HomeMy WebLinkAbout2013-07-09 Budget~~E IDIAN:---
CITY OF MERIDIAN
CITY COUNCIL MEETING
SPECIAL MEETING AMENDED AGENDA
Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 8:00 a.m.
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue, Meridian, Idaho
1. Roll-call Attendance:
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
2. Adoption of the Agenda Adopted
3. City of Meridian FY2014 Budget Meeting Presentation
4. Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c)(d): (c) To Conduct
Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire an Interest in
Real Property, Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency, and (d) To
Consider Records that are Exempt from Disclosure as Provided in Chapter
3, Title 9, Idaho Code
Into Executive Session at 2:22 p.m.
Out of Executive Session at 3:07 p.m.
Adjourned at 3:08 p.m.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda -Tuesday July 9, 2013 Page 1 of 2
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.
City of Meridian
Proposed Presentation Schedule
Schedule subject to change
FY2014 Budget
July 9, 2013 Tuesday
8:00 am to 2:00 pm
Start End
8:00 - 8:10
8:10 - 8:40
8:40 - 9:10
9:10 - 9:40
9:40 - 10:00
10:00 - 10:15
10:15 - 10:25
10:25 - 10:35
10:35 - 11:20
11:20 - 12:00
12:00 - 1:00
1:00 - 1:45
1:45 - 2:15
Minutes Department
0:10 Council assemble, review any additional materials
0:30 Overall Budget (TL), Merit/Benefits (BN)
0:30 Community Development
0:30 HR
0:20 Other Government
0:15 Break
0:10 Finance
0:10 Council - 2 New Members
0:45 Parks Department
0:40 Police Department
1:00 Lunch (Ordered In)
0:45 Fire Department
0:30 IT
Meridian City Council Special Meeting Agenda -Tuesday July 9, 2013 Page 2 of 2
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 Citv Council Special Meeting July 9, 2013
A special meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 8:10 a.m.,
Tuesday, July 9, 2013, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Keith Bird, David
Rountree and Brad Hoaglun.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Jeff Lavey, Mark Niemeyer, Stacy
Kilchenmann, Todd Lavoie, Reta Cunningham, Natalie Podgorski, 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: Okay. I will go ahead and start today's special meeting. It's our budget
workshop. It is Tuesday, July 9th. It's ten minutes after 8:00 for the record and I would
like to thank those that are in our audience. We never see faces during our budget
workshop, so it's really cool to see some faces. Madam Clerk, will you, please, start us
with roll call attendance.
Item 2: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I move adoption of the agenda as printed.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as printed. All those in
favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 3: City of Meridian FY2014 Budget Meeting Presentation
De Weerd: Okay. Item 3 is our fiscal year 2014 budget presentation. We will kick it off
with Stacy and as -- as customary and it's not because it's root comment, I will comment
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July 9, 2013
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how much I appreciate the work you and your staff do in preparing this budget and the
process that we go through. I really thoroughly enjoy playing good cop, bad cop with
Todd and so, you know, it's something I look forward to every single year. But I
appreciate you and your staff, Stacy, and I will turn it over to you.
Kilchenmann: Thank you. And welcome to the 2014 budget. I'm just going to give a
little overview. I do want to say that this budget is a little bit unique for a couple
reasons. One, this isn't a General Fund budget or an Enterprise Fund Budget, this is a
city budget. I think our whole team, including Tom, worked on all of this budget, as we
should. Tom pays half of all the administrative support functions, so he definitely has
some skin in the game there and also I think when the citizens look at our budget they
don't look and say, oh, that's the Enterprise Fund budget, it's fee supported; that's the
General Fund budget, it's tax supported, they look at the city as a whole and as a
complete unit and they just look at the services they receive and the programs that are
available. So, I really appreciate the directors, the way we were all able to work
together as one. And, then, this budget was a little bit difficult, because it was a little
tougher than it has been in some years when we had four and a half million dollars to
spend on enhancements. It was tighter and departments had to give up things that they
really cared about and that they worked hard for or that they were invested in in order to
do some other program or project that we will agreed was for the better of the city in the
long term. I really want to thank the directors for the work they did and the level of
negotiation they are willing to rise to. So, just briefly on the revenue, the General Fund
budget -- of course I -- the property tax is kind of a given. It increases eight percent
over last year and most of that is from the increase we experienced in new construction.
As far as the building permit side, I based the residential building permit revenue
projection basically on the year 2012. So, '13 is a lot -- the activity is greater than it was
in '12, but I just can't help being conservative and I always look back at 2007 when for
June year to date -- at the end of June 2007 we had sold 722 building permits. In July
everything crashed. So, for'13 year to date we are at about 697 building permits. So, I
wanted to be conservative, but I also want to recognize the increase in permit activity.
Now, the increase in permit activity is real low into the CIP fund, so it's not directly
affecting -- that projection won't directly affect our normal operations, but it will help
increase our CIP fund. And the other main component of the General Fund revenue is
sales tax and our sales tax increased seven percent from '12 to '13 largely because
they changed the computation formula, the calculation formula. So, I left it at about 3.3
million. It stays pretty consistently between three million and 3.5 million depending on
the activity in the economy. The Enterprise Fund has -- has consistent account lows
between two to three percent. So, wastewater I increased three percent over '13 and I
believe that's the same increase they used in the rate model and water I increased two
percent over anticipated '13. Water is a little tricky, because it does have the weather
dependent factor in it. But connection fees I left the same. I matched them to
residential and building permit level that I used for the General Fund and left them the
same as 2012, which will likely be low, but, again, the connection fees go into the fund
balance and, then, fund the one time capital construction. So, I have given you a
handout that shows the three funds -- a summary of the three funds and the revenue
forecast and, then, as we go through the General Fund enhancements there is a -- the
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July 9, 2013
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capital improvement plan for five years, the one that's got colors on it and it's front and
back and it just shows what we actually did in '13 and how we changed the plan and
where we are in '14. So, we haven't varied the plan very drastically. We have had to
move things back and, then, the other thing -- we exchanged part of the money we were
going to set aside for the field house to do the dark fiber. So, the Police Department
goes through their capital. That's just something for you to look at and see how we are
on track with our Capital Improvement Plan. So, that's just a quick, dirty overview and,
then, I believe Todd has a couple things to say and, then, we are ready to get started.
De Weerd: Thank you, Stacy. Council, any questions at this point?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. So, are you the good cop or bad cop today, so I know what my role
needs to be?
Lavoie: We will find out really quick, won't we. Well, good morning, Mayor, Members of
the Council. I just want to echo what the Mayor said earlier. This year was another
productive year in the budget process. I appreciate everybody's participation. The
budget would not be where it's at without the five of you up there and all the department
directors and all their staff members. I think every year as we get -- we learn something
new every year and I think we improve the process every single year. So, I just want to
say I appreciate it and I do agree it's fun playing bad cop, good cop. So, I'm going to go
over quick -- a quick slide here to go over the 2014 budget in its whole and, then, I'm
going to talk about what you're going to see here for the next two days. The first thing I
want to talk about are the supplemental budget documents. I have delivered a packet
that looks like this and you should have two stacks of paper. The first stack would
represent the new budget summary documents. We have had a few changes since our
last production of the books a month ago. So, if you can just amend your books with
the new summaries that would be great. Also there are four budget enhancements that
need to be replaced in your books. There is one for Well 16, if you wouldn't mind taking
out the old Well 16 and amending the new one and also there are three for the
wastewater division, if you can supplement those as well I would appreciate it. So, with
that, the budget is in good standing. We have a balanced budget for you today. The
General Fund is currently sitting at a 9,000 dollar above the line profit and the
Enterprise Fund, when we get to that tomorrow, you will see that we are requesting that
we spend 7.4 million out of the fund balance to get the product and the expenses
throughout the year. For the General Fund we are going to be requesting that we
spend 1.9 million dollars out of the fund balance to balance the budget and to use those
funds to pay for capital per the CIP plan that was presented to you in previous
meetings. So, in its entirety the city budget we are presenting to you is a little over 70.7
million dollars. With that the General Fund we are going to be presenting to you is 35
million dollars. The Community Development Fund is a little bit over 2.8 million dollars
and the Enterprise Fund is a little over 32.7 million and with this graphic you can see
how it's all broken out by department and the annual year over year changes from last
year to this year. This is a snapshot of what your budget has looked like for the last
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July 9, 2013
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seven years. This is a total city budget with all the enhancements. So, starting from
2007 on the left the proposed budget to the right for 2014 is what we have for you over
the next two days. Then this is just another view of that same graph broken out by the
funds that we present to you -- the General Fund, the Enterprise Fund, and the
Community Development team. Breaking it down to the General Fund, like we spoke of
earlier, we are going to be presenting a little over 35 million dollars to you. You can see
how this is broken out into the four major groups that we represent the General Fund in,
with the admin department representing 15 percent, the fire 28, the parks 13, and the
police represents 44 percent of the 35 million dollar budget that you will listen to over
the next two days. The Enterprise Fund is broken out in this fashion with a little over
32.7 million that will be presented in the next two days and, then, the community
development a little over 2.8 million dollars and you can see how that's broken out for
you. So, with the budget we break it down into three segments for you. Within the
summary sheet you will notice that it's broken down into the base budget, the
replacements and the enhancements. Total city budget we are going to present to you
is going to be for the base budget for 42.8 million dollars. The base budget is
comprised of your personnel costs and your ongoing operating costs. Within the total
budget you're going to be looking at 1.4 million dollars in replacements. Those are for
vehicles, computers, and so forth. And, then, over the next two days you will hear from
all the departments where they will be presenting a little over 25 million dollars in new
enhancements. Within new enhancements the General Fund is going to be requesting
4.5 FTEs, so four and a half new employees for the General Fund. Development
Services and Enterprise Fund will not be presenting any new FTEs or employees to you
over the next two days. And within the replacements and vehicles -- or sorry. Within.
the vehicles there is going to be 12 replacements and two new vehicles and all vehicles
-- all 14 vehicles will be represented in the General Fund, with Enterprise and
Community Development not requesting any new vehicles or replacements for 2014.
Now we are going to talk about the General Fund. As we spoke of the budget's broken
down into three components. This here is just the base budget, your personnel and
your operating, and you can see this is the General Fund's base budget over the last
seven years from 2007 on the left to 2014 that we are presenting today to the right and,
then, this is the operating cost for the General Fund itself. You can see what the trend
has been over the last seven years from left to right, from 2007 to -- or 2007 to 2014.
The same graph here for the Enterprise Fund starting from 2007 to 2014 is what you will
see for -- over tomorrow you will see the 2014 budget presented to you and this is a --
again another graph issue of these operating costs for the Enterprise Fund over the last
number of years. And, then, the same graph for the community development for the
base personnel and, then, for base operating. Over the next two days, like we spoke of
you're going to hear about replacements. The city will be requesting 1.4 -- a little over
1.4 million dollars for replacements. General Fund will be requesting 1.3. The
Community Development a little over a thousand dollars. And Enterprise Fund about
124,000 dollars you will hear from the departments requesting replacements and the
graph below shows you what the replacement requested has been over the last seven
years from left to right. And, then, also over the next two days you will hear
enhancements, like we spoke of, 25 million dollars will be requested from you in the
versions of enhancements. There is going to be 77 enhancements presented to you.
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July 9, 2013
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The General Fund will have 36 enhancements for a little over six million dollars.
Community Development will have three enhancements, a little over 102,000 dollars.
Enterprise Fund will have 38 enhancements for a little over 19 million dollars and you
can see what the enhancement requests have been over the last seven years as well.
There are a few departments that will not be presenting enhancements to you and those
are them. They are available to us. If you have questions I'm more than happy to
obtain that information for you. Just let me know. And with that that is the general
overview of the 2014 budget enhancement -- or budgets that you will be presented over
the next two days and I will just leave you with a few little jokes and I stand for any
questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Todd, I didn't get the enhancement sheet on Well 16 in my packet.
Lavoie: Okay. I will go ahead and get that for you, Mr. Rountree.
De Weerd: Anything else from Council?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Thanks. Todd.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I will tell you what's in your packets.
First, as Todd's pulling up the presentation on compensation and benefits, we actually
have in front of your packets are all the information received from our consultants
Mercer regards to our benefit changes for FY-14. Also in your packets you have last
year's presentation regards to benefits, you have this year's as well, and, then, also the
compensation matrix. It's a lot smaller than you prefer, so I blew it up as big as I could
get it into one sheet, so you could see what this compensation matrix looks like and
what we have been discussing as a group. Mayor and Council, thank you again for the
opportunity to be in front of you. We have some very good news. I tried to put this in
the most positive light, which kind of sums up the year in a lot of respects. We are
looking for the positive changes moving forward. If you look just briefly last year at our
wages -- or in benefits we did some refiguring of our benefit program and so we tried to
do some of that as some cost savings measures and moving things around in
anticipation of the Affordable Care Act, trying to make sure that we were aligned
properly. One of the things we are finding on the benefits side is that it is for -- I think
the next number of years it's going to be a dollars and cents game and there is a lot of
issues in regards to the Affordable Care Act and the impacts on employers, whether it
be public or private, how they are going to adjust to those things and so some of the
recommendations that you're going to have in front of you are totally related to dollars
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July 9, 2013
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and cents and trying to make the best practice that we could put and, then, also looking
forward to the future. But we did some good things last year in saving some money and
setting yourselves up for a potential increase this year, which is what we were all
anticipating. There isn't a way really around that, but we are really encouraged by what
Blue Cross and what Mercer has been able to provide for us as a city, but we will get
right into it with that. If you look at last year's I think we have done really well and going
forward this year I think we are also doing quite well. So, part of our objective this year
was to look at our compensation program as a whole. We had a working group with our
consultants from BDPA group that we have used on a number of occasions. The
working group included the Mayor, Council Member Zaremba, a few of the department
directors, plus Stacy Kilchenmann and Tom Barry from Public Works and a number of
other -- both Mercer, as well as other staff from my office in trying to come up with a
better structure of our compensation program than what we have had in the past. We
have what we call a times and level chart. We rank all jobs from the entry level job that
requires maybe a little certification or education components, to the most complex and
most intricate type of job requirements the city may have, we have ranked all of those
jobs in a matrix and, then, trying to make sure we have categorized and classified those
jobs appropriately both in the marketplace, as well as the jobs -- the job market both
locally and, then, sometimes nationally or at least in the northwest. So, we looked at all
of those factors in coming up with a compensation program recommendation for you,
market adjustments, the structure, through the analysis that we used in using a system
with BDPA where we compared a number of jobs that we had in the city with a number
of other jobs around the state at a variety of both cities and counties around the state,
we were able to come up with a market recommendation. What they found in making
that analysis that even through the -- the difficulty we have had over the last number of
years in the economy that our -- that our consultants were very comfortable in
recommending that we had a one percent differential between what we felt our market
was currently as to what our job categories and our job salary and compensation band
were set at. So, there is a one percent difference between what the marketplace is
today and what we were currently paying as an overall compensation. Not individually,
but as an overall compensation program for the city. So, this recommendation that's in
front of you -- and it's real small for the public. There are some in back. But, basically,
this table that you're looking at and what they have tried to do is come up with a
methodology that we could use consistently. One of the things that we committed to
bring to you in this exercise was a program that could be sustainable and repeatable
year after year, that it's something -- obviously it's always going to be dependent on the
current financial picture both of the city, as well as our community, but that it's a
sustainable type of program that can be predictable to folks, as some regularity and
some consistency for both of hiring, as well as for moving people through these ranges.
The range as you look at it -- I know this is the small one in front you, you will see that
it's just a shade under 49 percent from the bottom of the range to the top of the range.
The current salary matrix we have is about 56 -- almost 57 percent. We started at 50
and over time, as the jobs have adjusted some and the matrix has spread out a little bit.
One of the concerns by staff was that the further out you make these -- the job
categories the harder it is to achieve the end of the job category. It's harder to get to the
end of the pay grade without drastic changes in the salary structure or drastic changes
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July 9, 2013
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in the compensation that we do. So, trying to bring that in a little tighter was preferred
by this committee and that's what's in front of you. You will also see on there these little
arrows and sections and what we did was the current -- the current methodology that
we used really has a minimum, a mid point, and a max and you have probably seen it a
number of times and what this tries to do is help create hiring ranges on what we felt
was the market. If you look at the middle of the range it says market rate, so that is
what has been determined is the average market for that type of job in this community
based on comparisons with other communities, as well as the -- both private and public
sector locally. Private is a little tougher on the government side, because it really is a
little different kind of methodology the private sectors use, but at least it's a factor we
have to at least consider. The intent of this is to provide some guidance to departments
as to where you should be hiring folks, where you can bring them in at a higher level if
necessary because of -- they are already at the market. So, for example, if you use this
system you are hiring a new person for any position in the band -- say it's a level in the
middle, somewhere I or H area of the band, you have a person who maybe has just
entered the marketplace, maybe they have recently graduated, they have recently
become certified, they have recently become licensed in whatever that job requirement
is, but they have no level of experience and that hiring range is what we feel or what our
recommendations is going to be from our research is it's most appropriate to hire this
person into our job pool, because they don't bring a lot of experience, because they
have the appropriate level of education or certifications to be hired and so bringing them
in at somewhere in that initial range would be appropriate. The next one you see is
proficient. What we are looking at is as you progress through ranks, so whether you
have been here six months or a year, that's approximately where you should be in
progression along your career path with the city in compensation. You should be
looking at that. So, that's kind of a guide as to where the person might belong. The
objective is to get people to market within a reasonable period of time, three to five
years is what -- is the average of what we would anticipate, most people getting up to
the market rate of that particular position. Now, again, if you were to hire somebody --
say, again, at that middle category, the H, I area, but yet they have a number of years of
experience, they have come into the city from another entity from another city, another
county, another state that has a requisite level of experience, well, then, that gives
some guidance to the departments that this person might be closer to the market now,
because they are already bringing a tremendous amount of experience and expertise to
that position. So, again, it gives us an idea that the market in this community or this
area might be at that middle range and this person might be more appropriate to be
hired at that area because of their prior experience and, again, the objective is to move
people along in a progressive manner, so that they can move horizontally across this
range and not just vertically. That sometimes has been the challenge sometimes for
departments is trying to move people along has been difficult. So, that's the intent of
this range is really trying to capsulize in a very short time frame from a number of weeks
of meetings and a number of hours of meetings, but that's the general idea that we have
in trying to create this and you will see some guidelines below that as to what all of
those meant, but that's really what the intent is in trying to bring people into our city.
These are the matrix that we have been using as part of our guidelines and this will
help, again, drive the discussion of our departments when they are doing evaluations of
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July 9, 2013
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employees and making decisions on whether keeping people that are entry level or new
hires, whether it's annually as we do performance evaluations, where should they fit in
this matrix. Again, the idea is to move people at a fairly progressive rate from the
beginning entry level to the mid point to the market level, to slow them down a little bit
on the other end so that we don't push them out of the range too quickly, because that
can be more problematic from a compensation standpoint. So, this matrix that we have
come up with with the assistance of our consultants helped drive that and tries to make
sure that we progress in a consistent manner across from the beginning to the end of
the pay ranges. This year -- so we will get to the -- and this year also another
discussion we had as this group, we looked at past budgets. We have done merit and
we have across the board increases. Over the last four years we have done them both
ways. Over the last five to seven years we have done a number of merit pool types of
increases and what we have found is that we needed to create essentially two different
-- two different methods of compensation. We have pushed alot -- really because of
limited budgets we have pushed more towards merit pool. What we found in the
compensation arena is that what has happened with folks is that they had this desire
again to make sure they are being compensated appropriately and now we have sort of
mixed the message sometimes, that merit, although it should be for extraordinary or
extraordinary performance, not simply just competent, satisfactory, necessary
performance, that we make sure that we are -- make sure we are meeting both of those
types of needs of employees and departments. So, we looked at the performance
management system. You saw that last year as part of the presentation. We come up
with a new system, we implemented it in this fiscal year, we are in the process now of
bringing it back to the departments to get their feedback, so that we can understand if it
worked, what doesn't work, what can we do to make it better. It's like the performance
management system marries up with our compensation system. They work hand in
hand. We have done an internal alignment of positions. You will see a little of that in
our presentation in human resources, we tried to do some adjustment of some of those
positions. Future adjustments, one of those we are going to talk about here in a second
is what do we do with the positions that maybe at this point haven't been adjusted and
how are we going to address that. So, our next step from this and what we have in front
of you is there is a number in your budget packets to put this compensation system into
place. That is with a one percent market adjustment for the entire range as was
recommended by our constltants, but also was a 3.5 percent merit pool, so we were up
by 14 for the general employee group. Part of this employee focus group you see as
the first bullet is you want to take this -- this proposal that's been put forth by our
working group, as well as -- as well as our consultants to both the directors, as well as
employees so that they understand it. We need to figure out how to make sure we train
people as to what this means, how this impacts them, what this will mean to them in the
future, how they are going to understand how the system will work, we wanted to get
that done before the end of the fiscal year. So, that's one of the focuses that we are
trying to get done before the end of the summer. Annually what's been recommended
by our consultants is we do a market review and adjustment. It's not that this is the only
method, but fairly common in a lot of places, they may look at the CPI, for example.
The CPI adjusts normally somewhere between zero and about two percent annually.
That's normally a piece of a market review to determine if our matrix needs to be
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July 9, 2013
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evaluated annually and adjusted, whether it's a half a percent, one percent, or none,
depending on what the marketplace is at that time. The annual market review of the
merit pool. So, the same analysis needs to be done as what's appropriate in the
marketplace for any type of merit increases, if warranted, and affordable within each
fiscal year. The recommendation is to do that annually as well with the budget for FY-
14 we are going to anticipate. So, one of the things that has to get done is we have to
take all the current employees and put them into this -- into this box, into this matrix and
what we will probably find is that we have employees who have been here for a very
long time who are still somewhere in the bottom of the range and that may be for a
variety of reasons. Sometimes it may be the employee's performance, sometimes it
may be oversight promotions, sometimes there is a lot of factors that go into that. We
want to meet with each individual department and analyze those particular employees
and determine whether or not it may be appropriate to move those people further up the
-- the matrix to where they appropriately belong. If they belong in the market range now
and they haven't been, we need to know what that's going to look like and what that's
going to cost. We didn't have the opportunity or time right now to do that, it was decided
by our group to bring that to you in FY-14 after we had done all that analysis and looked
at that. Again, there is a lot of factors that go into why that occurs. We want to make
sure we vet that out appropriately with the departments. And, again, that's the last one.
That's where the budget amendment comes from in those specific employees. Benefit
changes. We will go through those fairly quickly. Benefit changes that we have -- a
couple of different things. We went to Blue Cross. Blue Cross has come back with a
very affordable and a very competitive rate increase. They originally had started at a
12.75 percent increase, 12.76 percent increase, which is significant. There are a
number of cities in our area that are experiencing double digit requests for increases.
We, with the help of our consultants at Mercer, have been able to get Blue Cross down
to a more affordable rate. This actually was prepared before we actually got a new
update from Blue Cross. So, what we have decided to do or recommend to you is to go
to Blue Cross for this next year at a five percent increase. Understanding that that five
percent -- every city that we have surveyed is increasing an Affordable Healthcare Act
surcharge, for lack of a better word, that all of the insurance companies, because they
are trying to anticipate what the impact will be to them, have assessed a specific
amount, a percentage of increase for each city for each of their customers, so both
private and public sectors are experiencing that. Originally Blue Cross was at 4.5
percent just for that surcharge. Now, they are at a total of five percent for the entire
increase for the year, so we had that and it is competitive, we did market this with other
companies and got a competitive rate. We feel five percent is reasonable and doesn't
warrant us changing to another provider. On the VSP, though, we do recommend a
different change on the VSP. In the past we have used -- for the vision service plan we
have used Blue Cross as our third-party provider. We can contract directly with VSP on
the program without going through Blue Cross and, actually, receive an 11 percent
decrease in our cost. It's about a 10,000 dollar swing from what the reclassified
increase by Blue Cross is and what the decrease is going requested by essentially
going through VSP directly without us using a third party like Blue Cross. We would
recommend that we do that. Ten thousand dollars may not be significantly large in the
big picture, but we think going directly actually provides a greater benefit to our
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employees in a lot of respects. EAP is a five percent increase. It's a pretty small
increase in general. It's a 700 dollar a year increase. We do have a very high usage
rate for an EAP, we think that's a really good thing for employees to have is an
opportunity when those needs arise, whether it's family, financial, personal needs, EAP
is a good outlet for them. The life and short-term disability -- short and long-term
disability through United Heritage is a zero percent increase. We are pretty pleased
with that. They have been a great company to work this and we would like to continue
to work with them. Delta Dental has now come back. Originally we were at a five
percent increase, now they are down to two. We think that's a reasonable amount
based on our usage of two percent. Willamette Dental actually came down. They were
also a little big higher than that initially. They were up at almost six percent. They have
now come down to 2.5. We feel, again, that's really valuable for folks. It's an
alternative dental program, if you recall. That's one where a lot of employees use when
they have specific types of needs. So, the increase there is really because they have
got a hundred percent usage versus -- or Delta Dental is not the same, but we think 2.5
percent is a reasonable increase based on the amount of uses that we have been
experiencing with that. We want to continue with the wellness benefits. The wellness
program. We have had a lot of success this last year. We aren't asking this year to
fund additional stipends to folks to do the -- the wellness screenings. We are not asking
for that. We are really looking at other alternatives to get people to participate, but we
don't feel that's necessarily something we have to do this year. We do still provide in
our Blue Cross plan that that type of screening can be covered at a hundred percent, so
we don't think it needs to be incentivized at least this year. We do want to move forward
with tobacco cessation. We think we can cover that in our current budget. There is
some classes that are -- have a higher success rate than a majority of the ones that are
out there. We would like to focus our attention on those. We have some that have 85
percent or higher success rate of getting to quit using tobacco. That's the number one
thing most of the literature will tell you is the best thing you can do healthwise is quit
using tobacco. There is lots of other things you can do, there is certainly other ways to
address your health, but if you can do -- if you can stop using tobacco you are a long
way towards a much more positive life and a longer life, so we would like to help
employees do that. Our objective is to get to a tobacco free workplace in 2014. Our
wellness group has been supportive of that. Our directors are supportive of that. We
have been to the departments to promote that. We are looking to finalize that. We'd
like to get the tobacco cessation classes really in place to give employees that
opportunity and time before it becomes a very final policy that we would bring to you
saying we don't want tobacco usage in our workplace during the work day on city
property. The other thing we are going to be exploring over this next year -- and we
may be coming back to you either in Fy-15 or potentially in FY-14. We don't necessarily
realize savings in cost of benefits, we basically realize money we didn't spend. Well,
over the last couple years there is some money we didn't spend that we may have
anticipated and there may be additional monies, so we don't really have that amount in
mind or targeted, but the HRA VEBA plan, in meeting with other cities around the state,
the HRA VEBA is essentially a health reimbursement account that's employer funded
that unlike your flex spending program, which you're familiar with, is a fund that actually
carries with you year after year after year. The number one thing that our employees
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have requested over time is something else towards their retirement. They, obviously,
have PERSI as an option. They have some alternative plans to fund themselves to
PERSI, whether it's a 401 (k) or a 457 plan, we offer those opportunities voluntarily for
employees to participate in, but I found another city with HRA VEBA is the one method
that they have been able to use in other cities to address the cost of health benefits, as
well as providing something for employees. Many cities have now pushed their health
benefits off into their HRA VEBA, because, again, it funds employees for the now, if
they have a medical need today, this is a method that they can use to help compensate
and pay for that. But also if they don't use it it's something they can use for the future.
So, cities have found ways to lower their out-of-pocket costs for healthcare, but provide
a very similar or even greater benefit to their employees by providing this through HRA.
VEBA. So, we are going to continue to explore that. It is something that if we think is
reasonable to bring to you in FY-14 we will. If it's not and if it's something we want to
put into Hansen in FY-15 we will do that. But we want to continue to explore that,
because we think it's a viable way for the city to address the rising cost of healthcare or
the city as a whole, as well as the employees. Questions? That was pretty quick.
De Weerd: Did you get that? Council, any questions at this point? It's a lot of
information, you know, from acommittee -- from several different committees that have
been working over a long period of time. So, certainly Bill will be available for any
questions. This will be back in front of you as the committee continues to work with the
compensation plan and fine tune it and to bring back a recommendation, but this is a
general overview and good background to back up the numbers that you're seeing in
front of you for wages and benefits.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, 4 just a comment. Bill, I think what the committee has done
is the right thing. Having worked under similar systems that were done for the right
reasons, but never implemented, no matter what you do the key is implementation and
consistency. If that's not done, then, you have built expectations in employees that are
never reached and you further create that chasm between employer and employee. So,
keep that in mind and everybody keep that in mind as we move forward if we implement
a plan such as this ultimately we have to commit to implementing it.
De Weerd: And, Mr. Rountree, I think we are in total agreement with you on that. The
compensation and benefits -- what Finance and Stacy's long goal is is to develop a
long-term financing plan for that, so we can start better tracking. We have been doing
that with certainly our capital improvement plan. We are doing it with our replacement
plans. We are doing it now with the facility maintenance plan. This is a huge piece to
that long term financial planning that will complete a lot of that predictability and better
understanding and planning for those base expenditures. So, Stacy, do you have
anything to add to that?
Kilchenmann: No. I -- and we have talked about this for a couple years, so it sounds
easier than it actually turns out to be, but we are working on it and appreciate Bill
inviting Tom and I and Jeff to join him, so that he has a great deal of patience and
fortitude.
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De Weerd: I think it's great debate, actually.
Kilchenmann: So, I think we are getting there.
De Weerd: Okay.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. That was impressive how quickly you did that and covered
a lot of information. Next up is Bruce with Community Development. We will just go
ahead and --
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, it's been brought to my attention we are not streaming all the
documents, so if we could take a five minute break to reboot communications, that will
help me get this system set up so we can get everything online.
De Weerd: Okay. We will reconvene in five minutes.
(Recess: 8:54 a.m. to 9:01 a.m.)
De Weerd: We will reconvene with Bruce Chatterton, our Community Development
director.
Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Members, I love the smell of budget in the morning.
It's smells like victory. Council Member Zaremba and I both went to school at Robert
Duval, so if Bill Nary can do media references this early in the morning we can, too.
De Weerd: I'm glad you explained what that comment was about.
Chatterton: Why do we have a budget? Why do we have a Community Development
Department? It's really to take three main functions, building development services,
planning, and economic development and give value to our community, to our
taxpayers. So, an integrated approach to some really key vital areas of our community
and as I go through -- I don't have a lot of enhancements, but as I go through them you
will see the code there for building and development services B, planning P, economy
development ED, to reference how those enhancements help to integrate the -- the
different functions within Community Development and I should mention it's been a real
-- we have been around just over a year now and it's been a time of change. We are
seeing a -- whereas before folks with building services, development services and
planning in separate departments, folks coming in with a can do attitude. Now we have
a systematic approach, an integrated approach to serve our customers and serving the
community. It's really resonated in lots of different ways. Why do we have a
Community Development Department? We need to insurance a quality, safe,
harmonious building environment for our city. We need to find what types of
development we need and want in Meridian and, then, remove barriers to that and so
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we see that constantly with problem solving using the building code. We see that
constantly with problem solving using the Uniform Development Code and the rolling
series of amendments that you all see to the UDC. If it's not working, if we are getting
counter productive results, we change it period. So, you all as elected officials reflecting
the desires of your constituents define what success looks like. What you want the
community to look like. And, then, our job, then, is to design and carry out the steps to
get to this preferred outcome and we exist, finally, I think to give the Mayor the
command and control that we need over the permitting process and in that way only can
we really be an extension of economic development to -- and we don't have -- as
everyone knows, we don't have cash incentives that -- almost without exception we
have no cash incentives. So, what do we try to do? We try to make things easier. I call
them process incentives. We try to get folks in faster. We try to make it easier than in
other communities. That distinguishes Meridian from other communities. And, then, we
build on that reputation, which I hear again and again from our professional customers.
We are working on helping out our small business customers and looking to having that
conversation with you later on this year about some pilot programs for a small business
coordinator position as well. So, we have got a good base. We have got a good
reputation. And I won't go into a lot of numbers, but things are, obviously, looking up. If
you look at the -- if you look at the real estate recovery nationally, if you look at it in
terms of our metro area, the Treasure Valley, Meridian is front and center
geographically, center graphically in terms of the market numbers. We really are right in
the middle of it and in many ways the heaviest part of the recovery is taking place right
in our city and when we look at just one measure of -- of how are -- of the activity we are
seeing are those revenues that we return to the General Fund, that is revenues which
are in excess of projections. Now, the finance director will shoot me if I say that these
are profits. They are not. It's another measure, though, of -- of excess revenues that
are therefore available to the General Fund for capital improvements and if any point
needs to be made it's that these numbers help to reflect the overall development activity
with just a little bit of lag time that's going on out there.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. If I can interrupt. You said capital improvement. Not
operating, such as the capital, because there --
Chatterton: That's correct.
Hoaglun: -- is a difference.
Chatterton: Yes. And Mayor and Council Member Hoaglun, that's very important,
because you can't rely on cyclical -- in some cases volatile revenues to provide base
funding. So, it's completely appropriate that it would go the capital projects, which not --
which, of course, are not based and it helps to take -- it's another component of that
very complicated issue of making development pay for itself. In the aggregate it does
and this is just one small way in which it helps to return something to the community.
So, we have three enhancements and I will go through them one by one and talk about
how they help to integrate each of our different divisions. First off electronic plan review
software. Accella is capable of allowing customers to submit plans electronically,
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submit them over the Internet. We receive them electronically and activating that
portion of Accella is what this enhancement is all about. It's really taking Accella to its
full potential. This helps to integrate primarily buildings, plus planning, but also there
will be benefits for Public Works, for fire, for the city clerk's office and the other agencies
as well. So, one of the things it helps -- this is along the overall theme of doing as we
do in Meridian constantly, the Meridian way, do more with less to get the greatest
efficiency that we can. This gives staff a whole suite of tools that allows them to mark
up plans and communicate with customers in a very efficient way. It allows
simultaneous review -- concurrent review. That's very important, because when you
have just a big roll -- and you will see -- you will see folks coming in with those
handcarts of rolled up plans. Some of the ones for the Village at Meridian are just
ginormous sets of plans. Rather than truck those -- and one of the reasons why we
have to plan that way is it really forces a linear review. One group looks -- one
discipline looks at the plan set, passes it to the next. If you try to do concurrent plan
sets it gets crazy with hard copies, because, then, pulling it together people are going to
make mistakes. It really is not good practice. So, this allows different disciplines to look
at plans at the same time. The other reason that we would need to do that linear
review, pass it on, pass it on, is if one discipline has to look at something before the
next. So, we do linear only when it's necessary at this point and we have also got good
feedback from other jurisdictions, not so much from Accella's plan review module, which
is fairly new, but from the practice of doing electronic plan review. You know, different
cities I have formerly been with are doing electronic plan review and just the idea of
being able to handle these file electronically and have those tools to more efficiently
review them and move them through the system it's much greener, of course, much
fewer trees -- far fewer trees are getting killed. We have been getting overall good
feedback from other jurisdictions and this includes -- the software we actually already
have, but this is the module that needs to be activated within Accella. So, mostly this is
for implementation of the software. Our second enhancement is to make sure that we
can finish the Fields District study and do it in a quality way. The Fields District for
those that in the audience aren't familiar with it is investigation of the future of
agriculture in Meridian and the Treasure Valley. The idea is to investigate the feasibility
of a bio-agriculture research park and related uses within our area of impact. The idea,
then, is to -- in my career I have been involved a lot of attempts to preserve agriculture.
It's always hard, because the property owners, farmers, always want the ability to cash
out, they want to be able to turn their -- their fields into subdivisions at their own
discretion. They would love them preserved, of course, as long as it's within their
family. That's always a hard thing, but what if we try something different. A lot of --
often agriculture is preserved, as it is being in our community right now, through
something called urban agriculture and that could be ostriches, it could be community
gardens, it could be those urban intensive uses that, you know, are small scale. But
that's one way to do it, but that's not all that we should be looking at. What if we can
preserve our agricultural landscape by transforming it, by making it perhaps more
intensive by allowing research and partnering with other institutions and property
owners, so that we end up with a different type of agriculture, which the offshoot of
which in terms of research help to create greater productivity for the remaining land that
we have. So, that to me is what's very exciting about the Fields District. So, the RFP
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would be out within three weeks, we will be looking for some teams to do a three phase
study and at any point you all as our decision makers can pull the plug on this. We are
going to be setting budget amounts for each of these phases. So, we would start with a
preliminary investigation. The consultant's team will be going out and talking to all the
stakeholders -- property owners. They will be talking to Council and the Mayor. They
will be talking to the educational institutions, to agri-business. They will be talking to
experts in the community and we expect to have experts in bio science and agriculture
on the consultant team as well. On the basis of that preliminary investigation they
would, then, be saying this looks like something that we -- that is worth looking at. And,
of course, you all would be making the decision whether or not you agree with that
assessment and, then, we would, then, move on to a market assessment and a
financial feasibility study that's really brass tax about whether or not there is a market for
a use like this. And, again, if that passes muster we would, then, move on, finally, to an
implementation plan. We would be looking at physical planning considerations, how do
we protect these possible research uses from encroachment by too many rooftops or by
incompatible uses and how do we create those buffers and those fences that make
good neighbors between uses. So, we are very excited about the Fields District and
this enhancement is to make sure that we have the money to complete the job, but at
any point you all, again, could say it's not looking like we want to move any further or
you could, of course, choose to move ahead with the entire project.
De Weerd: And, Bruce, I guess I would just add on step two would be an economic
impact report in terms of what the jobs created and anticipated family wage component
to that and what that means in our goals in the job -- create family wage jobs category,
similar to what the CORE is doing and our goals in that regard.
Chatterton: Thank you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: On the enhancement that shows previous year's budgeting of 65,000 --
Chatterton: Yes.
Rountree: -- is that carryover amount?
Chatterton: Yes.
Rountree: Why do we carry it over -- will we not have to do a budget amendment to
spend that money later? Why don't we roll it up into just one budget unit and stop the
confusion on accounting where the money is coming from and going?
Chatterton: Mayor and Council Members, I certainly would be open to any ideas that
Finance has about that.
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Kilchenmann: I'm not sure I understand the question.
Rountree: Well, we had 65,000 dollars at one point in time that were budgeted for this
item.
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Rountree: It will have to carry over.
Kilchenmann: Yes.
Rountree: Why isn't that rolled up into the new fiscal year budget and reduction in the
previous year's budget when you finalize that budget? It just seems to me that last
year's budget shows the 65,000 dollar number in it that was not expended. This year's
budget shows a 30,000 dollar budget item for this item, but we have 95,000 dollars in
the budget item to spend.
Kilchenmann: Correct. When we go into '14 it will show 95,000. Maybe Todd
understands better what you're asking.
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, the prior year's funding, just to let you
know, that does represent multiple years of requests that they -- the director has come
to you. So, the 65 may have been asked for in 2010 or some component between '10,
'11, '12 and '13. They may have already spent, you know, 30,000 or 20,000, so not
necessarily the 65 is still available, they may only -- I'd have to look at the financials -- I
think we have 20,000 dollars available still. So, of the 65 they already spent I think
maybe 40 of it. So, we just carry forward the remaining balance that has not been spent
that we requested in prior years.
Rountree: It still confuses yet.
Chatterton: Madam Mayor and Council Member Rountree, I don't want you to be
confused, I don't want to be confused about it either, so we will work with Finance to
consolidate that. Again, part of this is coming from the professional services portion of
planning, because that's part of the confusion. I think what you're asking for is a clearly
identified pot of money that says Fields District study and -- without coming from
multiple pots.
Rountree: Right.
Chatterton: That would help me as well.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
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Hoaglun: My question is going to be along the same lines as Councilman Rountree's,
but mine was basically we paid for number one. Does the enhancement of 30,000
dollars, does that pay for two and three or just two?
Chatterton: Mayor and Council Member Hoaglun, it in my mind pays for getting it
through phase three. Completing the project. I was concerned that we didn't have
enough money to finish the project. It was kind of based on my prior experience with
economic development studies. I felt that we were treating this too much as another
South Meridian or as a Ten Mile Master Plan that is an exercise in physical planning,
zoning, land use. That's important here, but we need to lead with economic
development with market feasibility and I just felt that we didn't have the amount for
bringing the product that you needed.
Hoaglun: And follow up, Madam Mayor. Bruce, then, of course, as you mentioned
earlier, we go through that -- we go through the process market financial feasibility
study, we hear that report and, then, if things aren't what we thought they were going to
be, then, we can stop there.
Chatterton: That's correct. And, then, money would, then, be available for whatever
use you feel that it should be put to.
Hoaglun: Okay.
Bird: Reallocation
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bruce. We are not done.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Zaremba: I know you already said this, but I think the thing that attracts me to this study
is the research component and as part of what you just stated -- and, of course, it has
on the ground planning and, you know, what's the area going to look like, the same as
we have done in other places, but I think the -- the opportunity to look for ways to
advance research and bring those kind of facilities into our city as a part of this is what
-- what makes this valuable to me. So, it goes beyond what we are normally doing and I
think if we can encourage and improve the research aspect of it I'm all in favor of it.
Chatterton: Yes. Thank you. Our final enhancement request is to get better
connectivity and productivity for our division managers. I think it was Caleb who pointed
out awhile back that he sits in a lot of meetings, you know, whether it's with ACHD or
COMPASS where he's waiting to present what's being presented and, then, given time.
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It could be something that he needs to have his sole attention on, but it's just as likely
perhaps he's waiting for something else and that -- I can tell you having that productivity
with a tablet device, a fairly inexpensive device, given that time to be able to bring
documents with you to that meeting electronically to have access to documents, it's
huge. So, our three division managers and building department services, planning,
economic development, would love to have them be more productive, because we do
send them out of the office a lot, we send them even in the office to tons of meetings
and we'd like to get greater efficiencies for them. It's sounds almost like we are
exploiting them a little bit, but -- and I can tell you that used properly these tools can be
-- can be wonderful. So, 2,400 dollars for three tablet devices. IT, of course, will advise
us of exactly on the type and configuration. That's everything I have. I'd love to have
any other thoughts or direction.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bruce. Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: I would note -- and thank you, Bruce. Before I ask our next -- oh, Bill from
HR. To thank Council for the role you have played in all of this. This is not new to any
of you. In particular, as liaisons to each of the departments you have already worked
very directly and extensively with the budgets there in front of you, so I -- I failed to note
that in my opening remarks. I do appreciate the attention and the interaction that you
have had as part of this budget as well. So, Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you. Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I get the
pleasure of addressing you twice, which I guess is probably better for me than it is for
you.
De Weerd: But a number of hats.
Nary: I have in your packets and in the back of the room as well what you had seen
previously in our strategic presentation for this year for human resources, the city
attorney's office and risk management. That's just for your review. We feel we are on
track with that. Our biggest -- our biggest component of the strategic plan from the HR
side is the best program, our training program. We have been getting a lot of very
positive feedback both internally, as well as externally. We have a number of other
cities that would like to recreate something like that. They are very envious of the work
that our city has done in leading that charge. They recognize the value that you have
placed in employees by creating such a program and they are really excited to want to
bring that to other cities around the state. I also have last year's presentation and it's
just to kind of catch you up on that. Our biggest addition last year was the youth work
life skills program for Human Resources. We are very excited about that. This is our
third year of it this year. We have continued to upgrade that program each year and the
departments I think each year find great value in the interns they are available to hire
and to provide to the departments for various projects, various assistants in the
departments to cover vacations and people that are gone and changes that the
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department may be experiencing and great opportunity for some of these young people
to really experience the city in a very good way. In fact, Crystal Ritchie has advised me
that we had a vacancy recently in one of the departments that one of our interns who
recently graduated from high school applied for that position and mostly because she
felt like she was very comfortable with the city having worked for us for the last couple
of summers and whether or not she is the person that we hire I don't know, but the fact
that we really helped introduce her to the city and give her the confidence that she could
come to work for us even right out of high school I think is a testament to what this
program really is about. It really is an opportunity for young people to see the city in a
very good way and, again, we are trying to expand their horizons and areas that they
had no experience in before, whether it's wastewater, water, fire, police. So, we are real
proud of that program and so I included last year's presentation just to catch you up that
that's going well and we appreciate that funding and we appreciate having a program
available for everyone. So, this year in Human Resources we have some very small
enhancements and, then, one significant one we need to talk about a little bit -- maybe a
little bit longer. So, we want to talk about our enhancements. We have two. I want to
give you a little street friend here, so this is your urban dictionary, a little moment here to
get your learn on so that you understand what we are talking about. So, basically, two
things that we are talking about from the department, adjustments and, then, an HR
reorg that we can talk about more in depth. Why do we do that? Well, we need to
adapt. If you look at this closer, if you can't read it from the back of the room, it says the
bad news is the robots can do yourjob now. The good news is we are now hiring robot
repair technicians. The worst news is there will be robots fixing robots and we do not
anticipate any further good news. So, being adaptable in the marketplace today is
important. Being able to adjust to both the changing face of our employees, as well as
we talked earlier in compensation and market adjustments and how that has dealt with
benefits -- all of those things are critical in having the best work force and critical in us
dealing with the work force as it changes. You know, I didn't used to think I was very
old until I realized people called me sir not because they were polite, but because I was
a lot older than they were and so you recognize that our work force changes very
rapidly and what is important to people who are 20 is not the same as important to
people that are 50 and understanding those complexities is really important and so in
the HR business we really want to make sure we are adaptable in dealing with those
types of things and helping departments address situations. I can give you a very short
anecdote. I went to a recent HR conference with other HR managers around the state
and in one city they had a frustration, the HR manager was frustrated with one of the
departments, because the department manager came in and said and I want to
terminate this employee and they said why do you want to do that. Well, they said
because they have a tongue ring and it bothers me and so the HR manager put her HR
hat on and said, well, you can't do that and we are the government, and it's an
expression issue and all these things and I said, well, why do you want to fire her. Well,
she clicks it. When she's sitting at the counter she clicks that tongue ring against her
teeth and it's annoying. I said why don't you tell her to stop doing that. Oh, well, that's a
different approach. Yeah. Why don't we just tell them. Again, behavior is something
we can deal with, but understanding that, again, you have people sometimes that have
different choices and different lifestyles and different behaviors which you have to
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address and that's of what Human Resources is about. So, what do we have? We
have department adjustments. We have internal alignment. We spoke about that a
little bit earlier. What we did is we had three different categories and you will see them
interspersed throughout the budget. What they did was -- I submitted a request and,
then, Todd, in his wisdom then attributed that to the individual departments. So, one of
them is we did athree-quarter position. You recall a year ago we had two positions in
the city that didn't necessarily require full-time positions in employment, but were critical
enough that they had to work greater than the part-time needs, which our part-time
requirements are based on PERSI, which PERSI says if you work more than 19 and a
half hours over a certain period of time under the formula work you're entitled to PERSI
benefits. So, the very few part-time people we have in the city, not including seasonal --
the few part-time people that only work a portion of the year, but work year end and
year out, work 19 and a half, except for two positions. With the Affordable Healthcare
Act what they said is if you were claiming 30 hours in a given week on any week over a
certain period of time and through another formulaic period, then, you're entitled to
healthcare benefits. Well, since there is only two positions we could either hire more
people, which costs money, or we could just convert two positions to full time, which
actually costs less money. So, we recommended converting the two current three-
quarter time positions to full time, one's in the Mayor's office, one's in the parks
department, so they are in your budget packet as part of the enhancement. Internal
alignment. Again, we talked about that. We had all of this -- we had every person
evaluated, had every department review the job descriptions of every job that they had
in their department to make sure they were still accurate. When we did that we used a
consultant to help us make sure that they met all the requirements of FLSA, made sure
they met all the requirements of the marketplace where those jobs belong and which
categories they belong in, whether they belong in Category A or Category O, where
they belong in the city, and some of those were adjusted, because they were either too
high or too low. The ones that were too low many had moved from one job ranking --
say they moved from a level G to a level H, normally their pay was commensurate with
the new level and it wasn't an issue. But we had two positions that moved two levels
and because of that they couldn't -- we couldn't meet the bottom of -- it was the
minimum of the pay range. So, there is two adjustments for those that are in your
packets. I think one was from Community Development and one was from Parks.
Department equity adjustment. Each year departments -- we asked departments, rather
than adjusting everything, we asked them to look at their individual jobs and tell us has
the job evolved, has it changed, have they become more complex than they used to be.
Are they different and explain to us how different they are and why they are different
and we looked at those and we make an evaluation based on that request and what the
marketplace shows. We looked at those positions and we had a number of those again
inside your budget that the jobs have changed significantly. So, we felt it was
appropriate to recommend a change to move them further horizontally along the pay
band. So, three types of adjustments are not in HR specifically, but you will see them in
your packets in enhancements and it will say form HR. So, that's what those are from.
So, now we are looking at a potential of reorganizing HR. So, I put priorities here and I
guess -- and I found this slide, I thought this sounds almost like my mantra. This is what
they are going to -- if they put this on my tombstone it would say hundreds of years from
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now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in or the kind
of car I drove, but the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy
that my ruins have become a tourist attraction. So, there are -- there has been a
discussion amongst our directors, amongst the Mayor and I and amongst my liaison
Council Member Zaremba, on where is HR going to go. What do we do with our HR
Department as we move forward in the future. What's the next step for the city? HR is
a complex area. I think our working group and our compensation probably had some
eyes open about some of the ways things happen and are done in the city and how
much more complicated it might seem to the outsider as to how things are reached and
decisions are made and how do we move forward in the city with our human resources
component. We have done great things in the city I think in the last eight years since I
have been here in combining those two disciplines. They really are -- there is a great
necessity in having that connection between the Legal Department and the Human
Resources Department. When I meet with other cities and I ask them how that
relationship is, it depends. In some cities it's very good, in some cities it's not. And I
said, you know, the one thing that we have in our city that I don't see in any other city is
I never have a fight between the city attorney and the HR director. We always seem to
come to the same conclusion and that generally has worked out in our favor. But where
does it go? One of the things I told the Mayor is that in the eight and a half years 1 have
been doing this job I have never went to a city attorneys' meeting or an HR manager's
meeting that anybody has ever walked up to me and said, gosh, I wish I had your job.
None of them have ever said that to me. They all think there must be something wrong
with me to want to do it this way. But I think it's worked for us really well. I think we just
need to look at what's the next step. Where do we go in the city. As both of these
areas became more complicated and more engaged with both legal issues, as well as
human resources issues, how do we make the adjustment as a city? How do we deal
with that? So, we have a couple of choices that we can evaluate and look at. One is
we can create two separate departments. We can create a city attorney's office and we
can have a human resources department. Many cities do that. Many cities smaller than
us don't even have a human resources department, but they are also seeing the error of
that. The human resources field is much more complicated than it was ten or fifteen
years ago. When I started providing legal assistance to the human resources in 1996 in
the city of Boise they were the leading edge of human resources. They were the only --
they were the largest in the state and still are one of the largest departments in the
state, but very few cities in 1996 had an HR person, much less a department. It was
personnel, it was very compliance oriented, there was no real process in place for
people to address personnel issues, to address internal issues in the city and what we
found over the time period -- I have been doing this now for 17 years -- is that most of
the time when you address personnel issues in the city it is rarely because someone
can't answer the phone properly or doesn't know how to unlock the door. Usually it's
because they can't get along with the person they sit next to each day and there is a lot
of complexity in addressing those types of things. You know, it isn't -- it isn't like it might
have been 50 years ago or a hundred years ago and just find somebody else. You
invest a lot of time and energy and money into hiring folks and training people and
putting the right people in place. You should invest a little bit more to make sure that
the workplace can function properly. If it can't it can't and we address that and that's
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where the legal side comes in, but if it can we really think it's important to do that. Many
cities are finding now that you can't function very well with a person who is the city clerk,
the treasurer, the HR person, the dog catcher, the police chief and everything else. So,
they really need a person who has had specific training and expertise in this area and
we have been fortunate the way it's been done, but we can certainly look at something
else. This is one option. It's in your packets currently as an enhancement. This
enhancement includes both the cost of hiring an HR director and remodeling a portion
of the city to put HR either in a different place or to co-locate it where we currently are,
which is what I would advocate, because I think there is still a necessity to both create
that linkage between legal and HR, but you can create some separation between the
two departments, so that you can both function independently and also function
corroboratively if necessary and that's the approximate amount that's listed in your
budget for both the change in personnel, as well as remodeling costs in addition to that.
Because change is a difficult thing, it's a short trip from riding the waves of change to
being torn apart by the jaws of defeat. So, our objective is to create change in a
positive way. Our objective is to make sure that if the change is coming in some way
that we can be in front of it, we can make sure to help drive it, we can make sure to help
message it with departments and with employees, so they understand that we are not
changing things to make it more difficult or more problematic or more of a concern for
them, but really to enhance the service that they receive. Most of HR's service is done
with our employees that are currently here. Certainly had a component in the hiring
piece and recruitment with outside folk. But most of the work that we do -- the people
that come into our door almost every day already work here. They already have
expressed some concerns, whether it's concerns with the department, concerns with
their management, concerns with their evaluation, concerns with their benefits,
concerns with how things work compared to how things might work in the future. We
addressed a lot of concerns and we want to make sure that they understand that's all
we are here for. That's the purpose of HR is to help them address their concerns. We
don't always tell them what they want to hear and we don't always tell them what they
like, but we want to make sure that we are providing that level of service that's
appropriate for our employees. So, different option. It's the transition in the department.
We can look at a transition plan. We can maintain one department for the time being.
We can, then, meet with the departments and develop a transition. We can work with
the departments on what specific skill sets are needed and I have met with a bunch of
other cities, Nampa, Caldwell, Boise, Ada County, to kind of see how their departments
work. Some are very large, like the city of Boise or like Ada County. Some are very
small, like the city of Caldwell. Some are sort of medium size, like the city of Nampa.
So, we are kind of in that sweet spot, it's kind of like we had the same conversation
regards putting our best training together. One place is that we are not too big to
change direction or is cumbersome or difficult, we are not too small that we have one
person that does everything, so we really are kind of hamstrung by that. So, we have
some flexibility. We have some great skills in our department currently. The staff we
have are great assets that we have for going forward and trying to find what are the
specific steps that we need, what could we do differently if we want to transition this.
Could we hire a deputy director in FY-14 with the objective of that position maybe
becoming the director at a point in the future when we feel that's the appropriate time to
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do that. Could we look for, again, that level or skill sets, that level of experience and
training, expertise, certification for that type of position, we could do. We wouldn't need
any remodeling costs for that. So, we would really be looking at personnel costs and
that's what's estimated. That's not in your packet, it's just an alternative you can look at,
but the cost -- the cost is in your budget currently and is balanced with the current
budget you have in front of you, but this is an alternative you can consider and, of
course, we can consider anything beyond these two, but these are the two I wanted to
make sure you saw as your alternative. What do we end up with either way? We end
up basically with a legacy of something and what this slide says, if you can't read it from
the back -- it took millions of years to create something this extraordinary. You have
about 74. Well, in the government business I don't know if you have got 74. You might
have a few and I have been doing this now for 24 years, so I don't think I have got 60
more to go, but I want to make sure that we leave the city in a place and we make sure
we continue to move our city forward. I'm not going anywhere, so the reality is --
unless there is something I don't know about -- I'm not planning on going anywhere and
so the reality is we need to make sure that we are situated as a city, as we go forward,
with what's the best method to address our needs, whatever it is. However we get
there. We want to make sure we want to help drive that conversation and be part of
that discussion with you as the leaders of the city to make sure our employees
understand where do we want to be and, again, what can we provide. The last
component we have in front of you is the prosecution of police services contract. There
was a small increase this year. We still find great value with this. Now, we do think,
again, we may be having a conversation with you next year on some changes and I
don't know what that's going to look like yet. The police and I -- police chief and I have
had some conversations on what fits our needs as a city. I think it's the same questions
we would be asking, what can we do as we move forward to continue to provide the
greatest service to our citizens, whether it's our employees in the city, whether it's our
citizens in our community, to make sure they are getting the value for their dollar. Right
now the prosecution of police services contract with the city of Boise is the best value
for our dollar that we have. It really does fit our needs both internally as a city, as well
as for the value of our citizens. Will it always? No. It will probably not always be that
way and we will have that same conversation with you in the future of what's the next
thing. What would be the most logical progression of that contract or those services
and how do we do that. But we think right now that's probably the best that we are at
and there is a slight increase for that as well. So, questions?
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Bill, you have indicated that the prosecutor services with the city of Boise are
the best value. Have you worked up preliminary numbers to project when that might not
be the case or is that something you're going to be doing?
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Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree, you know,
we have just ball parked it. We haven't really come to that type of fiscal analysis. I think
we are pretty close, you know, and the reality is is we get greater service than what we
-- what we really are paying for, because of the way the contract has been structured in
the past and the way that they want to provide the level of service. So, when I look at
just prosecution services, if we were just hiring prosecutors, support staff, the
operational needs that are necessary and space, what we are paying for the city of
Boise is pretty close. This 2.75 is probably right on the edge, because we were -- the
last time we looked at it it was about a year, year and a half ago and 300,000 was kind
of a starting to break even point and with this 2.75 we are right at about 300,000 a year.
But we receive additional services from them as well. So, that's the conversation the
chief and I have had on do we get a point in time where we really think that the
additional service we get we would really just rather have that as our own service and
whether or not we want to just basically provide it ourself and we use them only for that
and, again, we could make that same analysis, well, again, what they are providing
even at that cost is worthwhile, let's do that. And, of course, with potential changes that
may happen in the court system of the way the system is currently aligned that may
change as well. So, we have been kind of holding off and that might drive the
conversation a little bit better and we just don't have an answer for that today.
Rountree: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I think one of the intangibles in that discussion is with -- and what attracts me
to the current way -- and I realize there will come a time when we probably need to flip.
That's a legitimate question. But for the current time what attracts me to it is our
contribution -- what we pay the city of Boise and I think maybe they have this
arrangement with a couple other cities as well -- it allows them to have a big enough
department that they have specialties within their group that we would not be able to
hire if we went on our own. So, to me that's kind of an intangible benefit that goes
beyond just the actual cost comparison of what would it cost us to have one prosecutor
or -- and a staff or something. So, I -- I appreciate that you're considering, you know,
when is that change over, but I'm not sure it's an exact dollar for dollar comparison.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I would agree with you, Council Member
Zaremba. One of the things that a larger office like the city of Boise can do is they do it
day in and day out and they have -- the court has started to marginalize some of the
way some of the prosecution is done on certain types of offenses, DUIs and domestic
violence are two of those. They have prosecutors that that is primarily what they do.
They are not just generalists. Most cities and even when Meridian had either a
contracted prosecutor, they generally have to be generalists. They don't have the time
or the capability or the expertise to get really really good at domestic battery offenses.
They don't have the time to get really good at DUI offenses, because they have to go
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and prosecute batteries and barking dogs and fence violations and everything else. So,
they have to be able to be proficient in all of them and they can't necessarily be
proficient in any one or two specific areas. So, you're actually right, we do get a lot of
value out of that that would be much more difficult to be produced on a dollar for dollar
basis.
De Weerd: And I think the chief would tell you that the training that they also get from
the department has been outstanding and so there are probably some services we get
that it's hard to put a real price tag on, but as Councilman Zaremba has said there is --
there is some -- some of those benefits that we lose if we split off -- could potentially
lose the benefit of. so --
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Bill, question on the HR position. Looking at options within options, if you will.
You presented us with two options and if we would go with the full blown department
HR, the enhancement shows that you turn bare space in City Hall into functional office
space. Is there another option we could still go a separate HR director and staff, but do
it within your office? Is that an option within an option if you will?
Nary: Yes. Council Member Hoaglun, yes. What they did is that -- and Todd can
correct me. When we are looking at the potential cost of remodeling we use -- we have
remodeled a couple of spaces in the building for the congressman's office and, then,
Community Development. So, I think what Todd did was he tried to find a figure that
was sort of a ballpark, a reasonable amount of what a TI might cost. It could be
significantly less. If we were to co-locate the way the current office is set up upstairs we
have a front counter that is much more functional for HR needs than the legal needs.
Very little of the people that walk in the door come into our office for legal needs that
don't already work here. The majority -- 90 percent of the people or more of the people
that come to legal are employees about departmental questions, contracts, a variety of
different subject matters. Very little of the public comes in, because you don't represent
the public. They may have a random question, but they don't come in for services. But
we have a front counter. The front counter can serve both of those needs without us
having an empty counter. The majority of the people that come in are employees, but at
the front counter a person can assist both the public, because we do have public
coming in for HR, as well as we can at least direct them to the legal side. We are split
in two spaces and that was intentional when we moved over here is we divided the
department into the HR side and the legal side. We had a common break area. We
have two separate storage rooms. We have a separate room for the employee files.
We have all the offices in one location. We actually have the ability -- the center office
that I currently use was designed to be a future either offices or could be converted into
conference rooms, so you could actually take the current conference rooms and convert
those into offices for a fairly minimal cost, with a few changes that are necessary. One
of the conference rooms has no exterior windows of any kind. It would be nice to have
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a window of some sort in there, because it's dark. If you had it as an office it would be
bad. And you could convert the center office into two offices or two conference rooms.
It's the equivalent of the conference room sizes that we have for a lot of departments
and it would fit both the conference tables. So, for a fairly minimal cost you could
co-locate both of those with much less cost -- I guess. I'm not a builder. But less than
what the anticipated or approximate cost that's listed in your budget to locate those and,
again, you have space for a director, youu have space for the city attorney, you have
space for the existing staff, you have a slight amount of space for -- for growth and,
again, I think the only thing we have been looking for, potentially, for -- especially for HR
is some additional storage space. We have -- there is storage in the basement, but it's
not very practical in the basement, because sometimes it's necessary to have some of
that upstairs, but, again, we could get by with what we have and we could make it very
doable in the same location.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions for Bill?
Bird: I have none.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Is this the appropriate time to express opinions? I know we are supposed to
be asking questions, but --
De Weerd: Probably more in the discussion phase.
Zaremba: Okay.
De Weerd: Unless you have questions specifically to that.
Zaremba: It's not really a question.
De Weerd: Okay.
Zaremba: It's my own opinion. I will save it.
De Weerd: Okay.
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Okay. Our next subject is other government and it looks
like Natalie is our other government, covering the enhancement aspect of it.
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Podgorski: So, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, today I'm here to talk to you
about a budget enhancement to redesign the city's website and also create a mobile
version of our website for cell phones, tablets, iPads, all of that great stuff. So, just to
start off our website really is the hub of the city's information and that's what we want it
to be. We want it to be that go to place where people if they have questions, they need
to contact us, they just know that they can go to our website and find all of that
information and not just find it, but find it quickly, easily, it shouldn't be difficult, it should
just be right there for them at their fingertips. Now, this is a snapshot just looking at --
this is just the month of June. So, this is just last month. So, these are just a look at the
website. We have more than 50,000 -- or 57,000 visit the website in June. The
average person is spending two minutes on the site. They have visited an average of
2.5 pages each time and the really interesting fact and one of the reasons that we are
asking for that mobile version is 30 percent of the visitors who use our website were
doing it either through cell phones, tablets, or iPads. So, we still have a large portion,
70 percent, going through traditional computer, but we are starting to see that change
and some, you know, research that we have seen indicates that's going to continue to
trend that way as more people are -- get smart phones, they are able to access the
Internet from anywhere they are, versus sitting at their office or at home at their
computer. Why we are asking for this -- the last redesign took place in 2009, so it's
been a couple of years and since that time some departments have done a great job
maintaining their website, updating it on a regular basis. Other departments haven't
changed it as frequently, so some of the sections of our website we have different fields.
We don't have a cohesive website. You know, each department, obviously, they do
different things. They should have a slightly different field, but we need to be somewhat
consistent to improve usability for people. They should be able to go to each
department's site and kind of understand where they are going. If they can navigate
police's website they should be able to navigate parks and rec's website. Now going on
to the mobile version. So, 55 percent of adults who own cell phones use them to go
online. So, that's a growing number. Now, these are just -- this is a snapshot from my
cell phone. I have an iPhone, so you can see our website that's what it looks like on a
phone. And, then, this is a screen shot of -- this is Sparks, Nevada. This is their mobile
version of their website. Now, to me on my iPhone I can still navigate our website, but
this is easier. It's small, so you have to zoom in. You have to click around. It's doable,
but you can see with the city of Sparks their app -- their mobile version is just really
easy, you just -- you know exactly without having to zoom in what you need to click on
and where you need to go.
De Weerd: That's Todd's size.
Bird: I was going to say, that's Finance.
Podgorski: So, what -- we have received several and called different local web design
companies, asked for different price quotes. So, 15,000 dollars is what we are asking
for to redesign a website and the creation of the mobile version of the website. So, I will
be open for any questions that you might have.
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De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: You said in excess of 50,000 users in June. Do you have some degree of
precision of looking at what those 50,000 are all about? Is there any one area or are
there specific areas where most of the inquiries are being made?
Podgorski: We have a lot of views to HR's page. A lot of people who are looking for job
openings. And, then, parks and rec also has a large amount of traffic to their site.
De Weerd: And utility billing.
Podgorski: Yes. And utility billing is a big one as well.
Rountree: So, those would be -- say on the mobile those would be highlighted boxes --
Podgorski: Uh-huh.
Rountree: -- and that's how you would develop those by categories?
Podgorski: Yeah. I mean I'm not an expert, obviously, in mobile design, but I think they
can give us recommendations and the main thing we want is we want it to be easy and
that's the whole point of going about it and designing it. So, obviously, I think you would
keep in mind where people are going most frequently on the website and how do we
make that accessible from a mobile version so they don't have to search around.
Rountree: And you made the point that it's important to have cohesion and consistency
in the various pages. Is there one person in the city that oversees that, so we don't go
adrift -- and I see some heads nodding that that's not the case and should we have
some oversight to where we have a template that make -- obviously, the graphics might
be a little different, but the information is presented in the same way and a search can
be conducted in the same way on each page.
Podgorski: One of the things that we were working on before switching to a new
website -- so, the website changing over, it would just be design. So, in terms of
content, that will stay the same on the website. So, before we switch we want to make
sure we get that content up to date, so that's a project that I will be tackling, so I'm kind
of going to be the one that's going to make sure we are consistent and have that same
message at all the websites and that it's set up in a way that it -- it makes sense from
department to department.
De Weerd: And Natalie did mention that some departments keep their information
current.
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Rountree: She did say that. And some don't.
Podgorski: The software, unless you spend a lot of time using it, if you go in once every
two months it is a little daunting, so it's -- you know, if you don't do it very often it's not
the easiest thing to use.
Rountree: So, will it continue to be the responsibility of each department to update their
page or will you become the prod to the departments to say your page needs
refreshed?
De Weerd: She is the prod.
Podgorski: In a kind way.
Rountree: Okay.
Podgorski: The other thing, too, we have with our -- the back end of our user system
we have the ability to approve any changes that are made to the website, so you can
have a second pair of eyes on it. We don't have that setup now, but Mike Tanner and I
have talked about setting that up. So, we want people to make changes. It will still
come to me for approval, so before it goes live I can look over it and make sure we are
maintaining that field, so when we launch the new website -- obviously, we want people
to update the website. The website is -- it's not meant to be a book where it stays on
the shelf and that's -- that's how it was published, that's how it's going to stay. Websites
are meant to be updated. We want it to be constantly changing and reflecting what's
happening in the city, but with that, if you have this department doing that, you're going
to have different ways, because people are going to write different ways, so it would
start to go down that path where we don't have that consistency, but if we set that up
that there is one person approving it, looking at everything, that will help us to maintain
that once we redesign and make that transition.
Rountree: Thank you.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Natalie, one of the things -- we have a lot on our webpage.
Podgorski: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: I know we are talking about redesign, but once we go down that path, if we go
down that path, are you going to be working with departments to kind of say, you know,
some of this stuff hasn't been looked at in eight years, maybe it's time to remove some
of this stuff?
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Podgorski: Yeah. I definitely think -- I think just because it's on the current website I
don't think that automatically means it should be when we redesign it should still be
there. Obviously, we want to keep as much information -- and especially usable
information out there for the public, but the other day I saw a
about the Ten Mile interchange still being under construction.
need that information on our website anymore. So, those ar
down and not transition.
De Weerd: Just change the name to --
Podgorski: Meridian.
Bird: Meridian.
Podgorski: Yeah.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
Rountree: Very good. Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Natalie.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
page that said something
Well, we probably don't
e things that we can take
Zaremba: With the three minutes remaining on other government there is another
enhancement. Would you care for me to comment on that one?
De Weerd: I think it would be excellent. If you want to, please, go to the podium.
Zaremba: Okay. Mayor and other Council Members, thank you. It's unusual for a
council person to submit an enhancement, but you may all recall that maybe three years
or so ago when Kelly Farris of Valley Regional Transit made a presentation to us she
mentioned that the city of Boise has offered to extend a route along Ustick that would
come into Meridian probably as far as Meridian Road come, south to City Hall, go back
up to Fairview and back out of town. The situation -- well, as -- let me give some
background. You know that Meridian is a member of Valley Regional Transit and they
are the regional public transportation authority, so they run public transportation. We
pay dues to belong as a member and that covers the administration of VRT. To actually
get wheels on the ground VRT does not have a funding mechanism for doing that, so
they get it voluntarily from the cities. If I'm remembering off the top of my head, the city
of Boise out of their general fund pays either 5.2 million dollars or 5.3 million dollars,
somewhere in that neighborhood, for the bus service that is in Boise and covers -- I
think it goes through Garden City. They make a little contribution. The city of Nampa,
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the operations figure is about 300,000 and all combined I think they pay close to a half a
million dollars for service that's in Nampa. Caldwell -- the figure that I'm aware of is
120,000 for operations and I think it's close to 300,000 for their total cost. Meridian, as
they contribute their dues, we also now contribute a certain amount for the inter-county
line, so that we make stops in Meridian and that gives our people access to some
transportation, but as many people have heard me say before, Meridian is the largest
city in Idaho without a public transportation system within our city. So, this
enhancement is actually something which when Kelly mentioned it three years ago I felt
there was the positive reaction from the City Council and others about this, but it didn't
seem like it showed up on the budget ever. So, I took the unusual step of putting it on
the budget. What this would provide us is another toe into public transportation. I'm
sure you know I'm an advocate of public transportation and I hope some day we will
have a whole internal system. I have estimated that that would cost about 1.2 million
dollars and that is not out of our General Fund, that is not what I'm proposing with this
one. This is merely to take Boise up on their offer of extending a route that they already
have to come into Meridian and logically Iwill -- Boise is offering this, because it would
be of a benefit to them. They feel it would give their businesses access to Meridian
employees and Meridian customers. I feel the same would work in reverse. It would
give Boise customers and employees access to our businesses and also give our
businesses -- give our citizens other ways to move around. So, for -- in the scheme of
public transportation 60,000 dollars is not a whole lot of money, but what that would buy
us -- and I have learned a little bit more when I presented this to the directors I had a
little more optimistic view of what it would buy us, but it would buy us service at the
commute times. Now, what I did tell the directors -- and I have actually confirmed --
Ada County Highway District is beginning to feel not on the success of their
Commuteride program, but they need to expand on the idea of moving traffic -- or
removing traffic by supporting alternate forms of transportation. They are doing this by
allowing bike lanes, they are doing this with Commuteride, they are offering to do some
of this in support of that Valley Regional Transit and they are not willing to pay for
services that are already existing, but I have been told by two commissioners at ACHD
and a few staff people that if we are successful with this 60,000 dollar enhancement,
they would match it, because it saves -- if people can use buses, then, maybe they don't
need to build a couple extra lanes someplace and they feel that that's a big savings.
So, with our 60,000 -- and my question was, okay, what if we put it in for 30,000 and
you match that. No, you have already said 60,000, so the enhancement has to stay
60,000. But they would match the 60,000, because they feel there is a benefit to them.
Then that does put it back into the range of what I was saying, it actually could be all
day service, as opposed to just at commute times. So, I would be happy to answer any
further questions or suggest that I think this is another way, as I say, to stick a second
toe into the public transportation system. My recollection is that the city survey that we
did in November 2011, was it, something like that, 68 percent of the people on -- to the
question that -- it was something like what are the priorities of things we are not doing
that we should be doing, 68 percent of the people ranked public transportation as either
one -- either number one or number two. The people that put it number two put
pathways and bike lanes as number one. But a high percentage of people in Meridian
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think that that's where we should prioritize some funds if we could come up with them.
So, I will leave it at that and stand for questions.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: David, all of our public transportation is dependent on federal support,
essentially. It's dependent on federal support and we all make contributions to provide
a bit of a match. I know with sequestration there has been a reduction in transportation
dollars, particularly public transportation dollars, and I'm not sure what's going to
happen, if we ever do get a reauthorization bill. Have you talked to Kelly recently -- I
haven't -- to see what the impact is on the money received?
Zaremba: What seems to have happened is with what's been actually authorized at the
current moment, there has been a shuffle of how it's delivered, but it still seems to work
out to the same amount of money and, actually, another program opened up, so there is
a little bit more money available to VRT and that's true, this 60,000 is our local match
that -- of course Boise would pay the major portion of this route. We would only pay for
the portion that's within Meridian, but the several elements that go into it are our 60,000
dollars, plus Fare Box, which is not a whole lot of money, but the majority of it would be
federal funds. We would be doing our match to leverage federal funds and my
understanding is that VRT doesn't expect to be hurt by the sequestration and there is --
there is a little bit of accounting difference and some fiddle diddle there, but apparently
they believe they will end up with the same amount of funds that they had. The other
point I would make is that this does not require any city employees or any city operating
equipment. The expense would be the 60,000 dollars and the cost to write a check to
VRT I guess, but they handle everything and they have all the accounting to be able to
tell us how successful this is being or whether there needs to be changes to it, so I have
overstayed my three minutes, but if there is other questions --
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Rountree: I have none.
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Thank you, David. Appreciate it. Okay. We will take a break until 10:15.
Recess: (10:05 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.)
Kilchenmann: Okay. Finance Department.
Bird: Are you okay? We can read that print. I don't need my glasses.
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De Weerd: So, up next is Stacy Kilchenmann and who will give an overview on the
Finance Department.
Kilchenmann: This is the same slide you already saw not long ago. I'm sure you
memorized it in March. This is just kind of a summary of functions that we have that are
recurring functions and some of our accomplishments through the year. So, recurring
functions -- we have added -- accounting used to be basically payroll accounts payable,
basic budget, general ledger. The last few years we have added some things, like the
capital improvement plan, the revenue and fund balance forecast. The audit has gotten
considerably more time consuming. We are trying to do a lot more analysis for
departments as their needs get more complex. Our grant accounting has grown and we
also are trying to do a little bit more internal audit and process review. So, as we looked
at some of the projects that we wanted to do, we feel like we -- it's time for us to ask for
another person and we will just call this person financial analyst and the stage the city --
and any entity when it grows it changes and processes change, so what -- a good
process for Meridian six years ago is not the same process that Meridian should be
using now after going through a period of rapid growth and if you read much about
organization -- corporations that grow, if their processes don't change and grow the
entity generally falters. So, now we have good internal controls in place. We have
departments that understand internal control. They are on board with it. They are not --
theydon't need to be reined in. They know what they are doing. Our focus more now is
on looking forward and how we are going to make tough decisions on what we are
going to do with our budget in the future. How are we going to measure what to add
next and we can't add everything. For example, pertormance measurements, how are
we going to control all the systems shifting to like credit cards and I think I talked to you
in March how complicated something -- something as easy as credit cards seem to be
can be. We really need to help with contract management and contract tracking.
Departments have very complex contracts and agreements that last -- last several years
-- span several years and they don't necessarily have the staff to monitor the -- when it
comes to the payment or the conclusion of the agreement. We also need to be able to
do costing consistently across the city, so when one department raises their fee we
want to use an approach that's systematic and consistent with the approach that
another department might use. Not that they are going to be exactly the same, but that
we can tell the public -- we can show the public that we use a consistent, thorough
approach. We talked about the financial reporting. We are always apparently whining
about the audit a little bit, but the audit is very complex. The standards are changing.
They are going to get more complex. Budget -- we may have it mandated through
GASB that we do some sort of performance measurement, but at least I think all the
department directors are on board that they want to do some sort of measurement, they
want to have some quantitative way to sit down and say do we add three police, do we
add two fire, do we add another park -- and they want to be able to share that with you,
so that when you make a decision about adding a particular type of development you
are aware of the impact that we have on our service provisions. So, we also want to be
a little bit more involved when people are implementing an account -- or new software
systems, because almost any software system impacts us. Almost everything that's
done impacts finance in some way or the other. So, we like to get a seat at the table a
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little bit early in terms of controls to help with process review, et cetera. So, that's pretty
much the presentation -- the same presentation I gave you in March. Are there any
questions?
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Kilchenmann: Reta is going to present our -- an enhancement for something called Drill
Point.
Cunningham: Good morning.
De Weerd: Good morning, Reta.
Cunningham: This software is actually going to be an interface between MIP, our
accounting software, and Excel. Currently we continue to export from MIP into Excel,
but we have to do a lot of formatting to those documents every single month. If we want
to do a graph we actually have to hand enter the data by hand and cause -- it actually
opens it up for more errors. What this software will do is allow us to build those
documents, such as accounts and report in Excel and, then, with a click of a button, I
hope, we can actually update it once a month. So, it's -- and we are looking at five
licenses, four of which are going to be used in Finance and one we would like to offer to
Public Works and, then, if this -- if we find that they are pretty easy to use we would like
to look at maybe purchasing some more licenses for the other departments the next
year. That's it.
De Weerd: Short and sweet. Council, any questions regarding this enhancement
request?
Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Reta.
Cunningham: You bet.
De Weerd: Okay. So, that covers our Finance Department. Council, anything further
on that?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: No.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Nary, are you doing the Council two new members? I wasn't
quite sure who was doing this one. Or Todd or someone.
Nary: I misspoke. I guess there is three opportunities for me. Actually, Madam Mayor,
Members of the Council, this can be really brief. They have included in the budget the
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current salaries for new Council Members. We have two new Council Members that will
be coming on board with the fall election. One will be for a two year seat that will, then,
become a four year seat at the next election in 2015 and, then, one seat in 2013 will
also be elected to a four year seat. Also, though, in conjunction with your ordinance we
will be contravening a citizens committee next Monday to meet and discuss the current
compensation for all elected officials, both the Mayor and Council Members and to bring
a recommendation back to you whether to change that or not. By August -- we have to
have something in place by August 20th, which is 75 days prior to the election, so if we
have to make any changes they have -- I have discussed it with Finance and Finance
they have -- they have budgeted funds in your budget enhancements that are in front of
you to deal with that potential of an increase, so that we wouldn't require a budget
amendment. Again, Idon't -- I don't know what the citizen committee may recommend
to you and, again, it's up to you to decide what you would like to have in relation to the
compensation for elected officials, but we will have a citizen's group to at least give you
some feedback and a recommendation before the August 20th deadline. So, that's all I
have.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, Bill, this might be more a question for Todd, but in the purple
sheet this is for the existing council -- for the existing council seat we budget insurance
for those that take insurance and some don't take insurance, but like for me if for some
reason I'm not reelected and that new person might take insurance, so -- but we don't
budget for that, just based on the current situation, but that current situation could
change. So, I didn't know if that was something we should be budgeting for every
election year just in case or we just pull money from somewhere else to cover those
costs if there is changes, so --just maybe more something to notice.
Nary: And I guess while Todd is conferring, the other piece of that component, of
course, is when we budget all positions we budgeted for the full coverage. So, you're
right, the likelihood is that there is going to be funds available for either situation,
because you're going to have employees that, again, some separate from employment,
other employees you will have positions available. So, the funding source should exist,
but I think you're right, I guess that's up to Todd on how that's accounted for in the
budgeting process. But the funding is generally likely to be there, so --
Hoaglun: Okay.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: This is a similar question I think, but it's a totally separate line item
somewhere else. The council members are also reimbursed if they attend acity-related
conference like the AIC conference, Association of Idaho Cities conference, or the
leadership conference put on by the Chamber of Commerce and I just want to make
sure as we go from four to six that that line item, where ever it is, is increased as well.
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De Weerd: We did anticipate that and I believe it's built in, but --
Nary: It should be in your base, yes.
Zaremba: And not everybody goes every time, so it's not a hundred percent spent
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, the enhancement that is proposed for
the two Council Members did take into effect some training, some travel that you speak
of, so those costs are accounted for in the two new and, then, your current base that
represents the four of you up there has those as well, so I think we have covered all
those bases and to follow up with Councilman Hoaglun, that's a great thought process.
We will go ahead and integrate that into our process that every election year we allocate
the full benefit package just in case a change does occur. So, that's a good point. I
appreciate that and I will make that change I guess in two years.
Zaremba: Thank you
Nary: Thank you.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Okay. Our next up is our Parks Department with director
Steve Siddoway.
Siddoway: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. We had the pleasure
to be before you last month as part of the workshop to present our strategic
presentation where we talked about recent accomplishments, challenges, things like
that. So, we wanted to pick up today where -- where that one left off. We try very hard
to be good stewards of the funds that you give us, so the first question is what have we
done with the funds that you gave us last year. Well, probably our -- one of our most
proud accomplishments for this year was the opening of the park maintenance facility. I
think you were -- you were all there. The photo's there on the right and we were very
blessed to be able to open that facility and the move over is now complete and they are
starting the process of getting everything in the right spot, so that we can give you a tour
of that facility in the parks tour in September with everything where it belongs. We also
made improvements out at Kleiner Park and received some awards, specifically
budgeted this last year were an electrical service upgrade, which were completed in
May and opened for this event season. They were used during the Kiwanis Wing Off for
the booths that they set up and are available in that bench area south of the main
shelter. The tree grates, which were also budgeted, have been ordered and arrived.
The brackets and things to accept those within the tree wells are being fabricated
currently in -- at the new shop. We also completed construction of the Settlers Park
MIB overflow parking. The Settlers tennis facility design work is done. It has gone to
bid. The bids have been opened and that's in the process of being awarded and should
be to you soon. The park dedication plaques have been a long process of getting all
the dates and people correct and you have helped review some of those and Jay was
before you last month to -- to go over those and those are moving forward this summer.
In addition, we have had some pathway connections work done over the past year.
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Last fall we opened the Five Mile Creek pathway from Pine to Badley and finished the
design work on the Bridgetower section Five Mile Creek, which we anticipate starting
construction this summer. We implemented the recycling program through a SWAC
grant that was given to us. We have also finished design of the 8th Street Park
improvements through a CDBG grant. That project is currently in the bid process and is
underway this summer. We have always been able to -- with the funds given to us to --
from special events which help us build community, put on recreation, activity guide
classes, our summer camps are in full swing and our adult sports programs with
everything from volleyball to softball and basketball and summer we started a new
outdoor volleyball program that's been very successful in Bear Creek Park. So, our
process to get to today for us begins in earnest back in January. In January we begin to
review the base budget in detail and in February we meet as staff and draft our draft
enhancements. In March we have our -- as you know, our meetings with Finance, our
Council liaison, and the Mayor and go over those and, then, in April we finalize and
prioritize those enhancements. Probably one of the most rewarding or the part in the
process that makes the most difference I believe is that in May and June when we meet
as directors and the Mayor to go over all of the department enhancements and budget
requests to be able to make decisions when we come together say, okay, we are a
couple million dollars over, where is it going to make sense to -- to cut and, then, we
can do a balanced budget, which brings us to today in July. So, we have nine proposed
enhancements to discuss with you. The first one has been withdrawn, simply because
it's been funded, but it was on the list from the beginning, so I thought I better hit on it.
That is the Generations Plaza water feature update. Council did fund this one already
as an FY-13 budget amendment. The design work on that is wrapping up in the next
couple of weeks and, then, we will be going out to bid for construction this summer. So,
our second enhancement -- and, really, the first that we are requesting funding for in
FY-14 is for the 77 acre park well development. As you know we were -- we purchased
77 acres down south at Lake Hazel near Locust Grove. That property came with an
existing water right -- ground water right, but that water right is undeveloped. We are
required to develop that water right or risk losing it. We can apply for an extension. We
have looked into that process, but it's not guaranteed, and we thought it safer to just
move forward with developing a well, so that we don't risk losing that, especially where
it's funded through impact fees and we have those funds available to us. Those funds
are anticipated to cover the well casing pump and piping, survey needed. We have to
run power and the consulting for that and there is a small amount for ongoing surface
well maintenance. We have been anticipating this for a number of years and as we like
to say, you know, working the plan, this is in the capital improvements plan for this year,
it has been anticipated and we are proposing that we fund it this next year. Number
three is for geese control services. We talked about this last month, the challenge that
we have out in Kleiner Park and these are recent photos --
De Weerd: And some people might think that's a cute photo.
Siddoway: Yeah. They do -- we do receive a lot of complaints about the amount of
goose droppings out there. We do have a permit with Idaho Fish and Wildlife Services
or the state -- the Department of Fish and Wildlife and work with also Idaho Fish and
Meridian City Council Special Meeting
July 9, 2073
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Game to be able to haze the geese and run them off. Efforts to do that with only staff
have not been successful. We have -- efforts at Scentsy just down the street from us
using dogs have been and we are proposing that we contract with their dog handlers to
help us get the geese out of the park. So, it's going to be an ongoing operational
request.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: Steven, just a question on that and it's not really a budget question, but since
you brought it up I have a question. Have you all worked with Scentsy and Blue Cross
and other folks in the city -- the golf course, Fuller Park, other folks that have ponds to
try to coordinate -- because just moving them from one field to the next field to the next
field is just a perpetual goose motion and you're never going to get rid of the problem
and they will continue to breed in the urban environment and their populations continue
to expand. It seems to me that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service owes the urban
environment some effort at control these critters that are theirs, as well as the Idaho
Department of Fish and Game. There is no open season on them in the urban
environment and we all know why, but there needs to be some control of these resident
populations of theoretically migratory birds that never leave the valley and I would
encourage if there isn't a task force put together it's an expensive problem for all of us
and I think there ought to be -- and I think the federal government needs to step up and
take care of their animals.
De Weerd: Well, I think what Steve and his staff would tell you, too, it's an education of
neighbors that were surrounding the parks as well, that they are not building geese
nesting beds and, you know, kind of encouraging the nesting near our parks, because it
really feeds to it. I had the privilege of attending one of the parks meetings and they
described mowing in this park and I guess the consequences of -- of the geese and our
-- our employees are covered in goose poop by maintaining our parks. It's not helping,
it's -- it's uncleanly. Our park patrons have certainly made comments and I can tell you
we have employees that I think go above and beyond in trying to be part of the solution
in -- in goose control. This works for Scentsy and, Councilman Rountree, I agree with
you completely and it's a great suggestion in forming a task force and also part of the
discussion of this group when put together is going to have to be an outreach to the
neighboring residents in talking about why it's really not something they should be doing
and providing cute places where they can lay their eggs and draw more geese to the
park, so --
Rountree: Madam Mayor, I guess to get to the point I was trying to get to is I would
support funding of such an effort, because to me the money we are spending on this is
just wasted money. The problems -- we are not solving the problem.
Siddoway: We will work to get Fish and Wildlife Services at the table for that, too,
because it's going to take a coordinated effort at their level to really address this issue
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valley wide and Iknow -- you know, discussions have been had by Elroy and others in
particular with Fish and Wildlife Service, you know, talk about, you know, round-up for
the -- relocate, but they usually -- you know, they charge for those services and their
success is limited. But, anyway, it's a bigger discussion and I agree it needs to happen.
Rountree: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just adding onto Councilman Rountree's suggestion, if we were to form a
partnership to work together on this I would include Hewlett-Packard as well. They
have several ponds and a significant problem over there, too.
Siddoway: They do, but they have made their decision to allow the nesting and don't
currently haze, as I looked into their policy, so -- but, anyway, yeah, there are several
sites impacted by this. Our fourth enhancement is at -- regarding the Settlers Park
splash pad and it -- currently the splash pad is one of the amenities that we offer that
requires the most staff time and attention for -- and cost for maintenance. The proposal
is to convert the current recirculating system to a potable water system. We have a
potable water system currently at Kleiner Park splash pad. It is designed to have the
water come to the splash pad and, then, to drain to the pond and we irrigate out of the
pond to reuse that water a second time. We would propose to be able to do that same
type of scenario at Settlers Park would actually save us a lot of money and staff time.
Last year the -- our splash pad attendance had over 1,200 hours -- labor hours at a cost
of 11,477 dollars, our own full-time employees out there, 232 labor hours, cost over
6,000 dollars and chemicals costs to cost keep the water balanced over 1,700 dollars.
Total operational costs last year were 19,648 dollars. So, we recoup the money of
making the switch over pretty rapidly in a couple of years. It will also save the water
treatment plant 1.2 million gallons of water that we currently spill on the -- during our
season to the wastewater treatment plant that they have to treat and, then, put into the
-- the water system through their process. Have worked with Tom Barry to look at
whether the cost of providing water versus the cost of treating water balances out and
there is a cost savings for them on that end as well. The question is philosophically
does it seem like the right thing to do. Certainly the recirculated system has more of a
conservation feel to it, but we are proposing to reuse that water through the irrigation
system to try and further that -- that conservation side of things. So, it's a relatively
small enhancement and what it would do is modify the -- the water supply line coming
in, it would modify -- it would disconnect from the -- the sanitary sewer and re-pipe over
to the pond, remove the holding tank so that it becomes a fresh water system. For
discussion I think that, you know, we have the opportunity to completely remove or at
least reduce the splash pad attendants, so would -- one question is as a level of service
should we have some splash pad attendants out there during peak times even if it's
fresh water in case there is a -- you know, an incident on the splash pad or do we
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remove them from the system completely. That would be an additional cost savings
beyond what we have already talked about, so --
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Do the attendants supply any lifeguard kind of service? If we didn't have
their eyes out there is there anybody that's in danger that might not -- of course, they
probably -- the mommies and daddies probably all have cell phones that they can call
for emergency service if they needed to, but would there some loss or risk in that area?
Siddoway: They are not true lifeguards. We do provide CPR -- or require CPR training,
but they are out there or there is one out there, but actually have a separate
conversation coming today from the Fire Department to put AEDs in all the parks and,
you know, their primary function is to hand out swim diapers if someone -- if a small
child does not have one. They -- if there is an incident where it was something hitting
the deck of the splash pad that's going to get into the recirculated system, whether it's --
use your imagination. To be there to shut off the system and give it the time to be fully
treated and, then, to be able to turn it back on. So, if there are, you know, dogs in the
splash pad, then, they address that. If there are, you know, just things going on that
shouldn't be happening in the splash pad, they are there as eyes on that area, because
it is heavily used and very popular. You know, I could see -- what I would propose is
that maybe we --and the current budget as proposed to you anticipates this. It currently
keeps our splash pad attendant budget. I would say maybe next year, with this
modification, we try reducing the -- the attendants, but may try and keep a presence out
there during, you know, those true peak times, but, excuse me, only use that splash pad
attendant budget for those peak times and see how that goes and, then, we can make
the call after having a season under our belts with this system to say do we need
someone out there or let's cut it all together. So, that would be my proposal. Any other
questions on this one? The fifth enhancement is pathway connection projects and this
is an annual request. It is in the capital improvements plan forjust over 100,000 dollars.
It is the top priority of our Parks and Rec Commission to continue these pathway
connections and might add pretty top priority for me as well. It includes a small amount
for the ongoing asphalt maintenance and weed control and we are working on ideas for
where to spend the money. The priority idea that we have -- we have really been
working hard to make this Five Mile Creek a true path and get it to start feeling like a
greenbelt. We are not there yet, but we are -- with the Bud Porter Pathway, which is
along Five Mile Creek and the segment from Pine to Badley that we opened last year
and the segment in front of Bridgetower that we hope to open this year, we are starting
to get the pieces in place and we will continue to look for opportunities, as I think the top
priority to further enhance and implement that Five Mile Creek pathway. Another idea, if
we are unsuccessful in getting the necessary easements and things to make that work
in the next year, there is also a potential pathway connection along the Norse Lateral
that is circled there that connects for a full mile from Sawtooth Middle School at Linder
Road over to Meridian Road North of Settlers Park. So, that would be another one we
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could look at that's in an existing developed area and would not be development driven.
This is where the budget balancing starts coming into play. The recreational field house
development fund is in the capital improvements plan for 1.5 million dollars from the
fund balance this year. As was mentioned earlier I think with Stacy's presentation in
order to have the funds available in the FY-14 budget for the fiber project, what we are
proposing is that we fund half of that today in the FY-14 budget, 750,000 now and, then,
we wait until the end of
FY-14 and see what, you know, budget savings there is and, then, do a -- sorry. I was
going to say a sweep of those funds, but --that's the only word that's coming to mind.
De Weerd: Dedication.
Siddoway: Dedication of those funds -- we would have to come back to the Council for
this, but we would -- much like the public safety fund that was done in the past and
others, at the end of the year we see what funds are available and, then, we try and pull
those funds into the recreational field house development fund. This would get us a
step closer to meeting our indoor recreation needs of our community. It was a priority of
the public as we also put that same survey out that Councilman Zaremba mentioned on
public transportation. We do -- we are investigating potential partnerships for this that
might save us money, especially operationally in the long term if we get an operational
partner and those discussions are in the works, but this would put the money into that --
into that fund, just a portion of it now, as anticipated by the CIP and, then, we would
come back and address the rest of it at a later date. Number seven is the Storey Park
construction documents. As you know from the presentation last month we have been
working diligently on a potential land trade to clear up land water conservation fund
issues that in part would provide us with new property with frontage out on Watertower.
We also need to put up some fencing out there and so what we are proposing is seeing
everything complete this year as we are on schedule -- I will mention to you that all of
the documents that we have been working on, including the plat that came through you,
have been submitted to Idaho State Parks, reviewed, and we received word just
yesterday or Friday that that will be formally submitted now to the National Park Service.
So, the -- that process is moving forward. So, we are proposing to keep that moving
along, that we will be able to do the design work and construction documents and, then,
get ready for the construction possibly the following year. And this request is split 50-50
or close to. The capital part is split 50-50 with General Fund impact fees, so it is partly
existing and partly meeting future needs. Number eight. It falls to us as a department
to help maintain the interim treatment that come with these ACHD projects. Public
Works was tracking these and budgeting with our help, but with that position in Public
Works currently unfilled we are bringing it forward, so there is a project planned for
Ustick Road between Locust Grove and Eagle that would have detached sidewalks and
that area between the sidewalk and the road would need an interim treatment that
would be maintained by contract through the Parks Department with some fabric and
some rock and eventually when those properties develop they would be landscaped
and required to be maintained by those property owners, but until such -- but until that
time happens we would maintain that area. And, then, our final enhancement is a
comprehensive parks and recreation system plan update. It is -- it's been ten years,
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believe it or not, since the last action plan was developed. You can see a photo of it
there on the right. It is fun to read, primarily because it's rewarding to realize how much
of it's been implemented. It set a vision, we have implemented that plan, and we have
realized the vision that that plan set forward in large measure. I believe it's time for a
new vision for the next ten to 20 years and in addition to doing an update of that plan,
my thought is since we would be doing such significant public input and outreach effort,
I'm trying to roll into that a new master plan for the future parks sites that we own or we
know are coming. We don't yet own the Aldape property that is on the bottom right, but
we would like to start our planning for-- for that property in conjunction with the Ewings.
The Borup and Bottles property, we have an existing concept plan for that, but since
that time we have added another 17 and a half acres to it and that plan needs to be
updated. The 77 acres down south does not currently have a plan and we would like to
developed a plan for that. Our reason for this plan update would be to develop
recommendations for future parks, future amenities, and recreation facilities. The
financing for those projects -- look at our impact fees, future property acquisition, look at
a chapter on urban forest management and our capital improvements. So, it's a lot to
ask of one plan, but that's what we would -- would like to do. In some ways if this one
held off a year, you know, nothing truly falls apart, but, like I say, I think it's an important
to set that vision moving forward into the next decade. So, those are our requests for
enhancements. We do have three computers for replacement. Those are just per the
IT schedule. Elroy's desktop, my own desktop, and we share a laptop that we use
regularly for commission meetings, for all staff training, for -- well we use it for meetings
on a regular basis and that was also old and needing replaced. We are proposing two
trucks for replacement. The capital improvements plan actually has the 86,000 dollars
anticipated for this year in it. We are proposing about half that in that we are -- we are
three trucks -- we looked at three trucks. One with them we think still has some good
life in it and so we are not -- we are only going to replace these as needed, but there are
two older ones still that -- a '96 Ford F-250 and a '97 GMC 1500, both of which show
critical replacement needs as we work with them through the vehicle replacement
worksheets and we propose that those two of the three that were planned be approved
for replacement. Finally, I just want to add a look into the future. What do we currently
have on the books to come up. So, in 2015 we are looking for our annual allocation for
pathway connections. The construction fund for Storey Park. William Watson Park we
expect to be resurrecting in the Bainbridge Subdivision around it has submitted a plat
and is coming forward, so we -- our guesstimate in the CIP plan for when we might
need those funds looks to be pretty good. We also have an allocation in there for
vehicles and equipment. Similar in 2016 for pathways by then are starting to think
about Borup construction documents out there. I will say that the timing of that depends
quite a bit on development and utilities, but there is a Catch 22 there is we don't want to
wait fully for development, especially if we are anticipating lighted ball fields. We'd like
to get those lights in before the development comes, so that anyone moving into the
area knows well in advance that those are existing. So, we are thinking about those
sooner rather than later, but they are still at least a couple years out for the -- the
planning and, then, you can see -- you will see on the next slide in the second five years
we have the construction anticipated. So, 2017, again, the pathway connections, we do
have a neighborhood park anticipated that will be the one in Isola Creek. That one
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came to you in December. The developer agreed to donate the land and we will
develop it. And, then, finally, a look out at the second five years in the current CIP. As
we continue the annual allocation for pathways there is a million dollars anticipated for
the Rail With Trail project. Construction of the Borup property, which will need to be
updated -- this number is based on the previous acres, but as we develop those plans
we can update that. A second neighborhood park, an amount to be determined for the
field house, and, then, land acquisition and vehicles and equipment. So, that is our
budget presentation to you today and I will stand for questions.
De Weerd: Council, any questions? You know, Steve, I appreciate your presentation. I
guess it doesn't have anything to do with this upcoming budget year, but perhaps it
does depending on what the timeline is of the public training facility -- public safety
training facility and what the plan is in the dog park.
Siddoway: Oh, yes. So, we do know that the dog park will go away at the existing
location when the public safety training facility moves forward. We have talked about
whether that should be an enhancement, but with so many unknowns with the field
house at the current location or not, we have developed at least a draft plan and draft
budget for discussion that we can bring forward to Council at anytime when it's
appropriate and right now we are anticipating that it would be an amendment after
October as we get into the new fiscal year and determine what's really going to happen
with that --with that dog park and its location is settled.
De Weerd: Okay.
Siddoway: We do have it on our radar and we have been doing some preliminary
planning work for it and will continue to do so.
De Weerd: And I know you and the chief have been talking about that, so -- any other
questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Your comment about the Rails To Trails reminded me -- and I don't find it in
your budget and I didn't look at Planning's, but is that money that -- the transportation
money that was brought forward -- recently brought forward, is that in your budget or is
that in community development?
Siddoway: It should be in our budget. We -- the reason you may be confused is we
had talked about putting it in Planning's budget and Tim Cerns was going to manage
that -- the project, but Tim has since left to ACHD. Jay has agreed to take that on as
the project manager. The torch has officially been passed from Caleb to Jay to lead
that process. Those funds are available in our budget and they are -- the scoping work
is already underway to get that bid awarded and moved forward.
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Rountree: Okay. Good.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Steve, the Witty gritty stuff here in the purple pages. Just a couple of
questions of some line items that jumped out at me. Contracted labor, you have
budgeted 40,000 in 2013 and that's jumping by 20,000 for 2014.
Siddoway: Oh, yes. I do remember that one. That is -- that is typically revenues
covered. The contract labor I believe is in the'15 to'20 account.
Hoaglun: Fifty-one --
Siddoway: For recreation.
Hoaglun: 55-104.
De Weerd: No. The category.
Hoaglun: Oh. Category. Okay. Yeah. 5121.
Siddoway: Okay. So, that is the contracted labor with our -- the classes that are taught
at the community center. We are on an upward trend with enrollments and payments
that we make out to those contracted instructors, but the payments are only made if
those revenues come in. So, that increases based on the trend as we look at the
performance over the last several years and the amount will only be spent that come in
for that.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you. More under 5120. Holiday expense. We put out in the
last year, we are adding an additional 10,000 for 20,000, so we are doubling it this year.
We are taking more on I would assume, but --
Siddoway: I believe in that case -- and I'll look at Colin to make sure I'm right, but the
transferring money from Mike's budget and Colin's budget. So, from 50-210, parks to
50-120 for the employees that Colin is managing, so that we will -- so it's not new funds,
we are simply moving it from the parks side to the recreation side.
Hoaglun: Thank you. That helps connect the dots. Appreciate that. Just a couple
more. I notice under the 50-200 Parks Admin, the bank and merchant charges, we are
jumping from 10,000 to 16,000, so are we -- because of increased enrollments and
these things there is more fees associated with that -- is my assumption, but I don't
know.
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Siddoway: I believe that's exactly right and I would need to look at Todd, because he
manages the trend for that one based on actual.
Lavoie: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun, that is exactly what it is. Due to the
increased enrollments, the popularity, we have to incur credit card charges, unless --
but that is exactly what the answer is.
Hoaglun: Okay. I don't like to assume. Anyway. Last one, Steve, under 50-210, parks
maintenance, cell phone expenses, we are jumping up there pretty good from 50-200 to
adding another 47,800 and just -- I know we are getting more parks and more people
involved, so probably just --
Siddoway: The main difference there is the service. We currently are with T-Mobile.
We have a lot of challenges, missed calls, dropped calls, when we get, you know, the
emergency calls that are semi-emergency calls I will say at night, that goes to the on-
call phone. It hasn't proven to be reliable. Both fire and police have switched over to
Verizon and we are proposing to make the same switch and that is the additional actual
cost for that switch.
Hoaglun: Okay. I appreciate that, Steve. And I just noticed I just asked you about the
increases, I didn't ask you about the decreases, which would certainly cover a lot of
these --these costs, so --
Siddoway: You know, I wrote some down. In fact, the Mayor said I ought to point some
of those out, so I will just hit on one or two just to highlight. We are reducing by 8,000
dollars the equipment rental lease, because the -- we no longer have to pay for the
rental of the school district facilities through our mutual fee waiver agreement. We have
acknowledged that fact in our -- in our budget. Under van cleanup expenses, we -- last
year we reduced that by 5,000. This year we are proposing to transfer another --
around 2,000 from expenses and into our mounted camera line item, because the
cameras have really been the reason that the cleanup costs have reduced and we need
some additional funding in there. But it's just a transfer. You know, we also work
heavily with volunteers. We had over 3,100 hours last year. We believe that saved our
department over 48,000 dollars over the past year and we try to leverage those
opportunities as much as we can.
Hoaglun: Thank you.
De Weerd: And, Council, I would point out as you all are familiar with -- that you have
the detailed fixed costs in your binder that gives you details on some of those variable
line items, each of our departments give specific detail in what constitutes the budget
numbers, so --
Siddoway: Any questions?
De Weerd: Any other questions?
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Bird: I have none.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. And thank you to your staff.
Siddoway: Thank you.
De Weerd: Up next is our Police Department. Chief Lavey. So, I see former
Councilman Shaun Wardle. You can't get enough of this? You missed it; right? Okay.
Pleasant feelings; right?
Lavey: Madam Mayor, Council, thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today. This
is my sixth time presenting a budget in front of Council and each time it's -- it's grown a
little bit and it's been a constant struggle as the city has grown to maintain or reduce our
budget. Well, this year I'm happy to tell you that we have increased our operating costs
by 3.92 percent and our overall budget increase, although it's not much, it's a .029
percent, increase over last year. So, we made some progress. One of the things that
we do as a staff at the Police Department is all the commanders get together and we,
like the Parks Department and the Fire Department and everybody else, start working
on this budget about nine months prior to us meeting here today and we have really
hammered our operating costs to try to trim those down as much as we possibly could
without hampering any of our levels of service or our training that we provide to our
employees and so we feel confident coming in front of Council today that we have given
the best budget that we could. Some of the things I would like to do today is share
some of our successes; but there is so many to list that I didn't even know where to start
and they really -- my peers have challenged me and they realized that police chiefs and
attorneys never are brief and Bill's already set the bar today for me to be kind of brief,
because he did it fairly quickly.
De Weerd: Kind of.
Lavey: Well, he blamed Council's questions on extending his presentation, so we can --
he was quick to blame someone there, so -- but I also know that you have tested me,
because you put me right before lunch instead of after lunch and so that's really kind of
my deadline. So, last year I spoke in front of you for 30 minutes hopefully it's pretty
consistent with what we do. But, like I said, over this past year we have a lot of great
successes, but I need to thank the men and women of the Meridian Police Department,
because they are the reason why we have been successful. We have made drastic
improvements over the years. I have been with the city going on my 17th year and
every year it just keeps getting better and better and I attribute that to Mayor, Council,
and the great staff that I have. But some of the accomplishments that you might notice
this summer that I would like to talk about is we have put on two additional bike patrol
officers for a total of six. You have a dedicated supervisor and five bicycle officers. The
supervisor is on a bike, too. That are working the city. They work the special events.
They work the movie nights. The teen nights. They work Kleiner Park. And they work
everywhere else in the city. So, we have had some great successes with that team.
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After the summer is over you will have two full-time bike officers working up until we
have to tell them get to off the bikes because it's too cold or too dangerous for them to
ride because of the weather conditions, but we are riding all year long. We have
recently completed a complete policy overhaul, not only was it a change in our policies
in the Police Department, but it included changes to city ordinances, state laws, federal
laws, case laws and that was a major undertaking. This policy manual is about 400
pages long and it took us about a year to get it done. It probably would have been a
little less if Lieutenant Colaianni wouldn't have broken his leg, but that delayed us a little
bit. He's not in the room, so we can talk about him all we want. But part of the reason
why we had worked on the policy change was not only because it was necessary, it was
something that we could take ownership in, it was not something that was passed down
from chief to chief to additional leaders -- other leadership, it was our manual that we
had developed and -- but to really kind of segue into what's going to happen in two
weeks and that's our state accreditation. This has been a talk for about 12 plus years is
trying to get our police department state accredited. Basically, it's best practices across
the state. July 22nd and July 23rd we will have a state accreditation team in Meridian to
evaluate our -- our performance and while I'm optimistic that we will be successful, if we
are successful, then, that team will come in front of Council in -- somewhere in the
future and present a plaque and I give a presentation. So, cross your fingers for that. A
lot of dedicated staff time has gone into making that happen. As you know, we have
had some great successes over the last three years with our impact team -- Meridian
impact team, which is our pro-active enforcement team. Basically if there is a problem
going on within the city that we have identified through basically tactical crime analysis,
which is just looking at the computer and dots and seeing how many crime -- how many
crimes are occurring where or we receiving complaints from citizens or generally I like to
say that any of those -- those types of crimes that become a real pain to either the
Mayor or I and the citizens voice those to us, we start targeting those areas. Our impact
team, as I have shared with you over numerous years, has had great success in what
they have done. But that has been funded by a federal COPS grant and what was
unique about that grant is it was a hundred percent coverage for three years and in the
past you recall that they were a hundred percent one year, 70 percent -- 75 percent the
second --just each year it dropped. This one was one hundred percent funded for three
years. However, that does come to an end and the city has to commit to funding those
officers for a minimum of one year. The good news is -- well, the bad news is is that we
were delayed in getting the people hired and getting the team implemented and so we
didn't start as soon as we wanted to. I was under the belief that we would probably just
lose the rest of that money and we actually filed an extension and just as I was sitting at
my desk today is I received that approval. So, the good news is we will be able to
spend about 47 to 50 thousand dollars left out of that grant before the city has to take
over. The city was expecting to have to take over that funding right now and we have
delayed that by approximately 90 days after the grant was expired. So, I was just told
that Jenny from Finance will be carrying over approximately 47 to 50 thousand dollars to
help out in FY-14. One of the great things that we had done is -- is this was really kind
of a partnership deal. This was in partnership with the parks, partnership with the
Mayor's office and City Hall, but we had added for our volunteers and as you notice right
now outside there is a -- a City Hall kiosk that is staffed by two volunteers. They don't
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get to watch this presentation, but they get to list to it as they stand out there and
welcome the crowd. Are volunteer coordinator from -- from the Police Department was
a part-time position. As you recall last year I asked for it to be a full-time position and it
really is kind of a job sharing is we share her to help coordinate the volunteers that staff
that City Hall kiosk and that has been a great success. But one of the things that
challenged us with the kiosk -- because we had a lot of people that would show up -- is
that we also put in another volunteer program and that's the park volunteer program at
Kleiner Park and we discovered that once the weather got nicer that people would
rather be outside than inside and so it's been a constant challenge to try and find
volunteers to staff those positions. But, regardless, we have great success for both of
those programs. Our plans for the future is to potentially expand the hours for Kleiner
Park and, then, expend into other city parks as well. But it really is -- it's just
conditioned upon getting enough volunteers that are willing to donate their time for this
great city. And, then, of course, there is those that go to MADC and our drug prevention
efforts. Just -- there is too many to even mention here. But we have actively worked
towards the marijuana -- medical marijuana initiative, our opposition of that, and a whole
bunch of other things, including youth alcohol and shoulder taps and everything else
has been a great success. One of the things that I'm quite proud of is our school safety
and training. We have an awesome working relationship with our school district and just
the fact that that relationship exists is one thing, but the fact that we are the largest
school district in the state and we still have the relationship that we have, truly says
something about them. Dr. Clark and Dr. Gestron and the school board are just
wonderful. We have had some meetings with them where we were discussing our
safety plans and it's great that we get staff to show up for those meetings, because staff
are often the one that does the work, but we also get the leaders there. They take their
time to show up. We had a recent meeting where Dr. Gestron, Dr. Clark, and the
school board president were all -- were all in the same room and to get those three
powerful people together in one room to talk about school safety says something. But it
pays off. Unfortunately, this past year we have had to opportunities to test our plans.
The good news is is that they weren't really a threat, toward the end we had positive
outcomes, but it really let us know that our plans in place are working and we constantly
meet to -- with the school district to say, okay, what's working, what's not working, what
can we do better. So, I feel really confident when I go to bed to sleep at night that --
that we are handling things great with our schools. And, lastly, I would just like to say,
before I get into my presentation of -- of the budget is that we have a great working
relationship with our public safety partners across the Treasure. It really goes beyond
the Treasure Valley, but the Treasure Valley is who we work with day in and day out.
And especially Meridian Fire Department. The relationship that we have between the
police and fire is setting the bar for our other partners out there and when they show up
and come to Meridian they say we like what you guys are doing. We like being in town.
So, whatever we are doing, Mark, we need to keep doing. But thanks for that
relationship.
De Weerd: Chief, I would also make comment on one area that has received national
attention and it's your efforts in driver safety for our youth. Your -- your officers also
recognize that the team that does the Alive At 25 work and recently Sergeant Gonzales
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was recognized at a national level for his work and advocacy in that area. It's -- it's
been a delight to see. It has engaged and really inspired our community to be involved
at numbers that are not seen across the state, so I did want to make sure that that
recognition and your accomplishments was included.
Lavey_ Thank you, Mayor. And I have to apologize that 1 had forgotten that one, but not
to be kind of big headed, but we have actually had a lot of successes and we tend to
forget them. But I would like to comment just a little bit further on there, because you're
going to see something in the next Council meeting or the other on that. The
relationship that Sergeant Gonzales has with the off the highway safety is phenomenal.
He did receive a national award that he traveled back to Denver on that, but it's really
brought the youth together on seat belt use, alcohol use,, drug use, texting while driving,
other distracted driving and just -- just unbelievably successful and because of our
school district they have allowed us to come in there and really kind of throw parties --
pizza parties and give our personal message out at -- at lunchtime and have a DJ and
have officers that were participating. We had a few officers that were actually dancing
and it showed up on the Facebook page and I blackmail them every once in awhile on
that, but that's just the involvement that they have and listening to the kids make
comments on Facebook page -- on the Facebook page, will let me know that we are
doing it right. We are doing the right thing. But it attracted me -- we are doing a --
participated in a federal audit recently for the off-the-highway safety -- it attracted the
attention of the auditors and they just said how do you do that and tell me about it more.
So, once again, Meridian is really kind of setting the example of how things can be done
and you don't need to recreate the wheel. So, I thank you for saying that, because it
has had great success and the reason why you will be seeing it in front of Council in the
next week or two is that we have received additional grant funding to continue with our
effort for Alive At 25 and other youth safety functions. That grant is going to be 40,000
dollars split over two highway city budget years, which is in July, so I believe we are
going to get a section of it this month and a section of it after the next fiscal year starts
and so we are going to need spending authority for that, so you will see that in front of
Council. So, it is paying off. So, thank you for bringing that up. And I think I forgot to
share that with you yesterday, Mayor, when -- when we talked. So, just a quick little
summary about the Police Department. We handled 62,000 calls for service in 2012.
That number is not going down, that numbers is going up. Last year, year before was
about 59,000. We have 87 sworn officers, we have 28 staff positions, and I already
talked about the budget decreases for FY-12 and one of our -- I guess our proudest
moments is that our response times are constantly dropping, despite the challenging
construction going on in Meridian. This is probably the biggest proposal that I have for
enhancements in front of you. The nice thing about this one is that we gave a public
presentation to Councilmen in June -- June 4th and this enhancement is for the animal
shelter proposal and this would be to outsource the animal control and the shelter
services with Idaho's Humane Society and those numbers there -- the 357,000 number
is the proposed contract price. The -- the next number is the price that we are currently
paying to do it in-house. So, you will see we have about 138,000 dollars difference that
we would be paying in addition. So, the question is is why would we do that? Well, we
provide a bare minimum service to our citizens. It is part time. It doesn't include 24
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hour coverage, it doesn't include seven day a week, it doesn't include cats and a whole
bunch of other things and so we would be getting --
De Weerd: Do I detect a tone to cats?
Lavey: Yes. Yes. It is one of those things that, you know, they are there and they are
a nuisance to some of our citizens and we receive comments every once in awhile on
why don't you do something with cats and, frankly, it's -- when you have to look at how
many complaints you get versus how many complaints you don't get, it doesn't finance
well. And so this would be something that they would be able to do. And, then, there is
a potential for a decrease in those contract costs over the next couple of years if we
were to negotiate our vehicles into that -- that proposal. So, I'm not really going to go
into that much. It's my recommendation that we do that. If we do not do that we have
some hard choices to make. It's going to involve building a new shelter, it's going to
involve finding land to build that new shelter, it's going to involve an increased staff,
increased animal control officers, afull-time adoption coordinator and so I think that the
question has already been posed to you before is -- is what makes the most sense and
this proposal makes the most sense for today. It's not a permanent thing, because we
will have an opportunity to look at anything else in the future if we decide to do our own
thing or if someone comes forward and gives a better presentation, we can do that. So,
we are not locked into this, other than for a year by year contract, so that is my first
enhancement. This is probably -- and these enhancements aren't in order of priority,
but this is probably our second most important, if not the most important enhancement
that we are asking for this year is we are asking for one detective position. Now, we
wouldn't be hiring a detective, we would be hiring an entry level officer and, then,
promoting a detective within so we would have an experienced officer in there, but this
-- right now this detective position would be assigned to the Internet crimes against
children task force. Their main functions are going to be Internet crimes against
children, other crimes against children, such as physical or sexual abuse, and it will be
dealing with our health -- assisting with our Health and Welfare referrals. If you don't
know what those are, it's Health and Welfare takes in complaints every single day and
on Fridays they dump them to us and so we are -- we receive major backlog. At any
given time we have over 400 Health and Welfare referrals that we have to look at and
screen through. This position is going to have ongoing costs of 71,000 dollars. One
time costs, which are going to include a vehicle, additional equipment, desk, computer,
radio, that sort of thing of 30,868 dollars. So, the total request is 102,698, with ongoing
costs around 24 fifty. IA Pro software. This is a software program and licensing that's
been vetted out through our IT program. It's going to replace our current system, which
is access based. It was written by a volunteer and it is failing weekly. The data that we
have in there is too important to lose and too important to not be able to access, but we
keep track of every internal complaint that we receive, every use of force, every vehicle
pursuit, any commendations and we need a mechanism that we can retrieve that data.
Also this new system that we propose has what we call an early warning system to it
where it keeps track of all the things that are going on in that officer and flag it to maybe
us intervene before it's too late and maybe try to solve the problem. And it attracts all
the good letters that we get as well. The total cost of this is 19,450 dollars and I think
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this slide is in error on that last, because I think the ongoing cost is 24 fifty for me, so
that was -- it was on the wrong slide. So, 19,000 one time, 24 fifty software
maintenance per year. Lobby security cameras. When we built the building in 2012 --
no. 2001. 2002. 2002. I had in there. Yeah. Added onto the building? When we put
the building at --did the building in 2002 -- now I lost my train of thought -- we didn't put
any sort of cameras in, but we put in conduit for cameras and over the last several
years we have been coming in front of Council and we have added piecemeal cameras.
We have added cameras. We have added cameras into the parking lots. We have
added cameras into the vestibule of the police department, but we have not put
cameras in the lobbies and this would be a --just additional cameras in the lobby area.
Why this is crucial is for two things, really. Is one is -- well, three things. One is just for
the safety of our staff. If anything happens we want to be able to record that. Two is we
are often the exchange place for custodial court orders and our lobby is also open to the
general public when we are renting out the public meeting room and there is a lot of
items within the lobby that could be taken or destroyed and it would be nice to have a
record of that. Knock on wood we haven't had that opportunity, but we do house our
front lobby with our probation and parole as well. So, that's a one time cost of 6,500
dollars. It will be in addition to our existing system. The impact team computer. We
talked a little bit about the impact team earlier in my presentation. One of the things that
we had done is we added an additional member. That additional member comes out of
patrol and what we have done is we have used that for a -- a teaching moment and a
recognition moment, that is for someone who is doing really good in patrol we will give
them an opportunity to work on the impact team for a year, with the hopes of what they
learn on the impact team they can bring back to patrol and help them out as well. So,
that -- that one year rotational position is in place right now. We use all existing
equipment and desk and furniture to make that happen. The one item that we do not
have is a computer for that officer and so we are putting in a one time cost of 2,000
dollars to be able to put a desktop computer at that work station for that officer. And,
then, this budget enhancement has been withdrawn. It was for a parking enforcement
officer that would be 81,866. That would include a vehicle and everything in there. We
have apart-time code enforcement slash parking enforcement officer currently and it
doesn't work well. However, there is a lot of changes that have to occur before -- I think
this is putting the cart before the horse. We have to put some additional things in place
in downtown before we look at adding an enforcement officer. But sometime in the
future you will probably see this come before you again. And our computer
replacements total 21,750 dollars. I believe the list is in front of you. Those are based
on IT rotation and recommendations from IT and I will tell you that they include all
desktops, laptops, and vehicles. So, any other computer in a vehicle or any of our
laptops, that's everything. So, you will not see another request for vehicle computers
like I think we have done in the past. Capital equipment. If you recall last year on our
vehicles we had pulled out a couple of vehicles and not replaced them. Unfortunately,
when you do that that means it doubles the following year. Those vehicles that we
pulled out last year were some K-9 vehicles. One of the K-9 vehicles that is in that list
of eight recently just died. It will not make it until October. We have had to deadline it.
We just put a thousand dollars last week into it for a new fuel pump. This week it has a
broken axle. So, we put the old axle in it and we said call the yard and we will just get
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rid of it. So, we are in desperate need of replacing some of these vehicles. As those
eight vehicles, seven of them are marked full cars, which are pursuit rated cars. The
eighth one is our admin car that we had put into the impact team and so it's -- I don't
have the age. If you have a question of hours or ages on any of these -- I believe it's a
2003. With the edict that we had last year and with our discussion in our base budget
we want to make sure that our infrastructure is staying current in maintenance and
everything else and our buildings look nice. We put a lot of pride in our buildings and
we want to make sure that they look this good within reason as they did when we built
them in 2012. We have -- we have put together a replacement for the patrol carpet.
This is the third year that we have put it -- I have put it back up. This is the third year
that we have wanted this and it is the -- I pulled it out the first two years, now it's to the
point where I have to bring it in front of Council and the men's locker room flooring is
cracked and peeling and it's time to replace that before we have water issues and those
eight vehicles are within the capital improvement plan, which is budgeted about 300,000
dollars for vehicles every year and the additional items that we have on there -- oh, I
forgot tasers. One of the things on the tasers is we put the taser program in place in
about 2005 and we had not implemented a rotational replacement plan and its time to
do that and so we want to start replacing it with ten tasers. Those tasers are one
thousand dollars a piece, so that would be 10,000 dollars to start rotating the tasers.
So, we don't have all of them need to be replaced at one time. So, that's what that will
be. Right now that will either be a three or four year rotation. Total cost for that is -- for
all those items is 331,000 dollars. And, then, police and fire training center, it's been
mentioned already before by I believe several different presentations today. As you
know we have been discussing this for eight plus years and we have been setting some
money aside. Today you're going to have an enhancement in front of you that -- for 2.5
million. However that is money that was already set aside in the public safety fund and
about 500,000 -- 500,000 of that is impact fees, so that's all we are doing is basically
moving that from one area to our budget, so we will have the spending authority. The
one thing that we did do when we were working on balancing the budget is we withdrew
or withdrawn the operating costs at 41,348. Stacy had put those in there so we could
just kind of set them aside to realize this is how much it's going to cost to operate this
building. This building will not be operational in FY-14, therefore, the operating costs
weren't needed this year, but you will see them next year. And I believe that is it for my
presentation and I stand for any questions and, then, there is two additional areas that if
I receive questions on I have subject matter experts in the audience.
De Weerd: Thank you, chief.
Lavey: You can probably figure out which two those are.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Chief, you mentioned the volunteer program and it has expanded and I think
it's a great program and they do a lot of good. I don't see anything in the admin budget
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that has carved out volunteer for training, for recognition, for any of that kind of thing. I
mean there is a small amount for employee incentive, but I'm assuming that goes to
your full-time people. I don't know what you think about that, but I would support that
you have some kind of a line item there that helps support that program and maybe
encourages it to grow. And it sounds like they must be doing something in the road.
De Weerd: Well, I think that's the wrath of Finance on your suggestion.
Lavey: Councilman Rountree, yes, you are correct in that when you put this in place
last year it was a -- it is a bare bones minimum proposal and we had put together a -- a
couple of thousand dollars for a fence and that sort of thing and that we had actually put
some additional money together for a mule or an Polaris or something like that. Some
things have changed in regards to that. We actually converted the electric car over to
the parks and we have been using that out there. When we put together that proposal
last year -- and it really was at the last minute we put 10,000 dollars in there for that
mule, we have found that any configuration that would really work for both the police
and the volunteers is around 14 or 15 thousand dollars, because the base base model
is -- is like 9,900 dollars and so we have not moved forward on that purchase. In talking
with Lieutenant Overton we had maybe proposed coming in front of Council with -- with
some of those things that you suggested, maybe going in a different direction and get
some funding in place to make sure that we cover some of those other areas with the
volunteers. But you are correct, there is nothing in there currently that is specific to the
volunteers only to be used for that. John, did I pretty much cover that? There we go.
Any other questions?
De Weerd: So, I guess, chief, you found a way to fill the gap this budget year, but -- in
moving forward.
Lavey: Yeah. I would -- I would say that -- I will just see what Lieutenant -- he's shaking
his head yes or no. I would say that we are probably good for this year and that next
year after we see the continued successes, that we probably need to budget some
continued money to maybe take this to the next step. Maybe get some -- you know, I
know Finance hates this, but uniform shirts for them or some sort of more permanent
identification and some of those things, but I think right now we are probably -- we are
still in the early early stages of making it work and I think we are probably good. Do you
have additional comments, John?
Overton: No. You're right on track.
Lavey: No, Barb, I hope is not listening, because she will probably want something, but
I think we are fine.
De Weerd: Well, our volunteers are --
Lavey: Yes, they are. They are.
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De Weerd: -- and they turned up the volume out there.
Lavey: They can come in and speak. This is a public forum
Bird: They are going to be talking to Barb.
De Weerd: Well -- and I will tell you I was talking with them during our break and they
showed me a box of candy that they had gotten. It's for all of our volunteers and, of
course, it was from John Sweeney. I'm sure out of his pocket. But there should be a
way that we can recognize their ongoing support and donation of their time. So, we can
bring something back to Council in terms of that and -- and maybe relieve John
Sweeney of his duty to -- to show our appreciation to our volunteers, so --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: How many volunteers have you got? Do you have any idea? I can't remember
what Barb told me.
Lavey: Well, it's -- so, we have volunteers from our citizen cab and we have volunteers
for our animal shelter, we have volunteers for the kiosk here, we have volunteers for
parks and volunteers within the police department -- over a hundred.
Bird: Okay.
Lavey: I don't know if we have past 200 yet, but we are on target for two to two hundred
and fifty volunteers.
Bird: At least we could figure out how to get them shirts or something that said they
were volunteers.
Lavey: I think we upgraded our name tags. We are starting -- we are working on it,
so --
Bird: We will see what we can do.
Lavey: If they share their candy maybe we will work a little harder.
De Weerd: Maybe Jaycee can help with the candy, so -- okay. We will work on it,
council.
Lavey: I can tell it's almost lunch time. We have got nine more minutes.
Rountree: I don't have any.
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Bird: We don't have to hold you to the time.
De Weerd: And we will release you --
Lavey: I better run as fast as I can.
De Weerd: Thank you, chief. And to his staff as well. I will go ahead and recess this
until 1:00 o'clock.
Recess: (12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.)
De Weerd: We are reconvening. It is 1:03 and our next up is Chief Niemeyer. So, you
have to keep lively. It's after lunch.
Niemeyer: Good afternoon.
De Weerd: We don't want to fall asleep.
Niemeyer: I worry about this. You always put me after lunch and I don't know if that's a
good thing or a bad thing, so I have got some folks here that if I see you falling asleep
they are going to throw pencils at you. All right. Our 2014 budget presentation. To
start off with -- and this falls in the presentation both previous and future -- and that's
work the plan, man. And the reason I say that is understanding how public safety
officers build their careers, they react. That's what we do and we did it for 18 years out
in the field. A call for an emergency, we'd go, we'd fix the problem right away, and so
when you start asking public safety officials to look at five, ten, 15, 20 year plans, we
kind of twinge a little bit. I think that in our fire department we as a leadership team
have melded, we have matured, we have melded and now we are really focusing on the
long-term plans and the slow down has certainly given us that chance to do so.
Ironically, my initials spell out MAN, too, so I just reminded myself to work the plans
here. A little quirky there. So, when it comes to the plans, our guiding plan is our five
year strategic plan. You guys approved that in 2011. This is a plan that we want to
make sure did not collect dust on a shelf, but it was actually looked at every year and
followed to the best of our abilities. So, a lot of our enhancement requests, are ongoing
requests, both previous and current, to tie specifically to the strategic plan and we will
go over that. The CIP I believe that we are working a lot better with Finance and the
other departments to identify CIP items, make sure that that's current. Got to give credit
to Chief Amenn, who has done a lot of work on our analysis and data and trying to
collect that right data that, then, helps tie into the CIP. So, I feel very comfortable and
confident that we are doing the right thing there. Another area where I think our
planning has come into play is our collaborations with other departments both in the city
and outside the city and a couple examples of that. Outside the city the city of Boise got
together, Chief Doan called a meeting with his HR department and legal team and key
members of his staff and they were starting to look at firefighter recruitment, entry level
testing, and subsequent firefighter academies and in the middle of that meeting, which I
believe Mayor Bieter was there, then, stopped it and said we are not going forward and
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they all kind of gave him a confused look and he said not until we call Meridian and see
what they are going to do and they wanted to do it together. That really is an indication
of what's going on around this country -- or around this county right now is we are
working better together with other departments to make sure that before we move
something forward we take a look at how this might impact positively or negatively other
departments around us. Internally we are working a lot better with the other
departments. A good example of that is with our police department and I know we have
kind of beat the dirt into mud between Chief Lavey and when we say we are getting
along really well and I think we have focused a lot on the guys in the streets and what
they are going, but now we have taken it to a higher level, to the next level, to the
leadership of the departments. As you know we have had a lot of recent discussions
about special events here in the city. We continually evaluated what are those levels
and what services are required, et cetera. I believe in the past we would have said,
okay, let's create the fire department checklist and let's create the police checklist. We
have got folks in our teams getting together and saying let's create a public safety
checklist and bring those two things together and work together on that. So, I give
kudos to Chief Lavey and his leadership team, including other people in the big picture.
I do not have any pictures or slides that make fund of the police department. They were
common earlier, but were getting overly boring, so we don't have those anymore in our
presentations. And, then, internal plans. We have focused strongly this year on internal
plans. As you know we grew rapidly and that didn't give us time to sit down and focus
on the future a whole lot. We have had that time and we are taking advantage of it. A
couple of plans that I talked about that we have developed this year is a station
maintenance plan. I want to give a shout out to Chief Rod Shall who tackled this beast.
I mean this is a big issue on all the stuff that we have in our fire stations and how are we
going to maintain that over the years and what's the appropriate replacement plan when
it comes to that stuff that's in the fire stations. Our past history is just we just wait until
something breaks and, then, hope we have the money to do a replacement and that's
not really a good plan. So, he's got a station maintenance plan. Chief Amenn has
worked up a very good matrix for a vehicle replacement plan. It's no longer, well, it's ten
years old, let's get rid of it. It looks at things like mileage, hours, safety conditions,
maintenance to initial cost ratios, that sort of thing and I want to thank Tom Barry for his
help on that as well. We have extensive and comprehensive fire training and EMS
plans now that go over the training for those two divisions. In addition, one of the things
we are working on is a hiring matrix plan. One of the things that came out of the
overtime task force is trying to look into the future to determine what are the needs of
the future and when are those needs going to be projected to come and so we have
been working very closely with finance and I want to thank Stacy and her team and
working with us on that. Coming up next we do have pre-fire planning that we are going
to be doing. A public education plan --and what I mean by that is our request for public
education -- in other words, wanting our firefighters out there at so many different
events has gone through the roof and we are trying to balance those as best we can,
but I think we need to sit down and we are going to look at what the priorities are and
how we place those priorities so we get the best bang for the buck when it comes to
getting our folks and our public education division out there with folks. And, then, also
fire investigations is another area we are looking very closely with PD -- I just lost the
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officer's name. Help me out. Officer Dickson has been working with Chief Palmer and
our prevention division, so that we can join forces when it comes to fire investigations.
Both departments are involved, so it makes sense to do it together and create one plan
for that as opposed to the police having a plan and we have a plan and, then, we
sometimes maybe battle in the middle. So, those are some of the things on the horizon
as we move forward. I want to give you an update on last year's request. The first was
for administrative storage cabinetry. The amount approved was 11,200. This project
has been completed. Judy Gerhardt led that project. The Station Three room
upgrades, the approved amount was 11,100. This project is completed. It did meet
Initiative 9-A in the strategic plan. Our lead on that was Chief Tyler Rountree. I do want
to make a comment real quick, though, and it's an enhancement that's coming next, so I
won't steal all of Jaycee's thunder, but I do want to put a plug in for the fiber optic
connectivity that's going to be coming to you. Our -- our connections are shady at best
at times. Station Two and Station Five are routinely down and I want to give credit to IT,
because every time they go down those guys jump all over it. It doesn't matter if it's
day, night, weekends, it doesn't matter, Dave Teede is shooting us an a-mail saying we
are working on it. But that's because of that wireless system. When we put in this
enhancement request to get the video conferencing in every fire station, the equipment
is in, it's ready to go, but we don't have the connection speed to do streaming video at
all. It's choppy and cuts out and, then, just dies. So, from the fire department's
perspective the request is coming to you for fiber optic is very vital to our operation, so I
wanted to put a plug in for that. The NEYE vehicle video cameras, the amount
approved was 11,100. We have received the equipment. The install is coming next
and I anticipate that to be done in the next couple of months and we will have that
closed out before the end of the budget year. And our last enhancement request for --
was to replace the records management system of the fire department. Our current
records management system is inadequate, it has been for quite some time. The
approved amount was 29,225 dollars. The project lead was Chief Amenn. He has
done a needs assessment and we have that completed. This enhancement met three
strategic initiatives. We have purchased a third party software and as you can see in
my cliff notes that software normally, by the big vendors, costs about 40,000 dollars.
Our cost was about 2,800 dollars and that's a program we feel is going to work just fine.
The problem with this request is that the county decided to change their CAD software
program. CAD is computer-aided dispatch. This is a program that actually records all
the times, the routes, the geographic information, all that sort of stuff, and that is the
data that we need imported to us to, then, put into our records management system.
This county process has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. It's in an RFP review
process right now and we don't anticipate it being done by the end of the year, so we
will be requesting a carry forward request. Working with IT it doesn't make any sense
for us to go out and purchase an RMS software without knowing who the CAD software
is going to be, because if those two things don't talk, we are back to where we were.
So, it just doesn't make sense to move forward now on this particular enhancement until
we know that. So, look forward to FY-14, department wide focus and I want to thank
Jenny for creating a little graph on the left there. One of the things I want to point out is
we are somewhat unique in this fire department. Historically the fire service operations
and prevention, those circles would be a little bit further apart, because they are very --
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two different very mind sets or they have two different things that they focus on, but
under the leadership of Chief Amenn and Chief Palmer we truly do overlap within those
two divisions and that's a good thing, because operations and prevention do need to
work hand in hand. As Perry goes out and looks at what do we need to require out of
new buildings and access, Chief Amenn needs to have that input on how do we get into
that building and how do we fight that fire and so those two groups working together
truly does make us somewhat unique and creates some excellence. The three divisions
that we have within the department working together I believe does our part in meeting
the picture to the right. You know, we know we have a very vital role in keeping this
community safe and we have been the safest city in Idaho and we take pride in our part
in that and I know law enforcement does as a great job, along with parks and the rest of
the city departments as well. So, our first request is an administrative request for a
records clerk position. This is an admin support position. Our struggle there is on the
need side. Since 2005 the department has doubled in size. Yeah, we have maintained
the same two folks as far as administrative support. I think all of you know that between
Judy and Christie they work incredibly hard, but the workload has outpaced them and
so we need some assistance there. Our request for a public records request internal
database input and tracking and right along with public education requests, along with
the support request that comes from the operations and prevention decisions have
really outpaced their ability to keep up with the workload. We also have a strategic
initiative that I have been wanting to get enacted and that is 1-D and that is reaching out
to the folks that we see on a daily basis through our call volume and asking what they
thought of our service through a series of questions, so we can look at our performance
measures and say are we meeting what we said in our strategic plan as far as customer
service support approval. That's one of the 22 performance measures that we have in
the department. So, as far as benchmarks for this request, we are going to make sure
the requests are processed with minimal delay. The idea would be to move Christie to
be more support to the operations and prevention division folks and this position would
take care more the database, the requests that come in on a daily basis, the phone
calls, et cetera. One of the big keys of this position is getting that citizen customer
outreach and, then, recording and tracking that data. The position will report to Judy.
The cost is 46,273 ongoing, 4,975 one time. It is worth noting this fiscal year FY-14,
40,000 will be going back into the General Fund. That was our part-time on-call
program. That program is ending in March, so that salary money will be going back to
the General Fund. A prevention request -- this has long been on our list of things that
we wanted to get accomplished. We think it is the right thing to do. And that is a City of
Meridian CPR program. We have a need in this city to establish a standard as far as
CPR training goes with employees specifically and, then, for members of the public.
Right now parks contracts somebody to do CPR instructions for their employees. Police
has their own folks to do CPR instructions and, then, the fire department has their own.
We feel as a fire department responsible for the medical aspect of what goes on. We
are probably the best suited to take on this project and bring it all under one roof. We
also want to place AEDs, which are automated external defibrillators in targeted city
locations. I think Steve mentioned that earlier. We want to promote a heart safe
community initiative. We know that early and effective CPR is one of the key four
indicators in the chain of survival for cardiac arrest. I came from the King county system
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in Seattle where they had a heart safe community and their save rate, if you will,
meaning that we take somebody in cardiac arrest and we get them back to the point
that they are discharged from the hospital with full functionality, their save rate was
about 57, 58 percent, which is pretty impressive. Here in this county we are running
anywhere from 15 to 20 percent. Early CPR is absolutely need to get that save rate
higher, along with early defibrillation. Early notification through the 911 system, which
we have, and, then, the last link in that chain of survival are the paramedics in the event
life support. We are not the first. It does meet strategic initiative B-C-A-B, 7-A. We are
benchmarked. We have already got the CPR instructors done. EMS Chief David Jones
is overseeing this program. He's already got the instructors through the instructor
program. We have purchased the needed training equipment. Phase one of this will be
to work with the city department leadership and identify key staff that should go through
a CPR program. In other words, Parks folks we want a lot of them going through it. In
the clerk's office maybe Jaycee says we need two or three that have, so we have good
coverage of CPR. On the capital side we initially requested 120,000 dollars in capital
money for AEDs. As part of the budgeting process at the director's level we have cut
that in half for this year to purchase 60,000 dollars worth. That's going to focus on the
parks and the patrol cars working with our police department. One of the things we
recognize and Chief Jones working with Jamie, is that they are out mobile and when
that call comes in for help they may be a block away and if they can get a defibrillator on
that patient prior to us getting there, we increase our chance of survival exponentially.
So, that's the first half of the AED purchase. We will be coming back to you next year,
recognizing the success of the program and look to provide AEDs in the other city
locations. The thing in Idaho to be a heart safe community -- I don't say that to put a
something on the shelf. That's really not my thing. But I think that Chief Lavey alluded
to it before. Meridian is pro-active. We look ahead and we look at how we can create
the best programs, whether it's the drug turn-in program, whether it's the -- the Project
Safe. Whatever it is in the city we do have other communities look to us when it comes
to these programs and if we can lead the way in showing how to become a heart safe
community, increase the chance of survival for cardiac arrest patients, I believe we have
other cities that are going to be calling us asking how do you do it and how can we do
it? So, that's why I mention that. Chief Doan would be the program manager. The cost
to us is 14,469 ongoing. Initial capital outlay of 69,845. On operations request. A staff
vehicle. We are short one staff vehicle. This was mentioned in 2013 presentation.
Also back in 2012 when we talked about the division chiefs. It is a logistical need. We
tried to make do with the minimum number of vehicles. We are short one. So, we are
asking for one vehicle. Chief Amenn is currently driving one of the pickups. We would
reallocate that over to Chief Wellborn and Campbell for general use and also for their
use as far as response and, then, going to meetings. Portable Apex radios is another
operations request. This fills an operational and safety need. You heard the mobile
radio grants that I presented not too long ago. These are for spare portable radios.
When this grant went through and everybody went to the new dual band Apex portable
radios back in 2008, spare radios were not part of the grant request for Meridian. They
were for Boise. I believe they have about 30 spares. We have none. So, when one
goes down we are short portable radios and I will tell you the portable radio, as you look
at the pictures below, are kind of a life line when we are on scene of a fire and I know
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many of you have gone through fire ops 101, you have come out to our training burns
and you have seen how those portable radios are used and how often they are used.
So, the need is we don't have replacements and we don't have spares, so when we
have to call in an extra crew there is no portable radios in the department to do that. IY
is dual band, so it allows for fire ground communications. We are requesting for ten.
That allows for two call-in crews if we need to. It also allows for a minimum of two spare
radios for replacement if we have one go down. Chief Rountree is the project lead on
this and you can see the cost of 2,000 dollars ongoing, 50,000 dollars one time.
Cardiac monitors. Again, we have just enough to outfit our five front-line apparatus.
The initial request is going to be for three. We dropped that to two as part of the
process through the directors meetings. Again, we have no spare cardiac monitors at
all. When one goes down we are short and that means that one of our engines drops to
be BLS if we have to. The reserve engines right now have no cardiac monitors on them
as well. So, if we have to staff up an extra engine for some reason we are not able to
do so at the event with live support capability. It is an operational need. The
benchmarks are pretty simple. Get those cardiac monitors purchased, so we have a
spare one when one goes down. We also have one on the backup engine, so if we
have to call in a crew they can operate at the LS level, if we have a paramedic that
comes in. The project lead again is our EMS chief and the cost is 3,300 ongoing, that's
the maintenance plan to keep those maintained and, then, 68,000 one time. The next
request is an administrative request and this is something that IT has been asking us to
look into for about two years and we have kind of held off on this. The time is probably
right to at least bring it up and that is station security. It's actually a door code entry
system into our stations. The picture that you see on the left is what we currently have
at all of our fire stations. So, it's a push button code. Once we give that code out to a
vendor or anybody else, everybody knows the code. There is no real security to it.
They also fail quite a bit, which can be kind of a pain when you're trying to get into a
station. So, IT has requested that we move more towards the Linel system, like we
have at the police department and here at City Hall. We have been trying to do that city
wide. So, that would create some consistency as far as the equipment that we have out
there. It creates a much more secure environment for us when we have vendors that
are showing up we can give them a card, we know exactly who is going in and out of
the stations and we can track that. So, our benchmarks are to look like -- as far as
purchasing the needed equipment, getting that contract installation, IT to insure all the
door codes are working properly. Chief Shall is the chief that would be in charge of that
and the cost is 2,100 dollars ongoing, 40,391 one time. That covers all five fire stations
and the safety center. The last request -- this is really an operational and safety need.
Our apparatus engineers -- in other words, the guys that when they get done driving the
engine they get out and they look at the pumps and make sure that our hose lines are
staying charged and watching pressures and all that. You can kind of see the picture
down below. That's a pretty simple hose lay. That's not complex at all. However, right
now they are tethered to a head set and, then, it tethers to the console. So, they have
no ability to get off the engine to walk around to check a hose. They will pull equipment
off the engine if they need to. Chief Rountree brought this request forward. By having
the wireless head sets they are now mobile. They can get off the engine if they have to
away from the pump panel for a second if they have to check a hose behind the engine.
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It gives them some ability that they do not have right now. And you can ignore the
benchmarks, because I see those came over from the previous slide. Chief Rountree
would be in charge of this. He's our communications guru. I believe you have the cost
in front of you. I apologize for that slide. I want to mention the G100 replacements. We
have a couple pretty big ticket items on the replacement and those are Engine 38. It's
30 years old or more. It's about 170 percent at its maintenance to acquisition ratio. For
internal poor condition. It was scheduled last year on the CIP and we held off on it last
year, because -- for obvious reasons. That replacement cost was about 520,000
dollars. Below you can see this engine -- it used to be 311. Now it's Engine 38. This
one that did go back for refurb. I know Councilman Rountree after it was refurb'd asked
me what I thought and my concern was we are kind of putting Botox on it in the sense
that the guts are still the guts and it's still 30 years old. The axles, the brakes, the
engine systems. So, this is beyond scheduled for replacement. The other is the six
Fizio control cardiac monitors that we have, they are end of life. Their life span is about
five to seven years. We are beyond that. This, again, was scheduled last year in the
CIP. We held off on that to meet the financial needs of the city. So, that's what I have.
Any questions?
De Weerd: Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Councilman Rountree.
Rountree: Mark, in your initial slide you talked about internal plans and I know you have
had a seance with a number of folks on the overtime issue and I know it's a very difficult
issue to wrestle and tackle, but it seems to me that, you know, the last two years we
haven't even come close to meeting the budgeted amount and exceeding it significantly
this year. I see about a 20 percent increase in the -- in the overtime budget for the fire
station and, obviously, we just dealt with the increased overtime with the administrative
side. I would like to see a genuine effort put forth to tackle the overtime issue. I don't
have a solution. I know you don't have a solution. I don't know if there is a solution out
there. But it's hard for me to respond to the people that have asked me about it and I
had several people ask me about it, that how come it's the nature of the beast? It's a
difficult problem. But I don't have any specificity to say we have looked at it inside out
and backwards and this is our solution and is our solution just increasing the money
that's going to overtime. I look at the amount that we will be spending on overtime in '14
if we spent --spend the budgeted amount and we just about buy that replacement truck.
That's a lot of money. And, again, I don't know that there is a solution. But to me that's
an area that's ripe for some -- some real hard looking and a significant management
effort. So, I just throw that out that we have got the numbers, we have got a balanced
budget, but if growing that number is the solution I don't think we are going the right
direction.
De Weerd: Councilman Rountree, I guess I will jump in and say I know that Chief
Niemeyer, his senior management team, finance, his Council liaison and a couple of
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others did convene and dissected the overtime and tried to get a better understanding
of the different contributors to it, because it's not just there is a lot of different categories
that influence the overtime and I believe that the chief has been trying to meet with each
of the Council Members to -- to sit down and go over some of the discussion points that
this group hit on and some of the discoveries that they had had as a result of convening
this -- this focus group. So, he did it in that fashion, so that he -- you almost need it in
front of you to point at and to have more of a one-on-one dialogue. Certainly we can
have the chief put this on an agenda and come back and give it to Council as a whole. I
would still encourage each of you, if you haven't done so already, to sit down with the
chief and -- and hear what -- what has been discussed and some the outcomes from
that and maybe Brad -- or I mean Councilman Hoaglun and, chief, you might be wanting
to make a comment as well.
Niemeyer: I can certainly comment and, Councilman Rountree, I thank you for the
question, because it has kept me up at night and it's one of those that gets my gut
going. It is a complex issue and as we looked at it I think there was some
misconceptions that -- just simple comments. Well, hire more staff and the overtime
goes away and what we found is we ran the numbers -- and I thank Todd for all his
work, because he spent countless hours with me trying to work this thing around. Also
Chief Amenn. That doesn't always play out either. Just hiring more people isn't the
answer. We do have shift coverage needs. We have got training needs. And so we
broke all those down to look at where can we potentially save and where can we tighten
it up just a little bit and I think there is some areas that could tighten up and did and
there is some that are so unpredictable it's impossible to know what that's going to look
like. For example, a guy goes out and breaks his leg and he's out for six months. Now
we got a vacancy and that usually results in filling that with overtime. So, that is part of
the hiring matrix plan that I commented earlier is looking at that and say, okay, at what
point does it make sense and can you have that number -- you know, I'd like to say that
that's an easy solution and Todd and I have banged heads on this, because -- and we
have it close, we believe. But, then, have a plan moving forward so we can say, okay,
the numbers here -- now it makes sense based on our matrix to hire this many people
with an expected reduction of this and that's one of the things I have seen in fire
departments across the country as we researched the issue is that a comment was
made, well, give me more people and I will reduce overtime, but there was no
expectation of by how much and that's why I think we have fallen down as well. So, I
am happy to present it to the entire Council, I'm happy to meet with you one on one to
review what we have done so far, but I will say we have looked hard at the issue and we
are continuing to do so.
Rountree: Madam Mayor and chief, my point is -- I understand the difficulty and I
understand that you have done the work and you have come to some of these
conclusions, but I'd much prefer a suite of potential solutions, as opposed to a suite of
here is how come we can't do it. And if that suite includes we can't do it, then, that's
fine, too, but -- and you have taken the first step in dissecting it and that's great, but as
part of your next step in that -- in that hiring matrix plan is do you have this as a sub
plan of attack or is it something that --
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Niemeyer: I think the hiring matrix would be part of the plan. Because I would agree
with you, we can't just continually say, well, let's add again and again and again. There
has got to be different avenues to take.
De Weerd: Well, you need to know where the tipping point is as well. Councilman
Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Yeah. Madam Mayor and chief, talking about one of the things that was
helpful to me in going through that presentation is we kind of have some preconceived
notions of what possibly the solution might be and that really -- in sitting down and going
through it and, then, constant manning and what can occur out there, it kind of flips you
around a little bit in going, well, wait a minute, my -- my thinking on that wasn't very
accurate. It changes your perspective and when it changes your perspective, then, I
think it made it easier for me to understand and embrace some of the options that are
out there, because it helped me immensely, so --
De Weerd: Mr. Nary, did you have anything you wanted to add?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I think you have -- you have hit it all. I
mean I think the realty is is that -- I think to echo what Council Member Hoaglun said, I
think if we have the discussion and at some point I think it is appropriate that it's a public
discussion, because I think all of you have had similar questions from the public,
because the public doesn't understand how fire departments are operated and I think
the way Councilman Hoaglun said that your perspective needs to have an
understanding of how its operated. I think you also have to understand why constant
manning, scheduling, what the cost of doing business really is for a fire department in
your community is something the public just has to understand that there is an impact
for those things and there isn't a lot of ways to make it less of an impact. There just isn't
a way to operate efficiently without it being run the way it is. So, I don't think it -- I don't
think there is a -- I think it isn't just a -- where Council Member Hoaglun was saying --
and trying to understand where the costs are coming from. It's really also my
understanding that the reality is is that it can only be done in so many different ways as
well and so I think the chief has done a very good job at putting that together and I
would encourage all of you to have -- if you have the time to sit around and do that and
having public discussion about it at some point would make some sense.
De Weerd: I think there are areas that -- that are defined by law that you don't have -- I
hate to say control over, but I can't think of a better word and, then, there is also some
that -- that the chief will have some administrative oversight and I do know it's a goal of
him and his team to continue to explore some of those -- those things that you have
talked about.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
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Zaremba: I just wanted to chime in and support the idea of having a public discussion
on it. To me there is actually two issues. It's certainly a significant budget issue, but
many many years ago I was in a position that was subject to overtime and a little bit of
overtime is nice, but a lot of overtime is not and, you know, there is the human element
of how much time -- even if you pay people how much time are they willing to be away
from their families and having a life of their own. So, I think we need to have a public
discussion of all of that.
De Weerd: Well -- and I think what Todd had really tried to drill into is, you know, you
have sick leave and you have vacation time and what is that -- that there are some
things that can't be avoided, because you do have those things and I think what they
were able to put numbers to was some of that and how over a year period of time where
you have gaps almost every day that you're filling because of sick leave and overtime
and so I -- I think it will be very beneficial to all and have it on the public record that we
can point the public to to see the discussion and get a better understanding as well.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Madam Mayor -- I mean to be honest, if there was a magic fix that the chief and I
could come up with we wouldn't need to worry about a rule of 90. All departments in the
country, in the state, experience similar issues and that's because, again, it's not
because it's attributable to one type of cause. If it was -- if it was simply turning a knob
and changing the outflow like you could in a dam, that would be different, but it's not.
And a lot of it is just the nature of the beast of the type of organization and also because
of the requirements of manning safely to operate fire apparatus, to safely respond to
calls for services, there is just a necessity of personnel. So, I think you all understand
exactly maybe that the public has to be more educated, too, as well as how -- what --
how this is managed, how it's done, how it's performed for the service they need and
desire and, then, I think that will help answer a lot of the questions. If it was that easy
everyone would do it and there really isn't an easy answer.
De Weerd: But there is some kind of an answer and it needs to -- you need to help the
public servants sitting up here be able to answer that to those in our community that do
inquire and so that conversation will be helpful to have at some point.
Niemeyer: And we are happy to do that.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, chief. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. What is
your video? Let's see it.
(Video played.)
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De Weerd: Do you have a video, Jaycee? Up next is Jaycee Holman with our
Information Services.
Holman: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I think it's super that I get to follow
that. Kind of like what we do, but really not at all.
Hoaglun: Is micro data a dance or --
Holman: No. We try to do that as much as possible. This year has been a year of big
changes in my life personally and to our departments in the city. It's been great
changes for me. I started with the city eight years ago as the utility billing manager and
got to move to a director this year. So, thank you for faith and trust in that. I came into
this year with one really good department, being at the head of the clerk's office. A
great group of people. Truly believe we are one of the best in the city. So, in -- in
creating Information Services, as you all know, we moved IT from legal and HR over to
basically combine it with the clerk's office to create a new department and we are joined
in the same mission in that we are a support function for the rest of the city. Both of our
departments do that and to me it was a very logical and the good alignment. So, we
had to reorganize the clerk's office a little bit, which I think I spoke to you about -- it's
been about a month ago now. We now have a senior deputy city clerk, who is Jacy
Jones, and she really runs the day-to-day operations of our department and we moved
Machelle Hill up to a deputy city clerk. I'm out of the office a little bit more than I used to
be with different meetings and my functions with the city have changed. So, Jacy has
stepped nicely into that role in managing the department and it's giving her an
opportunity to learn to supervise. She has not done that before. So, she's directly
supervising the rest of the people in our department. Dave and Mike are the IT
managers and structure support manager and software engineering manager in IT, so
they, too, and Jacy report directly to me. In the clerk's office this last year we started in
November taking passports. Really, the goal there was to accept passport applications
on behalf of the Department of State, really, was not to make a lot of money at it, but
just to fund the position and I can proudly tell you we are well down that path. We have
done to date 1,580 passports for a total revenue there of 39,500 dollars. We have
about 13,000 dollars left to go to make it basically fund the position and we are doing
roughly 5,000 dollars a month in passport application fees, so I feel confident that we
will fully fund that position. So, it's been a great amenity to our city. It's a great use of
our City Hall. People really appreciate being able to come here, make an appointment,
receive excellent customer service and not have to drive to Caldwell or wait in line at the
post office to get a passport. We have a very different business model than some of the
other agencies in the valley, but I think it's been very very well received and right now
we are booked out three to four days in advance. A few months ago it was two months
in advance. But either way we are still booking out plenty of passports and doing well
there. I think it was a very good decision and I'm glad to say that it's working very well.
We have large scale special events. We have spent a lot of time on that, refining that
process, making that a better process, communicating with the other departments on
how to make some changes moving forward. Kleiner Park coming online really made a
lot of changes to the temporary use code, which was enacted in 2008. We have worked
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great with legal and the other departments really just trying to come up with a smooth
system to get as much information as we can up front and really have some nice --just
some nice events in our city and we will continue to refine that process. We are
meeting with other departments right now about these large scale special events and
how to change those applications and just really get people information earlier that
wanted to have these events and make sure that that communication with each
department is smooth and everything is communicated between departments and to the
applicant. So, Jacy Jones is heading up that mission. She and Nancy Radford have
been meeting with all of our different departments and it's really going well. I think it's --
we continue to get better. We are in our second season of Kleiner Park, so that's been
-- that's been a big deal and it's been really good, so -- we had also created a land use
summary page this year, which we really realize we were lacking a place for the general
public to go if they want to find some information on what's going on on the corner over
there. We created a place they can go on the clerk's website. Starts -- and the
planning and zoning process -- move all the way through City Council and all the way to
the development agreement and ordinance. It's a summary page with links to all the
documents that people want to find to be able to see what's going on with an application
that might be next to where they live or -- so, that's been very well received and we
continue to improve that process and make it better, too, and try to get a lot of
information. I have run -- so far learned how to run a city election meeting, going to be
running another one in August for how to run for City Council. Had a lot of people show
up. Mr. Nary was there, too, and helped -- we kind of tag teamed that together and,
hopefully, get people interested and make the process look less complicated, more
transparent, make it easy, especially for people who have never done it before. So, that
has been I think a really great addition. Had other city clerks actually attend it to see
what we are doing in our city and what they can bring back to theirs. So, the clerk's
budget this year -- we didn't ask for any enhancements. It's a fairly small budget. It
doesn't take a whole lot to get through that. Asked to increase my office expense by
about 1,500 dollars. I kept reducing that every year since I took over the clerk's office in
2008. This year probably went a little too far, so we are operating on a few hundred
dollars for the rest of the year, but we are doing it, so -- we are going to increase that a
little bit, because us bringing on passports I think that's probably dipped into it a little bit
more than we anticipated. We decreased our copier expense, codification expense,
electronic expense. A lot of that had to do with we were buying a laser fiche scanner,
you know, scanners that scan straight into laser fiche as far as scanning documents into
our records management software. We downsized the copier a couple of years ago into
-- it's called a Rico copier, printer, scanner. We can scan things as tifs and just drop
them straight into laser fiche now, so we don't really need to be replacing these
specifically with the scanners that were about 3,000 dollars. We had several of them
and as they die we probably won't replace them, except to have maybe one desktop
scanner. And the Rico copier has ended up being quite a lot cheaper than the
production copier that we used to have at old City Hall. We don't do as much paper as
we used to. There is a lot more just straight electronics, so we didn't need a production
grade copier. Challenges in the clerk's office. Just continued growth in temporary use
permits, licensing, that just continues to get more busy. That takes up a lot of time and
we had, you know, different staff that steps in and helps out Nancy when we get real
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busy, but that's just a challenge that we will continue to have as we get busier and along
with that land use picking up again, Machelle's job, she handles all the stuff from -- that
has to do with land use and things that come from planning and zoning and applications
and that is definitely keeping her very very busy. You can see how busy passports are
and I don't know if you have noticed all the people coming and going from our clerk's
conference room over there all day long, that's part of the customer service that we give
with passports that I don't think you can get anywhere else in the valley and that's a
private room where you sit down and you're spreading out all the documents, you know,
about your life and we do that in a private location and sit down with people. It allows
people with families and we just figure throughout the day you probably have noticed
quite a few people coming and going from there. So, I inherited the IT department. I
inherited an excellent department. We are a great team, I mean just all very very good
people who work very very well together. They have been patient with my lack of
knowledge of their acronyms. I'm getting about 20 percent trained up now. This year
we have continued to improve ITS, incident tracking system, which was a home grown
software system that Mike Tanner created and that we share with other agencies in the
valley. If you ever have an opportunity or want to take a half hour out of your day, I
highly recommend going up to Mike's office and having him show you the system we
were using and the system he created. He puts one on each screen. There is no
comparison. You can see it if you look at it that our system is superior to what they are
using in other agencies and also using our system. We worked on integrating it --
basically continuing just in process improvement and integration with other systems
across the valley. This year the state mandated a change in how we report -- basically
the PERSI reporting requirements. We agreed to be a test subject for writing a new
system to report PERSI information. We were the first in Idaho to pass all of the tests.
We are signed off, we are ready to go, and that was Nick Saries that created that
program and I know the county has been very happy with that and it's been fantastic.
So, that was neat that were first. A couple of years ago we talked to you about GIS
plans, different phases, dedicating resources to our GIS program -- our GIS plan.
Phase one of the GIS plan is complete. Moving on to phase two. The other thing that
we are doing is offering -- more training is offered the city employees on -- you name it.
You name the topic. We also worked with HR to implement basically 19-101 for all new
employees as part of their incoming process is to, hopefully, train them on some of the
basics and fundamentals that they need, to cut down on some of the calls that happen
after they get started. Challenges to IT would probably be continued growth in all things
technology. Cell phones, iPads, and et cetera. I mean it just -- every move you make it
seems like it affects technology in some way, because we are so dependent on it. So,
we are constantly having to stay on top of all these changes and -- I mean technology
just changes, you know, continually. We have really great software engineering people.
We are creating stuff that other people want and there are times when I think it's
fantastic to share with other departments in the valley, because there is some
reciprocity there and it's great to share with -- share information, share technology,
share software and things we have written. But there is other times that it doesn't make
any sense. It's more of a burden on our staff. So, this next year we are going to work
towards creating an SOP or some guidelines for when we share software, how we
share software, when it makes sense, when it doesn't. We have got some pretty
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talented engineers who are creating stuff that's better than anything else about out there
in the valley. Let's see. Just the constantly changing technology, staying on top of it,
testing. One thing we'd like to move towards is as new gadgets and toys and
technology comes out being able to purchase one of those, test it first within IT before
we decide if other people can have this technology and let us determine whether we
can support it and the cost of supporting it. A little bit of research and development
there on a small scale. Working on buildings and redundancy in systems so we can do
backup quickly in the event of an outage. That's really something that is -- because it
just makes our dependency on technology highly important. People are dependent on
technology for every part of their jobs. When the Internet goes down or a-mail goes
down all of the above and Mr. Nary says you can file for about three minutes and, then,
you run out of stuff to do. So, anyhow, that leads me into our enhancements. Like I
said, the clerk's office didn't have any, but we do have them in IT. So, see if I can get
this to advance. The first enhancement -- we decided to start off with a big one. Fiber
IRU enhancements. Okay. Well, it went back.
De Weerd: Now you know what it's like for those that stand in front and say how do you
work this.
Holman: It appears to be working, but not so well now. I have lost my button that tells
me whether I'm advancing down here. Oh, here we go. Okay. Twenty year right of use
agreement for four strands of underground dark fiber. The fiber is ours. We own the
connections on either end. No one else can use it. No one else can transmit data with
ours. Okay. It will connect 13 locations within the city and these are the 13 locations.
And this is a map of the locations. The orange fiber that you see that runs down the
interstate and up and down Eagle Road is an existing fiber. All of the other lines are
fiber that we would be putting in to connect these locations. We worked with --
extensively with the Public Works to come up with a plan of how to split the cost
between the two funds. Had a lot of help from Tom Barry, which is very appreciated.
I'm not going to go through every bit of detail that I have on the fiber, because Dave put
together four and a half pages of it, which I will hand out if you would like to review it.
He probably trimmed that down from 15. I don't know. But anything you ever wanted to
know is in this and it will answer a lot of the questions that you may have. So, initial
build cost is 1.4 million. Ongoing annual cost is 144,000. That's 12,000 dollars a month
in maintenance. Good Lord. Okay. So, it's split between the General Fund and the
Enterprise Fund. Our current solution that we are using is wireless. We currently pay
800 dollars a month maintenance on the wireless network. Fiber maintenance cost is
1,200 a month. Oh, come on. Okay.
Nary: There is some people back there that could help you with that if you --
Holman: Yes. I can't -- the little box that --
De Weerd: They are enjoying it, though.
Holman: I'm sure they are. I can see it.
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Bird: David is grinning from ear to ear.
Holman: I'm sure he is. I cannot get this thing to advance. Okay. We cease to pay
monthly maintenance on wireless, but we will keep it in place as a redundancy option.
There is several reasons to make the change from wireless to fiber. Robustness. Our
current equipment is slow. Fiber is a thousand times faster than wireless and it moves
data at the speed of light. It will improve our ability to recover systems in the event the
system goes down and resolve several of the issues that were discovered in the COOP
process and the after action report, including recoverability and redundancy. Liability.
Unregulated wireless is subject to interference from weather, foliage, new construction
-- that has happened to us. Since we lost our fiber connection between City Hall and
the police station -- we did have an outage, because -- and I don't know that we ever
clearly defined what caused it, because we don't know. It's an unregulated spectrum.
So, I know the police are very eager to get a fiber connection back up again. Currently
all cities have one data pass through City Hall. Fiber is flexible, it can grow as we grow.
It provides additional capacity with minor hardware adjustments and it's not designed to
be -- the wireless is not designed to be scalable, you have to add or replace equipment
every three to five years and we would need to upgrade to carrier class equipment to
the tune of about one to two million dollars. There is a lot more details on that in the
fiber notes, which I will be handing out to you. Come on. Okay. Now move to the IT
org chart. They were simply thrilled that I put all their pictures on a slide. So, if they are
back there laughing at me, I'm glad, because I'm getting the payback. I will just leave
this slide up for a long time. Part of my learning curve in taking over the IT department
was really learning that one IT person is not interchangeable for another. It's like -- the
analogy I use is saying someone who has been an electrician, a plumber, a dirt work
person, they all build houses, but you really can't interchange them one for the other.
We have two sides of the house. Dave is our infrastructure support manager, he
handles infrastructure network, all of that, those tasks, and Mike Tanner is our software
engineering manager, he handles a whole different set of -- I finally stopped asking
Dave questions that really have to do with Mike and Mike questions that have to do with
Dave.
De Weerd: I just a-mail them both. I know someone will return my a-mail.
Holman: Exactly. So, you know, when I first came onto the city eight years ago as the
billing manager we had I think one IT person. I don't remember if Dave was working
there yet. But I can remember I had been there for approximately a week and a half
before my assistant left and I had never run the billings before, so no pressure, run
24,000 utility bills with exactly half a sheet of instructions. So, that was fun. And I
remember running the system and Cassel got an error that said that the database was
corrupt and they need to rebuild it and I could have lost some data and I called the IT,
guy to come over from the state of Idaho and I called knowing they will fix it, because I
didn't even understand that error message. Well, IT told me just call Cassel, you're on
your own, we don't support that and I sat there stunned, I had no idea what to do. So,
the IT department has grown a lot since 2005. We now have quite a few more people.
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I will note, though, when I used to stay late trying to try the database every once in
awhile around midnight the Mayor would come over with some microwave popcorn and
share with me, the other person in the building with me. So, on the infrastructure
support side we have Dave is the manager. His second in command is Chad, who is
our systems administrator. Right now both of those people sometimes need to go to the
same training and they can't, because I will not allow them both to be out of the state at
the same time, because calling me would do no one any good. So, anyhow, it would --
right now they can do each other's roles, it was great to have a little bit more
redundancy there. James is our -- is the next one down. He's our computer specialist.
Right now about 50 to 75 percent of James' time is taken up in supporting the mobile
data terminal or MTDs at the police station and fire. That is something Ada County
used to do for us. We took that over -- I believe it's been a couple of years ago now and
so that level two support person that is really for all of City Hall. We don't really have a
full person for that now. Crystal is our support technician. She's our help desk person.
She is the one who answers the phone if you are looking for someone to help you fix
computer problems. She's great. She's done a lot of training for the city. On the
software engineering side we have Mike Tanner and, then, we have Nick Ferries, who is
a software, engineer who is full time. He's the one that wrote our PERSI app for us and
has done great things and worked a lot with accounting this year. Summer is next
down. She's apart-time software engineer. She's pretty much just an Accella engineer
now and the report writing side of Accella is really something that an end user can't
write reports in Accella, you have to understand the back end of the database to write
reports. So, our intent for her was for her to do engineering for the rest of the city, but
really she's -- we have got her fully dedicated to Accella right now. Rod Sisnowski is
our IT project manager. He also spends agood -- probably about half of his time
working on Accella. Rob is -- he got his PMP certification, so that's professional project
management. He has been a great asset to our department and all these big -- he's
one I should say the whole Accella process and was our city representative in that,
doing the same thing for the replacement of Cassel. He's worked alot -- any major
project, any systems that we are going to purchase, any systems we are going to
replace, it's very important I believe to have a project manager within the IT department
that knows how to organize what it is we are trying to accomplish what our scope is,
what our goals are, and where we are trying to head and, then, ushering it through that
whole process. We are hoping to use him more in that role in the coming year. And,
then, we have our two GIS specialists and they are -- have been instrumental in getting
that phase one GIS plan done. John McCormick, Rob Sisnowski, and Doug and Matt
have worked very hard on that this last year and it has just come a long ways with -- I
sat on that committee for a year trying to come up with everything we need to do with
GIS and, boy, have they really got a lot done. So, just wanted to give you an idea that
we are not all -- they are not all the same person, they really do have very specific
functions. Let me see if I can -- I'd like to keep it on this slide, but I will go fast. Come
on. Or maybe not. Todd, can you advance the slide from over there? Yes. Okay.
Okay. We currently support 35 full-time and 23 part-time employees. Our top three
support calls are retraining, security, and MDT issues. The next enhancement we
asked for was a computer specialist, which I call it another level two support person.
What we would like to do is have that position be able to split MDT support between
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both of them, so we have two people really trained on how to work with MDTs. Better
coverage and redundancy and cross-training would be fantastic. Right now it allows us
to put -- it would allow us to push down tasks to the appropriate level of proficiency,
instead of up the infrastructure due to lack of resources. Right now when Jamie and
Crystal are busy it gets moved up to Chad and sometimes Dave to be handling support
issues. We need two resources for field work. By field work we mean any location
that's not City Hall. It's happened many times that we will need to deploy people to two
different locations at the same time that are outside of home base. And cross-training in
system admin duties, that would be great, because then we could actually send Chad
and Mike to the same training if we needed -- I'm sorry -- Chad and Dave to the same
training if we needed to. So, the other one -- it's not supposed to say computer
specialist. It's our admin. Sorry. That's what I meant was basically this was a position
-- some of the IT admin functions were shared with the Legal-HR department's admin
that they had in their -- over there, so when that -- when IT moved from Legal-HR over
to Information Services that position was split. So, what we are asking for is a full-time
admin to work for IT. This person -- there is a long long list of duties that they can do.
Purchasing, procurement for software and hardware for all departments, which that's a
lot. Support for IT, that's to support all over the city. Tracking compliance. If you
looked on the fixed detail tabs on the software maintenance, there is 40 different
systems there that we pay software maintenance on all of those and associated
licenses and everything that goes with it. We have to track all of those to make sure we
are staying in compliance with the number of licenses we have for a certain program
site installed on computers and so these would be at the end of the year --tracking all of
those. We had a contract employee from office team working with us and did a fantastic
job in getting all of those organized and lists and hopefully get some donated to the
Boys and Girls Club and the Food Bank and things like that. It's a lot of processing,
tracking, and so -- and this person can also answer and route phone calls, too. They
can answer help desk requests. They can do a lot of things along those lines. They
have also -- it's been great, because we have been using -- this contract employee has
been serving an admin function in IT. When the clerk's office is really busy and the
phone calls keep rolling over she then picks up the phone calls. Nobody knows that
she's sitting up in IT, they just think she's down there with us and she's been answering
and routing and it also allows us to have a staff meeting once a week where we can
have somebody else answering the phones and have everyone in the clerk's office at a
meeting, so --the last one is a software deployment solution. This is a program that will
allow nonadministrative users -- they can pick from a list of programs to install on their
machines. IT can update the central location, instead of manually going to each work
station. Basically it updates the application without needing admin rights. Normally
that's a case management request and we have to deploy an IT person out there, a
level two support person or a level one support here in City Hall. We send them out
basically to do upgrades, to install programs, especially when they get new computers
or whatever, this would allow users to do it when it's convenient to them and it would
allow us to not have to deploy resources to other locations. We could hopefully allow
them to do it centrally from their own desktop. And in case you don't know what that is,
that's fiber, so -- Mike Tanner wanted that one included in our PowerPoint, so we did.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting
July 9, 2073
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So, if there is -- I'm going to hand out to you -- this is all of the backup documents for
fiber and if you have any in-depth questions on fiber I will phone a friend, so --
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: While she's passing those out I have a question that probably should go to
Mr. Nary and that is -- and I'm thrilled that the City of Meridian is able to be in the
leadership in many things and that we share with other people, but I'm curious on some
of the software or programs that are being developed in house that are useful to other
people, is the city allowed to patent those and charge a license fee to the people that
we give it to?
Nary: Yes. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Zaremba, yes,
cities can -- it can request patents. Most intellectual property isn't necessarily patented,
but you can -- you can own the rights to the use of that. You can license that. We
haven't -- we haven't -- we haven't explored that. I think if we get beyond Ada County
we probably do need to do that. At this point we have taken the position of those that
really are -- we are sharing systems, so that we have a collaborative effort for -- for
example, in law enforcement, but there are more useful or greater uses of the programs
that have been created. So, I think that is a worthy discussion for Information Services
and IT and the Council to have on what's the city's policy or position on those types of
uses and whether or not -- again, right now we have not done anything in the sense of
marketing it for -- either for our for profit venture or for whether it would be allowed even
outside of Ada County other than through the state. We do have an e-Ticketing system
with the state. So, I do think that's the next step. But, yeah, we certainly can patent
things, we certainly have copyright and trademarks and those kind of things that all are
relative to intellectual property that we probably need to have that discussion, as well as
the Council for future uses when we get better -- I would totally agree with Ms. Holman
that we have some very talented people in IT and the use of the projects that they
provide -- that they create for our use are things that they are finding that other entities
that they would like to them, too.
Holman: Mr. Nary?
Nary: Yes.
Holman: We have -- we were speaking of reciprocity earlier in coming up with some
sort of an SOP for how we would do this. With, for example, our ITS system in the
valley, we actually have developers and engineers from other agencies that are helping
develop against that now, so Ada County and Boise City. So, it's really been a
collaborative effort and we can share information and so we actually -- we are not
charging in the city, but we are receiving a lot of benefit from that also. We have
another cities that was interested in our pretreatment software. They wanted to have
this thing that we developed in house and we decided, no, that --there was no benefit to
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July 9, 2013
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us to share with a city that's well outside the Treasure Valley, it was a small community,
and it would just eat up our time supporting that with phone calls and all of the
information they would need and help getting it going. So, I agree with Mr. Nary the
valley wide stuff there is usually a benefit to all parties involved and we have definitely
benefits from sharing with both Boise City and Ada County. So, with that I will stand for
other questions or --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: On the fiber, Jaycee, how -- how long would it take -- how long is the estimate to
get that connected to all these buildings? How many years or months?
Holman: Mr. Bird, this is where I will phone a friend and his name is Dave Teede. I will
have him up to ask the detail questions.
Bird: That's what a figured.
Teede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, we have had
preliminary discussions with the consultant on this and they give estimates of the build
times between seven and eight months. Now, that will be contractually bound, of
course, so when we get to that point where we are negotiating the contract that's where
we will tie up -- wrap that up. But that's what the preliminary numbers have given us.
Bird: Follow up, Mayor?
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Bird: And this will all be underground?
Teede: Yes, it will. All underground.
Bird: And they will bore?
Teede: Absolutely.
Bird: Seven to eight months, uh? After they start.
Teede: Yes. After the contract is negotiated and signed.
Bird: Thank you, David.
Rountree: Don't go away. I have a question. At one point in time there was talk about
looping the fiber. Is that option still available in the future?
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July 9, 2013
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Teede: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Rountree, as part of this
project we were building in a certain level of redundancy, but a loop was not part of the
scope of this project. Down the road that would be possible with this provider if that's
the way we desire to do. There would be some level of redundancy, but a backhoe in
road would cause connection to be lost. Also Tom Barry with Public Works is planning
on submitting another enhancement that may also provide another solution to that for
Public Works facilities, so --
Rountree: Thank you.
Bird: Thanks, David.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Help me understand what happens to a system -- let's say a backhoe cuts
through a branch line that goes to Fire Station Six -- or Four. Does that shut down the
whole system or is it just that one building that loses communication?
Teede: Councilman Zaremba, in all honesty it depends on where the cut happens. As
you probably saw briefly on the map you can see the runs where they go. If it were cut
on the interstate that would potentially take down Fire Station Six and everything past
that point. Fire Station Two. Wastewater. Fire Station Five. However, part of the
agreement that we enter into also is to have an operating and maintenance contract in
place so the provider will be accountable for those breaks and responsible to respond to
and repair them within an allotted time that we agree upon.
Zaremba: And Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Zaremba: Different question, but there isn't a Fire Station Six yet, but there will be at
sometime and are you thinking that at sometime maybe the same provider would come
back and add new locations and -- is that possible?
Teede: Absolutely.
Zaremba: And maybe at that time do the looping. So, this is -- this is kind of a phased
thing. This is the first thing that needs to be done now.
Teede: Yes.
Zaremba: And, then, there may be more later.
Meridian City Council Special Meeting
July 9, 2013
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Teede: Right. And part of that also goes with this -- with this. You can see it kind of
goes down at the interstate and up Eagle Road is where they already have fiber. They
have plans to bring fiber down Chinden at some point and once that happens it would
be a very opportune time for the city to say at this point we want to collapse that loop
going into Chinden and go back down Eagle to hit Fire Station Three and, you know,
bring to a full loop redundant, so --
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions for David? Okay. Thank you.
Teede: Thank you.
De Weerd: Anything questions for Madam Clerk?
Rountree: No.
Bird: I have none.
Holman: It wasn't as exciting as the video, but the map was pretty cool
De Weerd: No. It was exciting watching you operate the PowerPoint. Okay. Council,
we are at the end of our presentation schedule. We have our workshop that begins at
3:00 o'clock. What is your pleasure?
Item 4: Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c)(d): (c) To
Conduct Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire
an Interest in Real Property, Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency,
and (d) To Consider Records that are Exempt from Disclosure as
Provided in Chapter 3, Title 9, Idaho Code
Rountree: We have an Executive Session.
De Weerd: Oh, we do. So, you would like to go into that before any discussion. Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(c) and
(1)(d).
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: We have a motion and a second to adjourn into Executive Session.
Madam Clerk, will you call role.
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Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, ea.
Y
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
EXECUTIVE SESSION: (2:22 p.m. to 3:08 p.m.)
Rountree: I move we come out of Executive Session.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to come out of Executive Session. All those
in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Do I have a motion to adjourn our workshop?
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: So moved. Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT3:08 P.M.
(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE
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ATTEST:
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Y DE WEERD
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DATE APPROVED