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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2012-10-09.~~ ~~s~ CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MEETING AGENDA Tuesday, October 09, 2012 at 3:00 PM Roll-Call Attendance X Brad Hoaglun X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd 2. 3. 4. Pledge of Allegiance Adoption of the Agenda Adopted Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 2-3) A. Addendum No. 10 to Agreement for City Prosecutor/Criminal Legal Services Dated November 1, 2002 with the City of Boise B. Lease Addendum Between the Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Meridian to Provide for Temporary Access to City Employee Parking Lot During the Construction of the Meridian Split Corridor Project, Phase 2 C. Farm Lease Between the City of Meridian and American Harvest, LLC for Approximately 77 Acres of Land on East Lake Hazel Road Item Vacated D. X David Zaremba X Charlie Rountree Resolution No. _ Between the City Approximately 77 Item Vacated Approval of Farm Lease of Meridian and American Harvest, LLC for Acres of Land on East Lake Hazel Road E. Final Order for Approval: TEC 12-009 Three Corners by Three Corners, LLC Located Southeast Corner of Chinden Boulevard and N. Locust Grove Road Request: Two (2) Year Time Extension on the Preliminary Plat for Three Corners Subdivision Moved off of Consent Agenda to Item 6 -Approved Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 09, 2012 Page 1 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. ~~. F. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: Public Hearing: PP 12-010 Mulberry Subdivision by Settlers Park, LLC Located Southwest Corner of N. Meridian Road and W. Ashby Drive Request: Preliminary Plat Approval Consisting of Five (5) Building Lots on 2.4 Acres of Land in an R-15 Zoning District G. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: CUP 12- 006 Mulberry Subdivision by Settlers Park, LLC Located at Southwest Corner of N. Meridian Road and W. Asby Drive Request: Conditional Use Permit Approval of aMulti-Family Development in an R-15 Zoning District Consisting of Thirty- Six (36) Residential Units on 2.4 Acres of Land H. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Order for Approval: SHP 12-003 Whitehawk Subdivision by GGR, LLC Located at 2134 E. Franklin Road Request: Short Plat Approval Consisting of Three (3) Building Lots on 2.11 Acres of Land in a C-G Zoning District I. Resolution No. 12-878: VAC 12-004 Southeast Corner Marketplace by The Land Group No. 2 Located Southeast Corner of E. Ustick Road and N. Eagle Road Request: Vacate a Public Domestic Water and Sewer Easement Platted on Lots 10-12, Block 1 of Southeast Corner Marketplace Subdivision No. 2 (File FP 07-020) 5. Community Items/Presentations A. Police Department: Swearing In of New Police Officer (Pg 3-4) B. Check Presentation from Light My Fire Organization (Pg 4-6) C. Economic Development CORE Update by Earl Sullivan (Pg 6- 8) 6. Items Moved From Consent Agenda Item 4E Moved to Item 6 - Approved (Pg 8-9) 7. Action Items A. Public Hearing: Republic Services Company 2012 Rate Increase (Pg 9-10) B. Resolution No. 12-879: A Resolution Adopting the Annual Rate Adjustment for Solid Waste Collection Services by Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 09, 2012 Page 2 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Republic Services Company and Authorizing the City of Meridian Utility Billing Department to Collect Such Rates Approved (Pg 9-10) 8. Department Reports A. Public Works Department: Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Update (Pg 10-16) B. Public Works Department: Strategic Plan Update (Pg 16-34) C. Community Development: Transportation Update on Transportation Projects, Priorities and Studies - Includes Discussion About Roadway, Intersection and Interchange Construction Projects (Pg 34-44) 9. Ordinances A. Third Reading of Ordinance No. 12-1528: Downtown Core Sidewalk Facility Standards, Title 8, Chapter 1 Ordinance with City of Meridian Improvement Standards Approved (Pg 44-45) B. Ordinance No. 12-1531: An Ordinance (RZ 12-001) of the Mayor and City Council of the City of Meridian for the Re-Zone of a Parcel of Property Known as Paramount East Subdivision Located on the West Side of N. Meridian Road Between W. Producer and E. McMillan Road, Meridian, Idaho Approved (Pg 45-46) 10. Future Meeting Topics Adjourned at 5:28 p.m. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 09, 2012 Page 3 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:00 p.m., Tuesday, October 9, 2012, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, David Zaremba, Keith Bird, and Brad Hoaglun. Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Bruce Chatterton, Pete Friedman, Sonya Watters, Caleb Hood, Tom Barry, Tim Curns, Jeff Lavey, John Overton, Mark Niemeyer, Warren Stewart, Steve Siddoway and Dean Willis. Item 1: Roll-call Attendance: Roll call. X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd De Weerd: I will go ahead and start this afternoon's meeting. First I'd like to welcome you all here at the Meridian City Council meeting. It's nice to see some familiar faces out there. We will start -- well, for the record it is Tuesday, October 9th. It 3:00 o'clock. We will start with roll call attendance, Madam Clerk. Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance De Weerd: Item No. 2 is our Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the pledge. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: A couple items to note on our agenda. Under 4-C and D, staff has requested to vacate those items. 4-E there is -- staff has requested to move that to Item 6. Under 4-I that resolution number is 12-878. Under Item 6, then, we will have moved 4-E. 7-B is resolution number 12-879. 9-B is Ordinance No. 12-1531. And with those changes, Madam Mayor, I move adoption of the agenda. Rountree: Second. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 2 of 48 De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as amended. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 4: Consent Agenda A. Addendum No. 10 to Agreement for City Prosecutor/Criminal Legal Services Dated November 1, 2002 with the City of Boise B. Lease Addendum Between the Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Meridian to Provide for Temporary Access to City Employee Parking Lot During the Construction of the Meridian Split Corridor Project, Phase 2 F. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: Public Hearing: PP 12-010 Mulberry Subdivision by Settlers Park, LLC Located Southwest Corner of N. Meridian Road and W. Ashby Drive Request: Preliminary Plat Approval Consisting of Five (5) Building Lots on 2.4 Acres of Land in an R-15 Zoning District G. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: CUP 12- 006 Mulberry Subdivision by Settlers Park, LLC Located at Southwest Corner of N. Meridian Road and W. Asby Drive Request: Conditional Use Permit Approval of aMulti-Family Development in an R-15 Zoning District Consisting of Thirty- Six (36) Residential Units on 2.4 Acres of Land H. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and ®rder for Approval: SHP 12-003 Whitehawk Subdivision by GGR, LLC Located at 2134 . Franklin Road Request: Short Plat Approval Consisting of Three (3) Building Lots on 2.11 Acres of Land in a C-G Zoning District I. Resolution No. 12-878: VAC 12-004 Southeast Corner Marketplace by The Land Group No. 2 Located Southeast Corner of E. Ustick Road and N. Eagle Road Request: Vacate a Public Domestic Water and Sewer Easement Platted on Lots 10-12, Block 1 of Southeast Corner Marketplace Subdivision No. 2 (File FP 07-020) De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 3 of 48 De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: At staff's request we will remove Items 4-C and 4-D and we will also move 4- E to Item 6 and 4-I is resolution number 12-878. So, Madam Mayor, I move approval of the Consent Agenda and Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda as changed. Madam Clerk, roll call, please. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 5: Community Items/Presentations A. Police Department: Swearing In of New Police Officer De Weerd: We are at Item 5, our Community Presentations. We will start today with Chief -- where is the chief? Chief Lavey. You know, I will tell you, chief, this particular one has a certain interest to me. I would like to say welcome to the right side of the law. Lavey; Madam Mayor, Council, I understand he's already been called to the principal's office. He was up meeting with you before he started with us, so -- De Weerd: He came in voluntarily. Lavey: I'm also aware that had he put you down as a reference he may not be employed with us, but -- so, his decision making is probably pretty good right now. This comes a time where we take the opportunity to welcome our new employees. Dustin came to us a couple of weeks ago and we always do the formal swearing in so he can go out and start working the road, but we also like to do the ceremonial swearing in and bring him and introduce him to Council, introduce him to the community as a whole. Oftentimes there is nobody in the audience, except maybe Ralph and a couple of officers. It's really kind of nice to see that the chairs are filled with people today, so they can see who is working for the city. But one of the things I'd like to do is just take an opportunity to share a few words about Officer Moe. He actually lives in the Treasure Valley. He's from the Treasure Valley. He's a graduate of Meridian High School and before coming to work for us he worked several years in Owyhee county as a sheriff's deputy and, then, he came into dark side like myself and he now works for the police department. So, we'd like to introduce Dustin Moe. What I would like to do is bring his wife Amber up as well. She has the weapon. And, Amber, if you would stand right there for me and, Dustin, raise your hand and repeat after me. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 4 of 48 (Oath repeated by Dustin Moe.) Lavey: I -- state your name -- do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution and laws of the state of Idaho, and the laws and ordinances of the City of Meridian. That I will abide by the law enforcement code of ethics, policies and procedures of those of the Meridian Police Department. That I will obey all lawful orders and directives of those appointed over me and that I will, to the best of my ability, safely discharge all the duties of police officer in and for the City of Meridian, state of Idaho, so help me God. Welcome aboard. De Weerd: Well, welcome, Officer Moe. Certainly when I first met him his dad was serving with Keith Bird and I on the parks commission and he was a wrestler in high school and we are very proud of you. I almost feel as proud as your parents. Oh, my gosh. Any comments from Council? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I know that, Officer Moe, you will continue on the fine tradition of our Meridian Police Department and the good men and women that work there and we are just glad to have you as part of the community and the city and -- and, you know, your dad kind of got here first and he kind of -- he set the bar awfully high for you, so -- Moe: He did. De Weerd: Welcome. Rountree: Welcome. Zaremba: Welcome. B. Check Presentation from Light IVIy Fire Organization De Weerd: Okay. Item 5-B is a check presentation. Chief. Is Pam here as well? Niemeyer: She is. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Thank you. Pam did ask me to do the talking tonight. She's fighting allergies and a sinus infection and so she begged me to come up here and I said I would sure do it. I do want to bring Bob Ricketts up and I see they are coming up for the presentation itself. I do want to introduce Bob as the spokesperson for the Light My Fire organization. This has been an organization that we have been involved with for several years now through their fundraising efforts. They have been strong supporters of our fire department through the Light My Fire golf tournament and the banquet. I know you and I did some battle on an auction item one year, but those funds are very important to us, because they go to Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 5 of 48 our prevention programs and our burn out fund and as we have seen over the last few weeks in the structure fires that we have had and displaced families, that burn out fund comes in really handy for folks that are trying to get their feet back on the ground. So, with that I'm not going to steal too much of Bob's thunder, I'll turn it over for a presentation for the group. Ricketts: Thank you, chief. It's my honor again and pleasure to be here to be able to present the City of Meridian Fire Department and burn out fund with some money that we have been able to raise over the last year and I want to give due credit. We have the Light My Fire committee. This is a representation of the committee. These are the people who really do the work and put the countless hours in and time organizing the events that we have, which is the February event, which is a silent auction and live auction and dinner and, then, we have a golf tournament in June also that raises additional money and, you know, along with them and along with all those who participate in these events is how we raise the money. I would also like to crow a little bit about, you know, every dollar that we raise stays right here in our community. Not one of these people take a dime for their work and every cent goes right to the fire department to operate their fire prevention systems and programs and the -- and the displaced families with the burn out fund. And so this year it's my great pleasure to present to each the -- the fire prevention organization and the burn out fund with a check for 5,992 dollars each, for a total of over 6,000 -- or -- De Weerd: It's more than that. Ricketts: -- 11,000 dollars. So, with that I want to thank you for helping -- letting us assist you and the citizens of the City of Meridian. Bird: Thank you. Rountree: Thank you. De Weerd: We certainly appreciate the support that you give our fire department and our prevention efforts and I can tell you to the Council certainly you're invited to the upcoming one. I assume that it's next February -- February 9th and -- because you can always count on a very good time. I also can see most of your volunteers. We almost have -- well, we have half of them on now city commissions, so we can see their heart for serving and appreciate you all being here this evening -- or this afternoon. So, thank you for attending. So, mark that on your calendars, Council. February 8th. Rountree: Get a notice out to us. I don't know that I have ever seen one. Bird: Yeah, we get them. Rountree: Do we? Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 6 of 48 De Weerd: Certainly we will. And we usually have men in kilts that entertain us, so -- that's why I go. C. Economic ®evelopment CORE Update by Earl Sullivan De Weerd: Okay. Item 5-C under Community Presentations. Today we have Earl Sullivan with The Core. Welcome, Earl. Sullivan: Thank you, Madam Mayor and City Council. Thank you for letting me have the time to come in and give a brief update on what the activities of The Core have been since the last time I came and spoke with you. We have had a tremendous amount of success in getting people involved in The Core with new membership. Recently adding the HC Company, Sanna Healthcare, Bank of the Cascades, All Valley Animal Hospital, Eagle Road Professional Center and Rehab Authority just in the recent several months. We have taken a lot of activity to generate interest in The Core and some of the activities that we have been doing include the -- probably the most prolifically advertised one is the Treasure Valley Angel Fund, which was started -- the first Angel Fund that was started since the Boise Angel Fund and the only active Angel Fund in the state for a period of time was a model through the Department of Finance using Department of Commerce, the governor's office, and Department of Finance as sounding boards for a new model for developing angel funds in the state. Since, then, another Angel Fund has started on the -- kind of the backs and efforts that The Core did through those different departments and the first investment has actually been made by the Treasure Valley Angel Fund. So, we are seeing small companies get invested by Angel Funding through the efforts of The Core. We have also had a very significant meeting with the governor where we spent three hours -- a little over three hours one on one with the governor and eight CEOs from around the Treasure Valley that are in the healthcare field, focused on The Core, many of them members of The Core, educating both the Department of Commerce and the governor's office on some of the opportunities that exist, as well as some of the success stories that are happening in the state that we already have available to us. We are meeting with the vice-presidents of research for all three of the universities on a regular basis and working with them on our new keystone project, which is an initiative that The Core is undertaking that will help bring some of the research that's being done in the different universities to a commercial level and try to establish a base of operations in the Treasure Valley right here in The Core for new companies and support businesses around some of the research areas that are already fairly well advanced in our state, including things like nuclear medicine that Idaho State University is working on and some new advances in nuclear medicine, as well as nano technology, and healthcare gramatics. So, we have -- we have been spending a lot of time meeting with people trying to get some traction. I think that you have probably seen some activity on the Business Insider. We have a regular column on a monthly basis and we have had four or five columns recently talking about some of the activities I just described. We also have a lot of future events coming up. In the early part of November we are going to have Bruce Newcomb come out and speak to the membership of The Core about what the new legislative session is going to look like and what that could mean for healthcare related bills. We are also going to take a quick Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 7 of 48 trip up to the River Point campus at Washington State University and learn some lessons from what they have done in the successful economic development around healthcare in their little campus area up there that's been well heralded in the Pacific Northwest as a model for economic development in healthcare and we also have a summit that we are going to participate with St. Luke's that's going to help, again, focus on bringing some commercialization to the research that goes on in the community, helping people understand that there is a lot of opportunity in health and health-related research in the community. And, finally, I will end with one of the -- the new members that has come in recently, the Eagle Road Professional Center right across from St. Luke's has donated signage space for us and so in the next couple weeks you will see a new sign go up that will mention The Core as this area as the home of Idaho Med Tech industry and that will be on both sides of The Core as part of their donation. We will have signage out there -- as people come off the interstate right there on to Eagle Road they will be able to see The Core's name from the center and what we are doing with a call to action on our website and so just to meet with us, the volunteers. We also have a new employee, Tyler Radke is sitting in the back there, has come on recently to our firm and she is spending her entire day working on the efforts of The Core to try to build this Core competency in the state right here on the need for health and healthcare research. So, I'm happy to take any questions if anybody has any specific questions. I just felt it was appropriate with all the activity we have had to provide an update to the Gity Council with all the support that the Mayor and the Gity Council and the City of Meridian have provided to us, I want to make sure that you stay up to date on what we are doing. De Weerd: Thank you, Earl. Well, any questions from Council? Rountree: I just want to thank Earl for the effort that he puts into this and what's come out of it. But I would ask the question is there additional things the city could do? Sullivan: At this point I think that the city is showing a lot of leadership, both with the efforts of supporting The Core, as well as motivating us and providing some access to people that were having trouble getting access through economic development efforts. So, at this point I don't need anything else. I would ask for it if we had a burning desire for continued support of the city and of the staff of the city as we move this forward is going to be critical to our success. So, if we can continue that we certainly appreciate it. Rountree: Excellent. Thank you. De Weerd: And certainly, Council, we will forward you the keystone project draft and if you have any comments to please share. Sullivan: Absolutely. I will forward that out this afternoon. De Weerd: Okay. And I would like -- I know I tell you this, but on the public record I will say that Earl has -- has taken the bull by the horns and really has driven this -- The Core to places that it's good to be. He's got a lot of respect for the efforts of what this Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 8 of 48 stands for, what it can mean, and I think that he's definitely been the right person to lead it to where it is and the direction we hope to see it go. So, I appreciate everything that you do and kylie I have appreciated you immensely as well. Sullivan: Thank you. We appreciate the effort. De Weerd: Thank you. Sullivan: I will see you guys in -- and lady in a couple of months, we will come back and give you an update after we do some work on our future initiatives and get further into our keystone project and certainly anybody can reach us at anytime if they have specific questions or things that they want us to focus on. De Weerd: Thank you, Earl. Rountree: Thanks, Earl. Item 6: Items IVioved From Consent Agenda E. Final Order for Approval: TEC 12-009 Three Corners by Three Corners, LLC Located Southeast Corner of Chinden Eoulevard and N. Locust Grove Road Request: Two (2) Year Time Extension on the Preliminary Plat for Three Corners Subdivision De Weerd: Okay. We did have an item moved from the Consent Agenda, which was Item 4-E and (will -- I don't know who is taking this? Pete? Friedman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, thank you very much. Yeah. This was the order for three-quarters time extension that you heard on September 25th and as you will recall original condition of approval was the requirement to have a city identification sign placed on the property. The property owner brought up several points stating his not supporting that. Council concurred with him. He did offer to contribute to the cost of a sign on the opposite side of the road and, essentially, Council did approve the time extension. The order as it had been written didn't have a not to exceed amount. There was some discussion about that. So, we just -- it was requested of us to get clarity from the Council. He's more than, again, willing to volunteer to pay half the cost of a city entrance sign on the opposite side of the road, but he would like in that order some language not to exceed 5,000 dollars, which is what his offer was at the Council meeting. So, we just wanted to get that memorialized to make sure that Council is -- we were clear with the Council on that and Council was -- that was intent, so that we can -- we have the language that we need for the order. If that's your intent, then, we can go ahead and have you vote to approve that order. De Weerd: Council, any comments? Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 9 of 48 Hoaglun: Yeah, Madam Mayor. Just -- yes. Comment. I think that is fair. It sounds like preliminarily it would come out to about 10,000 dollars for that sign and we appreciate his offer to do that and see if we can get that sited on the other side and I think it's a great compromise on that. Friedman: Thank you, Mr. Hoaglun. Appreciate that. Bird: Is that a motion? Hoaglun: And I would move, Madam Mayor, that we approve TEC 12-009 as presented. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 7: Action Items A. Public Hearing: Republic Services Company 2012 Rate Increase De Weerd: Item 7-A is a public hearing regarding our Republic Services rate. Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. We have in front of you the proposed rate changes for the next year with Republic. Rachelle Klein is here as well from Republic to answer any questions. It has been noticed. I think we brought a report to you a couple weeks ago before you noticed it up to make sure that -- and maybe Rachelle if you want some refresher on what specific the rates are. The changes were very small. Most of them were below the five percent requirement for publishing anyway, but we felt it was important since there was some new ones to include of the rate changes regardless. Did you want some specifics, Council, or do you recall that discussion, are you comfortable moving forward? De Weerd: Well, I would ask -- this is a public hearing, is there anyone who would like to provide testimony on this item? Okay. Any comments from Republic? No? Council, any questions? Rountree: I have none. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 10 of 48 Bird: I have none. B. Resolution No. 12-879: A Resolution Adopting the Annual Rate Adjustment for Solid l~/aste Collection Services by Republic Services Company and Authorizing the City of IVieridian Utility Billing Department to Collect Such Rates De Weerd: Okay. Well, then, 7-B is resolution 12-879. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I would move that we close the public hearing on 7-A and that we approve resolution 7-B, 12-879. Zaremba: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to close the public hearing and approve resolution 12-879. If there is no discussion, Madam Clerk. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 8: Department Reports A. Public 1/tlorks Department: Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Update De Weerd: Item 8-A is our Public Works Department and -- do you want to do the Capital Improvement Plan first or do you want to -- okay. So -- Council, I'm sure you have read this since yesterday, right? Rountree: No. Stewart: Well, hopefully, it was in your box a little sooner than that. I think maybe it was in there last week, but -- you may not have known that, so -- I did want to go first. Mine's going to be brief, so I did want to just come up here and talk with you for a moment, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. I'm happy to have the opportunity to present the third annual capital and enhancement plan for the Public Works Department. This is the third year we have done this and each year -- and previously we have had some fairly significant changes to the plan and as far as its format is Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 11 of 48 concerned. This year there really wasn't a lot of changes to the format. I think that's a good sign that we are starting to get somewhere that we feel pretty comfortable that it covers most of the bases. The one thing that I do want to sort of make sure that you're aware of -- the one thing this plan is missing from previous plans is the schedules for the projects that will be completed in 2013 and there is a reason for that. Last year we put those schedules in there based on a Microsoft project -- program that we had purchased for the department. This year, thanks to your support, we have purchased and are in process implementing a e-Builder project management software program that is a much more comprehensive program that will help us to manage capital improvement projects on multiple phases, not only the schedule, but also document tracking and financials and we are in the process of that implementation and we debated -- we held off in producing those schedules, because we had hoped to produce them in the e-Builder format, instead of having to produce them in Microsoft Project and, then, redo that work or duplicate that work once e-Builder was implemented. We are close to getting to the point where we can do that in e-Builder and we expect to have those schedules completed by the end of the month. So, we will update those -- that scheduling portion of this document as soon as we can do that. We just didn't feel like it was worth doing twice and so we held off and -- but we did want to get this information to you as quickly as possible. So, you have everything but those schedules. Again, just want to thank my staff and all those who, you know, sort of worked on this. This represents a pretty significant amount of work and it's one of the major projects that we do each year. I will say that it's getting easier not only because the format is getting a little bit more polished, but we are getting more and more comfortable with putting together this five year plan. We have also got capital improvement plans in many facets in water and wastewater and reclaimed water that have been finalized and finished and that information is also helping us to develop a better five year capital improvement plan and we are also able to integrate this more and more with our budgeting process, which has been helpful as well. So, this document that you see in front of you correlates with the budget that you guys approved just a month or so ago, month and a half ago. So, with that information I would just simply stand for any questions that you may have on the CIP. Certainly if you have questions later feel free to come and talk to us anytime, we are happy to sit down and explain that. De Weerd: Stewart, I guess I just have -- maybe it's just a format question, but as you look at the ECEP report and you show the different funding years that it's been broken into, it's hard to say if there is one of these projects that started before 2013, so if maybe next to the project name it can just say phase -- phases two through four, if you have already done phase one of a five phased project and -- I don't know how you can show maybe a project that's all already into its funding cycle that's already been funded in two or three or one, two or three funding years before this. Stewart: Thank you, Madam Mayor. I appreciate that comment. I think there is something we could do even if it was to indicate the total number of years that that project spans and put that in one of the columns there. I will say that if you -- the summary sheets don't include that information at all. If you go to the detail sheets for each project it does show previous years expenditures in the pre -- in the detailed Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 12 of 48 sheets of that, but we can certainly add that as a future enhancement to the summary sheets as well. De Weerd: I think most people will look at the summary. Stewart: I agree. De Weerd: So -- just a -- it was just a suggestion. Stewart: No. I think it's a good one. De Weerd: Council, any questions or comments? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Just a minor question. I was just curious when I was first looking at it I was looking at enhancement number to see what your top priorities were and so on and so forth and some numbers weren't -- they would skip -- like there wouldn't be a seven and eight, we go from six to nine, and I was just -- well, that's kind of odd. I mean they are still -- that's our top priority, but I was just kind of curious about the enhancement number, why that was that way. Stewart: Actually, the enhancement number doesn't correlate necessarily with the priority, they are just -- you know, the way they were listed for this particular year. Each one of the projects you will see ascore -- Hoaglun: Right. Stewart: And that score is actually what identifies the priorities for us. So, the projects with the higher score actually have a higher priority. We have gone to a scoring mechanism to allow us the opportunity to look at things a little bit more comprehensively. We have a sheet that breaks that down into several different categories and we rate and rank each project according to that. Hoaglun: I did see the score on the left-hand side, but they weren't in consecutive order, so there would be 61, then 55 and 51 and -- so it was just kind of interesting when I was trying to find, okay, what are your top priorities that I was trying to figure out how that worked and the very first table is alphabetical and, then, I went there I saw the score, okay, but the full enhancement -- oh, maybe that works. So, it might be at some point in the future when we look at it, because, you know, I want to see what -- what your top priority, what's number two, three, four, because that kind of helps us as we are budgeting and, you know, with the competition for the dollars and how far can we go and just kind of helps me sort some of these things out on what we are looking at. So, Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 13 of 48 what might have to drop off the list in a little easier fashion. I don't know how you do that, but you guys are engineers, you can figure it out. Stewart: Thank you, Councilman Hoaglun. De Weerd: Either that or make it more complicated. Sorry. Stewart: Whatever you prefer. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Councilman Hoaglun's question -- and I don't find in the report a one on one on how to read the report, so why don't you give us a -- go to page one of six in the summary report and go through the first four lines and talk about the score or the cap and DEF and the engineering number and the enhancement number in case somebody asks us what does that mean and why is it there, because I can't tell you. Stewart: Okay. Thanks. Rountree: And it would also be interesting to have amulti-year column and the years even though you can count the years in the funding, how many years is this project going to go on or be funded. Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, just trying to make sure I understand. So, if -- are you saying the number of years it goes on, if it goes on beyond the five year horizon that's shown here, is that where you're getting at? Rountree: Uh-huh. Stewart: Okay. De Weerd: So, it's beyond or begins before. Rountree: Yeah. De Weerd: Kind of like the previous -- Rountree: Yeah. Stewart: Okay. Well, I think we can -- we can work on that. Definitely. To kind of give a brief sort of -- of the document, we actually have a summary report that includes water, wastewater, and reclaimed water altogether and, then, there is a tab for the water division, the wastewater division and reclaimed water -- each one of those, then, again, has the summary just for that portion and, then, behind that is the detailed explanation Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 14 of 48 of each product -- project. In the summary reports the score that's listed there for -- you know, we score the water projects and, then, we score the wastewater projects and, then, we score the reclaimed water projects, so they are not -- each one of those different categories is scored in their own priorities. Rountree: So we don't compete against one another? Stewart: That is correct. Rountree: Okay. Stewart: And, then, the engineering number is just a number that we give for tracking purposes when -- because we -- we, actually, have this -- it's a five year plan, so when we identify a project that's five years out, that doesn't necessarily correspond with enhancement numbers, because they are only given for the next year. That's why you see enhancement numbers that are -- those are only listed on projects that are planned for the 2013 budget year. The CAP -- you will see a little box, there is a little heading up there, it says CAP and, then, there is some boxes there, it's either checked or not checked, that is to indicate whether that project was capital in nature or can be capitalized. And, then, the DF is the depreciation funded. So, that's to indicate whether or not we feel like it could qualify for depreciation funding. And, then, of course, you have got the title of the project and, then, the five years of the fiscal plan and the dollars that we think we will need for each one of those fiscal years. The summary does not include that -- you know, anything before 2013, which we can certainly find some way of indicating whether or not there were previous years money expended on that project and we could do the same thing on the other end of the spectrum from 2018 on, whether we think that funding will be necessary going forward or beyond that horizon. And, then, if you flip to the -- the tabs for the water department let's say, each one you will find at the very -- you will find a summary for the water department there. It's the same thing that you found in the beginning, only it's just for water. Then there is a map that identifies the location of each one of those projects by the engineering number. So, if you're curious as to where those projects are in the city, that will help identify the location and, then, there is separate tabs for various different categories of projects within the water department, whether they be mainline replacements or pumping facilities or so forth and you will find a detailed explanation for each of those projects listed behind those tabs. On the project page itself, you will find information regarding the description of the project, the enhancement number if it's for 2013, account information, project schedule right there indicates the beginning and the ending of that particular project. So, that's sort of an indicator as to the duration -- especially if it's going to extend beyond this particular fiscal -- or this particular planning horizon. Same kind of information, depreciation financed eligible, whether it's capital, the overall score of the project. There is your ranking. So, in the water department, you know, that's one that indicates the highest priority within the water enhancements or CIPs. So, that -- that information is on the detailed sheets, it just doesn't happen to be in the summary, which is something we could work to add. And, then, you will find the descriptions and, then, down below there is some cost information that does show expenditures in 2012. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 15 of 48 It does show through 2017 and, then, it gives the total project cost, so you can see what the overall cost of that project was going to be for,all -- all years. And, then, on the back of each one of those individual sheets it kind of gives an indication of -- that's actually the scoring mechanism. So, you will see on the back that's the scoring sheet and each one of those little boxes there that you will see a number that has a pull down menu that we go through and we actually score each one of those categories based on the merits of that particular project. Is that helpful or is there more -- would you like more detail? De Weerd: Warren, I think you provided a lot of detail. I think, though, what Councilman Rountree pointed out is just a guide for the user that doesn't know what all of that means and -- and this has come a long way, so to have just these few things pointed out to make it even easier are very minute. This is a great document. We know a lot of work has gone into it and it really does simplify it. But now if you will just provide us a summary so we know what we are looking at, that would be even better. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, Warren, just to follow up. When I was looking at individual pages, I was curious as to how when there is multiple projects under that tab how they are put in the order they are put in. I was just looking for some logical things here. And, again, as the Mayor said it very minor. I mean this is -- this is really good information, it's there, but -- De Weerd: Now we can nitpick. Hoaglun: Oh, yeah. Now we can nitpick. Stewart: That's fine. Hoaglun: Refine it. We will refine it. So, I was just, again, curious, because I -- sometimes there was an enhancement and, then, I didn't see some and, then, there was the ranking and the score and different things and -- but, then, 18 would be here, number four would be here and -- and I was just trying to think, okay, how -- how is this broken out. So, just one of those things as I was reading and going along trying to make sense of the document, going through each tab to say, okay, is this the most important thing. Just -- and what do you do that -- however you order it or put in the description sheet that Councilman Rountree had mentioned, how do I read this document so it makes sense to me, a nonengineer to -- to follow along and say, okay, this is why this is here. So -- it's good information, but it's a lot of information. So, need to know what I'm looking at, is that a priority or am I reading number 99 on the list and why am I reading number 99 that's going to be in 2017 when I need to spend my time on this end or on these things, so -- I hope that helps. Stewart: Thank you. Yeah. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I appreciate that information and input. We will definitely take that back. I think there is a couple of things that we could add to it that -- certainly some sort of a key or means for explaining how to read the document and, then, I think there might be -- maybe even another Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 16 of 48 addition to that or something similar to the summary that categorizes each one of the divisions in priority so we can certainly add that and give you another feature. De Weerd: Perfect. Stewart: Appreciate that. Thank you. De Weerd: Any further comment? Mr. Zaremba? Zaremba: Well, this is just in relation to the comments that have already been made. The term glossary of terms comes to mind, just a page that is a glossary page of terms. That would be very helpful. De Weerd: Thank you, Warren. Warren: Thank you. Public In/orks ®epartment: Strategic Plan lJpdate De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Barry, I believe. Item 8-B, our Public Works Department strategic plan update. Barry: Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. It's my pleasure to present to you our strategic focus presentation this year. It's hard to believe a year has already gone by, but we have a lot of information to share with you and so I will just dive right in. First of all, I want to recognize the strategic leadership team that was instrumental in helping me acquire this information and more importantly helping us to transition or move our department forward and those members are listed here on this particular slide, but there is a lot of activity and a lot of leadership that goes on beyond this particular work group, a lot of the members that are sitting in the audience this afternoon of the department are -- were also instrumental in acquiring information and, of course, certainly moving our department forward. So, I want to thank them and the strategic leadership team for their efforts in helping us to achieve many of the accomplishments we have for -- to share with you this evening. Very quickly go through the mission statement of the Public Works Department. The mission of the department is to anticipate, plan, and provide for exemplary public services and facilities that will support the needs of our growing community in an efficient, customer focused, and financially responsible manner. This is a statement that was put together several years ago in part due to our strategic planning back in 2009. This is an overview of the department as it -- as it exists today. We have seven divisions. You might recall we did have eight divisions and one of those divisions, then, was absorbed into the new Community Development Department. So, there is seven divisions and what's interesting is that of those seven divisions we have 29 functional work groups. So, we are still a pretty large department, cover a large and broad based period -- or activities and functions, programs, projects and services. So, here is a short list of our infrastructure. I'm not going to go through the full list, other than to say that this year we added over eight Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 17 of 48 miles of sewer mains and we added over nine miles of water mains. What you don't see here are -- or what you do see here is a reduction in the number of sewer lift stations. We successfully took off line four lift stations this year over this last year, which has been good for us, both operationally and environmentally -- from an environmental liability standpoint as well. And what you do see is the addition of significant infrastructure for the reclaimed water program. We added, of course, the two storage tanks, that's a total of a million gallons of storage and the booster station, as well as over four miles of reclaimed water lines. Our emphasis has continued to be to plan strategically and work tactically and the way I wanted to sort of define that is tactically when we focus on our tactical endeavors or efforts we are talking about really focusing on the short-term activities or actions that we are taking as a department to accomplish our short-term challenges. Now, as you know it's difficult sometimes to categorize short-term and long-term challenges and so our attempt to do that is, essentially, evolved into really putting some kind of time frame to the tactical and strategic focus. So, tactically, we are focused on really the last year when we go backwards and look at our accomplishments and this year and the next year when we look at sort of what are the things tactically we are working on. When we talk about strategic focus what we are really referring to is what we are doing now and into the future that will carry us over the next three to five years. So, a much more broader based organizational and community focused approach with regard to developing our strategies, in addition to really formulating our efforts to overcome long-term challenges. So, what we have done in this presentation, which we -- you know, this is a little bit new, is we have taken a balanced scorecard approach to the way we are going to communicate sort of our tactical and strategic activities and accomplishments for that matter. Now, the balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that's used extensively in industry and business and nonprofits and government organizations worldwide to really align business activities to the vision and strategy of an organization, to improve the internal and external communications of that particular organization and also to monitor organizational performance against strategic goals. All efforts that we have made significant strides and improvements on in the department. Now, what you see on the screen here is not the, quote, unquote, balanced scorecard, this is really a modified balanced scorecard. What we have done is we have identified the primary areas that we want to share with you and organize all of our department information into these five primary areas. Those areas include our financial component, our customer challenges and accomplishments, our employee concerns and challenges and accomplishments, our operational challenges and accomplishments and, then, a longer term view of our strategic challenges going forward. When we talk tactically what we are referring to is really the first four of the five categories. So, that would be financial, operations, customers and employees. This is the area, as you hear me talk today, that I will be focusing on for the short-term strategies and actions. Then we will move toward the end of the presentation to talk about our longer term strategy and really emphasize what strategic focus we are going to place on the department and deploy our personnel resources towards accomplishing. So, let's start first and talk tactically for quite awhile and we will discuss, first of all, the financial matrix. You all know where our money comes from, but you may not know how it varies. Sometimes we share this information during our budget process, so I thought it would be good to Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 18 of 48 sort of remind you where the money comes from and, more importantly, for the people in the audience -- all two of them and those at home as well -- but more importantly what I like about this chart is it shows change from last year to this year. If you look sewer sales is where we dominate our revenues from. We get most of our reviews from sewer sales. What you may not know is that sewer sales -- sewer and water sales should say, combining those -- sewer and water sales are up 11 and a half percent this year over last year. So, we are adding revenue. That's agood -- that's a good sign. We also know that assessments are up significantly this year over last year. As a matter of fact, assessments are up on the residential side 87 percent from last year to this year. That's a good sign with regard to what's going on in the economy. From a commercial assessment standpoint we see assessments I believe from last year to this year by about two percent and what we attribute that to is that commercial was strong prior to this last fiscal year. Of course everything is depressed from what we have sort of gone through in the mid 2000s, but commercial certainly leading residential. Now we are seeing the residential side come back and that's why we are seeing assessments come up. What's important to remember about assessment is that we still have over 2,000 ready to build on vacant lots, which represent about 9.3 million dollars up uncollected water and sewer assessments. MUBS has increased its revenue slightly and, then, if you look at other income, this other income is mostly like interest and miscellaneous fees. Of course interest rates have dropped significantly and that also helps to explain why our income from interest essentially has gone very very low. Now, let's talk a little bit about where we are spending on money. We talk about this in budget, but just quickly our Public Works administrative arm, which includes engineering, business operations, administration and capital projects and inspection, covers about 38 percent off our operating expenses -- excuse me -- 40 percent. Let me make sure I didn't go too fast here. Yeah. Here we go. Operating expenses. And so our operating expenses are around 4.1 million dollars with 40 percent of those being attributed to the wastewater division and about 37 percent of those being attributed to the water division. Public Works admin is about 20 percent and our environmental division is about three percent. This is our financial dashboard that we wanted to share with you. I share this with you about annually and I won't go through all the dashboard matrix here or benchmarks, if you will, but I will say if you compare this to years previous we can continue to see improvement in the way the utilities' financial position has evolved. Essentially here all of the matrix, except for two -- or all of the dashboard dials, if you will, except for two, are in the positive. And that's very good. A couple years ago half of them were in the negative. The only areas that we really see some concern in is in the annual system reinvestment or what can be termed depreciation financing. This is an area of weakness for us. We know that as a department. The good news is we know that it is a weakness and that we are focused on improving the way we identify and track and finance our depreciating assets. The other good news is that we have quite a bit of time, because most of our infrastructure is fairly new, since we grew rapidly over the last 20 years and so we are focused there and I will speak more to that as we go in the presentation a little bit later. Some of the accomplishments financially that we have been able to achieve over this last year -- and some of this is carryover from years prior, but you know that we have been doing monthly divisional reviews for both water and wastewater. We have incorporated quarterly division Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 19 of 48 reviews as well. This is where we track our actual performance beyond just financial, but into the operational side of things. And our budget execution rates have improved according. So, as we have drawn attention to our execution rates we have been able to sit as a team and evaluate why execution rates are where they are and what strategies we might want to pursue in order to improve those budget execution rates. By doing this we have been able to see a steady and gradual increase in our execution rates, although we are not there as it relates to accomplishing the goals we have set out for ourselves. Personnel costs are 92 percent of budget and this is, of course, year to date and we don't have, essentially, September numbers posted. Operating costs 86 percent of budget and capital construction is about 63 percent of budget, but keep in mind that we have a lot of capital construction activity that still is being invoiced right now and although the work did occur prior to the end of September, invoices are still rolling in, so we expect that number to come up considerably. We also have been able to achieve some remarkable improvements in energy efficiency by providing new automated controls both at the police department and at City Hall. You may remember here at the City Hall we went through a fairly robust control change out to try to get our HVAC systems to run better. I want to share with you that, essentially, we have reduced through these efforts our electricity consumption by ten percent at City Hall and our natural gas consumption by 30 percent at City Hall, just compared to last year's numbers. So, those are pretty good gains -- or gains rather. We have also been able to reduce energy consumption at the police station by improving their control system after robust auditing by 13 percent. So, let's look now in the financial arena what some of our challenges are going forward and, again, we are talking tactically, so the next year or two. Our rate model has served us well over the last several years and -- but it needs some updating and some refinement. We want to make sure that the model is streamlined and we want to simplify it a little bit, but also add to it some analytical capacities that it doesn't currently have. For example, the depreciation side of the utilities not well represented or tracked through our rate model. Also depreciation, that side -- as I mentioned the rate model is -- is limited simply because we are limited in what we know about our depreciating assets. we need to do a better job of trying to inventory those assets and, of course, the inventory management software we have acquired through your approval has allowed us to pursue those endeavors, but the valuing of existing assets is a challenge for us, because we still don't even have a really good handle of where every single asset is citywide and we are talking something like 50,000 assets across the city. Different assets for that matter. Understanding asset lifecycles, you know, that's something that is going to take us quite a bit of time to -- to develop, because while we may think that a certain type of material, like stainless steel, would last inside -- as a casing inside the ground for a drinking water well and that that well should last us 50 or 75 years, we know that steel casing, essentially, pits pretty quickly and we have only been able to get 13 to 20 years out of a well. So, different types of materials will depreciate differently depending upon how long they will last in the field. So, that's been difficult for us. Inadequate resources to fund replacement. Currently on the books it looks like we have adequate resources, but that's only based upon formulaic approaches to the way that we do straight line depreciation. We are not concerned about this, because as I say the more information we gather the more insight we develop about our depreciating assets, the better we will be able to tell you with Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 20 of 48 certainty what our vulnerabilities are that relates to those depreciating assets. We would like to also see some real time budget improvements and control processes. We have been working internally in the department to bring about improvements in the way that we track our budget expenditures and we have been trying to develop through the Finance Department standard operating procedures and policies that allow for quicker turnaround of financial data that would be shared between our department and, of course, that department. And so we -- while we have made some improvements on some of the current workflows related to our financial activities, there is a lot more work to be gained there. When we talked lastly about finances as a utility, we talked about three particular areas, rates -- we want to keep our rates competitive and we want to finance the accelerating growth and impending regulations that we are aware of. We also want to ensure that our rates cover our operational needs and that growth will continue to pay for growth. So, we will be tracking that and, of course, the rate model is a tool to do that. On usage, just to let you know, usage -- particularly from water -- water consumption continues to decrease over time. About eight years ago the average residential user was consuming about 14,000 gallons of water per month. Now it's under 8,000 gallons. That has a big impact on rates, obviously, and revenues I should say. So, the less you use the lower your revenues are going to be and, therefore, you have this sliding scale as it relates operationally to whether or not rates are going to adequately finance the operational components of the utility. So, that's something that we just need to continue to track and monitor. And, then, of course, assessments versus rates. I mentioned to you that we still have 9.3 million dollars of uncollected assessments out there, all we need to do is for people to pull building permits and start building on these vacant lots that already have infrastructure on them. That will certainly help us particularly as it relates to our regulatory required improvements throughout both utilities. Okay. So, here we are back to sort of ground dust in the modified balance scorecard and we will focus now on customers. In the customers some of our accomplishments as a department we have been able to work toward is improving water quality. We have -- I'm happy to say have DEQ approval to blend the water at Well 20B. You may be called that Well 20B we had to shut down for radionuclide problems. We now can capitalize on blending at the storage tank at Settlers Park and pump 20B water in and mix it with other water to bring -- the attempt is to try to bring down the radionuclide concentration. While we still -- we still have work to do in this area, the efforts that we have accomplished do include that work that I just mentioned. Also pilot projects for iron and manganese filtration have occurred. We shared that with you earlier this summer during our tour and those pilot projects were run at Well 21, 22, 15, 18 and 26. And, then, occlusion, which probably is a term you haven't heard of before, but occlusion refers to isolating different types of sections of the water or the well casing if you will. We know that when you drill a well water can come in from a variety of different levels depending on your screen intervals and what we have tried to do is reduce screen intervals to try to occlude or prevent the mixing of bad water in the aquifer from good water. We weren't able to successfully achieve the results we wanted to in Well 16, but the -- in Well 20B we have had some sort of mixed success and that's something we still need to track. In our -- to continue with our customer accomplishments, we have just developed a measurement tool to track and analyze customer service and satisfaction for our capital construction inspection Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 21 of 48 program and these surveys will again go out as part of every project that gets inspected by our construction division. So, we are excited about the data we are going to be able to collect from that and the services we will be able to improve once we analyze that data. Also wanted to share with you some other accomplishments from a customer standpoint is the read to bill time. There have been complaints that -- we developed -- Mr. Nary and I sit on the board of -- it is adjusters or appraisers? Nary: Adjustment. Barry: Adjustment. This is where folks who are concerned about their bills or leaks or those kind of things come and protest those bills to us and we have heard over the last year or so that people are concerned about how long it takes for them to be notified on their bill about the charges, so that they can be alerted to a leak. Now, we have very good staff in our water division who are actually very proactive and go out in advance when they see something on their reads and let people know. But sometimes things slip through the cracks. So, one of the things that we have done is we have tried to reduce the read to bill time. That is the time it takes for a staff member to go out and read the meter to the time it takes for the bill to be generated and we have worked with the Finance Department, specifically utility billing, to shorten those times from 15 to 30 days down to one to 15 days. We think every day counts. So, that's been an improvement. SOTO, which is a shot off turn on program was developed in house with the support of IT and utility billing and this allows us to provide better customer service as it relates to the shutting off and turning on of customers for either nonpayment or back flow prevention deficiencies and what's important there is that we have -- we suppressed or we have -- excuse me -- increased the amount of time for them to turn around some sort of payment and prevent a shut off, which only, then, in a few hours needs to be turned back on. And, then, our customer contact and outreach we have continued to make strides on. I'll just share some pictures. You know all about Public Works Week, I won't go into the details about Public Works Week, but it continues to be a very successful community outreach program for us or project I would say. Week long activities. This year we raised over 3,400 dollars for the Food Bank as part of these activities and, you know, it's just a wonderful event. We have increased the amount of participation in the Poop Scoot run to over 90 this year and the staff have been just phenomenal in showcasing the department and really stepping up and volunteering for these types of events. We have done more than just that. We have done a lot of other community outreach activities and these activities include several in school and educational presentations. We've had a lot of professional publications as a department that we have developed. Over five. We did ten program -- or over ten programs or exhibits or conferences in this last year where we contributed either staff expertise, time, materials and speaking. We did 12 community presentations this year, 12 facility tours that were conducted in the department and also more than 30 public and focus group meetings were conducted over this last year by department staff. De Weerd: Hey, Tom? Barry: Yes. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 22 of 48 De Weerd: In terms of your outreach from primarily the environmental division -- Barry: Uh-huh. De Weerd: -- can you keep track of all of those organizations that you touch and invite them to Public Works Week? Do you already do that? Barry: Well, we do some of that, Madam Mayor. And thank you for your question and suggestion. I have just met with Ken Corder, who as you know is a new hire in your group and we have tried to establish some processes by which we can tap into these different types of resources. The Meridian Academy for one is one that we are starting to investigate now and others who participate in auxiliary functions and through our other outreach efforts, we definitely want to keep a list of and bring them together and invite them to these. I talked with Ken about, you know, filling the bus, so to speak, for our facility tour and he's guaranteed me I will need three buses this year. So, I am excited about that. And to your point we are -- we are to a certain degree, a very small degree, doing what you have suggested and we need to do more of that. So, we will be tracking that more robustly as we go on. De Weerd: I guess since I see Mollie in the audience I know she will do that. Barry: Yes. She's very excited to do that. And thank you. So, moving forward, you know, we do have some challenges from a customer service standpoint. Our source water quality, we have talked about that, you know, as what -- while we have made some improvements we have a lot of improvements to be had. We are trying to develop these treatment filters at both -- both Wells 21 and 15. Of course that's the worst water quality we have from those wells and we are trying to improve water quality filtration at those facilities. New Well 16B is something that we also want to focus on this. Water storage, as you know, is a big concern of ours. We need to move forward with Water Reservoir No. 2. You should be hearing about that somewhat soon, but that is certainly a challenge and different people look at that type of project differently depending upon where you live. Wastewater system odor control is one other project that we know we have been trying to work toward. While, it hasn't risen to the highest level yet, we do have a couple of customers near the treatment plant that are concerned about the odors that come from the treatment plant and so it's on our radar, it's just not something we have planned immediately before. The split corridor project, that's going to be a big -- you know, from a tactical standpoint a big challenge for our customers. Both the customers who are getting services along the corridor, as well as the traveling public and future customers, for that matter, we are positioning ourselves to increase the amount of capacity in our water and sewer lines and position downtown for redevelopment here in the not too distant future after the corridor is established. And, then, of course, communication and education, that's an area we want to focus on. We are not communications people in Public Works. We are engineers and operators and GIS people and administrators, we don't really do community outreach and a public education. But the resources that have recently been added to the city will help us Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 23 of 48 significantly and that includes both Ken's position as community liaison and also the PIO for the city and so we appreciate those resources and we will be coordinating our efforts with them, along with Mollie to improve the development of our communications plan and implement that accordingly. We are back -- we are going to focus now on the third of these five areas and that's going to be employees. So, as we look at employees, some of the accomplishments that we can hang our hat on is that, essentially, this year -- over his last year we developed adepartment-wide training database and we have really focused on training as a major improvement from a workforce development standpoint. We have something like on average about 25 hours per employee now receiving training across the department. That is under the benchmark, however, it is still a very good number and we are very proud of that number. Before, several years ago, that number was below ten. So, we are pleased about the efforts we have been able to make in continuing the educational process and the -- the on-the-job learning that goes on and is important, so critical to everything that we do. We have been focusing on skills-based training. For the most part we have been working on leadership training for those leaders and mid managers. We have developed a management academy. It's been almost a year now since that academy has been instituted and monthly we will have about 30 of our managers and leaders in the department attend these meetings and right now we have partnered with the Boise State continuing education arm to continue the skills based training. We are excited about the training. HR has now developed the curriculum they have been developing and we will probably transition a lot of that training over into that, which is going to be a good synergy for us. But we have been improving our project management, process management, basic skills training, including writing, communication, time management, sort of the basic skills. A life for life training includes things like our operators being able to replace like equipment or electrical equipment for like under the law, as long as they don't add to the system. We are able to do life for life. We have been able to provide training for that. And, then, of course, safety, we have improved our health and safety manual and formalized our health and safety committee and, of course, we are performing basic safety oversight and training and we have put together an RFP to do the safety audit, which we talked about with you at the City Council earlier this summer. We also are improving our recognition and acknowledgement while we are not there and I won't say that -- you know, I sort of felt guilty even putting this on the slide, because really we still do a very poor job of recognizing and rewarding our staff for all the efforts they do, considering, you know, the challenges that they are up against each and every day in their jobs. But we did triple the amount of recognition we did this year. We gave out several more awards at our department picnic this year and we have encouraged our department leaders and managers to send e-mails and go up and do a better job recognizing the efforts of the staff when a good job has been done and I know some of the staff might say, well, I never got recognized and that's probably true, we don't -- we are not consistent yet. We are not -- we are not doing a great job, but we are moving in that direction and I think that the senior team, as well as our division managers, needs to be recognized for that. You will see that as one of our challenges here, too. Hoaglun: Tom? Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 24 of 48 De Weerd: Tom? Barry: Yes. Hoaglun: Just a quick question under recognition. Who won the kickball this year? Barry: That would be -- De Weerd: Who made up -- who made up new rules? Barry: Yeah. De Weerd: Isn't that what I heard? Barry: It was interesting, because, you know, we -- Tiffany couldn't play this year, so -- she's our utility operations manager and so we had her be the designated referee and, of course, I don't know why operations -- either wastewater or water didn't win, because it was heavily skewed towards -- towards them, but yet Public Works prevailed as usual and so we are pretty pleased. Thank you for your question. De Weerd: Well, Iheard -- I heard there were a bunch of new rules that no one had heard of. Barry: There new rules, but they were from U.S. official kickball rule making thing and Brian Kerr was the one who put that together from the Water Division, so -- De Weerd: Yeah. Barry: -- we should recognize his efforts for that. I'm not sure I understood all the rules, so I'm not sure they were all followed, but, you know, we -- De Weerd: I bet you made them up. Barry: Yeah. He probably made them up for water. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, maybe I should retract my question. Barry: Yeah. It's a sore subject for our operations side of our -- of our department. Anyway, our challenges are many in the employee section. One of them is department vacancies. You might recall when I joined the department about five years or so ago we were running a 22 percent vacancy rate. Over time we have been able to get that vacancy rate down to six percent, now we are back up to 12 percent. And what's interesting about that number -- 12 percent doesn't seem like a lot until you sort of transfer it into where those vacancies are. The vacancies that we have currently in the department are towards the top end of the organization. So, if you look at our top Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 25 of 48 managers, we are running about a 22 percent -- 21 to 22 percent vacancy rate at the top end of the organization. That's a challenge for us, because there is a lot that needs to be done by those staff and, of course, all staff. So, department vacancies are a challenge. It's difficult. We are a very lean organization, so we need every position filled and we have never had them all filled since I have been with the city. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Tom, just a question on this top end -- are you referring to engineers? Are they -- is that an area that's particularly tough? Barry: That's a great question. We are referring to a variety of different positions, for example, engineering, operations, administration are generally the three areas. Deputy director position. I don't know if you know -- I can announce it now, but Tiffany Floyd is leaving the city, so our utility operations manager position will go open again. So, it's the second time -- De Weerd: She takes softball that serious? Barry: Yeah. She's done. De Weerd: Or kickball. Barry: That's right. That's her last time refereeing and so we have taken care of that particular issue going forward. No. Actually, it had no relevance. But we are sad to see her go. She's done a great job for us and we wish her well. She's going back to DEQ and she will be a regional administrator over there. Of course Rich's retirement as our deputy director left a big hole. My -- if you look at the very top end of our organization, the four senior managers, I'm 50 percent vacant right now, so -- or will be 50 percent vacant on the 16th, next Tuesday. So, that's a bit disheartening and it slows down our progress in moving a lot of these tactical and strategic endeavors forwarded and so we just kind of do the best we can and we will begin the recruiting process for those. But, Mr. Hoaglun, it was operations, like assistant superintendent for wastewater, that's a position that's open, lead operator has been one that was difficult to fill, but we did finally fill. We have some engineer positions and, then, as I mentioned operations and senior staff positions as well. Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, I hope you don't mind, Tom, if I delve into this a little bit further. I'm just kind of curious. Are we able to compete with the private sector on salary? I mean what's some of the -- where do you see some of the issues on this? Is it primarily money? Is it opportunities for advancement? Is it none of the above? Barry: Thank you for your question. We have put a lot of thought into that and we have worked actually with Bill's staff, Crystal Ritchie as well, to try to figure out what seems to be the issue. We know there is a natural attrition that happens. People just come and go in organizations. We know that the economy has a lot to do with whether people want to move. If they are upside down in their house, for example. We also know that this region tends to be one that's not really on people's radars. Although it's a Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 26 of 48 great region once you -- once you tell people about the region and the benefits of the City of Meridian, particularly some of the awards we have, 100 Best Cities -- or 100 Best Cities for families and those kind of things, people get really excited about it. But attracting people here has been difficult for us. One of the things that is a challenge that I have on here is recruitment and retention. We noticed that some of our hiring policies are -- we think -- we don't know this for sure, because we haven't tested it -- perhaps making it difficult for us to attract people. The example is we have a very sort of -- as most governments do -- as most cities do, we have a very passive sort of application process. We post the advertisement and we wait for people to come to us and that's typically how it's done. Well, what we are talking about doing is trying to move that towards a more active recruitment base. So, we want to go after association. We have been researching other cities that are hiring positions similar to ours and asking for their candidate pools. You know, you guys select whoever the best candidate is, once you're done can you tell us the names of some people who have -- who rose to the top in your organization and we will go out and actively recruit them. We are also talking about going to our associations and maybe setting up a booth, for example, and trying to do active recruiting at the association conferences. Those are things we haven't historically done, which we hope we will be able to gain some -- some better recruitment and higher quality members or applicants, if you will. But we are not really sure. I do know that I have personally struggled at the top end of the organization with -- you know, we hire within the first third and we have very wide ranges, for example, as a city and so if we try to target people that come in at the first third, the first question I get is, you know, what are you going to hire me at and, then, we talk about salary and they say, well, gosh, you know, that's going to be a five or ten thousand dollar cut, but it sounds like a great opportunity, I'm willing to maybe take that to progress my career. How long would it take me is the next question to regain my salary and, then, you look at what we call the FLU rate and that's -- De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun, needless to say, there has been a lot of discussion and some strategies put in place that, hopefully, addresses some of the challenges that we have found. Barry: Right. De Weerd: And if you would like to know more you can stay late after class. Barry: It's something we have given a lot of thought to and I appreciate the question and some of the answers to your question we don't have and others we are working on and -- Hoaglun: I saw in here recently we were looking for an engineer and I can't remember what it was and -- and I knew someone --Iran into them, who was an engineer in the valley, had moved out of state, the economy went down, found a job in the tri-cities, looking to come back, was here, I ran into them and I said, oh, by the way, you know, we are looking for an engineer. I says I don't know anything about it. You need to go on the website, yadda, yadda. He says, well, Brad, he said to be honest typically he Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 27 of 48 says the municipalities in the area really don't pay compared to the private sector and so that's the genesis of my question going, gee, are we that bad where we are not at least being competitive with the private sector and that can be difficult for government , no doubt about it, but I didn't know if that was all there was to it or if there were other things -- it sounds like, yes, that's part of it, but there are some other things as well. Barry: Yeah. And I can simplify the answer as it relates to the private sector. No, your friend is right, I mean municipalities, including Meridian and the others in the Treasure Valley, don't pay the same as you would in private. But there is different benefits, right? You know, there is security, there is less travel, there is those types of things. I mean the whole package has to be looked at, so -- De Weerd: And he went to the tri-cities, because they didn't have the same recession we did. We lost a lot of engineers during the recession. The engineers that were in the private sector. So, yeah, there is -- there are pluses and minuses most certainly. Barry: So, anyway, with regard to retention, you know, that's another area we struggle in. Our SLU rate for the city is large. If you're a -- if you're a solid performer in our department and doing your job and doing your job well, if you started at the bottom, because we have wide ranges, it would take you two careers to get to the top of your range. That's a challenge. So, 47 years to go from the bottom of your range to the top of range under our current policies. And I know that those are being evaluated, as the Mayor said as well, and we are excited to be a part of some improvements along that line. But that's certainly a concern when you're attracting somebody, how long does it take me to go from the bottom to the top. Workforce development is one of those areas that we have made some gains in as it relates to training, but we have a lot more to do. Specifically we want to increase and focus our time and attention on leadership development, problem solving, decision making, project management and process management and improve the overall skill levels of the staff. We are wanting to do this by developing a critical skills matrix in the department and assessing how each staff member meets a certain criteria) skill that has been developed for their job and, then, develop a gap assessment if you will and, then, put together a plan or individual training plan for that particular employee in order to help bring them up to what the position requirements are for skills based training. Succession planning is something we haven't really been able to do much with and, Mr. Hoaglun, it goes back to your question, mean if we had been doing a better job succession planningwise we might not be in the position we are in as well. But that takes time and it takes resources. So, that's an area we want to focus on going forward. And, then, employee satisfaction, we want to make sure the employees are satisfied. We have been collecting feedback from them. We have done a fair job of providing feedback, but we have done a poor job in taking that feedback and implementing some sort of improvement plan associated with it. This year we have done that in the water division, but that's the first division that we sort of started with. We want to continue to do this and do it system wide or department wide going forward. And, then, workforce safety, we are -- as I mentioned before, we feel like we are vulnerable in that area and so we are doing our assessment, our operational assessment of our workplace safety and the RFP is going to be going out here not too -- Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 28 of 48 not too long from now and we hope that that audit will give us some information about where we stand there and, then, we will be able to develop program improvements to our workplace safety program. So, we are back to this sort of baseline slide and we are going to talk about operations here and there is -- of course operations -- I mean we are -- you know, operations is our thing. That's -- we are a water and sewer utility and so we have a lot of accomplishments, but a lot of challenges at the same time. Process and performance management wise we have been as you know -- and I won't go into the details here, but we have been developing matrix and we have been benchmarking our performance. I do want to say that it's notable that our benchmark -- the benchmark level of performance that we have established to date shows that, essentially, our operations is close to the industry best standards from those that we have identified so far, which is great. But we still -- we still can improve and that's the whole idea is behind continuous process improvement. So, process improvement, including things like budgeting, building assessment, energy efficiencies, documentation, in conjunction with our e-Builder development and implementation are all going to be things that -- or have been things that we have been able to hang our hat on as accomplishments for us and I have shared with you some of the efficiency improvements that have resulted from that. At the wastewater treatment plant we have been able to also increase efficiency by completing the turbo blower installation. We reprogrammed the aeration basin to control and minimize the blower energy use. We also included solar lighting at the new filter building. You saw that on your tour. Conducted full scale .polymer trials for competitive bids to reduce the amount of money that we spend on polymer at the treatment plant. And, then, we are, of course, using methane gas to heat our filter buildings, which has been good for reducing overall natural gas demand. We have also improved the design manual by centralizing and improving development in engineering standards and specifications and that has gone a long way to helping us get the type of infrastructure we want, the type of look that we want at the very beginning, instead of coming back in and trying to fix all of that stuff later. It also is a good way to communicate our expectations to the developing and engineering community right at the very beginning. So, there has been a lot of work on that that staff has done. A couple of other things that we should be proud of in the department is, of course, maintaining our NPDES permit compliance. We have passed another year here without any violations at the wastewater treatment plant or in the water division for that matter and so we are proud of that and that includes air permit compliance, reclaimed water compliance, water and wastewater compliance. We eliminated four of those stations I mentioned. We redrilled two wells. We did two biosolids projects and developed partnerships out of the last biosolids project to assess how well composting would work for the city. I do know that there is talk about a regional compost facility, so we have been keeping abreast of that. But we have been using a local partnership and statewide partnerships to try to see what effort might be able to be done locally on that front. Settlers Park recycling project, we worked with the parks department, Mollie did, with parks staff and put into place at Settlers Park a recycling pilot project and for the summer we were able to achieve over one ton of recycled materials from the park, which is great, just in this last, you know, five -- five, six months, so we are pretty proud of that. We had two inspections this year. We had an unannounced Environmental Protection Agency inspection. The good news is they didn't come with guns this or flack Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 29 of 48 jacks or anything any of that kind of stuff and the better news is that while they looked at thousands of documents we didn't -- we ended up coming out of that evaluation with zero violations. So, we are very pleased about that. That was a surprise audit. And, then, of course, the -- the Department of Environmental Quality for the state of Idaho did a sanitary survey on our water system. It's kind of a similar evaluation of the -- of our system and what they did is they knew that we had a great system, they actually brought out a trainee and trained that trainee at our system, because we had a good system and in the end we also passed that with flying colors as well. So, nothing out of the ordinary, fully compliant from a water systems standpoint. So, we are really pleased with that. Also, our reclaimed water program has been in intermittent full swing for most of the summer. You might not know that essentially we have produced and redistributed about 25 million gallons of reclaimed water or effluent, if you will, through our reclaimed water program and that has helped us with permit compliance. You might recall that we are at a seven MGD limit for our effluent and so the reclaimed water program is helping us considerably keep under that limit. Underground facility locating technologies, we have talked with you about that in the past where we can now use handheld devices to locate infrastructure under the ground without having to do a more invasive search, which has been great. And we also obtained our radio frequency license, if you will, for voice -- for voice frequencies, which is something that is required before the end of this year for you to be compliant with the FCC licensing rules. In the planning side of our operations you just heard from Warren about our infrastructure planning, the five year CIP. We have also projected out another five years and we have got -- we are beginning to plan further and further out. You might not know that the first five years, 2013 to 2017, represents about 65 million dollars worth of capital improvement needs, but the second five years represents about two thousand -- or, excuse me, 74 million dollars. So, we have another ten million dollars of added needs going forward. Capital project administration improvements include sending all of the project managers to project manager boot camp. We sent them to two, three day trainings out at various sites throughout the country to improve their project management skills. We have developed SOPs and process flows with the Finance Department, as I mentioned, and we have also developed and improved our coordinating efforts and policies and procedures for joint projects on ACHD slash City of Meridian projects as well. We have been making progress on the GIS plan. Six out of the 14 deliverables have been achieved so far on the phase one plan. There is a lot of work left to be done on that. And we also study chemical treatment options to reduce the effluent phosphorus. A hundred and forty-four jar tests were taking over this last year to try to figure out strategies we can incorporate to the wastewater treatment plant, which helped us get to ultra-low phosphorus reductions. We still have a lot of work left to do there. And, then, of course, the reclaimed water system improvements include the hydraulic model that we developed for the formalization of a service area and, then, of course, operational specifications which has helped development and has helped us to identify where we would want to put reclaimed water infrastructure throughout the city. Operational challenges continue to include process and performance management. We want our dashboards to not be static. We want them to be dynamic. Every time I come and give you a presentation I have to go do a lot of work to try to establish what the matrix are and our benchmarks and stick them on hand drawn graphics so they look Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 30 of 48 really cool for you. We want dynamic -- or dynamic tools to be able to do this, so that at any point in time we can pull that information and get you more regular and routine updates on information. We also again standardizing our procedures, e-Builder implementation. Warren mentioned that earlier with the capital project improvements. Develop or incorporating e-Builder will allow us to communicate better with the Finance Department and keep better track of our finances and our project schedules, but that work is -- there is a lot to be done there and so that's why it remains a challenge for us. And, then, of course, our asset management and inventory control efforts will continue to be a challenge for the next several years. Legislatively as an operational challenge we are focused on sort of doing no more harm, losing no more ground. That's sort of our philosophy right now when it comes to the legislature. We would like to eventually get to sort of maybe regaining some ground in critical areas that are of importance to us in our operation, but those will be challenges as we go forward. Our NPDES permitting is also a challenge. There is a lot of work that goes into development of a new permit and I don't know if you realize, but we have been having bi-weekly to monthly meetings on NPEDS strategies. We got a consultant on board helping us. There is a lot of data information sharing. There is a lot of analysis, a lot of strategy that goes into meeting with certain types of staff at certain times -- at certain points in time and it's just daunting, really, when you think about what we have at stake here with our new NPDES permit. What's also important is that we have been having to monitor others -- other jurisdictional NPDES permits. For example the city of Boise's came out in final form -- or in draft form, which we had to go and review and put our comments together. There are things that can happen to one jurisdiction that may or may not be beneficial for our jurisdiction and so we take advantage of the comment period to make sure that there is fairness and equity and certainly some scientific basis for the types of permits that are being generated and we do see inconsistencies across the valley with regard to permit levels for various constituents and so we want to make sure we know that, so that we can engage in appropriate conversations with our regulatory partners as it relates to putting our permitting together. And, then, of course, you have heard all about the wastewater treatment facility improvements. We had a slideshow on that in and of itself, but those will continue to be challenges for us. We have got about ten to 15 million dollars' worth of improvements at the wastewater treatment plant that need to occur and that will be not an easy task, but I'm told David Allison is up to the task, so we will see. In any event, we will go through here and last we talk about really our strategic accomplishments. Now, again, we have transitioned now to looking at the next three to five years. We did do the APWA, which is, again, the American Public Works Association accreditation self-assessment. What we realized by doing this assessment is two things. One, the best management practices that are required of us go well beyond the boundaries of the Public Works Department. We had across-functional team of people from -- from all divisions in Public Works and we had the HR staff, we had Planning staff, we had Finance staff, we had Parks staff, we had Fire and Police staff, all helping us on this self- assessment to sort of evaluate where are we in meeting these best management practices and the self-assessment is the first step, you have to kind of realize where you are and, then, make a decision as to whether or not you want to continue to close the gap that you found in your self-assessment. The great news here is that not only was it a great cross-functional team, it took about six months for us Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 31 of 48 to get through this work, but we realized that we are doing a lot of things right, which is fantastic. I mean it's -- it's not that you wouldn't expect that we weren't, but it was just surprising to see how many things we already are doing really well. So, its affirmation for us, for the staff, in a variety of different departments to know, hey, you know, we are really not that far off. There is some areas where we can make some improvements, but for the most part it was eye opening to that level and that's -- that's been good. At some point in the future I'll talk with you more about accreditation in our a process, but suffice it to -- I'll stop there for the purposes of today's discussion. Accomplishments also include SCADA, facility water, water conservation and reclaimed water master plans. We have been very busy doing a lot of master planning. And that's good, because we are embracing what challenges are coming down and putting into place strategies to overcome those challenges. Revise the five year CIP. That was an accomplishment. And some NPDES strategic planning was also an accomplishment. We were heavily involved as a regional partner in the Treasure Valley process and I'm pleased -- you know that we were involved in that. I'm pleased to say that the contributions I think that we made as one of the municipal partners were well received and strategically delivered and were very good for not just our community, but for a variety of Treasure Valley communities. And out of that developed a series of partnerships and have developed beyond the Treasure Valley camp a wide variety of partnerships, including Zamzows and others through the compost pilot project and other pilots that we have done at the treatment plant and throughout the department. So, now if we focus really heavily on, okay, what are you doing in the long term. Where are you really focusing your efforts. We have four areas that we are focusing efforts, in the water area, the wastewater area, in our organization and, then, in our community. So, areas of strategic focus, things we are going to focus on long term include source water protection and quality. We have talked with you about drilling standards and this has been a project that has critical importance to us, because we want to protect the aquifers that we pull our drinking water from, but at the same time the strategy used to try to provide that protection have varied significantly. We are on our third strategy right now and, actually, this third one is our most promising. So, we are excited about the development, but we are also discouraged by the length of time it's taken us to get to where we are. But we are not the only ones driving this train, if you will. Our quality and our operation side of things from our strategic area, we want to focus on water rights administration. We have been working for some time to shore up our water rights portfolio. I don't know if you know how important that is to our community to make sure that the permits and the licenses that we have for our water is transferred to decree rights and that we preserve and protect our portfolio to insure the viability of this community from a potable water standpoint. So, we want to convert our entire portfolio and justify that to the Department of Water Resources and, then, we need to start planning for the future beyond that. What else do we need to acquire in the way of water rights and so a RAFNA, a reasonable anticipated future needs application, is something that looks like is in our future at some point down the road. We are also evaluating or would like to evaluate interconnectivity. That means hooking up our system to other people's systems, like say for example United Water or some other jurisdiction, with security measures, but with the idea that if you have an emergency or if you have a well go down, if you have something that you might need to rely on a Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 32 of 48 neighbor for it's good to have that already established. So, we will be studying that. We don't have any recommendations at this point in time. Also storage -- increasing the storage. We have, as you know, this tank down at the south Meridian area is not going to be the only tank we are going to need storage wise. That's also going to be a challenge for us. And, then, water resources planning is really critical for us. We need to know where the best water is and how to preserve and protect that -- the best water in the aquifer system. So, we have been developing a geo hydrologic frame work, which is a fancy word -- or series of words that just says -- and we are studying what's under the ground and we are identifying where the best water is and trying to put together strategies to preserve and protect that. And, then, lastly, our water conservation plan is -- is another area that we want to continue to focus on. By reducing long-term demand on water we can help preserve the amount of water that we have in the ground. As it relates to the Water Division -- I think I just went through that. So, in our organization we are still focused on organizational excellence, accreditation efforts, are strategic plan is going to need to be updated here soon. It was published in 2010 and goes through 2015. Legislatively we talked about sort of our challenges that we have regarding water and even wastewater and other utility-related impacts to our operation. Planning both from a CIP and facilities standpoint and also from a technological standpoint is critical to us. Regional partnerships and continuing to develop those with the emphasis on developing mutually aligned strategies to further multiple efforts is going to be critical to us and, then, asset management is still going to be a challenge for us long term and fleet management, which we haven't done anything with, is something that, you know, we have on the radar, but at some point a couple years down the road we will need to be putting more resources towards. As it relates to our organization, we are focused on continuing to establish and ingrain a culture of learning and you have seen this several times, I won't go into it with great detail, other than to say that we are still heavily focused on collecting data and making data driven decisions in our organization that benefit what we do in our operation each and every day. So, we use things like continuous process improvement, data driven decision making, statistical process control and, then, of course, adaptive management where we learn from what we institute and, then, go back and through evaluation develop stronger and better processes, policies, and protocols to continue the continuous process improvement effort. Also culturally we want to focus staff to exemplify the Meridian way and uphold and promote the CARE values. We have been focusing heavily on the three C's, we call them the communication, coordination, and collaboration, and we have many great examples of that occurring both in our department and with other departments. We want to continue those efforts and focus on that. Workforce development is -- as mentioned already something that's critical for us to focus on on the long term and, then, regional and national leadership, we want to make sure that staff are given opportunities to provide conference presentations and many of them are doing that now, to be members of associations and to also take officership in these associations as well. While that's happening on a voluntary basis right now, we want to encourage many of the other staff that we see as upcoming leaders to also engage in those activities. And, then, lastly, in our community we want to focus on service enhancements, FlexNet reading system, this is that reading system. You're familiar with this, we have talked to you about it. I don't know if we have used Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 33 of 48 this terminology, but it's that automatic meter reading process or system that would allow us to collect information remotely from each of the meters and also to turn off people remotely and -- and prevent backflow prevention systems -- or backflow prevention situations on our system. Citywide irrigation system, we are going to be doing an evaluation this year, but as a longer term strategy, you know, a third of our customers across the city don't have access to irrigation at all and they are using city water to water their lawns at an expensive rate. So, long term we would like to get some sort of benefit back from -- as a service enhancement to them. Water treatment is a long-term solution for us. We have mentioned to you probably a five to six year endeavor for us. Hydraulic and financial modeling, that's also important to ensure that we are predicting what we -- and anticipating what we believe to be the challenges in preparing ourselves now, so that we can minimize the inconvenience to both of our customers and also community at large. Flood plain management program development. This is important for the downtown area if you want to see redevelopment. We want to get areas outside of the flood plain. So, we have some effort -- some long-term strategies to shrink down our flood plains and, then, also to become members of the community rating system, which also helps to lower the premiums for the National Flood Insurance Program. And, then, as a department reaching out to our community we want to promote the value of our services and develop a really formalized communications and outreach plan. We have talked a little bit about that from a tactical standpoint, but we see. that as a long-term strategy going forward. We want to ultimately build support and understanding and appreciation of the services that we provide and there is a lot of different media and a lot of different venues and a lot of different audiences to do this. And, then, lastly, we want to find ways to give back to our community. We have done a good job. I think an adequate job in the last seven years by participating in Paint The Town, by raising food and money for the Food Bank, and some of the other activities that we do, but we want to emphasize and step up our efforts on that as well and there are a lot of opportunities, certainly no shortage of opportunities to do that. So, that sort of explains quickly from a high level standpoint what we have been up to and what we see as the challenges coming down the road. I know there is a lot there. It's difficult to get through this. The Mayor and I talked even about maybe hitting you twice, splitting this up and giving you half of it and, then, giving you another half later, but we are a big department, we have a lot of things going on, so I appreciate your time and attention and with that I will stop and try to address any questions you might have. De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. Council, any questions? Rountree: Not right now. De Weerd: Wow. Has he ever gotten of this easy? Barry: I don't think ever. Bird: I can't talk, so -- Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 34 of 48 De Weerd: Oh. That's it. He planned it strategically when Councilman Bird couldn't talk. Barry: Oh, that's good. I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Bird, because I do enjoy our dialogue, but -- yes. No. And I appreciate your continued support of our department and of all my staff and the staff has been phenomenal and great and one last thank you for Susie Deardorff, who was instrumental in making us look pretty, so -- De Weerd: Now, I will thank your entire staff in every division. I know how much work it takes to bring and compile all this work together, but it's not just that it's the actions behind everything that he was able to present to Council tonight. We are very proud of our Public Works divisions and we thank you for staying out of the limelight, because we do you know your underground utilities and when we don't get calls that's a good thing. So, thank you so much for everything that you do. Thank you, Tom. Barry: Thank you, Mayor and Council. C. Community Development: Transportation Update on Transportation Projects, Priorities and Studies -Includes Discussion About Roadway, Intersection and Interchange Construction Projects De Weerd: Okay. Item 8-C is our Community Development and we have our transportation update. Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor and Members of the Council. I am going to quickly run through some of the transportation going ons over the past month and coming up over the next couple of months. I am going to be working from the memo provided in your packet, so it looks like three, maybe four pages long, so hopefully you have that and can follow along. As is usual, I'm not going to go through all the projects listed in that memo, but really highlight some of the important ones. But if there is anything in that memo or anything I skip over or you have the questions at anytime, please, feel free to interrupt. I did find one correction on page two. It has to do with the Main Street rehabilitation project. I put in there that construction began in July and is complete. That's not totally true. There are still a few blocks towards Franklin, about Ada to Franklin, that are still under construction there. A lot of that has to do with waiting for irrigation water to be out, so Public Works can put some of their infrastructure in. I didn't know that was still going on, because I don't usually drive Main Street in the middle of the night to know that that road work is going on. That's when they are doing the work. So, that is currently underway, but it should be complete before split corridor kicks off here. So, I want to make that correction. Ustick -Locust Grove is another project highlighted just because ACHD is contemplating accelerating that project from next year to this fiscal year. They are actually receiving more impact fees than they had originally planned and so they are trying to spend that money and this is one of the projects they are looking to accelerate. So, I will keep you posted on that. But it is one of the larger projects they are planning to move forward -- or at least looking to move forward. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 35 of 48 Franklin -Ten Mile -Linder. This project has been 2012, 2015, '14. This is another one that looks like it's moving forward. It's on the 90 day bid list. So, there are still a couple of property owners that they need to negotiate with, that they have been negotiating with, but are pretty confident that they can get those done with Brighton and Calnon to finish up negotiations there. And, then, one of the ones I wanted to spend a little bit more time on is the split corridor project. We are in October. 2013. This is when the project is going to kick off. So, I wanted to announce that if you haven't heard by now Central Paving is the contractor that's been selected. A preconstruction meeting was held on October 4th. Tim Curns attended that. I do have a quick handout I would like to give you with some of the information that was shared during that meeting and, then, just highlight a couple of things in that. So, some of that information in what we just handed out I'm going to let Tim go through. I want to focus in on the second slide there, the public outreach slide, and a couple things that aren't on there. There is a project webpage that's up and running. It's triple W Meridian split corridor dot org and this is the place where all information on this project will be housed, updates will be provided, all the businesses will be asked to bookmark it, to add to your favorites, whatever, because that will be where a lot of the information will flow for this project. So, it's not on ACHD's website, it's not on the city's website, there is a specific project page that's dedicated to this. The Langdon Group has been hired by the highway district to help initially with some of the outreach and just communications and logistics, how to communicate with businesses, so -- and they are under contract now with the highway district to assist in some of the business outreach efforts. There is a project fact card -- fact card that will be handed out to businesses that will have contact information for city staff, ACHD staff, the contractor and general project information, too. A timeline of when you can expect what type of work to be going on. In that slide there will be a public meeting on October 17th here at City Hall. That will be a big project kickoff meeting. In the meantime, starting next week, the week of the 15th, we will be doing door-to-door visits. I say we -- I didn't -- I don't have to go on these or I don't get to go on these. ACRD, Brenda, members from the chamber and MDC will be the ones primarily doing those door-to-door visits with businesses to make sure they are prepared and are ready for this project to kick off. And, then, subject to coordination with Peggy in the Mayor's office and all of your calendars, with ACHD, the groundbreaking event should be on or around Monday, October 29th. So, I think Stephanie Blake and ACRD have been in contact with the Mayor's office trying to -- trying organize that. So, we are getting ready, we are gearing up. I do want Tim to come up and highlight a couple of things -- or stay there and highlight just a couple of things on this project. He has -- I don't know if you all know, but Roxanne Holland is no longer with the city, so Tim is managing this project in Public Works. So, I will let Tim do his thing. Cures: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, as Caleb mentioned, there has been a tremendous amount of coordination work going on and public outreach with the split corridor project. We have been meeting very frequently with ACRD and the contractors trying to be proactive, anticipating what problems we may encounter with this project, what our backup plans are should we encounter those, and so we are just a few weeks away from start of construction October 29th. Meridian Road closes, work begins, our Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 36 of 48 piping contractor that's doing city utilities is it going to start up at the north end of the project there at -- near Albertsons on the north side of the road and we have actually been working on some redesign work in working with the contractor and our engineering consultant to try and shift for some of those pipes around a little bit to make it even less -- have even less of an impact to the traveling public up there, keep as many lanes open as we can, and with that in mind we are also -- here in another week or so we should see installation of the driveway to the south City Hall parking lot, which will make it possible for us to access that during construction -- throughout the duration of construction and so I'm sure that makes a lot of people happy, including some of our delivery folks and whatnot. So, those are just a couple things I wanted to mention. I don't know if there is anything else that Council or the Mayor has been wondering about the project and would like to know, I'm certainly happy to answer any questions. De Weerd: Council, any questions? I know there is two sessions coming up. Are those next week? Curns: Let's see. One's the 17th. So, yes, that would be next week here at City Hall. believe -- Caleb, I don't know if we ended up getting a particular room. Is that going to be Conference Room A, is what we were looking at? Hood: I think it's A and B both. Yeah. Curns: So, we do have that -- we have a meeting set up for the public meeting for the public to interface with the contractor, with us, and also we have our regular construction meetings that anyone can attend. So, they are all going to be here. De Weerd: And I think there has been confusion. I have heard several different comments regarding the closure. It's going to be a full closure. The entire -- the entire area. Curns: Madam Mayor, closing goes from just south of Cherry to the railroad tracks, with the exception of cross-traffic on Pine. There has been some discussion, although it's not official yet, as to whether or not the contractor will need to close between Pine and Broadway initially. They might -- might be able to leave that open -- that couple of block section for the first few months, but we are also waiting to find out what the other utilities -- we have got a huge amount of natural gas and telecommunications and whatnot that run through this, so we are waiting to see when those other companies need to get in and start doing their relocation work. So, hopefully, soon here we will have an idea of whether or not that -- we can keep that little piece open as long as possible to limit impacts, but right now we are telling people just plan on it all being closed. Worst case scenario. De Weerd: Yeah. I think it was the Broadway piece that had the most discussion going on it. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 37 of 48 De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Tim, I saw signs are up directing people to the various businesses that are on Meridian Road, but how will they access those that are across the street? How is that specifically going to work? Curns: Councilman Hoaglun, the businesses that are on the west side, I believe there is going to be signage up to take care of those as well, but it's going to be a little bit more circuitous to get them if you're coming from this side of Meridian Road. We also have information on the project website to help the people. In addition those signs people can go to the project website, that helps them figure out how to get to those businesses. Hoaglun: Okay. Yeah. Because for some of them you can come in the back way, you know, through Meridian, but there is some over here where there is no back way, there is only one way. And that's -- it's going to be a little more difficult, so -- De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions from the Council? Quiet group today. Hood: Okay. Moving right along. Still on page two in the memo. Just to bring you up to speed, the Ustick -Meridian Road project, we did have a team meeting, it was our first team meeting, but it was an important team meeting in that there was some recommendations from ACHD's consultant about the intersection configuration. Going forward what we decided on during that meeting last week was that a seven by seven intersection would be warranted. Initially the east and south legs -- I have talked to you about this before, but Meridian Road -- basically, this is where Meridian is planned right now anyways to go from five to three north of Ustick. So, the -- looking at the traffic numbers, Six Mile engineers recommended to ACRD that they evaluate having the auxiliary lanes and we also discussed dual left turn lanes, but the project team thought it was warranted to go to a seven by seven intersection. There was a good discussion about, you know, those are wide intersections in the cross and you have got a regional park in there, so there is a lot of travel lanes for a kid or anybody to walk across, so that was weighed in as well, just not sheer traffic volumes, but at the end of the day we thought it was best to move forward with a seven by seven intersection going forward. So, I just wanted to let you all know that, that it changed, it grew a little bit in its footprint, but -- but everybody -- most everybody at the table thought that was the best way to proceed, so -- and, then, the other big thing I wanted to spend a little bit of time on is a roundabout map that ACRD has generated and that's the slide that you see up on the computer now. Justin Lucas and Amar Pillai are here from ACRD. I met with them last week to go through -- to look at this map. ACHD has been evaluating the feasibility of roundabouts at various intersections throughout the county, kind of doing some of that sleuthing. They hired a contractor to figure out what intersections could accommodate roundabouts. As you can see in the legend here on the map, everything from a single to a triple lane roundabout. I do want to highlight that this isn't a build map, it's a preservation map, and that's really what it's -- you know, again, this is going to go over Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 38 of 48 the top of the master street map, which is a starting place, it's a starting place for typologies, for intersection configuration, but it's not the end all, be all map. I'm not educated enough to say I am pro or con a triple lane roundabout. I don't necessarily want to start driving one right away, but Idon't -- but I do see some merits at this point in time in saying, hey, some of these -- 50, 75 years when we actually build something out there, maybe a triple lane everybody is comfortable with at that point, and it is what gets constructed. At the end of the day what ACHD would like from us, if we are comfortable with this -- and I'm not asking you to be comfortable with it just yet -- is a letter of support. What I would put in there, if we support, you know, adding roundabouts to the masters street map, is that we are okay in concept with preserving the right of way for a triple lane roundabout, but we aren't comfortable designing or building any of these at this point in time. So, I will -- I'm looking for some input there. If you want to just put a flat kibosh on it and say, Hope, no way, no how, not even in -- on a preservation map do we want to see a triple lane, but if you look at the footprint of a triple lane, it's really the worst case scenario. You can still do, you know, a seven by seven where you're showing a triple lane roundabout or a really wide intersection, it's your worst case scenario for a right of way footprint. You can't go the other way. If you say you're only going to do a seven by seven intersection and you want to do a triple lane roundabout, you're buying landscaping and houses or whatever, because you have encroached. They have got different footprints, I guess is what I'm trying to say. So, a triple lane roundabout is about as bad as it's going to get for right of way needs. So, these would be the places that -- that are at least feasible, at least from the consultant and what ACHD is looking for. I guess a couple of other caveats to any support letter, if we are comfortable today voicing that support -- if you want to come back and discuss this more we can. The U.S. 20-26 corridor we have done a preservation study on that corridor and roundabouts weren't considered. So, this map isn't consistent with that plan, so I have some reservations about just sending a support letter forward. What I would ask is, again, if we are in support of adding roundabouts to the master street map is to say, you know, with the exception of -- or with further coordination with U.S. 20-26 preservation. It's hard for me to envision roundabouts on Chinden, quite honestly. So, don't know where you all stand on that. And, again, with there already being a corridor preservation plan that shows signalized intersections at these and other locations, I'm a little leery of -- but, again, maybe that's just my short-sightedness in not understanding how that will work on a 55 mile an hour roadway. The other caveat is Ten Mile. Ten Mile at the time we had HGR look at land uses and the transportation network. However, they were really looking at the network for that general area to serve. So, roundabouts at that time weren't really at the forethought of ACHD's mind, it was we build the signals and since, then, they kind of flip flopped that a little bit and roundabouts -- it's a roundabout unless you can prove otherwise, basically, that a signal is warranted. And at the Ten Mile I don't necessarily have any concern with going from a signal to a roundabout at those arterial-arterial intersections, so Overland -Ten Mile, Franklin- Linder, and Overland-Linder were all shown as signals, but it was basically the only game in town when we did the Ten Mile plan. Through this process their consultant -- ACHD's consultant uses the most current demographics and traffic numbers. Again, the one thing is there is a couple of triple lane roundabouts in there, so I don't know how I feel about those, but, basically, going from a signal to a roundabout, I don't necessarily Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 39 of 48 have any concerns. I don't think it violates the intent or any of the things that the Ten Mile interchange does. But I wanted to call that out as being a little bit different. And, then, finally, the one -- the one intersection, just with the timing, this has been going on for about a year at ACRD, the Pine-Linder intersection just opened up and they have it shown here as a dual lane roundabout and I don't see that. It doesn't make any sense to me. So, that would be one I would say -- color it -- you know, it's blue on here, but color it a -- you know, take it off of this map, because I don't see a roundabout working there. One with the high school -- roundabouts tend to be a little bit trickier for pedestrians and being right there and it being recently reconstructed as a signal, I don't think there is any reason to preserve for a dual lane roundabout, but that's just my two cents, so -- Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Caleb, I see a couple where they put in single lane roundabouts in already established residential areas and that's one of my concerns is -- it's already established as an intersection. In fact, one -- a couple of them are three legs, they are not a four way, and I'm not sure about pedestrian access with roundabouts in those areas and I would assume before they do anything ACHD would have a public hearing and let the neighborhood weigh in, but I struggle with that. I'm going it works fine now, there is one more phase to be built, it's going to add 50 more homes, yes, there will be a little more traffic, but with the playground, pool, walking paths right there, I -- I see a -- we are moving cars and not people and that troubles me a little bit in those residential areas, so I'm not so sure about some of those locations. So, just something to keep an eye on. Hood: So, a couple of things. Don't want you -- don't want to make you uncomfortable. I realize you're seeing this for the first time. I'll ask either Justin or Amar to maybe come up and talk to you about next steps with this -- what that public hearing looks like, both for -- you know, at a higher level for just a map and, then, more at a particular level, hey, when you put that roundabout in what's that process going to look like or generally look like, as a neighborhood what kind of voice do we have in this. And this is a preservation map. I mean it is worst case. It doesn't mean they are going to build any of these as roundabouts, but it would be to preserve the right to way to build it if all of those other things fall into line. But, you know, again, if you want some time to look at this, study this, come back with comments, questions, we do have both of these gentlemen here today, so -- to answer some of your other questions I would ask one of them to come up and try anyway to get there. Again, just because I keep going back to it, I mean for preservation I'm okay with it. Once it gets down to more specifics and you start to design it, we have got to factor all of those things in. What's there now -- now being when the project is being designed. How does it tie in with these other improvements. So, I will keep an eye on it, but I need a little more direction from you. We are at -- with your comfort levels this afternoon, so -- appreciate that. Are there any other -- that would be my recommendation. You know, at this point I think a support letter could work, if you are comfortable. If not, again, I'm willing to come back and we can talk about it some more. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 40 of 48 De Weerd: Yeah. I think, Caleb, probably give Council an opportunity to process this and -- unless, Council, you feel comfortable -- Rountree: Madam Mayor, I can offer a couple comments right now without studying it and, one, I agree with your comment about the Pine-Linder. I would also make a similar comment about a triple lane roundabout on Franklin and Linder and Linder and Overland. I might be able to understand why if there was a -- also on a map somewhere an overpass on Linder, but until there is through traffic I'm not sure that the limited amount of traffic at that point on, essentially, a dead end road on one of the legs necessitates a triple roundabout. So, I don't know if that's -- is Linder overpass in this scenario that would encompass the time frame this roundabout map is. I also question indicating roundabouts on 20-26, as well as McDermott. Both of those routes have undergone significant corridor analyses and McDermott, if the 16 extension goes through, is it going to be signalized intersections and/or interchanges, because it's going to be a full controlled facility at some point in time in the future. And McDermott, if any of its left, is going to be a local collector. On 20-26 there has been, what, a million dollars spent on the corridor analysis for that and I don't think it envisioned roundabouts. So, I think that there is some -- I appreciate ACHD planning and thinking about that, but I think they have maybe planned outside of what's been analyzed and accepted in those two corridors. I'd love to see a triple roundabout somewhere and see how many people's hair go gray up over it. That will be a new experience for the traveling public in the state of Idaho. Having been in one with as many as 11 lanes, it's a little interesting. But, then, it's kind of a kamikaze operation and you just go until you can get out of it. De Weerd: Any other comments from Council? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Just as a first instinct, I agree with what has been said and, Caleb, what you came up with. I appreciate that ACRD is looking ahead and thinking corridor preservation -- or space preservation for these areas and I would gladly support that. As with others, I probably would subtract Chinden from that and Pine-Linder as you said and some others and I will have to say having been through many roundabouts all over the country I'm definitely an advocate of them. When they get beyond two lanes I am not too thrilled with them. I think that creates some greater challenges and as you look up -- look up and down some of them that are presented here as triple lane, if we preserve the corridor for that -- or preserves the right of way to accomplish that, I wonder if we might be able to fit some urban interchanges within that footprint. In other words, you would have over-under and very narrow ramps and -- typically I'm thinking of the ones that are in Boston, one of the roadways gets a through and the other one you get signals at the top of a ramp, but if that would fit within what's being preserved here -- Iknow (personally prefer those to triple roundabouts. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 41 of 48 Hood: And, Councilman Zaremba, Tim Curns and I were talking about that a little bit, that you might -- if you did something, if we might have some right of way left over to do something a little outside the box like that, particularly if you looked at Chinden and just reserved the right of way, essentially, understanding you weren't going to build a roundabout there, you might be able to do a different design to that interchange or intersection, however it gets designed. But that's not the intent of this. So, I -- you can input surplus, too, that in the best -- I think my last thing on this -- and Iwill -- I will move on and I will bring it back and I guess I would request -- I will share this map with you. I would request that you look at it in your time and we will come back here in another couple of weeks or three weeks or whatever if you can prepare your notes to know which -- I think some others -- what others those are, then, I can just do a detailed list of where the concerns are and we can get that letter out with -- if ACRD moves forward with this what does the map look like for Meridian. These are our comments and bullet them for ACHD. My last comment would just be that I don't know if they are sold on preserving for triple lane roundabouts. So, I don't think this has been presented to them yet or that they have -- that staff has direction to move forward with triple lane roundabouts. So, not that what Meridian says will dictate what the highway district does, but I just don't know where their commission even stands on triple lane roundabouts at this point. So, I think that will be an interesting discussion when they have it as well, so -- Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, Caleb, when you say preserve the right of way, I want to make sure I clearly understand that, because when I think of some of these intersections that have businesses everywhere already established and some are new developments -- preserving the right of way in a new development and we can talk to the developer if that's something we can go, yes, that's going to be a future roundabout, but some of these others are -- it's a whole different animal. So, what does preserve the right of way mean? Hood: It really is for -- as we have -- Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Hoaglun. It really does mean as new development occurs we can acquire the right of way necessary to -- in this case ultimately build that size roundabout. It wouldn't be to go in and proactively or after the fact negotiate right of way at this point. Now, an intersection -- I don't know, I will just -- Ustick and Locust Grove or something like that, where you have got development on most sides there, as it's time to do a project you may only have three sides that have come in for development and you need to negotiate and knock on the door and ask them for the fourth corner or what have you. But this really is meant as a guide for -- as new projects come in and as you go into design of a project as a starting place. So, it wouldn't be -- and that's one of the -- one of criteria, although I'm probably not explaining it is very well, that ACHD's consultant looked at is what's already on the ground. Where is it -- where are you buying businesses if you build this. Because that's a no go. You don't want to put a roundabout in if you have got businesses and homes right there. So, most of these should reflect some level of feasibility to actually construct that without getting into parking lots or buildings or whatnot to have too big of an impact on a business or Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 42 of 48 property owner. So, preservation is just what that -- you know, preserving it for some future use. Hoaglun: Thank you. Hood: I will move on, unless there is any other -- I think we got good directions there and we will talk about it again here in the near future. Did you have something? Okay. So, the last thing I wanted to highlight this afternoon is the -- make the announcement -- I'm sure you all have heard now, but the Meridian Road interchange is in the 2013-2017 ITIP with 40 million dollars for reconstruction of the interchange. I guess what I wanted to -- I brought it up a couple of months ago when I was here, just to prove that dialogue, if you haven't at this time, or keep -- keep those -- those thoughts on the forefront of your mind anyways is specific amenities, landscaping, stamping concrete, specific design elements that you may like to see with that as a consultant is chosen and we move into design, what, if anything, does the city want to see with this that we may or may not have to foot the bill for. I can help out with that if there are some of those things, I can kind of let you know maybe where -- what we may have to pay for and what we can probably get with a project. Councilman Rountree can probably help with that a little bit, too. Or is there something you don't want to see with this project. What the -- the RFP is out right now for design and public involvement, they are two separate RFPs. The RFP does list a SPUI as the preferred design for this. I think depending on who is chosen and how that works, I think ITD at least at the district level is willing to consider other designs for an interchange, but the RFP did go out with the environmental clearance for a SPUI. We haven't really talked about that before as a group, but the consultant should be chosen by the end of this year and notice proceed with public involvement and design work beginning shortly thereafter, so at the first of the year. So, we don't have to do this now, but I do, again, want to -- the time will be here where there is anything we want to see -- and soon. What we want to see out of this project besides, you know, envision Ten Mile plopped down there or Vista plopped down there, so --- and, then, construction of the project should be complete in the summer of 2015. So, if you want to have that dialogue now I can take some notes. If not, we are going to need to discuss that or shoot me an a-mail or whatever, talk amongst yourselves about what our participation level is in this interchange. So, this is my first rodeo with a new interchange, so bear with me as I try to learn and understand, you know, when -- when to do what, but I think we need to gear up for that, because think that's what's coming up soon, so -- De Weerd: Well, certainly, Caleb, I think with the investment that has been made in that corridor already with Ada County Highway District, the urban renewal district, and making that a nice gateway into our community and into our Old Town, that there needs to be some attention to aesthetically how we do want to have that entry into our -- the heart of our community and certainly the stamped concrete, when they told -- when they talked to us with Ten Mile they said it wouldn't add to the cost. I don't -- Rountree: It was factored in. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 43 of 48 De Weerd: It was -- oh, it was factored in. So, we just need to know what it all means, so that Council can't make a determination of what they want, maybe a menu of things. Certainly the landscaping in the past -- I think we have talked briefly about that here at Council and that ten foot multi-use pathway and how it can connect to the interchange. Certainly there is a great deal of interest in making sure that there is safety for pedestrians and bicyclists. That's certainly a paramount concern that's been driving our comments on this interchange from day one. So, those are my thoughts. Rountree: Caleb, if you could get a cost breakdown from ITD on the Vista interchange -- and they are going to give you a number that was, basically, the construction cost, which is never what anything costs, but that's always the number they use. You need a number for preliminary engineering, design, right of way, and construction and that will get you pretty close to what the project costs. So, the group when we meet on the 11th will have a sense of what do you get for how much. It might be interesting to get the same number for Ten Mile, but there is a number of other structures in Ten Mile that will inflate that cost, but it would be a nice comparison to make and, then, the group will have a sense of what 40 million dollars will purchase, because that 40 million dollars, as near as I can tell, the way it's programmed, is for -- unless there is other monies programmed for right of way and preliminary and engineering and design -- and I don't think there is -- is the total amount of money that's going to be divvied up into those categories, because we have all heard that those interchanges were like 25 million or whatever. Well, that's what they cost to construct. That isn't what they cost -- Hood: In total. Rountree: -- in total. Hood: I will work on that. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I just would throw in, too, as has already been mentioned, when they get to design we do need to make sure that it's pedestrian usable. And the other question is know they want to keep their maintenance facility somewhere in that area, but are they planning on sprucing it up any or if this is one of our major entryway corridors, which it is, and the entry to Old Town, how can we make that facility look better? De Weerd: And I don't think that we should even give them that option. They need to move it. They don't want it there permanently and so we need to help figure out how to get them to make that move now. Zaremba: Good point. De Weerd: It's not an option. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 44 of 48 Hood: I will communicate those. Councilman Rountree mentioned the meeting on the 11th of this month. The interchange task force, that's the meeting on the 11th he referred to. I wanted to -- before meeting with them I wanted to see if anything was off the table, don't go there with this group, but I'm going to be, essentially, asking them a similar question, what should this interchange be, look like, do and, then, I will bring that back to you with some recommendations, kind of depending on how our discussion goes on yes-no -- and I don't know that it's going to be a menu, but I think there will be some list of prioritized elements and things they would like to see from it and you can kind of filter that and say, yeah, that works, no, that doesn't work, kind of depending. So, that's how I see this playing out, but I wanted to see if there was anything -- one of the things that we have to discuss is -- is the maintenance facility there and how important is that and it just jumped about five spots on the list. But that is something that that group has talked about previously and -- and we will work forward with those. But I will bring that back and we will have -- we will continue this discussion again. If you can -- I will work on getting some of this background information to help you, but we will talk about it here some more in the near future, so -- De Weerd: And I guess, Caleb, in regards to the ITD maintenance facility, which I'm glad Councilman Zaremba brought up, but it might even be a good idea to bring all of those landowners in that area together. It doesn't have to be right it in the face when you get into Meridian. If there can be a land swap where they can make internal where it's -- it's hidden behind future development, it makes it a little bit more palatable. But do know that in the long term they want it down by McDermott or where ever McDermott is going to meet I-84. So, if that's the case they should start moving in that direction now. Anyway, that's my preference. Hood: Thank you. That's all I have for this afternoon, unless there is anything else Council wants to discuss. De Weerd: Anything further from Council? Hood: Thank you. Item 9: Ordinances A. Third Reading of Ordinance No. 12-1528: Downtown Core Sidewalk Facility Standards, Title 8, Chapter 1 Ordinance with City of Meridian Improvement Standards De Weerd: Thank you. 9-A is the third reading of Ordinance 12-1528. Madam Clerk, will you, please, read this ordinance by title only. Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 12-1528 an ordinance of the City of Meridian repealing and replacing Title 9, Chapter 1, Meridian City Code, City Core Streetscape Ordinance, definitions, requirements for all Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 45 of 48 encroachments in the City Core streetscape, requirements for encroachments in the use zone, requirements for encroachments in the street furnishings zone, penalties and enforcement and severability. Repealing Title 8, Chapters 3, 4, and 5, Meridian City Code, and providing an effective date. De Weerd: Thank you. Council? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I move approval of Ordinance No. 12-1528 and the Mayor to sign and Clerk to attest. Zaremba: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9-A. Is there any discussion? Madam Clerk? Rountree: Madam Mayor, just a question for Bill. Were the suggestions that were provided handled within the ordinance and -- Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree, yes, we did incorporate some of them and, then, did respond back to Mr. Borton with what was incorporated and what wasn't, so -- and he was fine with that. Rountree: All right. De Weerd: Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. B. ®rdinance No. 12-1531: An ®rdinance (RZ 12-001j of the Mayor and City Council of the City of Meridian for the Re-Zone of a Parcel of Property Known as Paramount East Subdivision Located on the West Side of N. Meridian Road Between W. Producer and E. McMillan Road, Meridian, Idaho De Weerd: Item 9-B is the Ordinance 12-1531. Madam Clerk, will you, please, read this by Title only. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 46 of 48 Holman: Thank you, Madam Mayor. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 12-1531, an ordinance RZ 12-001, Paramount East Subdivision for the rezone of a parcel of land located in the southeast one quarter of Section 25, Township 4 North, Range 1 West, situated in Ada County Idaho and adjacent and continuous to the corporate limits of this City of Meridian, as requested by the City of Meridian, establishing and determining the land use zoning classification of 12.47 acres of land from the L-O, Limited Office Zoning District, to R-8, medium density residential zoning district in the Meridian City Code, providing that copies of this ordinance shall be filed with the Ada County Assessor, the Ada County Recorder and the Idaho State Tax Commission as required by law and providing for a summary of the ordinance and providing for a waiver of the reading rules and providing an effective date. De Weerd: Thank you. Council, seeing that there is no one to ask for it to be read in its entirety, I would entertain a motion. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I move we approve Ordinance 12-1531 and for the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest. Bird: Suspension of rules. Zaremba: With suspension of rules. Hoaglun: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 9-B. Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 90: Future IVleeting Topics De Weerd: We are at Item No. 10 and before I ask if there is any items to consider for future agenda topics, just because I'm feeling so generous today and that I'm still awake, I will offer City of Meridian pins to our three employees who are still here. Niemeyer, Lieutenant Overton, and Mike. Thank you for bearing with us and I do have City of Meridian pins for you. Mr. Hoaglun. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 47 of 48 Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, under future meeting topics we did -- I think Council saw we did receive a response from the Ada County Commissioners to our letter regarding some of the landfill issues and concerns that we had out there and I would like SWAC, Solid Waste Advisory Committee, to take a look at their response and at a future meeting report back to the Council on any recommendations, possible response, or anything else they would want to advise us on in response to that letter. So, I think that would be something worth us having them look into it and hear from, so -- De Weerd: Okay. Well, we will get that back and, then, to the SWAC and bring it back in front of you once they have had a chance to discuss it. Rountree: Madam Mayor, I guess with that suggestion, Mr. Nary will be available to SWAC to discuss that, because I'm thinking some of the issues are beyond their ability to get through some of the legal opinion I think expressed both in our letter and the county's response, so -- Nary: Yes, sir. I will be available for that. Rountree: Very good. De Weerd: Okay. Thank you so much. If there is nothing -- Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: On the subject of pins, I realize that Dean is not technically an employee, but he hangs in there with us at all of our meetings and the Planning and Zoning Commission meetings and does excellent work, I would like to nominate him for having a City of Meridian pin as well. De Weerd: He is a good sport, even if we pay him sometimes it's painful. So, Dean, you earn yourself a pin as well. So, with that said do I have a motion to adjourn? Rountree: So moved Zaremba: Second. De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Meridian City Council Workshop October 9, 2012 Page 48 of 48 MEETING ADJOURNED AT 5:28 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) MAY AMMY DE WEERD ~l~l ZD~Z DATE APPROVED ATTEST: CITY CLERK Clty Of ,~ ~a OW m IDAHO r~, S~, W Hf ~~ 6B V! ~~~e~T0.l AS~p~