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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2004 01-27 PreCITY OF MERIDIAN PRE -COUNCIL MEETING AGENDA Tuesday, January 27, 2004 at 6:00 p.m. City Council Chambers 1. Roll -call Attendance: X Shaun Wardle X Bill Nary X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Approve 3. Audit Report by Balukoff Lindstrom & Company PA: Accept (10-15 minutes*) 4. Wastewater T reatment P [ant F acility P Ian U pdate by B rad Watson: Presented (25-30 minutes*) 5. Discussion of Ice Skating Facility: Further Discussion (5-10 minutes*) 6. Proposed Fees for Picnic Shelters at Chateau Park and Meridian Settler's Park: Proceed for new fees (memo attached) 7. Discussion of City Council Meeting Agenda Format: Continue to February 3`1 for further discussion. (5-10 minutes) *Approximate allowable time set for agenda item may change depending on discussion. Please use the designated minutes as a guideline only. Meridian City Council Agenda - January 27, 3004 Pagc I of I All materials presented at public meetin us shall become property of [lie City of Vleridi an. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearings please contact [he City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Meridian Citv Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 The Pre -Council meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 6:00 P.M. on Tuesday, January 27, 2004 by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Keith Bird, Bill Nary, Charlie Rountree, Shaun Wardle. Staff Present: Stacy K ilchenmann, Bill Nichols, Gary Smith, Bill Musser, Brad Watson, John Shawcroft, Pauline Skeggs, Doug Strong, Diane Stewart, Kenny Bowers, Lynn Grady and Will Berg. Item 1. Roll -call Attendance: X Shaun Wardle X Bill Nary X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd Item 2. Adoption of the Agenda: Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I move that we adopt the agenda as published. Rountree: Second. Nary: We move to adopt the agenda as published. All those in favor, say aye MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES Item 3. Audit Report by Balukoff Lindstrom & Company PA: Kilchenmann: Madam Mayor and Members of the Council I am pleased to present to you tonight Kevin Smith from Balukoff Lindstrom. He was our partner in charge for our audit, which believe it or not we actually do have a good time when the auditor's come. I guess that's an accountant's humor kind of bouncing off of each other. Kevin is going to present the audit to you tonight and I hope you will take the opportunity to ask him lots of questions and use his time here to get as much information out of him as possible. Smith: Thank you Stacy. I appreciate the opportunity I have tonight to go over the financial statements for the year ended, September 30, 2003. As Stacy mentioned, any questions as I am doing my presentation are welcome and we can stop and discuss things or if you have any questions afterwards or even Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 2 of 19 during the year, feel free to give me a call and I would be happy to address them. We always feel that the audit is a year long process, rather than the two or three weeks that we spend out here looking through the information and we correspond with Stacy and her group quite often, which actually helps the process go much smoother. We appreciate her preparation in helping our crew be more efficient through the process. Just a little bit to kind of get started tonight. The financial statements as you look a t t hem this year are a I ittle bit different than they have been in the past. There was a new reporting requirement that Governmental Auditing Standard Board put out called Issue No. 34, which is called a new reporting model. That new reporting model basically required us to — or the City to present their financial statements based on a full accrual basis. It's more like entities that you guys may be familiar with or work in where the biggest changes were basically two things: when you looked at your general fund before all the debt was expensed immediately and all the debt payments, the principal interest, everything was expense in a debt service fund. That's now gone away. All your fixed assets as you purchase fixed assets, infrastructure and those type of items they were expensed and so they never reflect on the balance sheet, they were in a separate account group and those have gone away now. When you look at the financial statements starting on Page 12, you'll see basically, two different columns: governmental activities and then business type activities. The governmental activities basically have all the debt is now recorded on Page 13 and then all the fixed assets are now recorded on Page 12, which is a change from prior year statements. The business activities really there is not any change in the business activities is those assets and that's the water and the sewer (inaudible) enterprise funds. Those are basically the major changes that took place and then following in the (inaudible) there is reconciliations that you can actually see the governmental funds and the reconciling items that get up to this full accrual basis. To back up a little bit to explain a little bit about an audit, basically our objective is to provide reasonable assurance that financial statements are correct in all material respects. Their material respects would mean that we don't test every item. We select things on test basis and we do a lot of analytical procedures. Every invoice and every receipt is not going to be selected for testing, but we do try to select the material items, significant items in amount and then also on a random test basis. There are basically four different types of opinions that can be rendered on a financial statement. The first is an unqualified opinion or meaning the clean opinion. The second one is a qualified opinion meaning that everything is okay, except one or two items and then we point those out and qualify the opinion. The third one is an adverse opinion, meaning that there are a lot of things that we disagree with and so we were going to issue an adverse opinion. The fourth one is a disclaimer, meaning that we are not going to render an opinion, but we are basically leave and not complete the job because things are so bad that we don't feel that there is enough information to render an opinion. In the current year under audit, we issue an unqualified or a clean opinion on the financial statements for the City of Meridian. A few things — a couple of other things that kind of come out this year are fund balance or now as it's referred to as net Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 3 of 19 assets continues to increase and when you look at the budget versus actual expenditures it looks like there is about $16 million budget for expenses and about $12.9 million actually spent. In a sense tells us that management is doing a fairly good job of monitoring the budget and watching expenditures and planning for projects in the future, but there is some excess, you know balance that could actually be spent in the future. Especially in the enterprise fund. I know there are some projects that we see down the future and it looks like management and council is doing a good job of planning for those. So reserves are actually a good thing to have. We don't see that everywhere we go. In the report another item that is new this year is what we call management discussion and analysis, which is found right after the opinion on Page 3. This section is actually written by management and Stacy wrote most of this information and it's basically represents the financial statements and gives a little bit explanation. From the experience we have had over the last couple of years implementing this new pronouncement. We have found this has been very helpful to the readers. They have kind of put into paragraph form some of the changes, some of the financial highlights that have occurred during the year and most councils and commissions that we have visited with have liked this better than just looking at a bunch of columns of numbers. There are also graphs and other charts that Stacy has put into this financial statement that are helpful to kind of look at the picture. We do not give an opinion on this section of financial statement on the management discussion analysis; it's just there to support or to explain the financial statements themselves. A couple things that when we do our testing we look at internal controls and we do a fairly thorough evaluation of internal controls and we come up with some management discussion, some items that we think maybe could be strengthened in some areas as part of our procedures and there is basically three different degrees of awareness to have as far as internal control. The first one is what we refer to as a material weakness, meaning that controls are so bad that there could be material misstatements in the financial statements. An example of that is if maybe the bank statements haven't been reconciled (inaudible) a year and so we have no idea what the cash balance should be at any given time. The next one is reportable condition which means that internal controls need some attention in some areas and basically internal controls are always for the safety of the employees. The other one is just an other condition, where we maybe give some suggestions of where management could pay some attention — sometimes you have to you know weigh the cost benefit of some of those and sometimes we talk about segregation of duties or implementing some more segregation, that maybe the cost benefit isn't there. Maybe it's not worth the cost of bringing another employee just to implement some of those, so just some suggestions, but things that management you know needs to pay attention to. This year's audit we had three different suggestions that we had put down as reportable conditions where we felt needed some action. One was some areas in the grant area that we found that the grants weren't always being reported to the accounting department on a timely basis. As grants get larger and sometimes you know maybe there is $25,000 dollars that (inaudible) the timing of getting those to the accounting department is very Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 4 of 19 critical, especially when you are dealt with federal money and there is a lot of reporting requirements related to those grants and we wouldn't want anything to hinder your opportunities to get grants in the future. Another one was as part of this implementation process of the new reporting model you are required to go back to 1980 and record all infrastructure that is owned by the City and sometimes that's a very large undertaking depending on the City and fortunately the roads, the streets are owned by ACHD in this county and so the City — you don't have to work about that aspect, but we actually did the audit of ACHD and that was quite an undertaking to go through and to get those. There are some easements and some right-of-way that we are aware of in the City that haven't been valued yet. You basically have a four-year period where you can — aught to take the next four years and phase that in, in which management made that decision to do that and so it's disclosed in the financial statement. It was just another area of reportable condition that we pointed out that, you know, basically makes you aware that that still needs to be completed. The third one that we had in the management letter was some of the passwords in the computer IT department, w e felt needed a I ittle b it of a ttention t hat w e t hought t hat maybe there were too many people that had access to some of those passwords or that they weren't being changed on a regular basis and management has responded to a II t he m anagement c omments t hat w e h ad a nd w e were s atisfied w ith t he response and if there was any time that they need assistance in implementing some of those, we can come back and help in some of that process. As far as the audit went, we were very pleased the financial condition is very good here and that m akes our job a lot a asier to come in and know that m anagement's doing their job and that Council is aware of the financial situation and what's happening in the City. Any questions or comments that I can address? Nary: Council, are there any questions that you have? Bird: I have none. Nary: I did have one question. I didn't notice this in here, but I guess it could be — Is there — since your firm has done these audits for us continuously. Is there any trends or anything that we need to be aware of that you see from past audits to this one? Because I didn't see anything in relation to past, just the current year. Smith: Right and this one because of the implementation of this new pronouncement in the future you are going to see more comparison to a prior year. This year, since it was the first year of the implementation, especially in the management discussion analysis there is going to be a lot more comparison to prior i nformation, w hich I t hink w ill In elp. There are s ome t rends a nd t hen we could share some trends with you in the future, about the last four or five years everything continues to increase basically. There really is no area of concern that we found as far as any trends or — you know, we spend some time doing analytical procedures basically taking two and three years of data information Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 5 of 19 and being aware of what's happening in the City and then developing expectations if those numbers should change or if they should stay the same. Really, the information really met our expectations this year. There really were no surprises. Nary: Well, great. Thank you very much. Stacy did you have anything else you wanted to add? Mayor De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. Mayor De Weerd: I think Stacy and her staff need to be commended. The comments that were in last year's audit have all been addressed and we really came out with a clean audit. You had great work and it was kind of a transitional (inaudible). You transitioned very well into that. Thank you. Nary: Thank you very much. Smith: They do a great job and I echo your comments and over the last five years or so that we have been involved, it's gotten better and better and we appreciate that because it makes u s more efficient a nd it's just a better team when we are able to work that way. Our audit does go through the whole year and we welcome any questions, comments during the year. If there is any unusual transactions, you know, we welcome your comments for questions and we can assist in that process. Bird: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Bird. Bird: I think it would be a ppropriate now if we could d o it is I would make a motion that we accept the 203 Fiscal Audit so that this can be released to the public. I would m ake that motion that we a ccept this a udit for t he f iscal year 2003. Rountree: Second. Nary: Been motioned and second to accept the audit report prepared by Balukoff Lindstrom Company for the audit report for the previous fiscal year ending September 2003. All those in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES Item 4. Wastewater Treatment Plant Facility Plan Update by Brad Watson: Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 6 of 19 Nary: Mr, Watson. Watson: Thank you, Mr. President. Madame Mayor, Council members. We got a lot of ground to cover tonight, so I am going to try and be brief and get through an introduction. First of all, we thank you for the opportunity to present this wastewater facility plant. This is a big planning document. This is a 20 -year plan for the whole wastewater system and a lot of times wastewater is out of sight and out of mind, but it's pretty big to us. This all began about a year and one half ago when Carollo came here and presented a little Power Point Presentation for you on what they were going to do. Here we are a year and one half later with a final draft document for your review and approval. On part of the requirement of the facility plan through DEQ is that it be — that we have a public hearing. We held that January 121h and as Gary said it was well attended by staff, nobody from the public showed up. To my knowledge, no written comments have been received, although it's been publicly advertised. So, there is either apathy or I don't know what it is. Bird: Everybody was satisfied. Job well done, I guess. Watson: Well, we will continue to believe that, I guess. What we have got tonight is a three-part presentation. First of all is a study that Carollo completed on the Wastewater Treatment Facility that's kind of the meat of the presentation. The second component is an update to the Collection System Master Plan that JUB did. I will just briefly go over that and you can certainly ask any questions about that if you want. The third component the DEQ requires is a financial analysis of the sewer system — the management of the sewer system and for better or worse, I completed that and I think I forwarded that to you a week or two ago. It's also been sent to the finance department for their review. The final outcome of all of this that we are hoping for is a resolution by the City Council adopting this as the official Wastewater Plant of the City. The reason we need that is as you will see a little later some of these costs are fairly high and we want to very seriously look at applying for loans through the state. So that's the final outcome that I am asking for from you guys, not tonight, but here in the not too distant future. With that, I will just introduce — first of all, we have a good representation of staff here tonight. Obviously, you all know Gary our Public Works Director is here. John Shawcroft, our Wastewater Superintendent, who is the face of wastewater around here, as we like to call him. Nary: High praise isn't it? Watson: Yes, it is high praise. We have Lynn Grady, our staff engineer and Clint Dolsby our new staff engineer and from Carollo Engineers we have Stewart Hurley sitting here, Bill Banka and the Project Manager for this study is Tim Teacup, who will — I will turn it over to him and he will go through this Power Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 7 of 19 Point Presentation. I do have handouts so I will hand those out as he begins. Thank you. Teacup: Okay, is this on? Thanks, Brad. 1 feel like a talk show host. I wanted to stand over on this side of the room; I hope that's okay so I can work the computer as I speak. Thanks for your introduction, Brad. As Brad said, I was able to come here several months ago to kick off this project and lay out our plan of action for evaluating the different facilities they have out at the Wastewater Treatment Plant and I am very pleased to be able to come back tonight and present the results of our study and before I begin I would like to say that we have been fortunate to work closely with the staff, both the Public Works Department staff and the Treatment Plant staff. They were very helpful and made it a very smooth project for us up to this point. We still have to have our facility plan approved by DEQ and that was submitted about a month and one half ago and so we are expecting their comments and approval in the near term. So, this is a quick outline of my presentation this evening and after the introduction I am going to talk about the reasons why it's important to plan for growth and expansion of the Wastewater Treatment Facility and to stay ahead of the population growth curve that you have here at the City. Then I will talk about project goals, both general and specific to this particular treatment plant. The plans for a phased expansion are the portion of the presentation where I'll show the different phases and the costs associated with upgrading the Treatment Plant. To summarize that briefly, the results of the study showed that the Treatment Plant is going to — to keep up with future growth we looked at a 20 year planning period starting in 2003 and ending in 2023 and the population projection's that we looked at showed that the growth of the City, the users of the Treatment Plant were going to roughly double in that timeframe — go from about 40,000 to 80,000 contributors to the wastewater flow. Currently, the infrastructure that you have in place at the Treatment Plant is valued somewhere between $22-$25 million, in that range. We are talking about doubling the capacity of that plant and the costs associated with that are on the order of approximately $60 million and those are to be spread out in this phased expansion over the next approximately 15 years with the majority of these new facilities being required within the next 2 to 4 years and then kind of tailing off after that. So, with that being said, I'll move forward here. You are probably all familiar with the location of the City's Treatment Plant on Ten Mile Road between Ustick and McMillan. This is a site plan and I apologize, it's a little bit hard to see, b ut t his i s k ind o f an a erial v iews s ite p Ian o f t he T reatment P lant a nd i t shows I ots o f t he b ig tanks and u nit p rosthesis t hat are a vailable t here. I w ill come back to this later and show you where we are going to be adding facilities. To talk about reasons to do this facility plan, why should we plan now for the future in terms of wastewater? Number 1, it's a requirement by the State of Idaho DEQ and by Federal Government EPA to go ahead and update the facility plant as we reach the capacity of the existing facilities and so once we got to that point, the City decided to authorize the study. We want to do it so that we have a carefully planned expansion so that we can add things in the future beyond this Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page S of 19 20 -year planning period, so it's easy to do that. We want to allow for financial planning for these costs, this large price tag that we are talking about and ensure that the growth, these next 40,000 residents pay their own way for wastewater treatment. Also, very important, we are insuring protection of the environment by expanding these things before we need to. General goals of a planning project, we want at least for wastewater treatment, we want to meet capacity increases for growth, we want to be aware of stricter discharge regulations that are implemented from federal government, the state government. We want to replace old and failing equipment, so that we have a reliable and maintainable treatment facility and we want to be good neighbors to the residents surrounding the treatment plant so we took these things into account. Now the population projections I described this briefly before, but this is a relatively steep growth curve from 1990 to 2000 and we have projected it on about the same rate through the next 20 years and it shows that doubling of population and essentially doubling of wastewater flow. This shows more specifically the flows at the treatment plant. There is average day flows and then there is a diurnal pattern, so everyday there's the average flow, but flow goes up and down throughout the course of the day as people take showers in the morning, flush toilets and that kind of thing and so there was these different peak f lows and these show the ratio of the peak flows and we need to take all of these into account when we are sizing the different unit prosthesis. I mentioned discharge regulations before and the current requirements that the City is permitted to discharge will be extended into the future, but in addition, the DEQ and EPA are currently reviewing a study that calls for a 78 percent reduction and phosphorus to the Boise River. This means that some of the Treatment Plant prosthesis needs to be changed and upgraded to reach a low phosphorus level so we have taken that into account when we looked at those processes during this plan. Those regulations are currently still under review by DEC. So more specifically for Meridian, we looked at upgrades necessary for this 20 year planning period and presented cost estimates and timing for implementing those improvements and another goal was to assist the City in receiving a low interest loan from the state and then have a revolving loan fund program for wastewater projects and there are requirements that we had to comply with through our study and submittal to DEQ that makes that program available. This is a schematic that shows various processes at the Treatment Plant and I won't take the time to go through each one of these, but I wanted to show this schematic so that I can explain how we broke this up into different individual process areas at the Treatment Plant and we started at the beginning where the water comes into the plant and worked our way through the end of the plant with some different technical memoranda. Each one of these memoranda we looked at capacity of that particular process, the ability to meet regulations, maintainability these other criteria that I discussed earlier. So here is a look at these seven different preliminary design/memoranda that we did. The first one kind of sets the stage for the next six and that sets the design criteria, sets what population that we are going to design for flows to the Treatment Plant and those kind of things. Then these next five memoranda talk evaluate specific process areas and then Memo Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 9 of 19 No. 6 we looked at the utilities system to support those process areas and No. 7 was a summary report, which summarized all this and put it into the right format for the state to review. So, as an example the first process area we looked at the head works, it's a relatively simple expansion. These are hydraulic structures so if the flow doubles the structure that's required is twice as big. The next secondary a nd tertiary treatment a reas a s the treatment p Ian a re a I ittle m ore involved and this shows costs comparison for these specific areas that we looked at. We looked at expanding the existing process versus implementing some new prosthesis and in this case it was less costly to expand the existing process because of the good job that the City staff and the previous consultants had done at the treatment plant leaving provisions for expansion of the existing processes. We let that bio -solids treatment and reuse recycling of bio -solids if you want to use that term and we looked at production of class "A" bio -solids maintaining production of class "A" bio -solids because they are class "A" means that the bio - solids are essentially pathogen free and they can be given away to the public or sold if the opportunity arises. So we wanted to maintain that high level of treatment. We looked at some alternatives, including alternatives for composting or sledge drying, which could be implemented in the future if the requirement for disposal options arises. If currently your land disposing your bio -solids at farm fields and those farm fields continue to shrink as development progresses, so with these alternatives, the product would be easier to sell or give away in bulk or that kind of thing. It produces a drier product. So, again with that site plan the recommended improvements were broken up into two phases. Phase one shows several new unit prosthesis being constructed and you will notice that a lot of these new prosthesis are the same size tank as the ones right next to that and the reason for that is redundancy reasons so that anyone of these three aeration basis, for example, can be taken out of service and the capacities maintain in the other two. Phase two we are adding another set of improvements at the treatment plant. It's smaller than the phase one and the reason for that is because the plant currently is nearing it's capacity and by implementing these projects sooner, we were able to extend that capacity immediately, which is good for the future. So, we estimated costs for these different upgrades and put them in this table where we project those over time. So, this shows the target start date of these projects and this lists the costs of the individual process areas. Some of these projects are already included in the current city budget and are already u nder w ay. So, for t he Phase o ne a stimated c osts w e a re I ooking a t upgrading essentially every process area in the treatment plant to some degree and the total cost is about $13 million and this cost will be broken up into two or more projects to be implemented over the next three to four years. Phase two recommends about $3 million worth of construction and that's future projects anticipated around the year 2010. So, in summary, the recent explosive growth here in the City and coupled with reliability issues out of treatment plant required that we upgrade the plant. We are recommending two phases of construction for that: one in the near term and one six years down the road approximately. With that I would like to invite any questions or comments on the facility plan. The document is available in the Clerk's Office. Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 10 of 19 Nary: Council is there any questions? Rountree: Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Rountree Rountree: I have a couple of questions. One, you indicated that the plan had been submitted to DEQ, a month a half or so ago. Is there any regulatory or statutory response time for them to get back to the City or can they take as long as they want? Teacup: They can take as long as they want. They typically respond within 30- 60 days has been our experience with these and I have been in contact with some individuals over there so I know that they are actively reviewing the plan. We did submit some preliminary memoranda, some of our preliminary work to DEQ to get them to take a look at that. They gave us conditional approval of those memoranda before we took off and developed the work on the rest of the treatment plant prosthesis. So, they have given us preliminary approval of the population's projections and the goals that (inaudible) the project. Rountree: Are you comfortable with the delay as not due to their dissatisfaction with the plan, but just their normal work? Teacup: Yes. I don't anticipate they will have problems with the recommendations. Rountree: You have indicated on the approximate dollar amount and in one of your slides you have identified allows for financial planning. Was that part of this contract -- put together an outline for the financial planning that might need to be done in terms of identifying — you identified low interest loans from the state, but any other grant potentials that we might take advantage of — is that part of your agreement? Teacup: No, that was not part of our scope, but Brad and we worked together a little bit on that. I don't know if you want to address that, Brad. Watson: Council Member Rountree, Madame Mayor and Council President. We did not at the time, a year and one half ago, include in their scope analyzing financial options other than to make sure that this plan conformed with all state requirements to be eligible for the State Revolving Loan Fund. The financial analysis the DEQ requires as part of this plan is simply a rate. What is this going to do to the monthly rates of the users? It doesn't require at least for the submittal, a financial plan that says how are you going to pay for all these capital improvements over the years. We will do that, but that's not part of the DEQ submittal. Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 11 of 19 De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: I guess I understand you will do it, but those are some pretty mind boggling numbers and it's certainly something we really need to concern ourselves with as we move forward. The Sewer Treatment Plant has always been very proactive and that is because we plan and make sure that the financing — now we just went through some rate adjustments and it's certainly easier to look at it on an annual basis, rather than, you know, three years they have this major hit. So, I hope we can get those kind of numbers and see what kind of grant opportunities there are. Because there will be other things than just the Sewer Treatment Plant that we need to look at infrastructure costs for. Watson: Yes, Madame Mayor. There are a lot of points there that I can touch on. I have done some preliminary research into the grant system. They are basically unavailable to City's like this that is not rural or low income. There are some planning grants. We are past that stage now. We increased monthly rates. I think those took effect August, September of 2002 and Lynn Grady is actively working on an updater check on those rates right now. So, we are addressing that. As far as the impact of this project on the monthly rates. The third part of this little presentation I was just going to touch on that a little bit unless you have more questions for Tim over here. Nary: No questions. De Weerd: Thank you. Watson: I will move on real quick to the second and third part. Thank you, Tim for doing that. It was good. If I could just take a second, I am going to pull up the Master Sewer Plan so everyone can see it. I think it should be in the packets sent to you several weeks ago too. Obviously, no one can see it from where you are sitting. The main point to take out of the Sewer Master Plan update is that there really aren't that many significant changes. What they did was take the new Comprehensive Plan, take those land uses and plug in those flows into our old model. In essence, we found out that we are pretty much okay. We had some higher densities in some places and lower in others, but all in all we seem to be okay. The one thing — we did make some adjustments in certain areas just based on the experience we've had with (inaudible) coming in over the last couple of years — some problem areas. The one thing that I do need to point out is that's a little different is there is a new sewer trunk line identified along Chinden Avenue between Linder and Locust Grove that has never shown up. It was determined after looking at some more aerial mapping — a little better aerial mapping and a little more modeling that this is going to be required. This effects the Paramount Subdivision and any of those undeveloped parcels up along Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 12 of 19 Chinden, all along through there. So, you will probably be hearing about that in months, years to come. We will get a new computer model — everything is pretty much status quo other than a couple of little quirks and that one big item up along Chinden. After I made the initial introductions, our consultants on that project did come in. I didn't ask them to present anything. I think they are here for entertainment value, which is really sad to say. We have Steve Bienton on the left in the back row, Rich Weibe right there and the project manager was Phil Krichbaugh, who you have all probably seen before from JUB. They have done a really good job. The intent when we began this project was that I would update the sewer plan. Well, I didn't quite have time and if you recall, I came to you in August and asked for authorization to have JUB do it and it really put them in a crunch. They did a good job. I will pause right there. Are there any questions on the Sewer Master Plan? I am just going to wrap up with the financial plan real quick. De Weerd: We are all waiting for the financial Watson: I trust that I sent this out to you. I believe I did. I just took a real quick look at what this project would do to the sewer rates. Those are big numbers. We are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $18-$20 million over the next 20 years. But, really the amount of those improvements that can be attributed to existing users is relatively — and I say relatively small — it's kind of a (inaudible) it's over $3 million. Those improvements are ones that effect existing users and future users. Those are like increases in treatment levels, increases in redundancy so that these guys can maintain the facilities they have. So, when I go through and look at this a little over $3 million and (inaudible) it over 20 years and that's just — this is a draft number, mind you — we are looking at about $200,000 a year that must be covered by existing users or by the rate payers. If we use our population projections over the next 20 years, we start out — about 17 cents per thousand gallons per month increase. De Weerd: (Inaudible) to what? Watson: Right now, the rate for each thousand gallons is $2.78. So, I think that's in the neighborhood of a 7 or 8 percent increase, due only to these items. As the population grows, that cost can be spread out, obviously, over more connections, so in 20 years it should be — it should decrease to around 10 cents per thousand gallons. So, that is the affect of these proposed improvements on the monthly rates. Also, in this little analysis, I just looked at what we need to build just to serve future development and that comes in right around $11 million and a really rough calculation looking at the number of users that we have coming equates generally grossly to about to about $1,275 per connection, which is significant. That would be above and beyond the assessment fee that we are charging right now and that's only for treatment that doesn't include collection. We are going to put together a complete financial plan, not as part of this DEQ Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 13 of 19 submittal, but as part of a rate increase and fee increase this spring. With that, I would entertain any questions. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madame Mayor. De Weerd: So, does that take into account — didn't you hire a consultant to look at sewer assessment for a trunk line assessment fees? Watson: Madam Mayor, no. I haven't. I have those and I have done the study. I presented those to BCA last summer. They asked for additional information and calculations and examples. I simply have not been back to BCA since then, but it is — since I have the results of this study, I can make those even better, I mean I have the backing. I had been working on some older numbers at the time, so that's why I said this spring this will happen. De Weerd: That should compliment the two, but will that assist i n being one other way of looking at the formulation or formula? Watson: Yes, it will. We have to be very careful with these future costs that we don't turn them into an impact fee. They will somehow be reflected at least in a certain way in assessment fees. We may have to go down the impact fee road and that's a fairly cumbersome process if I understand that statute right. De Weerd: So, you want a follow up? Nary: Sure. De Weerd: So, on the trunk line assessments, you're thinking maybe this spring? Watson: Yes. De Weerd: And spring is March? Watson: Well, I would probably be able to get on the agenda at BCA for their March meeting — De Weerd: Okay. Watson: If I can somehow get on this agenda for shortly thereafter or at least first review — probably an official adoption. I guess that's at your wishes, but — De Weerd: Do you want to run those by Council before you take it to the BCA? Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 14 of 19 Watson: Maybe briefly, yes. It would obviously be in draft form, but — I hate to bog you down with this because I knew you'll have at least two looks after I go to BCA, but I can certainly do that. Nary: Council do you have other questions? No. Just one that I guess, I have Brad. Timing wise it seems a little strange, I mean you are asking basically for us to pass a resolution or some motion or something accepting the plan, but we don't — we are sort of committing to some degree to the schedule of improvements, but we are not going to get the financial plan that the money is available to do that for another couple of months. Is that just cause of the timing, we just have to do it that way? Watson: It could be and when I ask for the resolution I don't anticipate that being in the next couple of weeks. We need to get DEQ's comments back and see if we need to rework anything and get the collection's system document finalized. I anticipate this to be like a two-month process. Hopefully, that will somewhat coincide with at least the draft financial plan. Nary: So, we could hold off at least on that and have that as part of the discussion of that draft financial plan and then schedule that at the same time with the pre -council session and then we could have a resolution or something after that. Watson: Sure, I think that would work great. Thank you very much Nary: Thanks for bringing all your gang with you. "*End of Side 1'"" Item 5. Discussion of Ice Skatina Facilit Nary: Next item is the ice skating facility. There is a memo that is part of your packet and I don't know that there was a presentation, Madam Mayor, on this or -- De Weerd: Mr. Nichols can introduce the parts he needs to — so we kind of know the direction Council is going. Nichols: Mr. President, Madame Mayor and Members of the Council. Some months ago I did a memo to the Mayor and Council that outlined additional information that needed to come from the Council in order for me to proceed with drafting a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ice Skating Facility group. The tentative idea is to have that facility on the Borah property on the corner of Cherry Lane and McDermott, which the City has about 30 acres there. The group needs to know when the City will have infrastructure available, so that when they go to potential donors they can say here is the City's plan for when those things will be there. So, the donors will know when they have to come up Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 15 of 19 with their pledge and that sort of thing. So, I have outlined in the memo the additional information that I need to be able to go back to that group with some sort of Memorandum of Understanding and that's — we just haven't had a chance to have that discussion and for the Council — whether it's three years, ten years, two years, one year or whatever it is. De Weerd: Mr. President. Nary: Madam Mayor. De Weerd: I had also talked with Charlotte Catlett, she is somewhat leading this effort and at this point, which might come before the Memorandum of Understanding they want a letter of intent. I don't know what all planning we'll need to do for answers they need to have the letter of intent of what those qualifications — Nichols: Well, Madam Mayor, Mr. President, Members of Council when I met with Bob Aldridge one of the keystone pieces was when are facilities going to be out there so that we could actually put up a structure. So, I would think that is still is a key piece that needs to be in a letter agreement, letter of understanding, memorandum of understanding, however you want to characterize it that would set out what the City is willing to do when the City thinks those services will be there. H ow m uch g round i s going to be made available? H ow m ight that be located? A lot of those things we have already discussed, but it's the timing of the infrastructure that I need to go forward. Nary: Council Members too, one of the things that might be helpful — we haven't had what I consider a full-blown presentation of this project. It was something that was brought to the City a few years ago. There has been some discussion about it, but I know there are at least two of you that probably hadn't heard anything about it before you saw this memo. So -- Mr. Wardle go ahead. Wardle: Mr. President and Mr. Nichols, I guess I'll address this to you because we are talking about the memorandum. I am actually familiar with the project. One of the questions that I do have before this City commits to a timeline when we are going to provide services and then obviously when the property will be zoned and donated and 211 of the things that need to happen is unlike the memorandum of understanding that we had with Adventure Island Playground, where that was to be built and then donated to the City, it is my understanding this group will be operating this ice rink and with that in mind, I believe we need to see some sort of a plan for the operation of that in conjunction with the City committing when we are going to provide services and then start the, I guess, our partnership together. Have they given, Mr. Nichols, any indication as to whether they are going to provide that at the time that we provide information to them? Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 16 of 19 Nichols: Mr. President, Mayor and Members of the Council. The group has formed a non-profit corporation. They received 501 (c) (3) status from the IRS, so they have gone a lot farther than many groups have. They have a board of directors, which includes, I think one of the Supreme Court Justices is on the — they have got a pretty broad-based group that has come forward with this process. In terms of the actual operation they — I know in previous discussions privately with them that they are looking at putting up two sheets of ice. They have some idea with regard to what works in a facility design. We have emphasized from the very beginning that if this were a situation where they built this facility on City property and ran it, it would have to be one at least as we staff represented to them was no cost to the City, it wasn't going to be subsidized by the City, so they are not going to go forward with a however many million dollar structure unless they know that they are going to be able to operate it in the black or at least break even. As far as a business plan that shows how they are going to market it and those kinds of things, I don't think they have got there yet. They are trying to focus on raising the money, the pledges to be able to put up the structure and as they get closer to their goal, they would then begin that process of laying out what the operational costs would be. There were some other questions I think we raised in terms of are we going to let commercial vendors have a food booth inside, is that any concern to the City? There are some other things that may have been outlined in the memo, we just need you to (inaudible) — I am sure they would be glad to come and present to you where they are at, what they have done, where they need to go, but I know that they have hit a road block in fund raising because they can't really go to a corporation and say we would like you to donate some money because they can't tell them when it's going to be built because they know it can't be built until sewer is available. Nary: Council members. I think we have got really two issues before us. One is when is facilities going to be available for that site, regardless of what's going to be there, whether it's the size (inaudible) or anything else. Those are decisions we have to make, but also if there is at least a desire to have a little more information before proceeding further and for Mr. Nichols to be putting this MOU together and letter of intent or whatever form we want to use, would that be the Council's preference? I can get a hold of these folks, Ms. Catlette, Mr. Aldredge and see if they would be available in the next week or two to come and give us a little bit more detail. At one juncture in the past, we were looking to pattern this after some other facilities in the Valley like the Optimist Club and some of the other types of facilities that have been used at long term leases, but you know, I think t here a ppears to b e s ome q uestions on folks faces a nd I t hink m aybe — would that be helpful? Would you like me to do that? I can certainly try to book that within the next couple of weeks, so that we can proceed on this and move it along. Bird: That would be my preference, Mr. President. Nary: Mr. Strong, do you have any comment on this? If you don't, it's fine. Okay. Mr. Rountree. Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 17 of 19 Rountree: Mr. Nary. If the question is simply whether or not or when sewer is going to be out there, that is one thing, but I read in the memo a bunch of other things that they are asking from the City to take a position on. Though obviously, the sewer is probably the most costly initial item, there are some things in here in terms of whether or not the City wants to take over the facility at the end of the lease, etc., and apparently we need to address. So, I would like more information and be able to talk to those, but as far as the sewer I think we could probably give them a projected date on that. Nary: If the Council is all right, what I will do is try to get a hold of Ms. Catlette or Mr. Aldridge and try to see if we can schedule it within the next two weeks to come and give us a little more presentation on what they are really wanting and give us a little bit more and make those decisions to assist Mr. Nichols in this MOU because you are looking at some long term commitment for the City to have a facility there whether we are going to turn it over at the end of the day or whatever happens to it, so I will ask to do that and we'll put this back on in a week or two. Item 6. Proposed Fees for Picnic Shelters at Chateau Park and Meridian Settler's Park: Nary: Next item on our agenda is the proposed fees for picnic shelters. There is also a memo in your packets about that, basically I think all we are looking for is we have to have a public hearing on t hese f ees. I think we had another f ee hearing that we already talked about. Is there a way we can combine those, or do we have to burden us twice with having those things? Great. Well, basically, I think Council all we are looking for at this juncture is if they are at mind set to consider these proposed fees from the Parks Department for the shelters that we set a date. Do we have a proposed date Mr. Berg? Berg: No we don't. Nary: Okay, so we can set a date that needs to be at least three weeks from now, preferably longer, but before people start using them, so before summer. Berg: Yes sir. Rountree: Mr. President, if I could add just one thing. Mr. Nichols and I had discussed some issues and trying to draw up maybe in the ordinance that includes all parks rather than having to just keep adding — when we build a new park we add a new fee and so we are going to maybe try and clean that up also and make sure we are consistent through all the parks maybe with a square footage of a shelters, something in that nature so that — just because we add a new park we have to attach that fee the way the resolution is written. So, we are going to try and take care of that. Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 18 of 19 Nary: So, we are looking at an ordinance change as well as a hearing date for a new fee. Do you need us to then by motion set a hearing date? Or do you just need our direction or nodding approval to go a head and d o this and set it on there at some point? When we see it there we know what we are talking about. Berg: Yes, Mr. President. I think the intent of the Council was not to have fees or hearing surprise to them when we change things, so this is brought to your attention and you can tell us to proceed on and we will proceed on and get it as soon as we can. Nary: Is there any objection Council then I guess we will be having this in the next six weeks to eight weeks, somewhere in that range. Bird: Press on. Rountree: Press on. Nary: Great. Last one here -- our time has expired and we did have on here a City Council Meeting Agenda Format. I guess if I could take less than five minutes. Item 7. Discussion of City Council Meeting Agenda Format: Nary: I did forward to all of you an agenda that is used by the City of Boise and how their meetings are set up in the groupings that they do. I don't know if everyone got that. Just to give some food for thought. This is one of the items that we talked about at the beginning of the year that we wanted to have some discussion about; obviously tonight our time has run short to do that so we need to have this again. One of the things I was going to ask at this discussion if Mr. Nichols within the next week or two could help identify which ordinances we might need to change. Are we going to look at format changes that might be some assistance because once we decide what we need then we can assist him in giving direction to go ahead and get those changes accomplished so we can do that, but what's the pleasure of the rest of the Council? How would you like to go forward on this side of it? Nary: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: I agree with that. I think we identify the ordinances that need to be modified, have them in hand and then move forward with whatever stream lining we need to do and fit results in modification of the ordinance and we get that done post haste. Nary: If it's all right then with the rest of Council, what I will do is have this as another discussion item for next week. Mr. Nichols could — you could do that by Meridian City Pre -Council Meeting January 27, 2004 Page 19 of 19 next week, Mr. Nichols, couldn't you? Just identifying which sections we are going to have to change. Nichols: Mr. President. Mayor, Members of Council I can do it. The way my schedule is this week I won't have anything in your packets before Tuesday. Nary: Oh, that's okay. We will just have further discussion again. The one agenda I forwarded you was just some food for thought. There are ways and certainly that's not the only way to do it, but some ways to discuss — kind of kick off the discussion of how we can group some of these things. The Mayor is gone next week, s o l d on't think we a re g oing t o f inish t he d iscussion w by you a re gone. We will try and do that. Are there any other matters then? Rountree: I have none. Bird: No. Nary: I would take a motion to adjourn. Bird: So moved. Rountree: Second. Nary: So moved and second to adjourn the Pre -Council meeting. All those in favor? MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES Meeting adjourned at 7:04 p.m. (TAPE ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) APPROVED: _z4z / / 2710 T M ' E EERD, MAYOR DATE APPRO�{ "''r rriii ATTESTED: it -�-% - SEAL WILLIAM G. BERG, JR., CFNY O TtsZ• .�\c 'o r