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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2011-01-04 SpecialMeridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:05 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, Jamie Leslie, and Robert Simison. 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: Okay. I will go ahead and start tonight's special meeting agenda by -- for the record it is Tuesday, January 4th. It's a few minutes after 6:00. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk. Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda de Weerd: Item No. 2 is adoption of the agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move adoption of the special meeting agenda. Bird: Second. de Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as presented. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. Item 3: City Survey Presentation by Becky Yalch with Info Group/ORC de Weerd: Item 3 is our city survey presentation. I'd like to welcome Becky with us. She with ORC. Council, you do have -- I see you all brought your binders, but I didn't, Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 2 of 15 and I will turn this over to Becky. Becky, if you can pull that mike towards you. Yes. Thank you. Yalch: So, I'm glad to be here and this is the first survey that you have done, which is always kind of an exciting time to kind of get a different impression of how people think, because usually the experience is that you sit here and you have your meetings and you have public comment and -- and the people that come and do public comment aren't always typical of the people in Meridian, they are either really positive, there is lots of nice things to say or sometimes they are not so positive and not so nice things to say. So, this is a real opportunity to get a really broad brush approach and broad brush feeling to that. So, it's been a very exciting time to work with you guys, it's been a great team to work with. Lots of excitement about this and Nate and I have really enjoyed working with you all. So, a little bit about this. Like I said, it's your first formal citizen survey and it was completed in November 2010 and, really, the purpose of this is to set some real baseline measures of what it is that citizens currently require, currently expect, and what their priorities are for services and how well you're doing in those regards. We have a set of four measures that we use to measure performance on quality of life and, then, your quality of city services and, then, what this is, like I said, it's a baseline, so this sets up your tool to measure changes over time and. cities typically will pick some kind of, you know, time period to replicate the study. Some cities do it every year. That's kind of a lot. That's really frequent. It depends on how fast you can change, I guess, is one of the things and how fast your environment is changing. But most cities tend to do it on a bi-annual basis and sometimes about a three year basis in between. So, that's something as you go forward you will want to think about. The other thing that we have done here is that -- and we don't have these results now and will tell you why as soon as I finished my statement here, but we -- ORC has a city marks program is what you use and we set a set of benchmark standards. We will have those in Q1 of 2011. So, somewhere in mid February, very early March at the very latest. The cool thing is that you're going to be comparing your results to very, very current measures, as opposed to something just a couple years old, and since things have changed rather radically in the past couple years for cities that we wanted to make sure it was the most current and what we will do when we come back and get you this you will get compared to cities nationwide, cities in the mountain west and also we will pick cities of comparable size that you will compare your results to, so you will have a lot of kind of sense of where you stand. We do have some benchmarking on our five star rating, which I will show you -- the full benchmark will be coming. What this used is what we call is a CDP sampling methodology and it uses an address-based sample, which reaches, basically, all residents in Meridian, so instead of picking up the phone and trying to do an RUD telephone sample or a telephone directory, something like that, what we do is we go to the postal service and they have a current file of every household in Meridian, know exactly where they live, literally, down to the latitude and longitude of their house and we selected a random sample of Meridian households from that database. Then what we did is we sent the database our sample out and matched it for telephone numbers, as well as household characteristics and if the household had a telephone number that's a -- typically a listed or published land line telephone and those people, because they have listed their telephone number, will typically pick their Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 3 of 15 phone up and talk to us. So, those people got a letter saying, hey, you have been selected to do the survey, we really value your input, we are going to be calling you. We also gave them a toll free number that they could call into. The other group of people that are in there and those -- it will come back to the database and they didn't have a telephone number attached. Those households are either households that have chosen to not list their telephone number for whatever reason or they are people that have cell phone only and those are never in any kind of directory. So, those people -- because they are a very different group of people, they tend to be younger, they tend to be more mobile, they tend to be coming in from other areas, those people what we did is we sent them a letter saying, hey, you guys are really important, too, and we'd like you to do the survey. You have the option to do it online and it had a user name and a password they could go onto or you could call us with this toll free number. Most of the people when they get that go online. We had a couple call us and do it. So, the target goal for this study was to do 500 completed surveys. We actually did 575. Two hundred and fifty-nine were done by phone and 316 were done online. And we have some other results in the full report you can see, but we had a lot of people come online very, very quickly. So, people were really excited about doing the survey and it also shows that you're a pretty connected community and people like to do it that way. What this -- what we did is we also stratified the sample to insure representation of the four big regions here in Meridian. They were defined by census blocks, but they also, basically, you know, mirror your -- your precincts and so this is a map of the four regions in which we surveyed and you will see in the full report, as well as some of what I will present tonight, some of the differences by region. A little bit about the survey process, too, as you can see that by using this approach you get a generally representative and all inclusive sample of the people. So, the column in the middle there that says 2010 survey unweighted, that's the data that we just simply got back from people. This is who responded to us and we compared it to that middle column which was Meridian population, which is the data from the American Community Survey. So, you can see that, you know, we got a few more men than the Meridian population and that was because we had like 60 percent of the -- 60 or 65 percent of the people that came online and did the survey were men, which is kind of a surprising thing, because usually women do surveys more than men, so -- but, apparently, the men here are great so long as you hit them online. We still under represented the 18 to 34 year old group relative to what we would like to see in a population. We worked really, really hard to kind of boost that number up, but it was -- they are just hard to get here and I think they might feel a little disenfranchised. We got a little bit high on the single adult household, a little bit high on the children, but it was quite good. Same thing with dwelling type and the income is relatively represented. What we do on the back end of it, though, is we do weight the data by age and gender, so that the results really do represent and we can project it to the population. Okay. A couple of key findings. One of the things we did and we like to start with this question, it's an open-ended question and we just ask, you know, what do you think is the most important issue facing this city, okay? And it gets people kind of warmed up to that and it's not surprising what people said here. Growth, sprawl, type of combination thing and traffic congestion. And I have to say driving in here tonight that exit out there is quite something. It was all -- it was Seattle level traffic off that freeway. They said there was something going on, but I was quite surprised, Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 4 of 15 because I don't remember it a couple years ago being quite that bad, so I would say the traffic congestion up there. The next question we asked -- we have a series of five questions that we ask to kind of get a general overall measure and it feeds into a rating system that you will be in. But, basically, Meridian's quality of life exceeds the residents' expectation. You had 89 percent saying it exceeds their expectation. So, very, very high rating there. The next one you're going to kind of notice something here as we go through these next three slides. Somewhere you will see that the quality of city services exceeds resident expectation. But before we had 89 percent for quality of life, we have 82 percent for city services. So, a little bit lower. Not a huge difference, but something that you might want to think about in saying, well, you know, that might be an area of focus and we will get there. The third question we asked is to what extent do you feel the city is headed in the right or the wrong direction and these are all scaled in a little bit more detail, but I combined them for this purpose and what we see here is, again, the majority and a pretty large majority say that the city is headed in the right direction, but that 78 percent, a little more than the 82 percent that was on the slide before. So, we are starting to -- we are starting to see a little bit of a trend here. What we saw is that there is a segment that's coming in there that that's neutral. These are people that are younger residents, moved into the city in the last, you know, three to four years, so they are kind of sitting there saying I'm not so sure which direction it's headed in and, then, your long-term residents are the ones that are coming in there and are more likely to say it's headed in the wrong direction and that's not a surprising finding for a city that's gone through as much growth over the years as you have, those people that have been here from the beginning, they are a little frustrated sometimes with that. Hoaglun: I got to press a button now. I'm sorry. Do you -- and I haven't had the chance to go through all of this. Do you do cross tabs where we can look at that right direction, wrong direction, and you talked about primarily long-term residents versus young residents, does that breakdown by age demographics? Is that -- is there someplace in there that we can -- Yalch: Yeah. There is a whole set of tabs that -- Hoaglun: Okay. Yalch: -- Robert has that breaks it down by gender, age, geography, a whole series. Lots of details. Hoaglun: I'm just thinking some of the older folks lament the fact of how this used to be a small farming community of 5,000 and it's -- you know. Yalch: Exactly. When you look at this same -- a similar city for the city of Bellevue, which has, you knew, gone through a very similar sort of thing from being, basically, a bedroom community to being the fourth largest city in the state with a lot of stuff going on and the long-term residents there aren't real happy with the change and there is -- you know, you can do things about it and help communicate with them and alleviate their concerns, but you can't stop change. The last -- the fourth question that we asked Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 5 of 15 that we look at here is the extent to which people feel they get good value for the tax dollars that they pay and you see, again, the large majority, 72 percent, say they are getting their money's worth, but, you know, you go back to the previous slide, you know, and it was 78 percent, now we are down to that measure of 72 percent. And so it's kind of gone down and it sort of indicates there is some areas where -- for improvement and it's mainly I think a function of communication. Again what we see is the people that are younger and those living in multi-family dwelling units are the ones that have the neutral or more likely to have the neutral or negative opinion and that's the group that oftentimes feels a little disenfranchised from a city. You know, they don't -- they don't own a home, in this particular environment they probably have a little more angst about the economy and some things like that, but they often feel a little bit separated, because they don't have the strong ties to the community. So, the next area that we looked at is we have a -- our city marks program offers you the choice to pick between about 66 matrix on quality of life and quality of service and you all picked -- now I'm not going to remember the numbers -- it's like 17 plus 24 -- 41 or so measures that you picked to use and these are the ones in Q1 you will see benchmarks for. But here are your baseline results for quality of life and what we saw here is that consistent with what -- across the 17 quality of life measures that you chose, Meridian does a good job. You know, you have got an overall mean of 3.51, which is well above the mid point of three. It's pretty consistent across the city as well. The only difference is in south Meridian. So, you know, it's amore -- the area that's had more of the growth and some of the -- did you annex as well out in that area? You annexed out south of Meridian or -- as much as Boise has? Okay. You just -- okay. So, that -- you know, that area has been the faster growing area. In looking at the individual matrix that are in there, you can kind of see some areas where, you know, you have got very consistent levels of service across being a place to raise a family, that's really the strong point, being a good place to live, public safety rates very high, and it's consistent and having very high quality neighborhoods rates very high and it's consistent across the area. The areas that rate the lowest are public transportation services, providing options for travel, providing -- making sure that people can move in their cars safely. Those are the sorts of things where you're not doing as well and that's very consistent with that very first thing I said, what's the biggest problem sprawl, growth, and traffic and congestion. If you look at south Meridian, they are the ones -- and I have got them circled there -- that expressed the greatest concern about what are you doing in the future for planning and, then, what are you doing in terms of making it easier for me to get around and I do recall we did some focus groups -- kind of mini focus groups when we were planning for the questionnaire to test the questionnaire design that we have come up with, that a lot of people just on their own brought up the fact that we would like to be able to have more bike lanes and more pedestrian things and a lot of it seemed to be some underpass and connection systems that came out of the south into the areas where the lanes are more fully developed. So, something to think about there. When you look at your quality of services matrix, you pick 24 here, and, again, you get quite high ratings, only slightly below a four and, again, well above the mean. The mid point is three. What we see here are two areas so -- where the satisfactory ranges aren't quite as high. South Meridian, again, and, then, to a lesser extent central. So, when you look at the 23 areas -- the areas where you do better than your overall means, so -- and, basically, Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 6 of 15 remember on this you do well on all of these things pretty much, but you do better than -- better I guess is one way to look at it -- on these attributes and you can see that the big one that comes out is -- it's public safety in terms of fire protection, number one, and, then, not all that far below emergency medical services. You also do really well in terms of your parks. A little less so well in terms of the police department, but still well above the mean. And, then, you fall -- start to go down a little bit, but still very, very well in terms of, you know, garbage services, sewer services, water service. So, basically, what this is saying is you do really, really well in terms of your basic services. In terms of those two areas that are a little bit off, you can see that south Meridian is pretty much down across the board on all of these top areas, fire protection, quality of the parks, availability of parks, the whole thing. They are just generally a little bit more negative. For central Meridian what you see is a little bit of concerns about services for youth, garbage and trash services, water services, a little bit about parks. These are the areas that we -- that you rated below your overall means for these. So, again, you know, your ratings are high, with the exception of public transportation services, which we had in there twice and -- but they are lower than that -- kind of that overall mean for you. And knowing, again, that public transportation is not something that you actually can do much about, except for talking to Valley Ride about doing it, but it was included here to kind of show at a -- I guess at a regional level what an issue it is. But, again, here are the areas where, you know, you see -- and these probably aren't surprises to you, but it really shows you where -- that, you know, you are in tune with things, is, you know, what's the available -- lower on the availability of recreation centers and facilities, low on the availability and variety of special events, low on programs for seniors, which is an issue as your community starts to age and as we all happen to be doing these days and, then, low on availability of recreation programs and classes. Again, here is what we see is a couple kind of key points for those two areas that were less satisfied. In the south they indicated some less satisfaction with building services, which includes sort of the code enforcement, as well as the new residential development types of things. Central, animal control popped out a bit. Central they'd like to have more special events, maybe, because they feel closer to the downtown area and have hopes for that. And, then, south the availability of recreation centers and facilities. So, you know, some targeted improvements in those areas where possible can actually raise the overall score. What we do is -- that's unique to our program is that we have what we call a five star rating and we, basically, take five questions, the four I showed you initially, plus one other one, which is to what extent does the city meet your -- your ideal for quality of life and we have a mathematical formula that we have tested and we developed it on a nationwide survey that, basically, then, rates cities from a one star city to a five star city, with half points in between. So, it's kind of like a hotel rating is the way to look at them. What it does is it really provides us the ability to really say here is where your -- here is where you stand and on these five measures potential where you're either aligned or misaligned with other cities that are of your rating and, then, we use it for further analysis. So, you're a four star city and just FYI, we haven't found a five star city yet anywhere that we have done this in, so I think we purposely need a card to become a five star city, you know, I'm trying to think, you know, what's four seasons -- the city things. But we haven't hit that one yet. But you are a four star city and you are fairly consistent across the board, with the exception that -- that central Meridian the greater Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 7 of 15 percentage gave you a slightly lower than four star rating. Coincidentally, just so you know, we do the city of Boise survey and we have done theirs for a number of years and I talked to them and they said I could tell you this, is that they are also a four star city. And the interesting thing -- and that I don't have permission to discuss as yet, but there -- they are different on their four star rating than you are. There is certain things they are stronger on and weaker on and things. So, after we get it all released we can kind of compare results. What we see -- and this is kind of an interesting graph -- is it looks to see where you stand relative to other four star cities. So, Meridian is the big solid red line and the four star cities are -- I think they are purple -- the purple dotted line you can see and what you can -- what it shows is how far off of those -- off of that you -- off that four star line you are and on the whole you can see you're pretty close and what that means -- and that's a really good thing. It means if you're relatively well aligned on every one of these measures to what people would expect and what's important to them. The only potential, you know, area where you're a little bit weak relative to other four star cities is the direction that the city is headed and that was that rating that we saw back then. And we did a little further analysis in terms of saying, well, why did you fall down there and there was a little bit of a feeling of not being sure that you have a clear strategic vision and that you can potentially improve in that area, they are building a stronger sense of community. So, that's -- again, it's not saying that you don't have a strategic vision, it's not clear, it may be a function of communicating it more effectively and, then, I think we have seen and there has been a lot of research out recently kind of with the economy kind of a real need for people to want to have more community again and maybe looking at how you can build that community and I think that's why you see the demand for rec centers and that sort of thing in here. People are really searching for that. Okay. The next thing we did is we take that four star rating and we use that to determine areas where you might want to invest resources if they are available. So, we have this matrix and I apologize, it's a little hard to read, it's a little prettier on your report, but if I don't paste it as a picture to Powerpoint it goes ballistic on me. And across the top there in blue are the things that are -- it goes from most important to the least important drivers of that five star rating. They are -- basically, the most important driver is the quality of place and the quality of life and the least important driver -- although that doesn't mean it's not important, it just happens to be relative to these other things less important -- how effectively you communicate with your citizens. Okay. The next thing in there is that you will see the red areas are areas where your ratings -- remember we talked about your ratings and you had -- above your overall mean and below your overall mean, these areas -- the red areas are areas where you're below your overall mean. It doesn't mean you're doing bad, it just means that there is some opportunities for improvement there. The green areas are strengths and the yellow areas are areas that you might want to monitor, because they are kind of sitting right on the line here and, unfortunately, the colors don't come through really well on here. So, let me find this real quick. So, what you see here in terms of quality of place, areas are really strong, are place to live and place to raise children, but the area -- and the little key there -- it's supposed to be a key, not a finger pointing -- is that that's -- it's saying that these areas that are really important to the people and so there the idea of it being a place to live and do business is really important, but it's an area where you're kind of below your overall average in this area. And since your motto is a place to live and do Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 8 of 15 -- live and to work, that's something that may come up in play. In terms of quality of life in what I just said in terms of what's driving that in the wrong direction is building a stronger sense of community, letting people, you know, band together and be happy. Also in there as the traffic comes into play, a strong local workforce and, then, providing these options for moving around besides driving. And I'm sorry I couldn't read this and so your thing that's least important is enforcement, not communication. I probably really confused you. In terms of communication, what's most important for you to focus on is getting people to feel that they are involved in the decisions that are being made. Again, it doesn't say you're doing -- you know, you're not doing that, but letting them know and letting people -- and providing feedback in terms of how you're using some of that involvement is always a aood thina_ And_ thPn_ iust nc?nPral Pxnartinn communication with them. Utility services. The only thing to monitor there is your water services. In terms of basic services, you know, take a look, even though those ratings were high, you might have them take a look a little bit and follow up with, you know, where are our police services a little bit low, where are there potential issues with emergency medical services and that's something that you might just want to monitor over time to see if there is indicators. I don't think they are a significant problem, Ijust -- since they kind of popped out there I said, well, let's take a look at them. In terms of quality parks, looking at the quality and variety of special events, the availability of recreational centers and facilities, having programs for seniors and, then, having -- and, then, while it's not important, your low is the availability of recreation facility and centers. So, that's how that matrix is read. Bird: Madam Mayor, before she -- de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I have got a question. We show -- in fire we show pretty good and emergency we -- medical we need to do it and as the question was asked -- was that asked as one? Because our fire is actually our emergency medical. Yalch: They are actually asked as three separate questions. Bird: That's -- I knew that -- Yalch: Yeah. Bird: -- one was asked for fire, one was asked for medical, and one was asked for police. Yalch: Right. We generally ask -- Bird: The medical and fire our place is the same -- same people. Our fire department has a paramedic on board. They are medical people. And I happen to be -- because my wife got this phone call and that was one of the questions. Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 9 of 15 Yalch: And we always ask them separately, because in a sense if nothing else they come out in a different bus type of thing. Some big red trucks and some have white and red. And they provide their different functions. Bird: Well, yeah, they -- they assume that with fire, but it isn't -- it isn't -- the question should have been fire and medical, which is the same. Yalch: Right. I mean I think what Iwould -- maybe the thing that this says, then, the fact that, you know, they -- you have got a slightly lower rating for the most -- but it was still very, very high -- is to maybe communicate a little bit more to people and let them know that, you know, they are one and the same and what that means in terms of quality. So, a lot of times when you see ratings that kind of pop, you say, well, you know, no, it's not that they are bad and there is a problem with them, it's a communication issues, so -- Bird: Thank you. Yalch: And we will monitor -- you know, I recommend monitoring that as you move forward here. So, another area that you had us look at was to understand, you know, where you should allocate dollars in terms of investments to move forward here. And what we did is we asked people to -- on an open end basis we had this list of ten items here that we said what's most important and, then, we read the list again say what's second most important and we read the list again what's third most important and you see that right now -- and we are seeing this all over the place, every place we do this, everybody says you need to attract and retain your businesses and it's just -- you just can't get past the economy these days, so -- and this is all relatively consistent with everything we have seen here. The next thing once the economy improves and dollars start to flow, where do they want -- if they need you -- want you to get back to really planning for the future and where you're going to go with growth, providing support for public transportation, and, then, insuring a high quality public safety and those are all relatively similar. The third priority is, again, more mobility in terms of bike paths and sidewalks and your downtown redevelopment, a lot of interest in that. Your fourth priority is providing more community services. This is some of the parks and recreations and that sort of thing, as well as services for youth and seniors. More parks and open space. And, then, thinking about environmental protection. And the last area is investments into visual and performing arts programs and what we see there I think is you're saying, okay, you know, you're saying it's important to us, we really want to have it, but here they may be saying -- but maybe the money should come privately, as opposed to from the city or some combination of aprivate-public partnership. Another thing we asked is that -- we asked them if you -- if we were to spend dollars and invest in new programs and services here, where would you want to do the investment and, again, public transportation just comes out really, really high. I used to do quite a bit of work for Valley Ride, so I have been watching these figures over time and that's really good to see, because those figures used to be like down there in the bottom and like -- so, it's nice to see them here. But the goal to having public transportation -- which, like said, you don't have much to do with, is the bike lanes and the pedestrian pathways. Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 10 of 15 Anything to make this a more mobile and walk able city people are interested in. They are also interested in environmental programs. A little less so in terms of wetlands protection and things. What they are not interested in seeing you invest in is dog parks and that's what -- that one was way down and they aren't interested in seeing -- as interested in seeing is a priority at this time the performing arts center. So, very clear divide of opinions here. Hoaglun: Becky, do you -- I'm sorry, Madam Mayor. Becky, before you move on. I can't remember looking at the original survey were those all the options that we gave them? Yalch: Right. We read this and we said would you rate this as a priority -- how much of a priority of investment. Hoaglun: Okay. That's what I -- that included all of them. Yalch: Right. Hoaglun: Okay. Thanks. Yalch: We did every one of them. Yes. And you will see -- I have an interesting finding about dog parks here. de Weerd: Could it also be in how the question was asked? I had a couple of people who had received the phone call and they said that what they didn't understand is that dog parks -- they just figured dogs could run loose in the park and that is not the case. Yalch: Right. de Weerd: And so they -- they didn't understand it would be an off leash area that you don't already have that opportunity in other parks and I just had three different people ask that. So, I wondered could we have framed that question differently without trying to bias them. I mean that's -- Yalch: Right. And what we did -- I just looked at it, we said building dog parks and sort guess maybe something that they would understand, but I see your point. So, that may be something that, you know, could warrant some follow up or to take this particular finding was with a bit of a grain of salt. You will see a little bit later I -- we asked people if they have a dog and I did a little cross-tab to show whether they should invest in dog parks, whether they had a dog or not, and there is, you know, obviously, a huge difference there that you will see. But that's agood -- that's good feedback and, yes, developing off leash dog parks and things is probably the -- de Weerd: Yeah. I never would have thought of it either until it was brought in several different incidences. Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 11 of 15 Yalch: Right. de Weerd: So -- oh, wow. Okay. Yalch: You also -- you will always have a section in your questionnaire to ask for specific things that are relevant to you and we had a couple topics in here beyond the budget priorities and the first one was whether or not you should allow smoking in parks and -- and, basically, Meridian residents do support on the whole prohibiting smoking in your parks. And, in fact, they feel more strongly that you should prohibit it -- because we asked the same question in Boise -- they feel even more strongly than the people in Boise that you should not allow smoking in your parks. Boise was much more split. Boise residents were much more split on this particular finding. So, I thought that was very interesting. The next one that was of interest was, you know, was this whole dog park issue at odds as to what extent -- how many people actually have dogs. Unfortunately, American Community Survey hasn't included that on their -- their questionnaire these days, but, you know, not surprising half of Meridian residents have one or more dogs and of those that have dogs, you know, about half of them have two or more dogs, because you have got a mean of dogs per household of 1.5, so it works out half having one and, you know, half having more than one or some kind of, you know, mix of that. So, we did a projection at this -- you know, there is some error around this, but there is a little over 16,800 doggy residents in Meridian and the high per capita, actually, is the northwest Meridian. So, we have 64 -- I was trying to -- 64,000 residents and 16,000 dogs, so -- that's a lot of dogs. But as you look at -- going back to that question of, you know, should we have dog -- you know, should Meridian have some dog parks and you can see that if you have -- if you're a dog owner, you know, a priority -- do the math in my head -- 42 percent saying, you know, yes, invest as a priority, versus those that don't have dogs, 18 percent. You're always going to see that dichotomy, you know, of things. And so it's become a real sales job in terms of convincing that there is a benefit to everybody as a whole to have dog parks versus not. So -- and I think that that's what I put in for tonight. de Weerd: Thank you, Becky. Any questions from Council? Bird: I have only one. Good survey. de Weerd: We appreciate it. Zaremba: I was just going to add I really appreciate the entire survey. I was the one that was a little pushy about having the public transportation questions in there and in our local area the reason that it does make a difference to the city is that there is no funding mechanism for the local public transportation. The system that exists in Boise comes out of Boise's general fund, even though they pay that money to Valley Regional Transit and they administer it. Same thing in Nampa and Caldwell. The citizens are paying for that service through their local property taxes into the general fund of the city and, then, out to the Valley Regional Transit and I don't anticipate our legislature enabling any other way of funding it soon and -- and so I do want to make it an issue in Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 12 of 15 our budget. So, it is a city -- you mentioned that we don't have any control of it, but the reason that I asked for it to be in there is that I see how high it rated and I think we need to take control of it. Yalch: Boise did include in their survey -- and I think they are about to post theirs on their website, so you will be able to see it all. Zaremba: Uh-huh. Yalch: A question about the local option tax and we are seeing stronger support locally, but you're still not at the 60 to -- 60 percent range that Valley Ride and everybody agrees you're going to need to go forward with something like that. So, I think Valley Ride has some plans to go back out and look region-wide at that a little later this year as they have got some funding -- I know they have a grant requested for that. de Weerd: Well -- and I think this might have been another area that -- they couldn't have answered it that we had a good system, because we don't have one. So, how else could they have answered it? Yalch: I think what they -- I think what they are saying -- because I think that's why it was good to ask it, you know, how does it rate, well, no, it doesn't rate very well, because you don't have one and it wasn't surprising that it was that low on the totem pole. But I think it was good to add the question should you invest, because I think it does say that, you know, along -- the message is just mobility and being able to move without always having to be in the car, is a very strong message that came out of this. de Weerd: Yeah. Well, again, thank you for being here this evening. We appreciate -- Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, I did have one other question and this is kind of looking ahead. You know, if we do this survey again in a couple years from now, how do you -- do you recommend we ask the very same questions? Because there may be some things we want to do differently next time and, then, how do you balance that to the previous survey, because not all the questions will be the same? Yalch: Yeah. Like I said, I think, you know, you want to keep some core questions and would, you know, look really hard at those city mark questions that we have, because -- that we included. It was those 42 or 44 -- 41. I guess it was 41. de Weerd: Forty-one. Yalch: Can't do my math now. That we included, you know, and trying to retain as many of those as possible, because that will allow you to start to see a trend, especially if you're investing in -- you know, look at them and say this wasn't necessary. And you had a lot of parks questions, so you might be able to drop some of those. Sorry. Hoaglun: Our parks director is sitting over there. He just frowned. That's all. Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 13 of 15 Yalch: And like the questions about, you know, some of the investment priorities and things and that, those are the ones you chose to put in this year. You might drop some of those and put new questions in and we -- the survey is arranged in such a way so that you can easily add and drop, so that, you know, it doesn't cost you an arm or a leg to make these particular changes, so the whole thing doesn't have to be redone. Hoaglun: Okay. Great. Thank you. Bird: Madam Mayor? de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: If we are done and -- I would move that we get the final draft, put it into a resolution, and bring it forward for public acceptance. de Weerd: Okay. I don't know if we are quite at that point yet. I would like to bring it back for -- are we there yet, Robert? Bird: Well, all these say final on them. Nary: Mr. Bird, I think the final on there is the data, not the text. So, I think the data is the same. It's the text that needs to be finalized and, then, it would come back in front of you folks for adoption. Bird: I withdraw that. Let's just let her go. Yalch: And we should have afinal -- according to our final editing process right now, so some of these text changes -- like I noticed that Meridian has lower case in more than one place as I was going through it, so we will catch all that and run it through Robert one more time and, then, we are ready. The numbers don't change. de Weerd: Okay. Yalch: That's always the important thing. The only thing is the numbers. de Weerd: Well, thank you for being here. Yalch: Thank you. Item 4: Executive Session per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(f) - To Consider and Advise its Legal Representatives in Pending Litigation de Weerd: Okay. Council, we are at Item No. 4. I would entertain a motion. Bird: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 14 of 15 de Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(f). Hoaglun: Second. Zaremba: Second. de Weerd: f have a motion and a second. Madam Clerk, will you, please, call roll. Roll-Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, absent; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. de Weerd: All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. EXECUTIVE SESSION: (6:45 p.m. to 7:10 p.m.) de Weerd: Okay. I would entertain a motion to come out of Executive Session. Bird: So moved. Hoaglun: Second. de Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. de Weerd: Do I have a motion to adjourn? Bird: So moved. Hoaglun: Second. de Weerd: I have a motion to adjourn our special meeting. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: THREE AYES. ONE ABSENT. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 7:10 P.M. Meridian City Council Special Meeting January 4, 2011 Page 15 of 15 (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) -_ ~ G~ G% MAYOR,' MMY De WEERD ~ ~'' . ~ ~ ,~ Fo AI~EI = s~~L = 9 0~ .~O G.ST /; 1S'~ ~ Q•~,ti~ 9 //~~'~%, ~UNT~ ~ ~~~`~~~~` DATE APPROVED ~~~ OLMAN, CITY CLERK