift station generator we need to buy
another trailer mounted generator. We currently have one and it’s a 40 KW set
but it will not start the pumps at Ashford Greens lift station. In an extended
power outage, we can pump every lift station but that one. What we intend to do
is buy another one that will start those pumps and will also give us redundancy
because it will also run all the other lift stations as well so we can be out there in
a power outage with two generators routinely walking through and pumping the
lift stations down. Keeping people in sewer service. Lift station SCADA system
right now we go out twice a day to every lift station and how many are there?
13? See I always got 13 stuck in my head. 12. What we intend to do is radio
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link those to our SCADA system and by doing that we can see how the pumps
are performing and watch the levels pump up and down and we can reduce our
visits to once a week instead of twice a day. Build out improvements. As Brad
alluded to we are doing the facility plan this Carollo Engineers and we are
headed for the five MGD mark. Last year we treated 1.5 billion gallons of
sewage and we can typically build a trunk main in about a year and a half but to
build a clarifier or anything in plant takes two and a half to three years. We have
to be ahead of that curve and so that’s what this is designed to do. Not only
complete the facility plan and present that to DEQ but also to get ahead of our
growth curve. Black Cat trunk line lift station I’m going to turn this over to Brad
this is more his fun stuff.
Smith: Mr. Mayor and Council. I need to leave. Before I go though I do want to
say a very special thank you for all your support in the past. We don’t get where
we are without that. Again I also extend a very special thank you to all of our
staff and the work that they do, the results that we have that we are very proud of
has just directed proportional to their abilities and their knowledge and I’m very
appreciative of that personally so thank you very much.
Shawcroft: And before I relinquish the microphone. I too would like to extend
my thank you to Dan Higgs and Brent Grover. Although I run a wastewater
department these two gentlemen run the wastewater plant. And they are the
reason that we had zero violations last year. Thank you.
De Weerd: Good job.
Watson: I believe we are on the Black Cat enhancement. I gave you a
forewarning earlier this afternoon about the immensity of that one. I think we
plugged in six million dollars for that project. That was the estimate that JUB put
together when they did the Ten Mile Interchange sewer study about a year ago.
What we intend to do here in the next couple months is convene what we are
calling a finance steering committee and I think I’ve warned you about this before
too. We are hoping to have the help of the Attorneys office, the Finance
Department and at least one Councilperson to sit in on that. Take the place of
the Fence Committee I guess.
De Weerd: Bill is under the assigned (inaudible).
Corrie: Get rid of the fences (inaudible).
Watson: That’s what I figured. Although we are requesting funding of this
project out of the fund balance we do want to put together a steering committee
that would figure out how these properties will contribute to the project once they
are either annexed or whatever trigger mechanism there is. I guess that’s the
point of the steering committee. We hope to have not only those members but
maybe a developer or two that has property or is interested in property in that
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area, maybe a consulting engineer that works with developers quite a bit come in
and sit on that. There will be a plan in place to recoop that money but what we
are asking for in interest in getting this project started and constructed is funding
of six million. Before I go on I can certainly answer any questions you might
have on that. There’s enhancement number eight is the slide on the screen
doesn’t match the slide that’s in your book. I updated it at the 11th
hour this
morning or late yesterday. These are just a few of the projects that are separate
from the Black Cat trunk. Three of the four are joint projects that we will be doing
with ACHD Franklin Road rebuild, Locust Grove rebuild and they are also doing
a drainage project down 3rd
Street and across Broadway that I think we are going
to have to do some sewer replacement or remediation on. The fourth one is a
catch all there isn’t a designated project that goes with that 200,000 dollars but it
seems like every year something comes up either during applications or
something where we need to build something. We have kind of kept that in
there. Well the last couple years we’ve had this line item called sewer line
extensions, which was supposed to be for the white trunk, and with your
approval we’ve been using that for these other small projects. A good example
would be the Locust Grove sewer extension up to the Charter High School that
they’re building. Valley Life Christian Church is up there as well. The last one is
one that didn’t make it into the Finance Department and it is therefore not in your
budget packets. If you read that it will sort of explain what has happened, as you
most certainly will recall during the Paramount Subdivision annexation public
hearing the issue of sewer easements was first and for most in everyone’s mind,
I think at least for a while. During that testimony I suggested that perhaps the
city should initiate this project to complete the North Slough Trunk so that we
didn’t have a one-mile square island out in no mans land. My selfish reason
behind that is so I don’t have a bunch of lift station proposals coming in on that
section of land as well. I brought this before you and I probably should’ve given
Stacy some forewarning on this but I plugged it in a day or two ago bringing this
more for discussion sake then anything. I do have an estimate in there of about
1.02 million that if you direct us to we will certainly put that in. I’ll move on if
there are no questions on that.
Bird: You’re putting in aren’t you?
Watson: Excuse me?
Bird: You are putting it in aren’t you?
Watson: Because this came after we submitted to finance I will put it in if you
direct me too and Stacy allows me too.
Bird: I think we need to. I think this is something that’s very very important.
Something that’s going to be happening.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
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Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I guess the only question I’d have is we’re talking about that fairly large
project of Black Cat of putting some of that money aside in this next budget year
towards that. I mean just from a management standpoint is this of that same
magnitude, is this going to be something realistically that can really be done to
any degree in the next budget year or do you think its something that really we
need to do some preliminary stuff at this point? You just don’t want to get your
plate so full that really – that you are kind of strapped by everything.
Watson: Sure, appreciate that. The plate is already really really full so I’m not
sure the magnitude of this project –
Nary: You need a bigger plate.
Watson: Right we need a bigger plate. The magnitude of this project would be
equivalent to say half of the White Trunk project. I mean it’s big but it’s not even
close to the same magnitude as the Black Cat project. The hardest part of this
project would in my soul opinion will be easement acquisition. Design will not be
difficult at all. Construction once the easements are granted should not be
difficult at all.
Nary: So in that projected easement legal costs there if you are saying that’s – I
mean is that an adequate number, obviously it’s a guesstimate to some degree
anyway but and is that done in house or is that done through consultants? Isn’t
that how we’ve done them. Well I guess we’ve done them both ways depending
on the magnitude.
Watson: Right. Council Member Nary I think anything we do of any magnitude
is going to be through a consultant, the easement acquisition process. When I
say the easement acquisition will be the most difficult part I don’t necessarily
mean the costs or the – I’m trying to be politically correct here.
Nary: Or the time it takes to get that.
Watson: There may be some ideological differences between the proposed
grantors and we. If we were to do that through consultants or something then
that would at least wouldn’t add the same level to your plate. It just seems to me
that if we divide up to many things all at once it just really straps you even more
then what you have to do. If that’s something were the biggest bulk of the
project is going to be working through those issues of easement acquisition and
they’re done through an outside consultant then that sounds like that would at
least won’t raise the level of your departments workload more then the normal
everyday strapped workload that you have now.
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Watson: Right I think you’ve hit it square. It will increase the workload no doubt
because we have to coordinate and evaluate everything they submit and
everything they propose to do but we have learned a tremendous amount on the
White Trunk and the South Slough projects on how to handle these. It’s been
very educational and I think we’re not perfect but we are getting better.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess what Councilman Nary is brought up is this needs to be kind
of your call. If you feel that your staff is not going to be overloaded by adding
this to the budget request then you know we would be willing to support that
request. We just don’t want it to overburden the staff that we get low moral or
you know you can’t do it al.
Watson: Right Council Member de Weerd. The alternative in this particular case
is I alluded to you earlier is I get four, five or six different proposals for lift stations
in that area and those affect me personally more then this project would because
those are huge time consumers.
De Weerd: I don’t see why that would be an issue if we don’t have services
there and we have a designated line that those go on it can’t be built yet. Unless
they want to bring the line out there themselves.
Watson: Unfortunately the way the process works and maybe its fortunate for
you you don’t get to see this. Is that these proposals come in and they want to
meet with me. I tell them no, they go hire an engineer and they do some
preliminary engineering, they submit it to me and I have to evaluate it and tell
them its ultimately the Councils decision but my recommendation will be no.
Then they say okay, then they prepare the application and they will come to you
and we will still say no. It still work, even if I say no up front on a lift station they
can still bring it to you. The application that was withdrawn Tuesday night was
that very case. Where I met with them repeatedly over the course of a couple
months and evaluated what they did and told them no no no. It went all the way
forward until it was right before you. They withdrew so it is work.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I think again too as Council member Bird said a minute ago. I mean if we
don’t at least consider it this year we will be considering it next year. I mean I
think it’s more of a division of work and can the work get all done. I guess from
what I’m hearing is this isn’t really going to raise the bar tremendously as some
of these other ones will. I mean so its doable is what I guess I’m sort of hearing.
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Watson: I think it’s doable and I guess when it comes right down to it my
recommendation would be to include it. It may not be done in fiscal year 04
completed but if I can tell a developer out there that this is funded and it’s a city
project and to just wait we don’t want your lift station wait that goes a long ways.
De Weerd: So it’s going to be a wash essentially. Either if we don’t fund it you’ll
spend the time and fighting the applicants against it and if we do do it you can do
it a little bit more on your time.
Watson: If it is funded right I can usually manage to put them off and say have
some patience it’s coming. Just a summary of what John talked about is listed
out there for quick reference if you want to tab that sheet for future reference.
On the North Slough I guess I will proceed to prepare on enhancement number
nine and submit it to the Finance Department to include in your packets unless I
hear otherwise.
Corrie: Good.
Watson: All right we’ve got one more little section. Well medium sized section to
go through if you want to take a break. I’m in no hurry but I can certainly go
through it if you are ready.
Bird: Let’s go.
Corrie: Go ahead.
Watson: All right. We are going to jump into the engineering division
enhancements. These are pretty mundane most of them. First one I don’t
actually remember what the dollar value is pretty small its just some
housekeeping things that we need to take care of. We learned that when we
move water inspection to our department and all the tools that they come with we
don’t have any place to secure those tools. We need to enclose the pickups that
they have the beds with some shells so that they can lock those up. The rest of
it is just more furniture basically in our department. Our file cabinets are full are
plan racks are full and we just got stuff stacked on floors to much right now.
Enhancement Number 2 is the addition of two field inspectors as I mentioned we
moved one of the two water line inspectors who engineering so we have three
field inspectors now. Whereas four people were doing it previously so what we
were trying to do is fill the one that didn’t come over in addition with all the city
projects and just the overall growth rate we are feeling like that we probably need
a fifth one. These guys are out in the field so much right now that we are finding
that perhaps there administrative responsibilities, record keeping, updating the
drawings is perhaps to the point we would like it to be. We want to make sure
these guys get some office time and are able to do that. We have two new field
inspectors slotted in there. Enhancement Number 3 is really the only big one
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that we have and I think there is some interest on the Council about this project.
Len can probably speak to it a lot more clearly then I can but last year you
funded a needs assessment a GIS needs assessments and HGR Engineers
completed that. Basically it was a road map to tell us three things. What we
need in terms of software, hardware and personnel to have a computer based
GIS system that would meet what we told them we wanted it to do. And what we
told them we wanted it to do was be a platform where we had not only land use
which would include property owner just all the stuff that comes with Archview
that I think a lot of you are familiar with. Also to incorporate facilities, computer
modeling that Len and I do, maintenance inventories that John’s staff does. Rick
has a lot of stuff that he does whether its tracking complaints, brown water calls,
they track a bunch of stuff I don’t know what it is. But it’s a lot. We are trying to
figure out a place where we can have all of that information in one spot. Right
now if somebody comes into our department and asks about this sewer line on
East 3rd
Street north of Broadway or whatever I don’t know anyplace. Those
poor ladies at the front they have no idea where to start. They come back and
they ask Bruce Stewart what project was that put in with? He doesn’t know, well
actually he does know but if he’s not there, he knows everything. They’ll ask me
they’ll ask Gary they’ll ask Bruce they just go on down the line. This is how we
find plans right now. Is who ahs been around long enough to remember that
project and who did it. Rick could probably talk to that one for hours. When I
first came to work here I bugged him way too much. Anyway that’s the goal of
this and we are proposing 150,000 dollars to get going in this. It includes money
for both consulting which is how to build a system and it includes money for
hardware. Fourth and final enhancement is pretty small. This GPS unit goes
somewhat hand in hand with GIS we are just kind of getting our foot in the door
with both of them. This is I think Submeter GPS unit that we are going to rotate
amongst couple different departments and personnel including inspectors,
(inaudible), perhaps meter readers. Just to see how we can use that data so
that they can locate things in the field bring it in and we download it and we know
exactly where it is. The way we are doing record drawings right now is probably
not really efficient, its much better then it was five years ago but there are still
things that we don’t know where they are. Or we don’t know precisely where
they are. I think if that’s a success in another year you’ll probably see us here
asking for multiple GPS units. That’s followed just by a slide of summary slide.
We are getting to the end. We started out with a mission statement. We’ll wind it
down with what I think was our vision statement in our strategic plan. We don’t
see it easing up in terms of growth and in terms of expectations or in terms of
regulatory complaints. Those are the three driving factors that make us do
everything we do. I’m not quite sure of this is mission, vision or exactly what it
was but I think it was in our strategic plan. This is our final feel good statement
of the whole packet. I think –
***End Of Side Five***
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Watson: - I liked it so we kept it in there. That’s it. I guess in closing I would just
like to thank you all for your patience this went longer then I thought it was going
to. We had a lot of good questions and appreciate it. One thing to point out
Gary gives me credit for this packet but a lot of the information comes from John,
Rick, Len they are the ones that are actually pulling this stuff together. Also, Kari
Glen at our office she was about to pull her hair out this morning because I had
more slides I had to insert. She had those books made brought it back and I told
her that. At arms length. She did a lot of work on this, did a very good job.
De Weerd: Well please tell her thank you.
Watson: We will.
Bird: Thank you Brad for a nice job.
Watson: The very last thing I just slipped in the back just a little sheet that
comes out of the magazine from Water Environment Federation called Pipe
Dreams and I won’t read it I’ll just let it speak for itself. Thank you if you have
any other questions let me know.
Corrie: Very well done. Questions.
Bird: I have none.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: I just have one. Brad I was looking through this and one of the things that
I guess I’m more just curious about is – I don’t know what the expense is I
couldn’t remember when I looked through here but you know as long as I’ve
known you guys have always rented space, you folks have moved space this
year for your department and such and I guess I’m curious as to with all the other
things that have gone on. Has there been discussion on permanent space for
that so that we weren’t paying rent anymore?
Watson: My take on it Councilman Nary is that the Engineering Division and
Building Department would eventually be moved into a permanent City Hall.
Something that has been discussed is a permanent facility for the Water
Department either increasing the size out there or finding a new location. With
Lyman’s school out there their very cramped to the point where they can’t hire
new people because there’s no space. That’s kind of apart from what you asked
me. There are discussions about facilities are own facilities the Public Works
from and maybe Mayor Corrie can speak to this better then I can. I’ve left that
pretty much to Gary but I think that was my understanding is that we would
permanently move in to City Hall at some point.
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Nary: Thanks.
Corrie: Thank you.
Watson: Thank you.
PLANNING AND ZONING DEPARTMENT
Powell: Well Stacy called me earlier this afternoon and asked me to make a brief
presentation. I certainly don’t have everything prepared with overheads like a
fancy response. I think I’m fortunate in what my staff does is that we are before
you on a regular basis or at least the end result of our work is before you on a
weekly basis and I think you can appreciate the time and the thought and the
care that goes into preparing all those applications. I think you have a good feel
for most of what we do and the numbers that Gary and Brad showed regarding
the subdivision plats I think speak to the Planning Department as well. I don’t
know if you noticed a recent article in the Statesman about the population growth
for the different cities and how basically the physical number of growths between
Boise and Meridian was the same and their planning staff is probably three times
larger then ours. I think it’s a real sign that they are moving these through
efficiently, getting the work done and moving them on for you to make decisions
regarding the growth for the community. I think they spent most of their time
since they were short a leader most of the year. They spent most of their time
just kind of trying to keep the applications in process. There were a few things
that I wanted to point out that they did get done. Our new enforcement officer
has gone great guns in just jumping in, defining the job for himself. He’s done a
great job answering questions for – kind of reacting to complaints but also a
great proactive job at particularly the sign ordinance and enforcing that. We are
working now to kind of broaden his understanding of the zoning ordinance so
that he can work proactively on other things as well on ones that - he’s learning
but we got him doing that. He’s going out with the staff now on site visits and just
kind of looking around so that they can kind of point out to him what they see as
violations and so he’s working on that and he’s doing a great job. I also believe
the wireless communication ordinance went through this year which would have
been a big job. The sigh ordinance is just ready to get into the process and you’ll
see that soon. I know Brad spent a lot of time working with various businesses
on revising that sign ordinance. Steve and his work with the MDC may not be
quite as evident to you but he has spent a lot of time on the design standards
and working with that group to get that organization moving along. As part of
that Steve and I have been working on getting a parking study done for MDC and
we’ve got a consultant figured out that’s going to kind of help us do the work and
then we are going to hire an intern to walk around town and count parking
spaces. I think we’ve got that figured out within this year’s budget. Also as part
of that we are looking at new aerial photos for the city. COMPASS has asked us
to participate in that and hopefully those aerials will work for the parking study as
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well. It depends on when they were taken, we are investigating that right now.
We are also in the process of hiring a new planner. The turnout was
phenomenal for that planner position. I guess it was a good time to be looking
for a planner because we just had ten exceptional candidates with educational
background as well as great experience in city planning. We know we are going
to have a great new planner two its just we don’t know who it is yet. It’s going to
be a guy we know that much. We start interviews tomorrow and we have one
more on Monday. We should be able to know by the end of next week hopefully
who that will be. They’ve also hired a new Planning Director I hear and so far
that seems to be going well.
De Weerd: Depends on who you talk to.
Powell: Yes. You know I knew I had a great staff when I took the job but it is
why I took the job. I just knew they were a great crew and I was really looking
forward to working with them. What I didn’t expect or what I didn’t know is how
great the rest of everybody was going to turn out to be. Just the reception I’ve
got has been so warm and so wonderful and I just wanted to thank you all for
that. I’m very encouraged and very excited about being the Planning Director for
the City of Meridian and to that end for the last couple months, its almost three
months actually. Aside from learning how to work the overhead projectors I have
been doing some other things. I took some time just assessing the staff potential
and asking them what do you want to be when they grow up and just finding out
what was driving them, what they wanted to do, what they weren’t doing in their
current jobs and trying to set aside some expectations on what I expect from
them and then also what they can expect from me. Related to that I have an
education and training are very important to me so we’ve been discussing that
and we’ve set up a few things, all the Planning and Zoning Commission
members are now APA members and will be receiving that magazine so it can
kind of further their training and the planning field. My administrative assistant is
now enrolled at BSU, she’s going to get her associates degree so that was kind
of exciting for her and I thought that was great. Steve is now a member of the
landscape architecture and Joe and Wendi, Sonya, and Brad are all going to
various conferences. There has been an emphasis there just setting aside or
finding out what was important for them and I think they have really appreci0ated
that more then anything so far just that feeling they are being trained and they
are valued. On the trip back from Coeur d' A’lene its probably a good thing I
drove up there because the 10 hour trip back was really a great time for me to
reflect on what I wanted to do for the department. Aside from the strategic, plan
things just really kind of what I wanted to do. I sat down, I wrote out an operating
philosophy, and I forwarded that to the staff to give them an idea of what was
important to me when I was assigning work tasks. When I was purchasing
things, when I was looking at the budget, when we were talking about the
strategic plan just so that they knew okay this is where I’m coming from. In a
nutshell that is when a developer comes up with a great project I want them to
say you know this would be a great project for Meridian. I want them to have
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that trust, that comfort that they can come to us with a new innovative project
and really do great things and to do that I need to have great staff and we need
to have some better standards and we’ll work on those. That’s where I’m coming
from. To that end, I’ve compiled a list of projects that was a compellation of
things from some joint meetings and also from the Comprehensive Plan, the
immediate action items only and just other things that we’ve been asked to the
last few months and it was about two pages long. I’m going to be coming to you
and asking you for some help in prioritizing those list of things so that we can
jump in and start moving. That’s where I’m at, I’ve done my fact finding I’m ready
to jump in and get some work done. That’s all.
Corrie: Anna you are doing a great job so far.
Powell: Well thank you.
Corrie: I think you will in the future too and we’ve been very fortunate to have
three new ones here that’s all panned out to be real good and I know –
(Inaudible discussion)
Corrie: Back there in the Finance part – Finance of course has helped this one
immensely. I’ll tell you that. I’m always amazed at 180 employees getting this
much done. Whenever I talk to other Mayors they say they are amazed that we
only have 180 employees for a town of 42,000. They may have 40,000 and they
got 300 or 400 employees. I ask them what they do all the time and they said
they have a lot of coffee drinkers and the coffee shops are employed there. I do
want to say for the record that we got a tremendous bunch of employees that’s
just great and I want to see that we take care of them and do them right and I’m
sure the Council feels the same way and they will too. We will have this budget
here pretty soon and thank you all.
Powell: Thank you.
McCandless: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. McCandless.
McCandless: I just wanted to say that I am absolutely positive and I’m sure the
Council joins me in the fact that we found the right person when we hired Anna.
We are very very proud of you thank you. I’d also like to say that I’m very
grateful to the Public Works staff and to John and to Rick and to Brad and Gary
and for putting up with me for the last two years and teaching me so much.
Nary: I feel your pain.
McCandless: So thank you very much I think you guys are great.
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Corrie: Thank you. I will add that there isn’t a time when I haven’t picked up the
phone and called an employee that didn’t have an answer for me and it was the
right answer. They didn’t make one up. They knew what they were doing and
they do know what they are doing. Again I want to thank all of you, everybody.
Anybody else.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: This may surprise you. I was the one that asked about Planning and
Zoning. I guess I was curious about was that the fact that there wasn’t any real
enhancements and such. I think you’ve explained that real well, as to how you
folks are meeting all the needs, so I think that’s really great. I really appreciate
that.
Powell: And part of that was I got here late in the process and I actually haven’t
thought about it much. I can see that as – I think we got a lot of preliminary plats
done and has the Final Plats come in I don’t know if its going to be to
overwhelming or not. You know next year I would imagine I’ll be asking for a
new planner, the problem is I don’t have space for one. You know I’m not quite
sure what we are going to be doing there.
Nary: And I would echo the same thing that both the Mayor and Council member
McCandless said. I mean the work is tremendous that you and your staff all do.
I mean we see it every week. We probably don’t acknowledge it as often as we
should but that it really is excellent. That’s really, what makes the city go you
know at least in that arena. One of the areas on the base budget that we’ve had
discussion with in the past that are surprisingly near and dear to me is the legal
costs that are a part of your departments budget and seems my recollection in
the past and I guess this is more of an area to sort of keep in the for front. Is part
of that legal cost I think eventually was supposed to decrease as the planners
time and expertise increased because they would be doing less of the stuff that’s
been prepared by legal in the past that they charge us for, preparation of findings
and (inaudible) would be done by your staff rather then the legal staff as a cost
saving measure and I noticed that here its increased again and it’s a fairly small
increase amount but I mean it is just one of those things that what we are looking
down the road and costs and operational costs. That’s something I know that we
have at least looked at and tried to evaluate and I know its more of a discussion
probably for you and the City Attorney as to how to kind of keep a hold on that so
it doesn’t become a runaway train.
Powell: Well I think that there’s certainly room there for staff to take over a lot
more of that work actually. Some of it depends on your comfort as a Council in
how those are prepared. I mean the City of Meridian, I don’t know of any other
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city that has their legal staff do all their findings of fact and conclusions of law.
They look very different from any other cities. I mean they are much lengthier. I
think there is an opportunity to not have them be quite so legalistic I mean
everybody else seems to get by with them not being quite such the legal
document. I would think you could do the same. Generally, the Development
Agreements are the only ones where the legal staff is completely immersed in
those. I think there is great opportunity there, if I ask Bill he’s going to want them
done the way that – I’m sorry the City’s Attorney – He’s going to want them done
the way that they are probably currently done. It may be advantageous to have
perhaps you Councilman Nary meet with both of us to discuss how we could
maybe come to a compromise on how those are structured because I do think it
would be more efficient for staff to do it as well as perhaps more accurate.
Especially coming from Planning and Zoning going to the Council because they
are there, they heard the discussion, its not one person trying to communicate to
their administrative assistant. Not that there are a lot of errors that occur. I just
think it helps when you are there at the hearing and to understand what
happened.
Nary: Everything else I think has just been great and even the changes and the
enhancements even in the short time you’ve been there, I mean we’ve seen it. It
has been a very very positive thing. I mean it really has been a good thing for
the city with you being here and I think that’s great.
Powell: Thank you.
Nary: Good luck on the priority thing. If I know the rest of us up here it’ll be one
(inaudible).
Powell: And I forwarded the list to the Mayor (inaudible) what should I do with
the list. We’ll see what his answer is.
De Weerd: I keep trying to keep her grounded and you guys are just kind of
puffing her up there.
(Inaudible discussion)
Nary: Well she is here on Tuesday night’s too so she knows (inaudible).
De Weerd: He can be short-lived Anna, take it while you can. Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mrs. de Weerd.
De Weerd: I guess I see the transit contributions here. Where is COMPASS?
Where are the COMPASS contributions? On Anna’s budget. I thought
COMPASS somehow came out of P and Z in the past.
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Kilchenmann: I think its combined in there. If we are going to go on to that
subject we can go ahead and bring up that worksheet that shows all the different
memberships and how they are split out.
De Weerd: Well I only brought it up because I didn’t see it. Anna is standing
there.
Kilchenmann: Part of it is in it. I just have to look it up and see exactly how it’s
split up.
De Weerd: Which line item.
Kilchenmann: I think she has 6,500 of COMPASS in her budget.
De Weerd: Oh okay. I see where it is.
Powell: I do you have one request when the new city hall that’s built. Please
don’t put these things. They make me so dizzy, these things out in front. I don’t
know if you’ve ever spoken up here. I’m grabbing on.
McCandless: They are terrible.
Powell: They are terrible.
Corrie: They are.
Powell: Did you have further questions?
Corrie: Any other questions?
Bird: I have none.
Powell: Tammy I think that comes out of the dues and membership, is what I
understood.
De Weerd: Thank you Anna.
Kilchenmann: Would you guys like to take a break while we set up our computer
and then we could go over the miscellaneous things? Then in the morning we
are scheduled we are scheduled – I would have Pauline come in now but she’s
not here today so she’s scheduled first thing in the morning to talk about
compensation.
(Recess)
Corrie: We will come back into session now. Reta and Stacy you have the floor.
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Kilchenmann: We don’t really have a presentation. I guess just if anyone had
questions.
Bird: I think we got some questions here but I think it’s some that Mayor is going
to have to check into like that Emergency Management that’s awful expensive.
De Weerd: Yes.
Bird: (Inaudible) is no problem but I think that’s something Mayor is just going to
have to ask about.
Corrie: Valley Transit. They asked for 25,000 something.
Cunningham: They sent in a request.
Corrie: They called me and I said what we had on the books but I couldn’t
remember the exact fee.
De Weerd: There’s Clair right now. You are so (inaudible).
Bowman: My ears were burning.
Nary: The Mayor said he was not going to rejoin the conference of Mayors?
De Weerd: Yes.
Cunningham: Then Pauline decided to drop that IEC.
Bird: What are we going to do (inaudible)?
De Weerd: Yes.
McCandless: Idaho what is it?
Cunningham: The IEC? I’m not sure what it stands for. Do you guys know?
Nary: Good thing we aren’t paying for it anymore.
McCandless: I don’t know what half of these things are.
Kilchenmann: Some kind of employee thing. An HRish thing.
McCandless: I know there are a bunch of HRish things in here.
Berg: Idaho Employee Council.
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Kilchenmann: Yeah I was going to say Idaho Employee Council.
McCandless: What the heck is HRATV.
Cunningham: Oh are you looking at the ones down below?
McCandless: Yes. The fourth one down.
Kilchenmann: I bet its Human Resource Association of Treasure Valley.
Bird: Why do we belong to all that?
McCandless: Yes why do we?
Kilchenmann: Well that one is only 50 dollars. I think they actually have
meetings in the Treasure Valley and they –
Nary: You know here’s what I think for what its worth. I think for some of the
departments, I think within reason and most of these are fairly low. I mean within
reason I think the department has to have some flexibility to be able to decide
what helps them do business and what helps them work with others.
McCandless: I agree.
Bird: I agree with you.
Nary: And because all of these are fairly low. On these lower ones, I guess I
don’t have a real heartburn to try to second guess whether or not they really
think they need it. If it was quite a bit more money then I think we want to do that
but I think even if you look at HR 350 bucks a year seems fairly small. We can
certainly ask though tomorrow if you want to what those particular organizations
do. I think the bigger numbers up above are the ones that we probably need to
talk about more as to viability and usefulness for the city.
McCandless: (inaudible) Valley Transit. That’s a big amount of money.
Nary: They are. You know last year I know since I only have one-year frame of
reference when we talked about those. I mean part of that is you know we are
part of a large regional group in trying to maintain those things and I think we’ve
at least from last year. We are looking at the bigger picture from a region
standpoint rather then just the individual needs of the city and our residence and
how much they use it and all that. I think as the budgets get a little skinnier and
a little bit tighter we at least have to ask those questions and at least know what
we are going into eyes open that if that’s where we are spending that kind of
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dough on then what exactly are we getting as a turn around for that or our
residence.
Corrie: It says for accounting billing fund. Those three figures on top are they
coming out of the billing fund. In other words, people are paying for that anyway.
Cunningham: Yes it’s coming out of the billing fund.
Corrie: Okay so its not general fund item.
Cunningham: No.
Corrie: So that’s going to come out –
Cunningham: It’s coming out of the special service fund.
Cunningham: See on the P and Z actually has the line item for it.
Corrie: Right. Okay.
Cunningham: Transit dues.
Nary: I mean you think if you look at the top row I mean other then those transit
ones which again are fairly large and most of these are pretty much what it takes
to do business. AIC, COMPASS, I mean maybe we need to talk about the
assessment number, same thing with the EMS one but I mean (inaudible) these
are ones that we cannot participate in.
(Inaudible discussion)
Nary: Will in these other dues I mean there’s (inaudible) a way for Stacy but
don’t you belong to that?
Berg: No.
Kilchenmann: Actually I dropped that one.
Nary: Oh.
Berg: I have a line item in my budget for 500 dollars for dues but I’m a member
like of ICCTFOA –
Nary: Right I guess that’s –
Berg: IIMC and PRIMA. I’m a member of PRIMA.
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Nary: Those aren’t on here so –
Berg: I noticed that so I don’t know where –
Kilchenmann: What happens to those is like Reta and I both belong to the
Association of Governmental Accountants and in the state you can’t really pay
dues so what the state does for some of those associations is they combine the
membership into the training seminar. Like we go to a two day training and part
of the training conference registration we pay is for – then we have a
membership for the year. I think that’s what’s happened is people have coded
them is its in conjunction with the conference and so they don’t show up here.
Nary: Is there dues for PRIMA? Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: On these ones for the regional transportation. I don’t recall that we had a
presentation from the TV Metro. Treasure Valley Transportation is what I thought
the one that was here most recently and then we have had Valley Ride. I don’t
remember the Treasure Valley Metro doing a presentation or maybe I have them
backwards.
Corrie: The Midday Express you did and Katherine – if I remember right I think
everybody did.
De Weerd: I think Katherine’s been here.
Corrie: They were all there and I can remember going back they were all
presented.
Nary: Maybe it was but I just don’t remember. I’m kind of torn I know it’s a good
regional thing, I know it’s a long term commitment we’ve really made to doing
those and not necessarily wanted to eliminate funding but I think at some point
someone’s going to call us on it and say what am I getting for that. And I’m not
sure what we get for that. We have some benefits to our community, I think there
is no doubt about it, I just don’t know dollar wise what that is but I know if you
don’t participate then there is nothing. I guess I’m just torn about it.
Corrie: I would like to see them get more of the businesses involved. Like Saint
Luke’s and Saint Al’s and some of those. I think they are trying to, we have a lot
of people that call and say thanks that that’s there. I used to get some people
that when they changed the spot I got a lot of phone calls the first week. There
are a lot of people out there using it and there’s more everyday. I agree with you
I think we are going to have to draw the line here somewhere. I don’t know how
Boise is going to do keeping that bus service there.
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Nary: You raised a really accurate point is I think that was the least part of the
discussion I recall was they had some frustration in trying to deal with the private
businesses that are really gaining a benefit like Saint Luke’s or the mall or those
places and they don’t want to participate in the maintenance of the program.
They certainly don’t mind that their workers can get there on the bus, they don’t
mind that their patrons can get there on the bus system but they don’t want to
help pay for it and so I’m not sure there’s a real answer to that either. Obviously
they are working to do that but that does make it awfully tough sometimes to
keep funding something that appears to be only getting larger not smaller.
Service is getting a little smaller because it’s very tight for ridership and it’s a lot
of money. 67 almost 68,000 dollars is a lot of money.
Corrie: They may have to go in the back door at those places to. They say they
are not going to be able to do it and they may step forward and say –
De Weerd: Well and that’s where I think the Cities can step up and start helping
people think out of the box and maybe give incentives for smaller parking lots for
a commitment to something like this so that we can make it happen. We need to
build that into ordinances and that sort of thing.
Nary: That is exactly right.
De Weerd: You know for this year I’d like to see us maintain it and let them know
we would like more information on who your funding partners are and if the
private industry can’t step up to the plate you know the city can’t continue to do it
on the backs of their taxpayers. Although the taxpayers aren’t paying for this our
fees are and right now the building community is supportive of mass transit.
They see the benefits but I think we to have to respond to them and if we can’t
show more collaboration. Yeah we need to take a second look at it but right now
we need a partner in hoping it succeeds.
Nary: I would agree.
McCandless: I should know I know but I’m either new or have forgotten or
something but what’s Treasure Valley Partnership?
Corrie: All the Mayors and the County Commissioners that meet and put things
before the P and Z and Council and ordinances that come - that was raised on
like the communications towers that we get an ordinance for, we put that
together and then they get all the Comprehensive Plans put together and make
sure they are not putting a contractors yard against something else –
(Inaudible discussion)
Corrie: We did goof on that one but. Actually we are getting quite a bit of bang
for a buck on that one.
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Nary: Is the dues for that based on population too like COMPASS?
Corrie: Yes.
Nary: Okay.
De Weerd: I don’t see anything on here that hasn’t already been addressed or
answered. I would like to go to the enhancements in the admin side. Meridian
Development Corporation they are paying back its indicated in the bottom. It will
probably be towards the end of the budget year because they won’t get their tax
increment financing until January at the earliest and probably a smaller portion.
Bird: I was going to say probably more like July.
De Weerd: But it will get paid back. I guess I didn’t know why the Senior Center
was at zero.
Corrie: Okay. Let me get there. That was a question mark.
De Weerd: Okay.
Corrie: If we go into SAGE membership and they are going to grants for them
would they be able to get part of that 15,000 or more then 15,000 in grants. Why
would we pay them double if we can do that? That was the only question that
was brought up to me. Can we still want to give them 15,000 when they could
probably through these grants that we are going to be working with get 50 to
100,000.
De Weerd: Mayor last year we raised it to 15,000 it was at 10,000 and they use
the 10,000 in their operations. And it was an ongoing to help offset the cost of
doing business. Last year when we increased it 5,000 was about the same
conversation we just had about mass transit, they had just gotten their new bus
they were talking about partnering with Meridian Elementary School and we
wanted to help offset the cost of their new transportation system which has really
been successful. They are utilizing it for a lot of seniors they have on a monthly,
they already beat the numbers we see from the Treasure Valley Transportation
and the Treasure Valley Metro. Their van hauls around 450 people a month and
that’s pretty good numbers. That 5,000 were to offset some of their
transportation costs. I do know because of the number of repair projects that
they have going that they certainly can take advantage of the SAGE membership
but that’s kind of over above their transportation and operational type of
expenses that they look to the city and the county for support from, and they do
get county support as well.
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Corrie: I agree. I think what you have to do though if you keep the 15,000 in be
specific on where it’s to go. Not that they have a choice of where they want it to
go. The attorney gave us that advice that we can’t just give them a lump sum of
money and do what you want to with it. We have to ear mark it to be legal and of
course we can do that. If you want to earmark it for new sidewalks or what have
you then that becomes not a problem for us and not for them neither. We can’t
just say here’s 15,000 dollars use it the way you want it.
De Weerd: I understand that.
Corrie: I’m not objecting it and one of the reasons I brought that up was the fact
that we do need to – if we do give that we have to specifically say where its
going to and then if you want to give them 15 or 20 that’s up to you. I did want to
bring it up for discussion, this is the quickest way I could get it to your attention,
and it was going out.
De Weerd: Mayor I appreciate that and I think that and I think that we still need
to continue to ear market 5,000 to their bus. It’s very important. I don’t want to
see them take away that partnership with Meridian Elementary and as they start-
pinching pennies that’s what they do. We are there to remind them that’s why
you got that extra 5,000 dollars. The 10,000 I’m sure they won’t have a problem
designating that either as a match to something that they might get a grant for or
a particular problem or a particular project. We’ll just have to be specific with
them and hope when they submit their information to the accounting office it’s a
lot clearer then it was this last time.
Nary: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Mr. Nary.
Nary: On the MDC one I guess so I understand isn’t the intent to repay that?
Corrie: Yes.
Nary: Or this is on top of something.
Bird: They are going to pay it back.
De Weerd: It’s on the bottom.
Nary: Okay but then is there some necessity to even fund it? I mean is there
some start up that they have a need for?
De Weerd: What I had just said is their tax increment financing at earliest they
will get a small proportion in January.
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Nary: I understand that. What do they need the 60,000 for in October then?
Why do they need 60,000 dollars?
Bird: You’re basically running their deal when you are paying seven, eight 9,000
dollars a year in legal fees, which we have been and stuff like that. The city is
basically funding MDC until they get some of this increment and money in it. I
think we are going to have to help them for a couple years but they should be
able to pay us back. That’s what its basically doing is you are funding it.
Nary: I understand that I just didn’t know what we were funding.
Bird: We are funding the expenses of MDC.
Nary: Right but all we’ve got is –
Bird: They want to hire a director and everything else so you know you are going
to have to –
De Weerd: Will can you get a copy of their budget.
Kilchenmann: Its in here.
De Weerd: Is it.
Bird: Yes it’s in there.
De Weerd: The updated one too?
Kilchenmann: It’s pretty much the same.
De Weerd: Oh okay. Right off Bill mainly that money will be funding the market
feasibility study. The traffic study is being done now and the parking. Well the
traffic maybe funded during their next budget year. There’s a number of projects
that there having consultants do to help set the base for generating some
interest and some investment into old town.
Kilchenmann: They also want to hire a grant writer. The façade and streetscape
improvement and then they are looking at the end of the year of hiring a director.
Their ideas of hiring a director I feel are rather vague because they don’t have a
job description, they don’t have a range. I think they are going to ask the city to
share that cost with them but they haven’t really developed the cost they want
the city to share office space because I don’t think on their own it would be a long
time before they could afford to support a full time position with insurance and so
forth. I wouldn’t think that they really would need the full 60,000 dollars up front.
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Nary: I’m looking at their request I mean 10,000 is to hire a director, I don’t know
if that’s for process, it’s obviously not a salary. I don’t think. 3,000 for grant
writing when we are paying 2,500 dollars to SAGE and Craig Slocum came and
said that’s what they would use. I’m not sure that they really need 3,000 dollars
more to contracted a grant writer if we are going to pay for SAGE. I guess I
would look at a couple of those things. An office space and supplies is 2,000
dollars and I don’t know that they need it. I don’t know what they need yet
specifically. Some of these things seem like, completing of a market study
25,000 I mean if that’s already an ongoing project that makes some sense the
same thing with the street façade but some of these other things I guess I don’t
see a necessity for them at this time.
De Weerd: The audit the legal. I don’t know, if you need them to come in and
talk to you. Well what do you mean them, that’s us. I think it’s going to be paid
back so you know rob Peter to pay Paul. It’s a lush and its.
Nary: I just don’t see a reason to fund 13,000 dollars for hiring a director when
there is really nothing defined as to what that means or 3,000 dollars for a grant
writer when we are going to pay 2,500 dollars for another grant writer –
De Weerd: Well I agree with the 3,000.
Nary: But 10,000 to hire a director with no idea of what that’s for seems like a
waste of money. If they define what its for –
Bird: I agree with you, they just threw out some numbers. I think they just want
to make sure they are protected because nobody has any idea what kind of tax
revenue they are going to get this first year, your not going to know until you see
it. They’ve got to go on I mean you’ve already basically funded this thing by
throwing out the first 15 or 20,000 whatever we put out the first year and you’ve
got to start it Bill. Its like Tammy said there is no guarantee that they will get us
paid back next year because we don’t know what the revenue sharing is going to
be. We will get it back and I think they just put this stuff in here as a guess and
hopefully because nobody had any idea when, where and why we would be
hiring a director when we would or anything but they hope to do it next year.
Kilchenmann: Maybe instead of just writing them a 60,000-dollar check at the
beginning of the year we should just do it more on a monthly basis.
Nary: At least for me. I mean I don’t have a problem with some of these things I
mean I think the market study I think the streetscape funding, even the office
administration audit. I think that’s fine even the legal expenses. If they don’t
have legal services they really can’t operate. The miscellaneous, 1,500 dollars is
a lot, I don’t know what that means. Is that pop and cookies? I mean I don’t
know what its for but between that and 2,000 dollars for office space and
supplies when they don’t have an office and they don’t have supplies seems like
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a lot of money. I’d rather say you know if we are going to fund them up front and
be repaid we fund the things that are defined specifically as to a need and the
other things that at least at this point haven’t identified a specific need that can
wait and we can address that later if there is a need and the funding for their tax
increment is inadequate and they realize that and again I understand those
things but I just have a hard time saying lets just – when we are talking about a
very tight budget for our own employees, I have a hard time saying lets just give
another 20,000 to this group when we don’t really know what its for.
De Weerd: Mr. Mayor.
***End Of Side Six***
De Weerd: - they don’t intend to hire him towards the end of the budget year.
You can guarantee they will have a description and everything else by then. It
will be similar to the other descriptions for positions similar to that in the valley.
What they are asking is only going to pay a couple months of someone’s salary
anyway so they won’t be looking for that person until next summer. Why would
we expect that they have a job description a year ahead of when they hire a
director? You know I guess I don’t have that expectation for that board other
then I know they are working towards that. The office space and supplies they
are hoping to have some space in City Hall that they’ve talked about, they don’t
know if that’s realistic because they know the space constraints. They have
mailings, they want to do some public visual type of things. They are going to be
going through a visioning process to create a vision for Old Town. Be doing
some visioning boards and that sort of thing. I can see how those expenses will
accumulate. I don’t think that this is an unreasonable budget. If you want more
detail, we can ask the chairman to send himself or one of the other members
who would not have a conflict like myself and Mr. Bird. You know if you want
more detail, I think we need to ask them instead of trying to second-guess what
the intent is. Like Councilman Bird said we’ve already made an investment of
55,000 dollars and we are invested. We want to see this work and if you need
rationale then we need to ask them to be here.
Nary: That’s fine. They can be here tomorrow then.
Corrie: Let me ask you, did they say that they would probably pay it back as
soon as they got paid their monies and that’s –
Kilchenmann: That’s correct. They don’t know what the cash flow will be
exactly.
Corrie: Okay.
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Kilchenmann: So we could. Some of these expenses like hiring the director they
do have slated for the end of the previous year. To help our cash flow we could
not give them the entire amount up front, as we have in the past.
Corrie: Let me ask you a question. Was this talked about at your MDC meeting?
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Bird: You bet it was.
Corrie: The amount that they wanted.
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Corrie: Okay. I’m concerned with if we don’t what kind of message are we
sending to them? We either support this or we don’t and I can see his point, we
got other things to do. I’m in a stage to (inaudible) saying 60,000 is not that
much maybe but in your case, it is and my case it is too. I’m more inclined to say
this is fine and in January we are going to get it so why –
Kilchenmann: We won’t get all of it in January. This is actually a guess as to
how much.
Bird: Mr. Mayor.
Corrie: Yes.
Bird: They started out wanting 75,000 from us. Tammy and I said that there was
no way that we felt that we could give that much because we were going to be
pretty tight. They went back in and cut down and did some stuff. There is no
way in January are we going to get the 60,000 paid back. If we get it paid back
in July when we get our second installment because nobody has any idea what
kind of tax increment they are going to get.
Kilchenmann: This is though, this is based on some numbers that they got from
Ada County. They didn’t just pull it out of a hat.
Bird: We’re hoping its right. Then they will get plenty back and I see where
Councilman Nary is coming from. I mean I don’t like it any better then anything
else but we do have this thing going, it is going to help downtown and I firmly
believe that. Downtown needs help. I assure you they just didn’t throw this out,
they went and looked at seeing – and they are trying to be as practical as – but
they have no track record Bill on you know we have no track record we have no
idea – we have an idea on what our revenue is going to be but there’s no
guarantee.
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Kilchenmann: Once they get through this first year then it’ll be like our property
tax. I think they will be able to predict it. It will be based on market value but it
will be easier to project and then I think they will have a better idea.
Nary: Well like I said we can all have our own positions. I can see out of what
they have requested, I can see 45,000 dollars of that being based on some
reality and I can see about 15,000 of it not. I wouldn’t support more then 45,000
dollars for it and they can find the rest of the money or if they get something
more to find and the money is available then we can assist further. I’m not trying
to cut their legs off but they are supposed to operate independent of the city. We
are going to help fund some things and we are going to keep doing that but when
they are asking for these things that don’t really have any definition to them I
don’t see a reason to spend at least 15,000 dollars for this request.
Bird: Do you want one of them to come then?
Nary: Sure. I mean that’s fine if they want to come. I just think 45,000 of this
seems like you can at least base it on something and they are all pretty rounded
numbers anyway. 45,000 of it seems to make some sense but the director, the
grant writing service and the office space to me don’t. They don’t make sense at
this time. Now they may later. We may have the money to fund that later if they
have more specifics as to what they want and what they need and why they
need it but I guess to me at this juncture I would be much more comfortable then
saying we will commit 45,000 to their request and we’ll see about the other 15
later. That maybe the first 15 they make up out of their tax increments is that
and they can make that up first, I don’t care but without being real defined.
Bird: Bill that’s something that we can do tomorrow. If you want to do that you
can make a motion and we can find out.
Nary: Okay.
Bird: I’m not saying you are not right but like I said they start at 75, Tammy, and I
told them there was no way we could give it that. They got down to 60 and we
said we would try to sell that.
De Weerd: I thought we took the grant writer out.
Bird: I did too. Well I don’t recall us saying we were going to join SAGE. I
haven’t voted on joining SAGE.
Nary: Well we said we were going to talk about it. Your right we didn’t agree to
join.
De Weerd: And I guess that’s why they kept it in there.
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Corrie: (Inaudible) take all of you to do it so then that’s what it’s there for and
you can discuss that (inaudible).
McCandless: Well you look at that page, they haven’t got a darn thing in there
that says what they are going to do or –
Corrie: SAGE you mean?
McCandless: Yes.
Corrie: Other then –
De Weerd: We’ve heard it.
Corrie: That’s the democratic way to vote on it. Okay what else are we talking
about here? Is this the new figures that – no two reserve officers – 18,000, that’s
not what they asked on –
Cunningham: We haven’t made any changes.
Corrie: Because they came up different then what they were asking for.
Cunningham: Did they?
Corrie: Okay because they can get about 3,000 dollars (inaudible).
Cunningham: Okay we will make changes and have that ready for you.
Corrie: Okay good for me as a dummy accountant who drank beer in college
instead of going to the accounting class make it as simple as possible. Okay.
Lets bring up knox box for engines. You know I hate to say it but I think a captain
would be in charge of that and he could open a box. Not to have to spend 6,000
dollars for an electric – I don’t Tammy maybe you can come up with it but
everybody can get in that box. I think the Captain should have the responsibility
of putting that key back. 5,000 dollars – give me 5,000 dollars and I’ll go on
every trip.
(Inaudible discussion)
Bird: I’m with you Mayor and I can’t figure out why.
Corrie: Anyway that was just a – I was going to it and I thought no don’t go
there.
(Inaudible discussion)
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Nary: This shows they aren’t going to repay the 60,000.
Kilchenmann: It’s at the bottom.
De Weerd: Yes it does. It says repay City of Meridian. I mean how much more
clearer do you want it?
Nary: I still don’t buy it.
(Inaudible discussion)
Nary: I just don’t agree with it. Its funny money, it’s not based on anything. It’s a
guess, it’s not worth it. How are going to explain to our employees that we have
a tight budget and then we say but that 15,000 dollars that the MDC wants is
based on a guess but we will go ahead and give them that but we can’t give you
anything. I mean come on.
Bird: You got a point there Bill.
De Weerd: But we also have money going in and money going out. It’s not
taking away from the bottom line.
Nary: But they can get it themselves and pay themselves back first. They can
pay us back the 45 after that. I just don’t see funding it up front.
Bird: Well you said if they needed it, we could fund it later or something. Its got
to be in the budget as the funding starts with one way or the other its got to be in
the start of our budget.
De Weerd: We’ll just have Steve come and speak to what the professional
services are. What constitutes the 64,000? The plans for the director and they
did take the grant writing out. What was the other issue you had Bill was it the
director, the grant writing and something else?
Nary: It was the miscellaneous, the office space.
De Weerd: Miscellaneous and office. Okay we will have them address that.
Nary: It looks like I assumed that the 6,000 that they are telling us for the legal
services are just they anticipate coming up with the other 4,000.
(Inaudible discussion)
De Weerd: Well when that went out that went out before they had a chance to
even get it to the board. It was 10,000, which was approximately, what they have
spent so far now too.
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Bird: Isn’t this what they published Stacy.
Kilchenmann: Yes they still have the grant writer in there. (Inaudible).
De Weerd: They have it in where?
Corrie: It’s in hers. That was a different thing that she made for us.
De Weerd: Okay and we want to have our discussion tomorrow? After we get
this then we can just go? Although Cheri wants to stick around because Glen’s
making dinner and she doesn’t want to get home to early.
McCandless: I didn’t say I wanted to stick around here. I said I would find
someplace to go.
(Inaudible discussion)
De Weerd: We will just all go to Cherie’s house for dinner. Can I bring my kids?
McCandless: Sure, why not.
(Inaudible discussion)
Bird: Every department was very very understanding and very very helpful.
McCandless: We had some good presentations today.
De Weerd: Excellent.
Bird: They all worked to get it as tight as they could too.
De Weerd: Well and Mayor I appreciate this process. You know you working –
McCandless: Yes me too.
De Weerd: - you working with them has really helped clarify their presentations
and what you should come and request and it’s been – every year it gets more
pleasurable.
Corrie: The thing is in meeting with them one thing I found out is I looked at it
and I said why do you want this? Why? They came back and said well we could
use it. We can always use something. I start (inaudible) and now go back and
all this I’ve cut out you tell me what you can if you want it back, how much you
can really stand to take out. You saw thought really in the Police Department.
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You really did and when they cut 300,000 dollars out there I knew there was
money to be cut.
De Weerd: I know I like their red lines.
Nary: And also though I think the real positive of the process was you know the
one thing the other departments saw is the police do that so you know next year
the Fire Department will have gotten that message and say lets go find the
alternatives and that’s positive. It’s not going to be turned around one time but I
think there’s some real positive (inaudible).
Bird: And I’ll tell you Doug Strong did the same thing in the Parks you know he
really went and (inaudible) and what he asked for was what he felt he basically
needs and that’s it.
De Weerd: So Stacy I think – I hint that Councilman Nary is giving is keep the
presentation by the Police Department as a template for what they can do next
year.
Kilchenmann: What they do is you just ask for 65 things and then you show red
crosses through them. Then it looks impressive.
De Weerd: Oh Stacy.
Corrie: Okay anybody else have anything else? I’m just sitting here waiting for
someone to say something.
De Weerd: I move we adjourn.
Nary: Second.
Corrie: Motion made and second to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Okay 3:50
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 3:50 P.M.
(TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
APPROVED:
/ /
ROBERT D. CORRIE, MAYOR DATE
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ATTESTED:
WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CITY CLERK