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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-01-04Meridian City Council Meeting January 4. 2011 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 7:10 p.m., Tuesday, January 4, 2011, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Brad Hoaglun, and David Zaremba. Members Absent: Charlie Rountree. Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Anna Canning, Tom Barry, Jamie Leslie, Bill Johnson, Robert Simison and Dean Willis. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd de Weerd: Sorry for the delay. Thank you for joining us. Happy New Year. It is Tuesday, January 4th for the record. It's ten minutes after 7:00. I will start tonight's meeting with roll call attendance. Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance by Boy Scout Troop #156 with Meridian Greens LDS Ward. de Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. Tonight we will be led by Boy Scout Troop 156 with Meridian Greens LDS Ward. Thank you, boys, for joining us. If you want to come forward. If you will all rise and join us in the pledge. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) de Weerd: Boys, if I could give you a City of Meridian pin for leading us. Item 3: Community Invocation by Pastor Burt Roberts with Meridian legacy Church de Weerd: Item No. 3 is our community invocation. Tonight we will be led in our community invocation by Pastor Burt Roberts. He is with Meridian Legacy Church -- or retired from. Thank you for joining us and giving us our first invocation of 2011. Roberts: My privilege. It's good to be here. Gracious and kind Heavenly Father, we pause to thank you for all of your many blessings of the year past. As we look forward to a new year we ask your blessing and your guidance upon our Mayor and the Council, all the decisions that will be necessary to be made this year we need your wisdom and Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 2 of 11 your guidance and we are so thankful that we could come to you and ask for that. So, let your guidance be known here tonight. Give peace, give joy, give a contentment and a belief in the future. Anew year is ours and we thank you for it, in Christ's name we pray, amen. de Weerd: Thank you. It's always a pleasure to see you. Item 4: Adoption of the Agenda. de Weerd: Item No. 4 is adoption of the agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I keep looking, but I don't see any changes, so I move adoption of the agenda as printed. Zaremba: Second. de Weerd: That has to be a first. I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as printed. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 5: Consent Agenda A. Approve Minutes of December 14, 2010 City Council Special Meeting B. Approve Minutes of December 21, 2010 City Council Special Meeting C. Acceptance Agreement with JanyRae Seda for Display of Artwork in Initial Point Gallery D. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: MDA 10- 010 Scentsy Campus by Sam Johnson, H.O.T. 1, LLC Located Southwest Corner of E. Pine Avenue and N. Eagle Road Request: Modify the Existing Development Agreement to Update the Owner Information and Development Plan E. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: VAR 10- 002 Scentsy Campus by Sam Johnson, H.O.T. 1, LLC Located Southwest Corner of E. Pine Avenue and N. Eagle Road Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 3 of 11 Request: Variance to UDC 11-3H-4B to Allow aRight-in I Right-out Access Point to/from the site Via Eagle Road Between Pine Avenue and Commercial Street de Weerd: Item 5 is our Consent Agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move approval of the Consent Agenda and the Mayor be authorized to sign and Clerk to attest. Zaremba: Second. de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is no discussion from Council, Madam Clerk, roll call, please. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda. de Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. Item 7: Action Items A. Public Hearing: TE 10-033 Knightsky by Sea 2 Sea, LLC Located Northwest Corner of Chinden Boulevard and N. Linder Road Request: Approval of a Two (2) Year Time Extension to Obtain the City Engineer's Signature on the Final Plat de Weerd: We are at Item 7 under Action Items, a public hearing on TE 10-033. I will open this public hearing with staff comments. Canning: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, this is a time extension for a preliminary plat. The site consists of 9.47 acres zoned C-C and TN-R and it's located at 18 -- and that is the wrong information on my notes. I apologize. It's located on the north side of Chinden Boulevard. The applicant requests approval of a second time extension on the preliminary plat for Knightsky Estates Subdivision in order to obtain the city engineer's signature on the final plat. The preliminary plat consists of 102 single family residential building lots, 24 townhouse lots, seven commercial lots and six common lots and two private streets on 55.83 acres in R-4, TN-C, and C-C zoning Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 4 of 11 districts. Since the Meridian design manual was not in effect at the time of the previous approvals, all future construction, excluding the single family homes within this development, are subject to the structure and site design standards as set forth in the UDC and we have requested that a condition of approval noting that be added and also the UDC requires that there beaten foot multi-use pathway along Chinden Boulevard, Highway 20-26. Currently they are showing a five foot wide pathway, so we have amended the conditions of approval to change that to a ten foot pathway. And those are the only two new conditions that we are recommending. We have received written testimony from Shawn Nickle, the applicant, and he is in agreement with the staff report and to our knowledge there are no outstanding issues before City Council and staff is recommending approval of a two year time extension. de Weerd: Thank you, Anna. Sorry, we have a new sound system tonight. Thank you, Anna. Shawn, do you have any additional comments? Council, any questions for staff or the applicant? Bird: I have none. de Weerd: This is a public hearing. I do have a Jake Nowell who has signed up as neutral. Would you like to provide testimony? Okay. Well, thank you. And welcome. Well, if you get extra credit, we will give extra credit for signing the sign-up sheet. It is a public hearing. Is there anyone who would like to provide comment on this item? Okay. Council? Bird: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: Hearing no public testimony, I move we close the public hearing TE 10-033. Zaremba: Second. de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to close the public hearing for this Item 7-A. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Bird: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we approve TE 10-033 with comments from staff and written agreement from applicant. Zaremba: Second. Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 5 of 11 de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-A. If there is no discussion from Council could I have roll call on this item? Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. de Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 8: Department Reports A. City Council: Election of New City Council Officers de Weerd: Item 8-A is under Department Reports. I'll turn this over to Councilman Zaremba. Oh, this isn't like the agenda item. I guess I would open for nominations. Bird: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I would nominate Councilman Zaremba as president and Councilman Hoaglun as vice-president. Well, you got to second -- Zaremba: I'll second that. de Weerd: Okay. Well, I can't, so I'm just decoration. Do both of you accept those nominations? Hoaglun: Yes, I do. Zaremba: Yes, I do. de Weerd: Okay. Any further nominations? Bird: I move we close nominations. de Weerd: Okay. Zaremba: Second. de Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. de Weerd: Okay. Because we just have -- Mr. Nary, we don't have to have a vote if there is only one nominated for each one? Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 6 of 11 Nary: You can certainly do it just by voice vote. Bird: Yeah. Voice vote. de Weerd: Okay. Well, we do have a slate for officers for City Council President Mr. Zaremba and City Council Vice-president Mr. Hoaglun. All those in favor of those positions say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. de Weerd: Okay. Zaremba: Thank you very much. Madam Mayor, may I ask to speak to both of the Councilmen for about two minutes after we adjourn, please. B. Public Works: Reservoir #2 Discussion de Weerd: Yes. Well, you bet, you can talk to anyone you want. Okay. Item 8-B is our Public Works Department. I'll turn this over to Mr. Barry. Barry: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Tonight we have before you an update on the Locust Grove ground reservoir capital improvement project. As you know we have been working on this project for some time. During the FY2010 budget we had begun design of the -- design and location of the ground reservoir project and information was shared with you at that time as it related to siting criteria, location, those kinds of things. wanted to talk with you tonight about where we are in the project, particularly because, as you know, late last year as we were pursuing the close of the FY 2011 budget, we had some changes to the overall funding of this particular project and what was approved in the 2011 budget was elimination of two million dollars for this project that was postponed and put onto the FY 2013 budget when that rolls around. So, what that's created for us is a bit of separation between the design and annexation phase of this particular project, which was already underway and, then, now this construction phase, which is at least two years out. So, we wanted to get with you and talk with you about some of the thoughts we had behind pursuing a couple courses of action and get your ideas on which course of action you'd like us to pursue. So, originally -- and what we do mostly in Public Works projects is we like to connect the design, any annexation or permitting issues, along with construction, so we have a seamless project. In this case because of what happened in the FY 2011 budget, we have now got this two year separation between, as I mentioned, design, annexation, and permitting with construction. So, we had a couple options for your consideration tonight and want to get some direction as it relates to pursuing this project forward. So, we have held a neighborhood meeting as part of our annexation requirement and some concerns have been expressed from that, some of those concerns have been shared with you, you're familiar with those. I don't want to get into that. But what I did want to do is -- as I mentioned try to get your direction as it relates to how we want to finish out this project. Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 7 of 11 We have three options for you to consider this evening and, then, finally, a recommendation. The first option is to continue the path that we were -- that we are already on and that is to finish out our design, complete our annexation and inform the neighbors that the project will be constructed on the selected site when the budget is approved and, again, that was estimated to be in the FY 2013 budget. The advantages of this particular alternative include that the design contract can be finished out with additional neighborhood meetings as needed and that we can continue our current momentum on the project as to where we are at this point in time and continue to incorporate solutions to concerns that the neighborhood might have. One of the disadvantages is neighborhood concerns, particularly as it relates to the disconnect maybe in them understanding this phase and how it relates to the construction phase. So, we didn't want that to be confusing for any folks. The second alternative is to shelf the project temporarily and complete the annexation and design components in a point in time which is just before the construction phase, meaning go back to kind of how we normally move forward on construction projects and that is to coordinate the phase of design and permitting with the phase of construction, so that it's seamless. This -- the advantages of this particular alternative is that it more closely aligns with the design and annexation phase, with the construction phase as has already been mentioned and is typical with most of our capital projects. Some of the disadvantages are perhaps public perception that the project has gone away, that, essentially, we are not going to work on this project, when, in reality, what we would be trying to do is simply align construction and design. There is substantial concern with this alternative also that there may be a loss of momentum, but that could be maybe countered with additional community education and outreach on Public Works' part and, then, because there will have to be a restart in the design and annexation process there could be some additional costs associated with that particular alternative. The last alternative for consideration is looking for another project site, which has been suggested and has been reviewed by Public Works staff and there are pros and cons to this. The current neighbors might be satisfied that the location of the proposed reservoir might go someplace else, but, obviously, no matter where this thing goes -- because it has to be situated with regard to close proximity of our infrastructure, new neighborhood concerns may result and certainly additional purchasing and other costs would be of concern as well. So, we don't recommend alternative three, although it's something that has been suggested that we wanted at least bring to your attention. Our recommendation is alternative one, which is to continue our current course of action and allow us the time between now and the construction to maybe workout neighborhood concerns, as well as to incorporate any kinds of improvements to the site that might help alleviate neighborhood concerns. However, alternative two is also a feasible and relatively palatable option as well and that is to postpone the project and go ahead and combine design and construction together as a seamless component of the project. So, that's what we had for you this evening, to kind of try to get a little bit of alignment in regard to your expectations on moving forward with this particular project. So, I'll turn it over to you. de Weerd: Council, any questions? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 8 of 11 de Weerd: I'm sorry. Council, any questions? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: This entire project at some point will be the subject of a public hearing, at which time we will learn what the issues are from the neighbors in the path that Public Works is taking. I don't know if Mr. Nary needs to comment on what we are allowed to talk about today, but I would be uncomfortable discussing the issues. I think focusing just on the question should the Public Works Department proceed or stop is all I would care to discuss at this time. de Weerd: I think that is the question in front of you. Zaremba: Okay. Thank you. I just wanted to make the point that this is not a public hearing. There will be public hearings. de Weerd: Yes. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. Tom, could we jump back to the slide that gave the first two options one and two? Barry: Yes, sir. There you are. Hoaglun: Just to give you my thoughts on it, I'm leaning towards alternative number -- alternative two. We have -- because we as a Council delayed the funding for construction -- there is going to be a water tank over in that area somewhere, whether it's this site or not that depends on how the process moves forward. But I'm a little concerned about disconnecting the design and annexation and the public process from the actual construction. I think you point out some key issues there and I think one way to mitigate the con that the project has gone away when there will be a point in time where there will be a public process to go through the hearings and the different things, the annexation process and everything else, is maybe we just put up a sign out there that says potential site of a future water tank or whatever that wording is, however you want to characterize that water storage feature and -- and just that way anybody driving by or buying a house out there knows that in the future this could be a potential site, but, then, move that whole annexation discussion and planning process and public hearing process to the time that is more closely aligned with funds that were if it's approved it goes forward, then, into the construction phase. Is -- that's how I view it, so that's my preferred alternative is number two. Barry: Thank you. de Weerd: Other comments from Council? Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 9 of 11 Zaremba: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would just speak in support of what Councilman Hoaglun has said. I do think it's a good idea to put a sign out there. The example would probably be like the Idaho Power signs; they have them all over the place that say future substation or something like that. And I think that's -- that's a wise thing to do and I also think it's reasonable to align the design and annexation phases closer. It also gives more opportunity for the Public Works Department to get together with the neighbors and deal with their issues. So, I'm in support of what Councilman Hoaglun said. de Weerd: Okay. I guess what I would just add to the process, whether it's one or two, is a follow-up neighborhood meeting is necessary to describe or detail what the process is, that this is definitely not a done deal until you go through the annexation and zoning and the public participation steps, because that's -- that's a key element to this. If you go with item two, as it sounds from two of our Council members that -- that seems to connect better, having them back to back as is usually done, but it does buy you time to work with the neighbors in identifying -- and you have gotten a lot of details on what their specific concerns are, but working with them on what those specific concerns are and mitigating light, noise, sight, vision type of items, so that when you do bring it back for the public process in the subsequent year you have -- you stop to go through the neighborhood meetings again, but you may want to post the site in the interim as a potential site for and continue that dialogue. Just my thoughts. Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, Tom, yeah, that -- and my recommendation of number two that does not preclude what the Mayor just suggested. I think you should go forward and be doing that. It's no different than a developer going into an area, working with the neighborhoods long before they come to us with their application and talking with Planning and Zoning staff to say, okay, we have done this with the neighborhood, we have got this worked out and that makes the process much smoother for everybody involved. So, for Public Works to talk to the neighborhood, I think you need to have that -- continue the dialogue, keep communication lines open, see what the concerns are, see what the give and take is and -- but still when the process begins things are more compact than what we would have now if we were to do the public process and, then, construction process if it were approved and that, again, is if, because we have not heard the details and gone through the public process and that is something that has to -- has to occur in the future, so -- Zaremba: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Just wanted to confirm for the public record we do, in fact, own that piece of property already, don't we? Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 10 of 11 Barry: That is correct. We do. Zaremba: Thank you. de Weerd: Okay. Council, so staff is seeking your direction. I would imagine we need it in the form of a motion. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move that Public Works proceed with alternative number two and that it also include continued communication with the neighborhood -- neighbors in the adjoining areas about the process and potential plans if that moves forward in the future. Zaremba: And putting a sign on the property? Hoaglun: And -- yes. Thank you. And that would include putting up a sign of a potential future water storage facility. Zaremba: Second that. de Weerd: Okay. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll-Call: Bird, abstain; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. de Weerd: Okay. All -- the ayes have it. I was going to say all ayes. MOTION CARRIED: TWO AYES. ONE ABSTAIN. ONE ABSENT. de Weerd: Okay. We are at the end of our agenda. Great way to start out the new year. Very unusual, too. Hoaglun: These high school kids are lucky, unless they need us to talk longer, but I don't think so. Bird: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move we adjourn. Zaremba: Second. Meridian City Council January 4, 2011 Page 11 of 11 de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carries. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:34 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) _~---° MA OR TAp Y De WEERD ATTES ~ i (I i ~t DATE APPROVED