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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2013-10-08E IDIAN =-- CITY COUNCIL WORKSHOP MEETING AGENDA City Council Chambers 33 East Broadway Avenue Meridian, Idaho Tuesday, October 08, 2013 at 3:00 PM 1. Roll-Call Attendance X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird X Mayor Tammy de Weerd 2. Pledge of Allegiance 3. Adoption of the Agenda Adopted (Pg 1-2) 4. Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 2-3) A. Approve Minutes of September 10, 2013 City Council and Planning and Zoning Special Joint Meeting B. Approve Minutes of September 17, 2013 City Council PreCouncil Meeting C. Approve Minutes of September 17, 2013 City Council Meeting D. Approve Minutes of September 24, 2013 City Council Meeting E. Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: SHP 13-003 River Valley Retail Subdivision by North Eagle Road, LLC Located at 3230 E. River Valley Street Request: Short Plat Consisting of Two (2) Building Lots on 1.14 Acres of Land in the C-G Zoning District F. Agreement for Professional Services with Centra Consulting Inc. for QLPE Plan Check Services for the Not-to-Exceed Amount of $50,000.00 G. Sewer and Water Main Easement for Walmart, 795 W Overland Rd H. Renewal of Emergency Medical Services Joint Powers Agreement I. Tradewinds Subdivision Water Main Easement J. Resolution No. 13-956: A Resolution for Community Development Block Grant Amended PY12 Action Plan Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 08, 2013 Page 1 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. 5. 6 7. K. Resolution No. 13-957: A Resolution Appointing Tammy De Weerd as a Member of the Ada County-City EMS System Joint Powers Board and Appointing Brad Hoaglun as the Alternate Member of the Ada County-City EMS System Joint Powers Board Community Items/Presentations A. Resolution No. 13-958: Resolution Approving Project Selection for the Community Development Block Grant PY2013 Action Plan Moved to Item 4L on the Consent Agenda (Pg 3) Items Moved From Consent Agenda None (Pg 3) Department Reports A. Public Works Department: Strategic Focus Update (Pg 3-20) B. Public Works: Meridian Water Conservation Plan Update (Pg 20-24) C. Parks and Recreation Department: Discussion on Future Dog Park (Pg 24- 29) D. Community Development: Transportation Update on Projects, Plans and Programs -Includes Report on Parklet Project, Downtown Street Cross- Section Master Plan, Meridian Road Interchange Rebuild Project, and Other Transportation Projects (Pg 29-37) E. Legal Department: Three Party Agreement between the City of Meridian, the Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District (MHWSD), and Lee Centers for the Dissolution and Transfer of Assets and Liabilities from MHWSD to the City of Meridian. (Pg 37-40) F. Police Department: Public Safety Training Facility Design Update Motion approved to Proceed with the Covering of the Hunter Lateral for the Not-to- Exceed Amount of $80,000.00 (Pg 40-42) G. Legal Department: Budget Amendment for Purchase of Real Property near City Hall for Future Parking and Demolition of 15 W. Broadway Avenue in the Amount of $373,336.00 Approved (Pg 43-44) H. Human Resources: Discussion of City Policy Regarding Use of Nicotine or Tobacco Products Bring back for discussion on October 15, 2013 Agenda (Pg 44-50) Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 08, 2013 Page 2 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. I. Human Resources: Discussion Regarding City Policy 6.11 -Gifts and Gratuities (Pg 50-51) J. Legal and Police Department: Active Code Enforcement Discussion (Pg 51-62) K. Legal Department: Fees and Hardships Discussion (Pg 62-69) 8. Ordinances A. Second and Third Reading of Ordinance No. 13-1579: Parks and Recreation Code Update Approved (Pg 69-70) 9. Future Meeting Topics None (Pg 70) Adjourned at 6:47 p.m. Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, October 08, 2013 Page 3 of 3 All materials presented at public meetings shall become property of the City of Meridian. Anyone desiring accommodation for disabilities related to documents and/or hearing, please contact the City Clerk's Office at 888-4433 at least 48 hours prior to the public meeting. Meridian City Council Workshop October 8, 2013 A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:04 p.m., Tuesday, October 8, 2013, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd. Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Brad Hoaglun, Charlie Rountree, David Zaremba, and Keith Bird. Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Bruce Chatterton, Caleb Hood, Tom Barry, Mollie Mangerich, Brian McClure, John Overton, Jamie Leslie, Mike Barton and Dennis Teller. 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: Welcome to our City Council Workshop. We appreciate you all for joining us. For the record it is Tuesday, October 8th. It's a few minutes after 3:00. We will start with roll call attendance. Madam Clerk. Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance De Weerd: Item No. 2 is our pledge to our flag. If you will all rise and join us in the pledge. (Pledge of Allegiance recited.) Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: On today's agenda under 4-J that is Resolution No. 13-956. 4-K is Resolution No. 13-957. 5-A is Resolution No. 13-958 and there is a request that this be moved to the Consent Agenda by staff. So, we will make that 4-L as part of the Consent Agenda. So, with those, Madam Mayor, I move adoption of the agenda as amended. Rountree: Second. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 2 of 70 De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda as amended. All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 4: Consent Agenda A. Approve Minutes of September 10, 2013 City Council and Planning and Zoning Special Joint Meeting B. Approve Minutes of September 17, 2013 City Council PreCouncil Meeting C. Approve Minutes of September 17, 2013 City Council Meeting D. Approve Minutes of September 24, 2013 City Council Meeting Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law for Approval: SHP 13- 003 River Valley Retail Subdivision by North Eagle Road, LLC Located at 3230 E. River Valley Street Request: Short Plat Consisting of Two (2) Building Lots on 1.14 Acres of Land in the C-G Zoning District F. Agreement for Professional Services with Centra Consulting Inc. for QLPE Plan Check Services for the Not-to-Exceed Amount of $50,000.00 G. Sewer and Water Main Easement for Walmart, 795 W Overland Rd H. Renewal of Emergency Medical Services Joint Powers Agreement I. Tradewinds Subdivision Water Main Easement J. Resolution No. 13-956: A Resolution for Community Development Block Grant Amended PY12 Action Plan FC. Resolution No. 13-957: A Resolution Appointing °Tammy De Weerd as a Member of the Ada County-City EMS System Joint Powers Board and Appointing Brad Hoaglun as the Alternate Member of the Ada County-City EMS System Joint Powers Board Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 3 of 70 L. Resolution No. 13-958: Resolution Approving Project Selection for the Community Development Dlock Grant PY2013 Action Plan Moved to Item 4L on the Consent Agenda De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: 4-J is Resolution No. 13-956. 4-K is Resolution No. 13-957. And 4-L is Resolution No. 13-958. And, remember, we added 4-L from 5-A. So, with that, Madam Mayor, I move that the Consent Agenda be approved as amended. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 5: Community Items/Presentations A. Resolution No. 13®958: Resolution Approving Project Selection for the Community Development flock Grant PY2013 Action Plan Moved to Item 4L on the Consent Agenda Item 6: Items Moved From Consent Agenda De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda. Item 7: Department Reports A. Public Works Department: Strategic Focus Update De Weerd: Item 7-A is under our Public Works Department. I will turn this over to our Public Works Director Tom Barry. Barry: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. It's my pleasure to present to you this afternoon the strategic focus of the Public Works Department, as well as our accomplishments for the past year, and as you know we -- all department heads come up and present to you annually or so regarding the state of our departments and this is Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 4 of 70 ours for the Public Works Department. Before I get too far along I do want to recognize the staff that's joined us here today and most of my strategic leadership team is here and I want to recognize them, as well as all the other staff who work hard each and every day to help us attain the accomplishments -- the strategic accomplishments that we are able to do and meet the challenges of this growing community. So, thank you to them. We will see a lot of their good works here in the presentation as we go. The mission of the Public Works Department is to anticipate, plan, and provide for exemplary public services and facilities that support the needs of our growing community in an efficient, customer focused, and financially responsible manner. The department as you know, but maybe many in the community do not, is a complex bunch and it is comprised of seven distinct divisions and 29 distinct functional areas or accountabilities and those are represented in this particular chart. This is not an organizational chart as it relates to staff, it's a functional accountability chart with regard to areas of responsibility that we oversee. Our infrastructure continues to grow. Here are some of the latest statistics that we have to share with you. I won't walk you through every one of those, but you can imagine on many levels we are continuing to add quite a bit of infrastructure. We are developing, again, pretty much like crazy and with that development comes the addition of water and sewer lines and mains, PRB's, a number of different well infrastructure and sewer infrastructure that comes with those expansions and so the system is continuing to grow. I wanted to spend just a quick minute. I know you know this, but for those in the audience and Council hopefuls and those watching at home, I wanted to differentiate really the work that we do from the work that the rest of the city does and what I mean is to divide this up by the General Fund versus the Enterprise Fund is -- as all of you know the Enterprise Fund is financed differently than the General Fund. We get our revenues from the sale of services, essentially, water and sewer services and for the hook-up fees that developers pay or homeowners pay, for that matter, in connecting up to those systems. That money is used exclusively for the expansion or improvement or replacement of that same infrastructure and is not to be used or allowed to be used for General Fund type activities, which are, essentially, rate based -- or, excuse me, taxpayer based funds, this is sales tax, property taxes, that are used predominately to fund almost everything else in the city. All of the other seven departments and as the activities that are associated with -- with the good work that they do as well. So, very different between Enterprise Fund and General Fund and, likewise, the different set of sort of rules, if you will, from both an accounting and logistics and financing and infrastructure related standpoint. So, let's move into the performance highlights. Now, we have a number of things to share with you. First I want to remind you of the way that we would like to present these performance highlights. We are using the balance score card. The balance score card is an industry standard that has been used in a number of organizations to allow for the organization to align its business activities with the vision and strategy of its overall organizational mission and approve internal and external communication throughout the organization, as well as monitor organizational performance against the strategic goals and initiatives that the organization strives to achieve. Now, we have modified this by inserting the operational components. The typical balance score card only includes the four corners. We have added operations, because we are, essentially, aservice-based or operationally intensive based organization. We will take each of these independently Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 5 of 70 and talk with you about our accomplishments, as well as some of the challenges we see in each of those quadrants. On the financial front I wanted to share a couple of our benchmarks with you. First of all, we continue -- this is over the last three years. We continue to see increases in both sewer and water account growth. That is, of course, where the dominant amount of our revenues come from, the sale of our services. However, assessments, which are, essentially, hook-ups charges for either water and/or sewer, are also growing. But you will notice here that they are growing at a much more rapid pace than our -- our account growth. So, what we are seeing is from development a surge in revenues coming back into the city. We did a quick analysis and you might recall a couple years ago I gave you the statistics that we had about 2,200 vacant lots in the city that were already ready to build on, meaning all the water and sewer infrastructure was there represented over about 13 million, if I'm not mistaken, in uncollected assessments. The number is down to around 1,700 now and continuing to drop. And, of course, a lot of the development that's going on is not on already to build lots. We have got a lot of green field areas as well. So, we are certainly seeing a huge increase in the up tick of connections -- or connection revenues related to connections. Just so you know, our overall revenue this year, year to date as around the beginning of September is six percent, about what we -- what it was last year and last year it was about 11 percent -- or, excuse me, 15 percent over fiscal year 2011. Largely, again, dominated by the growth in the water and sewer hookups. Well, there is where we spend our money. We spend money largely in the Enterprise Fund on two principle areas if you will. Capital expenditures. This is for expanding the system or revitalizing the system, replacing the system, upgrading the system, those types of things. We dominate the spending in wastewater. It is a very expensive business that is not unique to Meridian. So, we spend about three million in water and about 5.3 million of our revenues for capital expenditures. When it comes to operating, we are including both personnel, operating, and maintenance costs, wastewater again continues to dominate. It has about 38 percent of our overall costs go to wastewater operations, about 29 percent go to water operations. Public Works admin, which includes both the administration arm, the business operations arm, inspection, environmental, as well, as engineering, comprises about 28 percent and I did say environmental. We pulled that out separately. You have asked for that to be pulled out in years past, so we continue to track that separately and that amount is, essentially, about four percent of our overall expenditure. We like to put our dashboard up. You have seen this a number of times. This dashboard describes a number of different industry matrix that we continue to track on an annual basis and these matrix are important, because they help us understand where we are on both a cost standpoint and a revenue standpoint and an overall operational standpoint with regard to reserves and operating income. So, I will walk you through the first very few. The red, yellow, green graphs at the very top there are cost of services. This compares our utility costs against other organizational utility costs around the country based upon American Public Works Association standards and what you will see is that Meridian in the water area has a very favorable -- meaning less than ten percent of our costs are in the industry standard of being the best in the country and about ten percent below industry average. The same is -- well, close to the same is true in wastewater. We are a little bit above the best, but certainly within the average -- much on the lower side of the average for industry standards with regard to cost of Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 6 of 70 services on a million gallons of wastewater treated. The four dials in the center essentially cover a number of different things. We will take the first two on the left and this is, essentially, operating ratios, which measures the operating revenues in our organization against our operating expenses and this particular value measures assistance capability of handling operational costs through our user rates and fees. So, we want to make sure that operational costs are being covered by rates. That's why we set up this organization or the system, if you will, several years ago and what you will see is we are doing very well here in both of those matrix where we are covering our operational costs with our operational revenues. If you move over to the graphs on the right, this is, essentially, our revenues versus expenses, which compares total revenues, as you might imagine, against total expenses. This summary is a representation of how the system is doing financially overall and what you see here is that essentially we are positive on revenues or collecting more revenues than we have expenses at the moment. There is a number of different reasons for that. If you have tracked the information that the Finance Department has put together you will know, again, that water and sewer assessments are outpacing even what we have predicted as a projected budget and that's because growth is moving much more quickly than it has in recent years. In addition to that, we are not able to keep pace with the capital construction that we need to be moving on and I will be talking to you about that in a little bit here. Capital construction is waning a bit. We are not able to keep pace with the demands that we have on the capital construction side. Moving down to the two black dials. There is one on either side of the two vertical bars. Those are, essentially, affordability indices and those, essentially, measure, according to the EPA matrix, they measure how affordable are our rates, both on the water side and the sewer side and I'm pleased to report they are extremely affordable when you use that matrix that the EPA has established for developments of new environmental regulations. The two middle dials, the vertical ones, just measure, essentially, what our ending fund balance is and, essentially, you will see that we are in good position there. This excludes our reserves. As you know we have about 13 and a half million in reserves that we have set aside for a number of different reserves and, then, the two dials on the bottom there, which talk about annual system reinvestment, also known as depreciation, you will see we are a little bit in the red there, but those dials are coming back. We have been watching this for several years. If you look at some of these -- if you look at these two indices over the past couple of years you will notice that the dial is coming back, which means that we are getting better and better at this. We are still not there, but we continue to work. We hope to see some improvements as well over this next year and hopefully get those in the green by the time we talk to you this time next year. We will talk about specifically some of the financial accomplishments we have had. As you know a number of months ago we had the wastewater division come in and share with you the good news regarding the collection system program. As you recall in 2009 you gave us approval for in-sourcing our collections, cleaning, and camera inspection program. Since 2009 if we had to pay a contractor for the same level of service over that same period of time it would have cost us 4.7 million dollars to do what we did for only 1.6 million. So, we are really pleased with that. It was a great financial decision for us and, not only that, we have been able to shorten the amount of time it takes us to get through the entire sewer system from around 15 years now down to four, which is a Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 7 of 70 much better -- much more closely matches the industry standards. So, that's good news. Our sensory jar sounds like -- unless we are talking with our laboratory staff sounds like quitexa boring thing. But, essentially, this is important, because what we have done at the wastewater treatment plant is we had used the laboratory staff to help us determine whether or not design improvements that we have conceived are actually going to have or make a difference that we thought they would before we begin construction and in this particular case the centrate jar testing that we did for evaluating the flock tank project evaluated that the project we had conceived, which was supposed to get us quite a bit of gains on wastewater treatment actually didn't produce any gains whatsoever. So, we saved over a million dollars by avoiding those costs and investing in that type of system simply by taking a few months and setting up some jar tests inside the laboratory with our own staff saved the city over a million dollars. So, we are really pleased with that. As you know we continue to also enhance our financial accountability. We conduct monthly and quarterly division reviews across the entire department and we have also been able to post significant improvements in a number of those different divisions. As I mentioned, operationally we have been able to achieve significant improvements over the last four to five years. I will share a little bit more on that as we go. Our capital construction, however, that indices is -- is not as strong this year as it was last year. We are falling behind essentially. We are not able to keep pace under -- on our capital construction program and inspection is also not able to keep pace as well and we will try and touch on that here in just a little bit also. Some of our challenges on the financial indices essentially revolve around project management improvements or capital improvement project performance. This, again, is being able to jump on projects sooner, being able to manage those projects from conception to construction much more efficiently and some of these -- some of the obstacles which prevent us from doing that have to do with process. Essentially what we have been doing as we have been digging more and more is we have found out that there are enormous processes that add significant time and compromise our ability effectively deliver projects on the conceived schedule that we have developed at the start of the year. So, we have to spend a lot more time improving processes, not only within our department and within our division, but between departments. A considerable amount of work still has to be done there. Depreciation although getting better as I mentioned, valuing those assets is important for us, even understanding what those assets are and where they are has been an enormous task. For the last four years we have been working on expanding the asset management program for the department and that has allowed us to track tens of thousands of assets that we didn't even track before. So, this allows us to, then, identify the type of asset, its longevity or life cycle and allows us to preventatively schedule its repair or replacement or maintenance before it breaks. That has allowed us to achieve significant efficiency gains across the department on a number of our infrastructure. So, lastly some of our challenges involving finances is rates. We want to make sure that our operational revenues keep pace with our operational costs and that seems to be forecasted out for the next five years to be fairly stable for us. We are pretty excited about that. But we do know that usage on the water side continues to reduce. If you were in the city ten years ago as a resident your average water consumption was around 14 to 15 thousand gallons per month. Today it's less than 8,000 which means, essentially, you're using less water, which is a Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 8 of 70 wonderful thing, unless you're entire program is based upon a certain consumption of water. So, while we love to see the conservation piece, conservation does impact the overall financial stability of the organization. Now, we don't see anything immediately that throws any concerns to us, but it's something that we have to continue to track to make sure that we are -- have long term stability in the financial capabilities of the organization. And, then, assessments versus rates. You know, we have been operating under a policy that growth pays for growth and that policy has worked well for us and what we see is that when growth surges we get a surge in revenues and that surge in revenues is, then, earmarked for other types of improvements, which takes us some time to get. So, you get this sort of bubble effect where you get a surge in development, a surge in assessment revenues and, than, an expension -- or expending of those revenues over time and you end up with these fluctuations and that's a cycle that we have just gone through with this recession. So, we are seeing again the growth of a lot of those funds as well. So, maintaining -- or keep an eye on that is important for us going forward. Operationally we have got a number of different improvements. Most of these -- or accomplishments (should say -- are just kind of statistical pieces of information. I don't know if you know, but in an -- in an annual year essentially we produce about 3.2 billion gallons of potable water, all without a single violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. We treated two billion gallons of wastewater in that same time frame and we have produced over 40 million gallons of reclaimed water that was recycled and reused within our own community and which we are pretty proud of. We have added a number of infrastructure lines and appurtenances that go with those lines. We have also developed an asset plan for our water division. As you know we have been doing asset management and inventory characterization on the wastewater side for some time. We have integrated that into water and through our phase one water asset plan have worked diligently to try to get key assets identified and input into the system. That plan should be finished -- phase one should be finished by February of this year, in which case -- after which we will start phase two. We have got tens of thousands of assets that are being added into the system and characterized and inventoried and so on and so forth. It's enormous work and we are doing it with the same resources that we have, you know, before we even started this work. We have made a number of different well improvements to the system. Some of them have been pilots that we have been testing our water treatment with. A number of them have been redrills or test wells or those sorts of things. The collections program, as I mentioned, was a huge operational accomplishment for us, because not only did it save us three million over the same time period, but we have been able to get through the entire collection symptom program in a much -- essentially a third of the time. We did, as you know, make pretreatment fees more equitable, so that that way when developers are bringing on -- or our builders are bringing on system improvements that they are not having to pay for inspections they don't need. There is many cases where a developer or a builder will come in and we have to do a review to determine that, yes, we don't need grease traps and we don't need other sorts of pretreatment types of things and, therefore, if you don't need that why would we charge you the inspection fee. So, we have separated out the inspection fees and the review fees, so that we get a little bit more equitable treatment there and, then, the supplemental specification, as you know, were recently updated. That was no small task. It took us two years to update the Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 9 of 70 supplemental. These are the kinds of projects that plague us, because it takes a lot of time, because they are very detailed and, essentially, we are working with the same resources that we have always had, so we kind of -- we just kind of plug away, you know, month after month after month until we get it done and it takes us a large amount of time at that pace to get those kinds of projects done. Some of the things that we also want to highlight as accomplishments are the wastewater treatment plant, the laboratory, the administration building and the RV dump, call currently on schedule or within a few weeks of being on scheduled. The RV dump, if you have been by lately, is nearing completion. We are excited about that. The wastewater treatment plant lab and admin buildings are all out, essentially, to bid and we hope to have -- we hope to have those numbers back and get some ground broken here in the not too distant future. As you know, the split corridor phase two project we celebrated the ribbon cutting the other day, 33 days done early and I don't know if people know this -- the majority of that project costwise -- or a substantial portion of it was water and sewer system improvement. We spent over two and a half million dollars upgrading the water and sewer systems in and around downtown in concert with ACHD's improvements regarding the split corridor. So, we are pretty excited about that. We did just finish the 8th Street project, despite the fact that you all might recall we had a tragedy in our community regarding one of our residents attacking one of our contractors and a firefighter and so on that was in the news. That did delay the project about a week. But, nevertheless, we were able to get the project completed on time with -- you know, when you consider that and it looks great and our goal is to get it done before the school start and we are pretty darn close. Franklin Road reconstruction, if you have been by there, we have got the final grading done, we have got asphalt being laid as recently as this morning. So, we hope that that will be done here over the next week or so. And, then, our RAS or return activated slug basin denitrification project is also underway and that will help us reduce costly chemical usage and total nitrogen concentrations that help improve phosphorus reductions at the wastewater treatment plant. There is a lot of things going on. We still have some challenges operationally. mentioned one of them and that is standardization of internal and cross-functional processes. This isn't just on the financial side of things; but this is on an operational side. We really need to take some time and figure out a lot of these processes and streamline those processes and get staff trained up on them. While we have been doing a lot of this, you can't imagine how many processes we have in the city to get things done and all of them have a purpose. But we do need to make sure that we can streamline them to the greatest degree that we can. We want to improve our project management capabilities both from a software management standpoint, as well as a staff standpoint. The Boise River TMDL, the total maximum daily load, which has huge implications for the Treasure Valley, is also critical to us and we are playing a lead role in that with DEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency, along with our consultants, because whatever goes into the TMDL is what we are going to get stuck with having to meet through our national pollution discharge elimination system permit, which is the next big challenge. As you know we are next in line with the EPA. It's been 14 years or so since we last talked with them seriously about our wastewater treatment plant permit. They are about ten years overdue from our last permit update and we are told that they will have our permit fully updated and in effect next year -- for a number of years now, Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 10 of 70 but we do have a permit rider and we have had them down from Seattle, along with the associate director from Region Ten EPA. We invited them down as well to take a tour of the treatment plant, see what we have been up to regarding our improvements, both operationally and technologically and infrastructure wise. We have also had leadership from the department of environmental quality come out as well. So, we are gearing up for that work. But that will be a challenge. Likewise, the wastewater treatment plant improvements of which there are many, we have presented to you a five year capital improvement plan, essentially our facility plan for the wastewater treatment plant. We are doing two -- or three or four of the major projects this last year and this year and we will continue for the next several years. The next thing that you will see from us is going to be the maintenance facility at the wastewater treatment plant. So, that's keeping -- keeping the plant running while it's under construction is another challenge for us and it's something we are up to, we have been doing it for about 20 years as the city has grown. Ordinance designed. Our ordinance and design guideline updates are also important. We have a number of ordinances that are antiquated and have actually caused us some trouble over the last year or so. One of them is site tours. The site tour ordinance and in connection shared services and encumbered mains along an operating boundary that we have no easement. So, therefore, we have no access right, unless you have certain authorities that we found out in some cases we thought we had, but don't. So, we have to make improvements along those lines. The design guidelines that we have been working on for some time is a major attempt to consolidate all design guidelines to put them into one document, not necessarily redo all of the guidelines, but, essentially, do a consolidation of many of the guidelines that already exist and continue to update and upgrade those that are needing to be updated. Capital construction and inspection are problematic for us. As I mentioned before, we can't keep pace at the moment. The number of capital projects that we have been working on and the cost and complexity of those projects have surged in the last two years and the same is true for inspection. Now, our inspection program in Public Works -- this is not building inspection, this is utility inspection -- is controlled by not only what we do publicly, but what is done privately. So, we have private inspection, meaning that we have developers that go around and install water and wastewater infrastructure that we end up getting ownership of -- they transfer over to us and so we want to make sure that it's built to the standard that the City of Meridian wants, so that when we operate it and maintain it we are doing so in the best -- getting it in the best shape and that we are financially responsible for this long term stewardship. So, those service levels that we are able to provide, although good, are not adequate for keeping pace with the surge in capital construction and in inspection. But to move to customers, we can talk about a number of different accomplishments. I won't go into great detail here. A lot of this has been shared with you throughout the year, but we did install a refill station along the Borup Trail near Tully Park. Essentially, this has been well received. It was a little bit of money that we were able to set aside to trial the use of tap water, like encouragement of tap water, instead of bottled water. We would like to see an expansion of this. I think we will be bringing that to you. I think, actually, maybe even already asked for that for next year. The Starts At Home animation is something that we have got a lot of favorable comments on in the lower left there. That's been phenomenal. We are in the middle right now of doing the next one and we have got Republic Services helping us Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 11 of 70 out. They will be doing wastewater -- or, excuse me, they will be doing solid waste for us, an animation that shows the Solid Waste Advisory Committee and the City of Meridian and the Republic Services is working on collaboratively, about 10,000 dollars from Republic Services is going into that animation, which we are proud and pleased with. We will also be working on the water animation here in the next couple of months as well, so -- we have also -- we talked about Meridian corridor phase two. Many of you may not have even known that we switched our emergency on-call number over to a new service that is with Streamlined Conversion and allows us much greater access and control of information between the city and our customers. That has been -- that's been a phenomenal transition for us and it's been seamless. If you didn't know about it we have done our job. Roaring Springs -- excuse me. I want to talk a little bit about the winter of 2013. Most of you may recall it was a very difficult winter. We had a number of residential -- residence, homes, and businesses out of water because of frozen pipes. We had over a hundred on-call -- or on-call call requests, meaning overtime requests for service restoration outside normal business hours, which taps our overtime budget for the year, but we were able to get everybody back in line within a reasonable time frame and we had heaters out in those meter pits and we did everything we could to get people up and running and we had a very very good customer response rate on our customer comment cards during that time period as well. So, we are really proud of that and I'm really proud of the water guys for, you know, taking time away from their family in helping our community get water restored. In addition, Roaring Springs is tickled pink, although they didn't get pick water from us this year, they got clear water. They are so happy with the water that we were able to provide them this year. As you know, some of our wells are plaqued with iron and manganese and we do what we can to try to keep those -- those constituents down in the system. This year we were able to shut some systems off because of our pressure zone and feed from much better quality water from much better wells and so we have placed a couple calls back and forth and coordinated the whole thing and orchestrated the delivery of some really great quality water and they were just tickled pink about that. And, then, the consumer confidence report, which is, essentially, our water quality report, as you know for the last couple of years we have been updating and upgrading that. We did receive an Association of Idaho Cities award for the quality and educational components of that particular CC&R. You may recall the old CC&R was a mimeographed single sheet of paper, double sided, and it gave you what the numbers were. Now our education campaign has got, essentially, a really nice web press booklet with a number of different activities and educational components to it that we have been able to produce at a lower cost. So, we are very pleased with that. We continue to provide leadership by awarding environmental excellence awards throughout the community recognizing the good deeds of businesses. We gave several of those out this year. We have done a number of different community educational outreaches. We have touched over -- close to a thousand people throughout our community with our different community education events. That doesn't include the Public Works Week. As you know one of our signature outreach events. This year we estimate about 700 or so -- 800 different folks that came out for Public Works Week Expo and that doesn't include the other different activities, like the tour -- the facility tour or the golf scramble and those other things. Whereby, as you know, we raised 5,000 dollars for the Meridian Food Bank. We gave right back to Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 12 of 70 them. In addition to several hundred pounds of canned food for them. So, that fundraising is important to the 25 staff and the department as well. Some of our challenges our customerwise include source water quality improvements. Trying to dial into water quality improvements has been a challenge for us and we are up to the task, but we are going slow and we want to make sure that the improvements we make are going to be lasting improvements and are good -- and that we are being good financial stewards of the resources we are using to bring about those improvements. The wastewater system odor control project is -- we are trying to get a little bit more steam behind that. As you know it's got a couple developments now. Very near the wastewater treatment plant. And despite the fact that we have done what we could zoningwise to preserve and protect the area around the wastewater water treatment plant, the areas that did not have the industrial zoning are getting residential developments in and, of course, we can't control where the wind blows. So, we do have some challenges there as we try to get those odor improvement projects turned more quickly. Communications. Also a challenge for us. We do -- we do engineering and operations, we are not communications people. So, it's been nice to have Natalie join the city and we have been using a lot of her time. Unfortunately, we don't get all of her time, so we do still struggle with getting the education and outreach components of our department out. We don't do any social media. We have been doing a little bit on the animation video. Our website is antiquated and actually needs a big overall. But those are the kinds of things that, you know, essentially we are not all that versed on. As you know, the Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District we have been working with, signed the agreement last week. This is going to be an operational challenge for us, bringing on about a thousand new residents or about 300 new accounts and providing them both water and sewer and getting them transitioned into the city, again, if they choose at the November ballot to come into the City of Meridian. Of course, if they choose not to do that everything stays the status quo. So, we don't know how that's going to turn out just yet. There are some dig line improvements that are on the way I won't bore you with, except essentially to say that dig line has been a challenge for us on two fronts. One, keeping pace with a number of big line tickets has been a real challenge for us. We are now up to about 500 dig line tickets per month, which is -- which is enormous for one staff person to try to handle in one month's time. So, you do the math. Thirty days, 500 tickets -- we just can't keep pace with that. In addition, we have some legislative changes to dig line, which may further complicate our ability to keep pace on that front. But we don't know how that's going to shake out just yet. And, then, customer care database. We are trying to develop a database where we track concerns from different customers and, then, GPS those concerns into different areas to allow us to better respond predictably to particular concerns that the community might have. For example, brown water quality and other sorts of calls are things that are the kind data we want to track, so that we can be more prescriptive about where we focus our time and attention on the improvement front in keeping customers happy. The next section is on employees and this has been a struggle for us. We are having -- this is probably an area that we need to spend considerably more time on on a number of different fronts. We do have several accomplishments we want to share with you. Number one, we did do a citywide employee satisfaction survey this year. We did that citywide. Public Works did participate in that. But we took it a step further in the Public Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 13 of 70 Works Department by providing a supplemental survey, such as staff were asked to fill out. It asked other questions, which we wanted to get at identifying satisfaction -- job satisfaction and personal and professional growth and a number of different fronts. So, we did do the supplemental survey. We did also convene focus groups that came out of the survey to validate the statistical information that we received, as well as to get at root cause analysis for lifestyle says a certain way about certain things. About 22 percent of the entire department were asked to serve as a focus group member. And, then, we had several communications and educational opportunities through that work. That work is still ongoing. We are trying to develop an action plan with division managers on how we are going to approach the employee satisfaction and elevate improvement in certain areas. I will share those results those with you in just a moment. We also provided an employee safety assessment and training this year. We audited the -- the Public Works Department from a safety perspective in all sectors of the department and now we have a whole list of things that we should probably be looking at and be attentive to and is that being -- that is being worked into our overall action plan to elevate the awareness and the safety training of our staff. Some of us participate on the compensation plan committee and I will talk a little bit more about that. Mr. Nary's leadership has been instrumental in helping the committee move forward on those fronts. But the compensation plan committee did have important work that I think is going to positively impact the Public Works Department and I will share -- again, Iwill get to that here in just a minute. We developed also a skill and capability assessment whereby we now are working towards identifying the skills and capabilities of each staff person in the department and, then, identifying where we need their skills and capabilities to do -- or to be, so that we can develop a gap analysis and develop individual training plans, so that we tailor our training and not just give blanket training that people may or may not need or find useful, we wanted to specify the types of training that they need in our organization, so it truly benefits the position and, therefore, the organization. For that reason we have developed also a training tracker database with IT staff. They have been instrumental in helping us put together this tracker database. This helps us track CVUs and also professional credentialing credits and a number of different types of professional credentials. We have been sometimes on the heel or the backside of knowing when we actually need to have certain staff credentials, because we haven't updated with -- or kept track of the credentialing. So, that will help us with that. And, then, the workload analysis -- this is kind of making sure that we have the right resources in the right places in the organization, because that's something we have been focused on as well. A lot of that work has been done, but there is still a little bit more work to do in that area. For award and recognitionwise we have come a long way and we have had a number of different awards that have been bestowed upon the city and our staff I wanted to share with you. Laurelei Ball received the laboratory analysts excellence award and continues to be an outstanding member in our Public Works Department. We had about a quarter of the employee of the year awards go to Public Works staff this year, which was great. We are very excited about that. From a certification standpoint about three percent of the entire Public Works staff credentialed up, which was great. And, then, from a Public Works award or a recognition standpoint, we have nearly half of our entire department recognized for good works over this last year. Many from a team perspective and many from an individual perspective as well. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 14 of 70 So, we are doing better I think in recognizing staff and trying to reward them appropriately, but there is still a lot more we could be doing. In-house wise from a promotional perspective we have had about ten percent of our staff in the Public Works Department move up or be promoted, which is a great number. I don't even think many in our own department are aware at how often we do look at staff internally. So, that -- we are pretty pleased with that number, too. Ten percent moving up into higher level positions is a great number for us. It's probably the highest it's been in five years. But there are a number of challenges that we are up against on the employee front. Many of them have to do with talent management. Recruitment, retention, discussion planning, are all areas that we need to work and spend more time on. It takes us an average of about six months to hire somebody once we have an available vacancy. A lot of this is process driven. A lot of it is just finding the right person. We still have positions that have been open for eight or ten months that we just can't find the right person and we are not trying to be too picky, but we definitely want to make sure that if we hire the right person that that person will be happy and stick around and that we don't have to fill that position in year or two or three later. Retention. We have a ten percent turnover rate in the Public Works Department. Some of this is voluntary and some of it's involuntary. I won't go into that level of detail at this point. Other than to say that that retention number is higher than we would like to see it. We like to see it more in line between four and five percent. So, we'd like to cut that in half. But there is a lot of work that goes into lowering that number. For example, training and performance evaluation and coaching and mentoring and those sorts of things. Things that we are just -- we just are finding that we have two little time to spend on, but that we know is very very important for the success our staff. Succession planning in our department is essentially inadequate, although I did share with you the fact that we have a ten percent in-house promotion rate, I can't tell you that it's ten percent because of anything we necessarily did on our own as a department leadership. It just happened to work out that way and -- and I wish I wasn't saying that to you, but that is the case. Also workforce development, whether it's -- I mean we have improved quite a bit on training, but as far as our performance improvements go, that's all we do. We send people off to training, they go get trained, and we expect them to come back and be smarter and brighter and more assertive and we don't really follow up. I mean we are not -- we are not spending the time to circle around, because there isn't enough time to do that. We are still focused on the day to day. So, it's been a challenge for us. Employee safety with our audit has identified that there are a number of things we need to work on. I'm pleased to say that about 99 percent or 98 percent of the entire department has gone through the eight hour OSHA safety training course in the last month and a half. We have two more hours to receive our ten hour certification as a department and we brought in an OSHA trainer to help us with that and we are still trying to be very attentive to improving that -- the overall safety and health of our department. So, we need to implement the safety audit findings. That's going to be a challenge for us. And we need to modify our safety training program and staff and also get into better coordination of the various types of training that we need to bring in- house. The employee satisfaction. This is an area that I mentioned I was going to save a couple of statistics for you. Employee satisfaction is waning in the department. I will tell you that. It's waning for a number of different reasons. Essentially when we did our Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 15 of 70 Public Works survey and -- supplemental survey I should say -- we found out there were a couple of teams departmentwide that were -- that are challenging us as a department and those things include essentially pay and benefits, no opportunity for advancement and the feeling that there are several manage challenges -- that managers don't have the time and in some cases even the skills to manage. That's been a challenge for us, because we really -- we need to rely on our management staff to oversee our technical, administrative, and professional and operational staff to make sure that things are getting done when they need to get done in the way that they need to be done. Then as I mentioned, the -- or I don't think I did mention. That workload was stress and the work live balance is also a challenge. If you look at the way the department is going and what's happening in and around our community, every single matrix is on the way up, whether it is essentially number of projects or if it is number of assessment or type of assessment or water accounts or sewer accounts or building permits or whatever it is, all our indices are going up. In the last five years alone the number of water and sewer accounts added to this department has grown by almost 19 percent. The number of staff have grown at less then five. So, even though those aren't aone-to-one comparison, I just throw that out to show you that in certain areas of our department we are struggling and that struggle has created, essentially, an enormous amount of stress for certain members of the Public Works Department. In fact, our survey, I'm sad to report, did show that, essentially -- let me make sure I get the number for you. It's, essentially, as high as 50 percent of some divisions felt extremely overwhelmed in the department, unable to keep up, and that they felt that the organization was understaffed and that it's too lean and that the current workload is not sustainable with the resources that we have. Those are comments straight out of our supplemental survey. So, we are trying to remedy this. This problem isn't widespread, but it is certainly a challenge in certain areas of our organization. So, that's going to be a challenge for us as we move forward. As you know, the Public Works Department has focused extensively on improving its efficiency over the last four years. You don't get a 20 percent improvement over four years in your personnel, operations, and maintenance components sectors of your organization without really spending some time there turning over every rock and grabbing every low hanging fruit you can. But we have grabbed almost all the low hanging fruit we can and, unfortunately, I'm sad to say that as we have improved our efficiencies we have compromised, we will be able to do more -- more quantity of work, but as that quantity of work increases the quality of our work is sometimes challenged. As you know overachievement in efficiency can lead to errors or mistakes or omissions and ultimately can increase an organizational -- organizations risk and liability and not to mention undermine the very efficiencies gained by necessitating rework and we are doing a lot of rework in certain areas of our department. We are doing things over and we are redoing them at a greater pace than they should be, because we haven't -- we haven't the time to do them right the first time. So, I'm just saying you can do it right the first time or you can do it over and we find, unfortunately, in many cases we are doing it over more than we like to see. But the problem that we have is easily solvable. Although we do have enormous work, we do have resources in the department. We are not resources constrained from a financial standpoint. We are not constrained from a work standpoint. There is plenty of projects. We are constrained from a staffing standpoint. So, what we need to do is we need to, Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 16 of 70 essentially, balance those resources, so that our financial resources, the work required of our staff and our staff are all on par and that's what our challenge is over this next -- next year. So, the last area of strategy -- and I will go through this pretty quickly. Our accomplishments in the strategy score card, essentially, are improved long-term emphasis with regard to planning. The SKADA master plan, the five year CIP plans, and even after predicting out ten years from a capital standpoint are all important characteristics of getting ahead of growth and have focused on these types of plans and we really haven't focused a whole lot on the staffing plans that need to go with that. Five year rate forecasting, we are still continuing to do that. We continue to look in good shape on that front. Our strategic plan for Public Works has been updated this year. I'm pleased to report that about 25 percent of all the objectives that we set out to achieve have been achieved and 50 percent are in process. We are a little bit further behind than we wanted to be, but we are still making good progress there. Well, we did get called in to do a water shortage contingency plan on short notice this year. I want to appreciate the leadership of our liaison Charlie Rountree for helping us through that, giving us a lot of insights and input to the improvements of the water shortage contingency plan. That's been very good. We were luck -- fortunate this year that, essentially, the day we asked people to voluntarily assist us in reducing their water consumption for the month of September, the skies didn't part, they did the opposite, and it started to rain and get cold. So, we are fortunate from that perspective and we have seen essentially no impacts in the water system as a result. We did take a lot of conscious effort. We worked with the Fire Department, the Parks Department, and a number of other departments to curb water use, which I want to thank them for their assistance in that. All of that helps. Our national pollution discharge elimination system permitting and strategy meetings have been going well. We have been able to get time with leadership at EPA, as well as DEQ and I think that's making a significant difference in the way they look at our program and our projects and our services from a wastewater perspective. I have been told by the associate director that she will do her very best to make sure that our reclaimed water program isn't compromised with this new permit and that's very important to us as you know. So, I appreciate that. Without those kinds of strategic opportunistic meetings and conversations you kind of get what you're stuck with. So, we are being very active on that front. And as you know, we have done quite a bit of proactive legislative work. We have kind of been a silent leader, but we have gained a lot of respect by a number of different organizations in and around the state with regard to our legislative work. We still need to continue focusing strategically on a number of different areas. Our water asset management plan, which talked about finishing phase one and getting to phase two, so that we can get all of our water assets incorporated into the system, tracked, monitored and, then, eventually scheduled for either repair or replacement or upgrade. Boise River outfall relocation and repair. We have been trying to upgrade the outfall that we have for the Boise River to give us the flexibility that we may need in the event that we are pushed to the Boise River outfall. As you know, all of our discharge goes to Five Mile Creek at the moment. So, we have been -- we have got to focus on doing those kind of upgrades. The encumbered means and shared sewer services, you know, getting mains out of people's backyards and getting them into easements or into right of ways where we have access to them, getting the shared services, issues, particularly in downtown fixed, Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 17 of 70 so that we have access and we can actually serve properties better is important for us. When you have shared services and one person doesn't take care of their system and backs up the neighbor's services, that creates a problem for us in the overall system management. Establishing new Council relationships, it's going to be important for us. We are going to get, you know, three new Council members this year, possibly more, and we want to make sure that we spend time with our new Council members and we update them and educate them on what we are doing in Public Works and that's going to be a considerable effort I'm sure not just on myself and my leadership team, but by many other departments throughout the city. Legislatively we still have a lot of work to do. That's sort of a bunch of work that's important, but just turns every year and the legislative calendar for us keeps getting longer and longer. It used to be that we would only work during the legislative season, now we are working with it further to get to further out ahead on certain legislative issues. So, that's important. South Meridian planning. That's critical. Figuring out how we are going to plan and service the south Meridian area with the city of Kuna and the Ada County all sort. of working together. That's something we still have to continue to work on. Reuse program expansion. As you know we would like to get to the golf course as soon as we can, but we just don't feel comfortable exacting the resources to get there until the EPA gives us the go ahead that the reclaimed water program won't be compromised in our new permit. So, we are working really hard on that one. And, then, our strategic plan progress, we want to make sure that we continue to be diligent about the improvement strategically that we are doing to move the department forward. So, other areas that we want to focus on is improving our services. We'd like to move to a flex net reading system. We are still waiting for the technology to sort of catch up and be -- be something that is as useful as we hope it would be. This is automatic meter reading, if you will. City wide irrigation system. We have got a project underway right now to evaluate whether or not it makes sense for us to move to a system like the city of Nampa has where we have our own irrigation systems that we partner with Nampa-Meridian and Settlers on. Water treatment for the potable water side continue to be something that's important for us and getting the wells that have the most iron and manganese in them some treatment, so that we can reduce those concentrations in the lines and reduced ground water is important for us. Community awareness. I won't list all of those things, but, essentially, we really want to continue to step it up in our community awareness efforts. We have done a lot of great things, but there is so much more to do. Finally, I think some people know what Public Works is and that's exciting for us. We want to make sure a lot more know what it is and know what it's about and what it means to them and ultimately help get -- gain their support for the things that we do in our community that truly impact the quality of life of every single resident in our community. And, then, finally, giving back to our community, we continue to partner with the Meridian Food Bank. We value that partnership and we value the leadership there to give back to our -- our own record in our own community and so we are very -- we are very excited to continue our efforts that way and I want to thank the staff for their time and effort on doing just that. So, that's it for now. I mean we could go and on. I'm sure you know that. There is a lot to cover. It's a big department. But I did want to give you the highlights and I will stand for any questions that you might have. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 18 of 70 De Weerd: Thank you, Tom. Council, any questions? Bird: I have none. Just a very nice report, Tom. Appreciate it. Rountree: Madam Mayor, no questions. Tom, again, an outstanding report. All of the challenges aside, you guys have made major accomplishments and -- and efficiencies in the department that have really benefited all of us and our community and I appreciate that and I thank you all out there in the audience, you have done a great job over the years and this past year as well. We did indicate that some of your challenges -- a good share of your challenges are employee based and you and I have talked about that and I think that that's a subject that we need to address, because there are some areas that are critical for the quality of our Public Works facility that we need some extra help in inspections and big line and some of those areas where we need some specific technical folks and we also need to give our managers an opportunity to managed. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I wrote down some comments that you made during -- during your presentation and it's clear there are some -- as Councilman Rountree pointed out, some areas that you need some assistance on in terms of having -- having employee support and whatnot and that's something that we definitely have to work on and I'm assuming will be part of the budget proposal for next year moving forward and looking for opportunities to find ways to make it work in the meantime, which I know you're doing, but it can be tough, but do appreciate the work everyone does, because everyone is doing a good job, but it does add up over time and makes it difficult for folks. Barry: Madam Mayor, if I will, I appreciate Councilman Rountree's comments, as well as Councilman Hoaglun's comments. We -- we have struggled with this. As you know our -- if we have to wait for certain modifications for the budget cycle we are a year out and I don't think in some areas of our organization we can -- we can sustain that kind of wait. Councilman Rountree and I have talked about certain areas of the department where we may want to focus a little bit more quickly on rectifying and he mentioned a few of them. Inspection. Engineering is another. And dig line is another. So, I'm working on a proposal and I'm going to share that with both the Mayor and Councilman Rountree, our liaison, here over the next several weeks to see if we can't accelerate a correction, if you will, in certain areas of the organization and, then, put off those other resources that we might need upcoming to the budget process, which would allow for a little bit more time to study and get comfortable with those particular resources. But I'm afraid that we are not going to be able to wait that long for -- for all the corrections, if you know what I mean. Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, Tom, yeah, I would be interested in listening to what options are available out there to rectify the situation sooner as opposed to later. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 19 of 70 Barry: Great. Thank you. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I would just like to say that that area, personnel and in all the areas, appreciate how much you and your staff do the look forward and see what needs to be done. A lot of things that have been identify as needing to be done a long time ago nobody was even looking at. So, when you bring something up that's a-challenge kudos to you and your staff for even recognizing that this is coming and I look forward -- you always manage to come up with some pretty good solutions as well and I look forward to discussing those. But you and your staff are just amazing for being able to look ahead and say here is something we need to plan for and look out for and be ready for, so that helps. Barry: Thank you. De Weerd: Well, certainly there is a lot of information in that presentation. Public Works is a very complex organization and the Enterprise Fund supports itself. We appreciate all the efficiencies and certainly the milestones that you all have been able to accomplish over this last year and it is recognized the number of challenges and constraints that you are operating within. So, certainly kudos to you all. You have got to deal with a couple of high profile projects that did come in under time and certainly at budget. That is a big deal. And I know those 33 days that we were able to open the Meridian Road early meant a lot to the community and certainly the residents and businesses that are along that corridor. So, I know that we recognized three people at the ceremony, but there was a huge team behind all of that. So, hats off to all of you. Tom has been an advocate for the divisions within Public Works and -- and staffing and salary and benefits have been among those and have -- has been talking with Councilman Rountree and myself about what is needed to get you not only the training that he also highlighted, but some relief. We can't measure it only by account growth. We realize that. It's a hard thing to get your arms around. We appreciate the focus groups that spent time to really drill down into what some of those influences are and a plan is being put together to -- to, again, move forward. This Council has worked with all of our departments and really establishing our base of trust in terms of the performance based budgeting that we asked you to do and a lot of that we -- these kind of questions unanswered when you get to the budget hearings. I think that this Council will -- will respond when they get the plan and give you the tools that -- the training and the additional manpower relief that -- that you are hoping for. So, do know that the team that has been trying to digest the feedback that they got from the staff and the focus groups as well, they will bringing something forward and I just appreciate everyone who has put their heads together to -- to look holistically at the departments and making it a climate that you all look forward to coming to work in. It's going to take all of us working together to assure that we do get the resources to you that you need. But we Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 20 of 70 appreciate all of you. We thank you and I think you know -- especially during Public Works Week, but every day when we flush our toilets and turn on the faucet that what you do is valued, appreciated, and probably under recognized in terms of giving you kudos often enough that -- hats off to you, thank you for all you do, and certainly, Tom, thank you for doing this in less than an hour and I didn't count your slides, but we did notice a reduction in that, too. Barry: Great. Thank you. Just for that I'm going to make my next presentation twice as long. No, I appreciate very much your support and your guidance and leadership. You have been a great Council and certainly, Mayor, you have been phenomenal to work with as well and I think that's the reason that our employees, not just in Public Works, but city wide work so darn hard, because we have such great leadership in the city and we all want to play on that team and be a part of it and it's just very rewarding when we can pull off the kinds of fetes that we have been able to pull off, because it's certainly a team achievement. So, we are very grateful for all that you do for us and for your leadership and look forward to counting on that in the future. De Weerd: Thank you. Barry: Thank you. Public Works: Meridian Water Conservation Plan Update De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-B is also under Public Works and, Mollie, it's nice having you here. Mangerich: Thank you. And thank you very much for those kind words to both our leadership and staff. We really appreciate that. So, I am here today to provide an update regarding our Meridian Water Conservation Plan. You haven't heard from us since 2011 when you adopted the plan for us, which we are most grateful. Here is the data. While Tom did say that we are reducing the per capita water usage throughout the City of Meridian, we are experiencing an overall trend upwards in the water demand throughout the city. Since 2011 we have seen a six percent growth in the number of water accounts that we provide service to. Also since 2011 we have seen a daily demand up by one million gallons per day to all of our customers. So, commercial and residential and industrial. We have added two wells to our system and added 70 lines to our all preexisting 400 miles of distribution lines. In the development of our water conservation plan we had a very active working group that identified the categories that you're looking at on your screen in which there are water conservation opportunities that could occur. Following this table of objectives and goals and action plans there was a consistent opinion among the members of this work group that the best conversation actions which could be employed should be conducted through education, outreach, and setting an example through city leadership, rather than developing ordinances or forcing results for customers to reduce consumption. In regards to the actions that we have taken to date for water conservation, one of the things that we have done is we have recently begun a water filter and aquifer conditioning project. Through our water Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 21 of 70 we currently flush an average of 16 to 20 million gallons annually to flush out the manganese and iron, that brown water that is such a nuisance in some of our systems. So, through our water division and engineering folks we are developing a water filter and aquifer conditioning project aimed to reduce that iron and manganese out of our source water. For this project we will pump our higher quality water wells into the distribution system and recharge it back into the aquifer through our high performing wells in the hopes of recovering that water with a better ratio and yield and a higher quality of water as well. Was conservation actions we have also done through our city practices. In fact, most recently -- in fact, this last September -- last month we had the third reading for the adoption of the 2009 Idaho State Plumbing Code, which includes in it the 2009 Uniform Plumbing Code. This has language in it that enhances water efficiency both in plumbing fixtures in both residential and commercial facilities. This will undoubtedly make a change in our water consumption in the future. Activities to date. Also within the conservation plan we have done an extensive amount of education and outreach. This year we are most proud of the community confidence report that our water division pulled out, professionally done, wonderful materials that is entirely readable and also included conservation efforts and source water protection information of this well. All three work together to provide a utility that supplies us clean and ample water. We delivered this year CCR report to over 20,000 people and we are looking at a digital version to include next year. We conducted 17 out reach events and, yes, Tom over 3,600 people that have contact here within our community. From schools to library presentations the larger community events, our environmental division and other staff within our department tried to staff the table when feasible to talk about the services that we provide our rate payers. People are always so interested to learn about our water resources, where it comes from, how to protect it and how to conserve it. As well this year we were very fortunate to receive additional staff support with an administrative assistant to help in both the construction and environmental divisions. She comes packed with a lot of talents and capability has been able to greatly improve the quality of information that's on our website within the environmental division. Incentive items are those that we can, when appropriate, give out to those individuals within our community who show a keen interest in using them. A particular target of our out reach for water conservation items such as hose timers, tower timers and water miser garden nozzles are those who use potable water to use for their irrigation. They have the most to gain by reducing the use of potable water to their irrigation system. Our Class A recycled water plays an essential role in water conservation in our city. Substituting our Class A recycled water for potable is a successful way to conserve water and meet also the pending new requirements while maintaining -- remaining within our wastewater treatment facility capacity and MPDS flow minute. Water -- winter water demand. This is significant. Winter water demand in our city is 148 million gallons per month, while summertime demand is 318 million gallons per month. That summer irrigation activity increases demand by about 179 million gallons per month. By utilizing reclaimed water, such as did within our Ten Mile interchange, has proven to be a remarkable reduction in the use of our potable water in providing those essential services. Our parks department can use up to a quarter million gallons per day at our Heroes Park during the hot summer dry months. Fast Eddy's also irrigates their irrigation and has a total usage for the last one and a half years of over two million gallons of our Class A Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 22 of 70 reclaimed water at their facility. In the Ten Mile interchange we calibrated on those about 16 acres of landscaping about 748,000 gallons of water have been helped to develop that. You know, this year, as Tom said, we had the opportunity to practice to communicate water conservation to our -- our rate users. Late this summer our irrigation districts that serve the Meridian area communicated to us that their water would be shutting off early at the beginning of September. With the help of our director and our engineering Warren Stewart we pulled together a work group and we decided to address this problem and develop a communications plan which Tom alluded to. The crux is is if a large number of homeowners associations who currently receive the inexpensive surface water for their pressurized irrigation chose to convert to our potable water we would have a lot of demand already, as you will see in the next slide, our peak demand areas within our community. It is essential that we remain able to provide peak demand water that diurnal effect that you're seeing in the grass, as well as providing sufficient water to provide for fire services. So, what we did is we developed a water supply contingency plan. We had all the people at the table that needed to be. We recognized that we had about four weeks to communicate some water conservation voluntary efforts to our community in which they would want to probably keep continue irrigating. So, through a letter that Tom Barry put out through our utility billing services, we explained the potential threat to our existing system. We asked for a voluntary reduction in their daily water use. We suggested that alternate day watering occur through our homeowners associations and we asked that people not water during our peak demand time, so that we could still provide that essential flow to both our existing customer base and demand and also fire suppression. We fielded about 40 calls as a result of that letter with the water conservation tips, coupled with information to our other department, organizations such as our irrigation departments, our school districts, and to other leadership and citizens and so of the 40 phone calls we fielded I would say that all of them ended up in a positive and learning experience. Where does your water come from. Better communication between the homeowners association, their respective property management companies, and the irrigation districts and the departments. So, look forward to this next year. We will be growing ordinances that will mature and support our water contingency plan. We have a tiered approach to that and we will be ready coming into a potentially nondrought season next year, but you never know. Looking forward -- I think I passed one. Into the future we are looking at exploring some collaboration with Idaho -- with United Water of Idaho on collaborating on water supply planning for the region and water resources assessment. We also want to look at considering implementing a pilot project. Many software services are out there that transform our individual account meter reading data into an effective, customized water conservation and customer engagement program. As well this year we are going to be doing graphics animation on our water division and we will be able to address that brown water problem within that animation, as well as protecting our source water and how to conserve both at home at business. Another nugget of information that came out as a result of fielding our calls is that for the most part people do not recognize where we receive our drinking water from and how that differs from the surface water that provides the pressurized irrigation. We will be developing educational materials, table top displays, and such and probably integrating into our interpretive center at our wastewater treatment facility, so that we develop a higher level Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 23 of 70 of literacy about the water resources that we do have within this wonderful Treasure Valley. We also have within our approved water conservation plan ahalf-time person that we will look to the fiscal school year as to when it would be appropriate to develop that additional resource staffing within our department. This concludes my presentation. If there is any questions I would be happy to answer them. De Weerd: Thank you, Mollie. Mangerich: You're welcome De Weerd: Council, any questions? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I thank you very much for that report. Very enlightening and very positive. The preparation for the irrigation provider around to shut their system off I thought was excellent foresight and the materials that were sent out I thought were very helpful. Do we have any knowledge of once people were starting to use our potable water for their subdivision irrigation did we -- did we get enough cooperation out of the general public and how close did we come to having low water pressures on -- Mangerich: Well, I can let Dennis respond to the actual physical demand if there were charges, but to answer your question about cooperation other stakeholders, actually, will say that Nampa-Meridian Irrigation District communicated very well to our surface water administrator to let us know when homeowners associations would be contacting the water division to be able to switch. So, we had a good sense of communication of how many. I think there was about 12 that converted that we know of to potable. As to demand -- effect on demand -- Teller: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, our affect this year that we noticed were little to none. We were completely prepared, everyone coming into work, checking our services and our demand and luckily with the rain and the weather that we got everything was checked out as normal and all is well. De Weerd: Yeah. I was going to say that God stepped in. Zaremba: Well, actually, I was going to make a second remark about that and that is to appreciate the cooperation not only among divisions within Public Works, but departments throughout the city. My understanding is that when we had the torrential rains for a short while there we were at risk of exceeding our permit for wastewater treatment and let me say before anybody gets upset about that, our permit is, like Tom said, 12 or 14 years old and we have probably doubled the capacity that our permit allows us to use. So, it's never an issue of whether the wastewater treatment plant is overwhelmed and unsafe, it's -- it's a paperwork problem if we exceed what our permit Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 24 of 70 said we could do ten years ago. But I am aware that when that event happened and when we realized that we were going to be coming close to exceeding that permit when the other departments like the parts department jumped in and I understand there were people at wastewater treatment there 24 hours a day and Parks Department there 24 hours a day and maybe the Fire Department and other people, that were drawing off reclaimed water and putting as much of it on the parks as they could without flooding the parks and helping us manage those limits and a lot of people put a lot of work in I think for three or four days straight in several of our departments. I know for sure Parks Department contributed to that and I know Public Works was doing it as well and I just wanted to appreciate the cooperation that went on and the creative thinking about what do we do with all this extra water. It's going to -- going to cause a legal problem, not a safety problem necessarily, but a legal problem and all the cooperation that went on to avoid that I just want to thank everybody for. Teller: Yes. Thank you for that recognition. It was definitely a combined effort and my hat's off to Tracy and his team, because that was a hard time and just something we can't control. So, I know that parks and water and everyone stepped up to do what we could and thank you for that. Zaremba: Thanks. Mangerich: And also staff at our wastewater treatment department they did -- they were there at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and there until late at night and we exceedance, I will underscore your words, Councilman Zaremba, was in paperwork only. Never once did our wastewater treatment plant allow any illicit discharge into our Five Mile Creek. They processed that exactly correctly. They did a fabulous job and my hat's off to the -- the ability of the wastewater treatment plant team. De Weerd: And I would recognize certainly the conservation efforts and being prepared for the potential of what the early cutoff of our pressurized irrigation districts put us in, but also the response of our wastewater treatment plant personnel, our administrators in engineering -- and also in our parks department how -- all hands-on deck, because that was -- that was amajor -- major issue and you did well. So, thank you so much. We appreciate all your efforts. Mangerich: Thank you. C. Parks and Recreation ®epartment: ®iscussion on Future ®og Park De Weerd: Dennis, anything you wanted to add further? Okay. Okay.. Item 7-C is under our Parks Department. Barton: Good afternoon, Mayor and Members of the Council. Bringing forward a dog park discussion this afternoon. As you know, our future -- our current dog park that's located next to the police department will soon be lost to a construction project, so we Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 25 of 70 are bringing forward what we feel are three viable options for discussion. We have listed pros and cons and mapped the different sites and we are looking for some guidance and direction. The current dog park at 1411 East Watertower next to the police department will be lost soon. We don't know exactly when. Even at best this site was almost temporary. It was kind of a victim of its own success in popularity and went through a lot of wear and tear and we reduced hours, so part of this discussion in choosing another site we think is adding to the space of it. You know, we think that this half acre or three-quarters of an acre would be better served if it was in the -- in the three to four acre range, something like that. So, that's kind of what we are looking at. We will just jump right into the -- the sites that we feel are viable options that are on the table for discussion. The first site is out on Cherry Lane. It's where the Lions Club rodeo is and most of the site is currently being farmed and there is some definite pros and cons to this. The pros are really unlimited space. I mean it hasn't been master planned yet. We have a total of 50 acres we could go anywhere from five to ten acres on this site. Actually have a water feature as part of an amenity for dogs. One of the -- one of the pros to this is that it is in a rural area, so as far as a fit we wouldn't be imposing on anybody right now. Some of the cons to this -- and they are -- we feel they are significant and there is currently no infrastructure to the site. Water. Sewer. Parking. Off-site improvements with sidewalks, all that kind of stuff. It's -- .it's still located in the county. The park hasn't been master planned yet. We don't know what the future holds for the remainder of that if a dog park were to go in here and one of the -- one of the drawbacks to this site is it's not centrally located. So, it's on the edge of our area of impact at the moment and, therefore, an inconvenience for people on the other side of town to access. So, some pros, some cons to that site. That's option number one. Option number two is the remainder of the property that's located adjacent to the maintenance facility and, then, again, with this one there is some -- there is some pros and some definite cons. You know, one of the pros, as with the Borup property, there would be no impact to the surrounding neighbor. It's currently located in an industrial area. I don't think the dogs are going to bother any neighbors at this site. Services and off-site improvements are in place. We have -- we have water and sewer brought in that were stubbed over as part of the new maintenance facility construction, sidewalk -- curb, gutter, sidewalk is all in place. Some of the cons. The site -- if you -- if you see there is a remainder of almost two and a half acres, but we would -- we would require that a landscape buffer be put around -- around this area if it were fenced off, even though it's a park we would add some fencing to it and the setbacks I think are in the 15 to 20 foot range around Lanark and -- both Locust Grove and Lanark. So, that in itself is going to reduce the amount of available space on this site. One of the other cons is we are still -- there has been some discussion about locating a field house on this area of this property and some of the infrastructure that was added in was added in with the -- with the idea that the field house could potentially end up here. So, a dog park would -- would eliminate that possibility. I mean it would, you know, just kind of -- it complicates the discussion a little bit. It could become temporary and, then, move when the field house goes in and we are not really sure how that plays into it and, then, one of the other ones is just lack of available parking. There is some parking on street and we would have to add some parking places to that. So, option number two. Definitely some pros and cons with that that stand out. The third option -- and we feel that this is Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 26 of 70 a preferred option -- is the undeveloped portion of Storey Park. With this there is -- there is some pros and cons that go along with this portion. The pros -- and we feel that it would be appropriate use with -- with no impact to the surrounding neighborhood. There is a component to all of this and it's the land swap that's -- that we are currently negotiating with the Meridian dairy show board and the speedway to gain access out onto Watertower. If we go back to the map. We currently own the upper portion of the land all the way to the edge of the speedway. So, in this -- in these negotiations we would draw a line from the middle of the existing parking lot and be able to add parking down and access Watertower Road to the south. So, what's left of that is what we consider an awkward shaped piece of land. It's not -- it's not big enough to locate another softball field on or a soccer field, it's just kind of a park space. So, the dog park could be a good use of that awkward piece of land. There is some infrastructure in place. There is parking. There is restroom facilities. We feel that it's the appropriate size. It's about three to four acres. It would be walkable from downtown and the construction documents are in -- we have that in this year's budget to both finish master planning the remaining portion of the park and do the construction documents for whatever that park is. Parking lot irrigation system. Whatever use is determined best for that. We have that in this year's budget. The pros to this site -- I think I minimized it. There we go. The cons -- the cons to this -- there would be some conflicts with the existing softball field. De Weerd: They just wouldn't get their softballs back. Zaremba: With teeth marks in them. Barton: They would play fetch. You know, that -- I think we can solve that with some netting. I have seen that in other -- where softball fields have been located and kind of squeezed into places without a lot of buffer. The site couldn't be developed until the year 2015. We currently have Storey Park development in our CIP for 2016. There is some Borup funding in our CIP for 2015. It would be fairly easy to just switch those. So, it can be moved forward with Storey Park development to 2015, but that's about as soon as we could get that project started. One of the biggest cons right now is that we don't own that piece of land yet. We are in negotiations with the speedway to get that and where we stand is we have an agreement in principle on what we -- what we would be swapping, how much it would -- what the financial implications of that swap are. Part of this -- this trade involves a land and water conservation grant. So, it had to go through -- it has to go through three approval processes. One of them is state parks. The other one went to the state historical preservation office for an approval and, then, to -- to the National Parks Service for approval. We have the first two approvals and we have got over those hurdles and they have taken it to national parks and we are waiting for a response from national parks. They are currently not at work right now, so -- Zaremba: They are closed. Barton: We are kind of -- we are in that boat. But once we get that -- and we feel that it is -- it's going to happen. We -- the first two are key. You know, that third approval Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 27 of 70 process would just finalize it. So, we don't own the land yet, but we feel that we are making great strides and we are getting -- we are getting close and hope to have that done soon, but we -- it's on a desk somewhere. With that I will stand for questions and discussion and, hopefully, direction. De Weerd: Thank you, Mike. Any questions from Council? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Mike, I think the logical for -- the questions is do we need it and the little or small cost -- the area in front of the new maintenance building, we could get some chain link fence and put around there and throw some grass seed in as we have already got some -- I don't know whether it's weeds or not. As long as it don't have goat heads or cockleburs in it and get our chain link around it, I don't know why we have to have a buffer around it. We don't have a buffer around the existing dog park and everybody seems to be satisfied with that and I think that's our cheapest and best way right now. If we want to get a permanent one after this over at Storey Park in 2016 or whenever we can, that's something else, but some chain -- we can always take the chain link back down if we don't cement it in and take it and use it over there. But I think right now for moving -- and we are not -- we are talking maybe a quarter mile farther from the existing dog park and the property you're talking about down there by Storey Park, it just seems dollar wise and sense -- and common sense that that field's just sitting there and I'd lot sooner see dogs running on it than weeds growing up. De Weerd: Any other comments? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Yeah. Option two and option three, there is a lot of similarities in terms of what's available. If we can go to the Watertower property in option three. The parking lot that's going to be there on the southwest corner, if you will, when -- when was that going to be planned? I know there was discussions of extending that parking lot out. Is that going to be part of the 2015 proposal if we -- once everything gets worked out or is that kind of farther on down? Barton: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun. Yeah, the -- that's part of a -- right now in our CIP it's scheduled for 2016, but it could be moved up if we needed to and what we are -- our property line would be like -- this is a drive aisle and, then, it would open up into parking. So, that's more or less the layout of -- of what we would have. Hoaglun: Okay. And also I kind of see if we were to look at this -- I kind of like -- I know you're saving money by utilizing the outfield fence, but it's kind of nice to have a ten foot Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 28 of 70 area where people can walk through, just to access point A to point B, instead of going clear back around to the field and different things like that, but I know that would save a few dollars. Bigger site, three acres, costs more to fence. You do have facilities there. To me it kind of boils down to -- both are good sites, if it's a matter of cost and speed. That's the current site that's going away, you know, which one can we do cost or is it going to be that much -- which one can we do faster and at what cost and -- but both, because of their proximity to one another and their current park, it's kind of a -- kind of a wash. Barton: Madam Mayor, Councilman Hoaglun and for Councilman Bird as well, there is a -- there is a fourth option out there that we didn't want to bring forward, because it would be a temporary solution. We don't have the property owner's permission, but it may be something that we want to pursue and if we are looking for a temporary something that would -- we could put in and, then, move while we are developing a more permanent solution -- the soccer fields that we operate over at Jabil could be a fourth option -- not a permanent one, but -- because we don't own the property, but if we were able to get permission we could pound you know, chain link in that wasn't concreted in and fence off some grass. I mean there -- the con to that is we would lose a soccer field and -- so, just as a -- just one of the -- put that out there for -- Bird: Madam Chair? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Madam Mayor. Another thing on this park -- Storey. We have got a lot of site work to do in that property that is one of -- the tradable park property. There is a lot of site work. The one over in front of the maintenance depot -- parking -- I drive by there quite a bit and I don't think I have seen over three cars in our parking lot in front of the building at a time. But I think we could get by temporarily. Your fourth option -- man, if you got that past the owner I would buy our lunch. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, you know, some folks might be thinking why not the field house eventually at this -- at the Storey Park property. There is a lateral that runs through there, if I'm not mistaken and does limit us -- limit us on what we can build on that property. De Weerd: Any other comments from Council? Rountree: I have none. De Weerd: So, preferences on what you would like to see staff bring back. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor, do we have a name for this bark park yet? De Weerd: I think we have all named it. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 29 of 70 Hoaglun: I guess, Madam Mayor, in seriousness, Mike, I'd like to see -- if you look at the two options and say, okay, in going to option two, if there is going to be a future field house I think you could design a parking lot that would maybe be something that's permanent for that as well. I don't know if you can or not. I mean that's something to discuss. Is it doable? Is it not? You know, it might be something we have to rip out. So, to me it just boils down to, well, what are the costs and what are the timing elements between -- between those two properties. So, I think either one would be fine, it's just a matter of cost. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I think I agree with -- the Borup property is going to be attractive for an eventual use, but for this purpose is so far off center that it doesn't seem to be the solution to this problem and like Councilman Hoaglun said, forgetting that one, I would like to see kind of a cost comparison between two and three and see what could be done. I can see the reasons for going on the Watertower one as well, if it's not twice as expensive as the other one or some weird thing like that. But to me the next step would be work up some ideas and cost comparison between the two. Barton: Okay. De Weerd: So, Mike, when -- when do you think that you might be able to do that? Barton: Madam Mayor, (believe -- well, the Lanark site next to the maintenance facility we have a concept plan already in place. It needs some revision and a statement of probable cost. The Storey Park site -- good possibility at the next workshop we could bring that in, along with the maintenance facility proposal and probable cost and timing and kind of refine what -- what it means. We can check into setbacks and, you know, what do we do with restrooms at the Lanark facility and, you know, some more -- refine the details and bring them back -- bring them back to you and -- and go forward. De Weerd: Okay. So, next workshop in November. Very good. Okay. Anything else from Council? Rountree: I have none. ®. Community ®evelopment: Transportation Update on Projects, Plans and Programs -Includes Report on Parklet Project, ®owntown Street Cross-Section tVlaster Plan, Meridian Road Interchange Rebuild Project, and Other Transportation Projects De Weerd: Thank you, Mike. Okay. Item 7-D is under Community Development and will turn this over to Caleb. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 30 of 70 Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Brian McClure is actually going to go first. We are going to tag team this. We will try to be brief. You shouldn't allow Tom Barry and my all things transportation on the same agenda. That's not a good idea. But we will try to be fairly brief. There are a couple of projects I want to talk about and some things that recently transpired with some projects. So, again, I will let Brian go first if he's ready and as I pull up the PowerPoint. Bird: Are you going to talk about a dog park? McClure: Likely no. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I have a couple updates on a few downtown projects for you today. The first one is -- the first one is the city core downtown cross-section master plan. As a reminder, this is kind of the planning area for that plan. There is also some considerations in this plan for the entryway corridors into downtown, including Main Street and Pine. The objective of this cross-section plan is to create and preserve for connectivity in downtown, to unify all of the other related plans and add some more detail to them. And this plan includes Destination Downtown, the East 3rd Street extension, our pathway master plan and, then, the streetscape design guidelines. And, then, to clearly identify expectations with redevelopment and, finally, to support long range collaborative implementation. I won't go into details of the whole plan, but I would like to touch on two examples. The first one here is for East 3rd Street. It's a very standard cross-section, a slice on the pathway you see on the left there. The idea being here that we have a pathway on Main Street from the interchange all the way up to Franklin Road. We will soon have pathway improvements crossing the interchange in that bridge project, but we do not have anything connecting to downtown or through downtown and so this pathway that you see here would do that. As a side note, we do not have bike lanes on Meridian Road or on Main Street. The second cross-section you see here is for Idaho Avenue between Main and East 3rd Street. This is not a typical cross-section. This is very atypical. What you see here is curbless, for example. The idea here is to create greater vibrancy and to better support elements which create more visibility and draw into downtown. This would not only increase visibility of businesses through there, but it would also increase certain areas and, actually, it provides for more parking than what's currently there. This could also be done with curbs, but that kind of detracts from this, so curbs are kind of like a raised striping and when we provide those cars seem like they have a priority there and they typically go faster. The one note on this -- and one of the reasons why this was a collaborative effort and why it's kind of a long range effort is to get something like this wouldn't be cheap if we do it. And these are all currently draft. We had an open house on the 30th. We sent out several hundred post cards to every stakeholder in the area. Not only did we include the property owners, but we also sent them to all the tenants, businesses and residences. We, unfortunately, did not have the attendance we would have liked. We only had about a dozen people show up. They were generally supportive of the elements they saw there, though there was some questions about some of the details. After the open house I opened up an online comment forum that would be up for the duration of the month. I haven't checked for a couple days, but so far we only had one response and that was also positive. Prior to the open house I did Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 31 of 70 go door to door. I dropped off business cards to a dozen or so identified stakeholders, people that I thought would be interested. I did have some general positive interest when they saw some of the specifics and that's something I'd like to expand on in the future. And that's also one of the next steps. So, we have four next steps we have detailed based on some of the outreach. I wanted to explore multi-purpose infrastructure with ACHD. I had one comment from them regarding that. The image on the right is kind of an example of that. That isn't going to work for a lot of streets in downtown, because we need that space for signing or activities, but we also have more residential space we could do something like that. ACHD is interested -- or at least there is some person pursuing that, so we will talk about that a little bit. And some more targeted outreach. While a lot of plans are based off of the existing plans that have been vetted through the many public processes, there are a couple of atypical cross- sections here and I really would like some better stakeholder support, so I will be trying to find some way to better engage with them and get them more involved. Moving forward, after adoption of this plan, which, by the way, is something we would like, one idea is to kind of test it. A couple of the streets do have alternative parking configurations, so we will be testing that, putting some temporary parking down, see how it works, whether it's worth it, things like that. Looking at priorities for these street sections, while most of them are kind of a slow build thing, they happen as redevelopment occurs, there are opportunities for some of them to actually just happen in mass, so do a whole street block. Where would it occur. How would they occur? What are the needs there. And down the road possibly doing some specific area designs for some of these. So, being ready for when development occurs and when partnerships are available. The second project update is an update on the demonstration project. That is intended principally to draw some awareness of this effort. It kind of expanded into an opportunity to see how businesses like it. Test some ideas. I neglected to get any photos of it that were good photos. So, here is two examples and, then, the original kind of concept for it. De Weerd: I have a good photo. I will let you use it. McClure: Thank you. We had two installations of this. The first one was at Sunrise Cafe and the second one was at Rick's Pressroom. We had originally planned on having a third in front of Corkscrew on Idaho Avenue. The business, however, closed and still has not opened since to my knowledge. Sunrise attendants was okay. The set up and tear down of that was considerable. It was difficult the first time. Set up and tear down at Rick's Pressroom for the subsequent installation was significantly easier and parks had a lot of ideas to set up further. However, attendants was less than par if anything. The weather that weekend was abysmal and Rick's actually has very restricted hours on the weekends, so that would be also one of the lessons learned with this is, you know, the limited duration events can be difficult, so you kind of need a special event and, then, look at doing it for a longer duration. On a side note for this, all those materials, minus the plants, are currently at the parks facility over off of Locust Grove and everything except for the plants, are reusable and can be repurchased if necessary, too. And with that I will stand for questions on one or both of those projects. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 32 of 70 De Weerd: Thank you, Brian. And we did go by Rick's the Friday they put it out and the wind was blowing about 50 miles an hour, so it just wasn't conducive to dining outside and certainly September is a little bit less predictable in its weather, which was unfortunate, but I think other -- other times to try and use this as another demonstration would be good, particularly if the owners are interested in trying it again. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: I think you're a hundred percent right. I would like to see it tried again during decent weather, because I think outdoor dining -- if you look at the Pie Hole's roof top, very very popular. I think if the owners come in agreement of it I think it would be very attractive to downtown. But you're always going to have to, you know, work with the weather, but I think it's a very good idea. We just didn't -- we just didn't have the best weekend. Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: Can you show the picture or graphic, if it was, of the road section of Idaho? I'm concerned about distances there. The space across the current roadway and sidewalk distances wouldn't appear to me to allow that sideways parking or straight in parking or whatever you call it. Have you actually gone out and measured the space that's available there and does this fit into that? McClure: Yes. We have 80 feet of right of way at the street currently -- sorry. Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, the street out there currently is -- there is a very wide roadway out there right now and we would be reducing the size of that roadway to allow for some of these other improvements. Zaremba: So, you wouldn't -- you wouldn't be taking space out of the sidewalk, you would be taking space out of the roadway. McClure: Correct. Yes. Zaremba: Okay. McClure: The sidewalks there are actually significantly larger. Zaremba: Cool. Rountree: Madam Mayor, I agree with what's been said about the timing. Probably June or July would be better. I don't know if you timed it with some event like Dairy Days or something like that, if that's possible. You need to do it when there is going to Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 33 of 70 be people downtown to see if it's even going to be something that attracts folks. It might be chaos during Dairy Days, but it might put something in the back of somebody's mind that, hey, that was kind of neat, I'm going to go down there next weekend and see if it's there. So, it's a matter of exposure. I'd like to see us try it some more. Bird: Madam Mayor? On the Idaho Street there, if I remember right prior to -- and some of you guys can help me, but prior to '91 or '92 when they did that LID we had -- Idaho Street was parallel parking on both sides and I don't think they have added -- they have added a little bit of sidewalk when they put in the trees and stuff, so I think -- I like that idea, Brian, on Idaho Street, I like it very much if it's workable. But we did have parallel parking on both sides until they did that LID; Hoaglun: Madam Mayor. Brian, you mentioned something about possibly just trying some things in the interim and, then, getting feedback. I think sometimes when you show people that we can do this and they actually get to try it out, then, I think they can give you specifics. So, I think it's worth taking a look at and seeing if there is some alternatives you can try out and see if -- what people think and say, hey, we do like that parking -- you know, perpendicular parking or some other item that you want to experiment with and be a pilot project for a time certain that you need to design it for and see what happens. So, I think that's worth pursuing. McClure: Thank you. De Weerd: Thank you, Brian. Hood: Madam Mayor, before I jump into some of the more traditional updates on transportation projects, a little bit on that park lot project. We actually were trying to do some inflations earlier in the year -- not to totally throw ACHD under the bus, but it was -- there was some coordination there that didn't happen in a timely manner and so we had to push it further and further back into September, which, again, was unfortunate. There was some nice weekends earlier in the month. But we certainly will consider that going forward and -- and that's one of our next steps talking with Brian is we need to coordinate with -- with ACHD more, as he mentioned -- doing this takes some time and effort and we are grateful for a parks staff, for their assistance in patting this up, but ACRD is going to also have to sign off on it. If we do this for a special event, a Dairy Days, a week long type thing, we need to have their blessing, because we are in the right of way. So, we need to coordinate that with them as well, so some more work to be done on that. De Weerd: Well, I totally agree and not only that, I think ACHD has been suggesting others look at this, too. I think it's been a positive thing. Hood: I think we can get there. We just -- we haven't had that -- that discussion. We just finished this round up and so we are going to kind of see what our -- our next task is, so -- so, I believe the clerk just provided you with a handout. That is, essentially, a supplement to my memo that you should have in your packet today. I wasn't planning Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 34 of 70 on going through that entire list, but that's everything that's in the hopper for ACRD, either in construction, design, right of way, the various stages of project development. So, I think everything is pretty intuitive as far as the headings of the columns. PM is project manager, so that's the name of the project manager at ACRD. Right of way, obviously, is R-O-W. And construction and priority number. So, that's just -- that's something for you to chew on later if you would like to see all of the overlays and bridges and -- just all the projects, but my memo doesn't go into all of those. But a couple of the more high profile ones that I do want to touch base on real quick -- it came up last week -- is the -- the surplus triangle piece on the south end of the split corridor at the curve, the cross-over. I did talk to a few ACRD staff this week. They are looking at this sidewalk now. When that project was designed the sidewalk was not put in. We had a discussion at that point in time. There was some concerns that a pedestrian can get trapped in there. There is not really a good outlet, but I think the things that the city wanted to do to dress that up with the landscaping that parks is moving forward with and the art piece that was chosen last week, there is some realization now that this is going to be an attractor. So, before it was kind of let's steer people away from this, we won't want to encourage people getting there, because it's kind of in the middle of, you know, a lot traffic and -- but, again, with the -- we are turning it into a little pocket park. think they realized that and are looking at that. So, they haven't made any commitments on putting any sidewalk through, but they are looking at it and they should be here next week, if not the following week to report out on a solution to that issue. De Weerd: Thank you. Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes. Rountree: Caleb, driving through there several times now I'm noticing people parking on the north side of that little connector. I don't think that was intended for parking. There is no signage. And, actually, there is a person or individuals that have been parking right there at the -- the end of the curb and it's -- it's not a good situation. You might point that out to ACHD. Hood: I will do that. I also notice that -- if you are -- if you are southbound and you make the turn and head over to Meridian Road, that street is extra wide. So, it feels like you can park there. But, like you said, it's not signed for parking or not parking, but -- Rountree: Well, it's got a strip, but I don't know if -- why the stripe is there. I don't know whether it's for bike or what. But they are parking the other side of the stripe up against the curb. It seems to me there probably ought to be a right-hand turn lane there and a through movement through there, so -- to make it more efficient. Hood: I will talk to them about that. The final point I think on that one -- I mentioned the parks landscaping project, that's full steam ahead and with the change in the past week, think October 15th, this next week, they are going to be out there putting in the Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 35 of 70 landscaping. So, we are trying to coordinate whatever solution ACHD comes up with the landscaping that the parks is getting ready to do, so we don't have to rip it out when it just gets installed or -- we can make sure there is an accommodation there. But think -- I think they can both go forward. Tom already mentioned the Franklin project. They are in his report. I'm not going to touch on that one. Ustick, Locust Grove to Leslie, just wanted to let you know that one is on the 90 day bid list at ACRD. So, 2.5 million dollar project that will be -- be out there on the street here this fall and be going into construction here. So, just a quick highlight on the project. ACHD programming. We talked about in September -- on September 10th at the last workshop the integrated five year work plan draft. There are a couple of comments that the Council made at that meeting. I did draft a letter, the Mayor signed it later that week. The two main comments were, one, do what you can, please, to get ready for the State Highway 16 extension to Chinden and looking at the impact fee to Black Cat, McDermott, and Cherry -- I think there are three. But, basically, those -- those corridors in northwest Meridian. So, a little report -- update on that. I went to the commission work session last week. They did discuss that. They did not make a change to their five year work plan in putting any of the intersections or railroad crossings or roadways, for that matter, into the five year work plan. There was some sentiment that they overreacted a little bit to Ten Mile in preparation of the Ten Mile interchange and they -- they made -- yeah. So, maybe I will just leave it at that. They did direct the staff to -- to do some more modeling and bring some recommendations and some of those modeling numbers to a future work session. I am also meeting with them next Friday to look at some of those numbers and see maybe what they are going to be presenting at the work session first part of next month. So, they do want to be nimble in the future. So, there is some acknowledgement there that there will be an impact, but they aren't ready to put things into their five year work plan just yet to proactively accommodate those before there is a problem. They want to have the problem and, then, be able to react to that quickly and put an interim signal in if they need to. So, that was, basically, the discussion of the commission on that topic. Our other request was to -- our economic development request project, which is a new program over at ACRD, was the East 3rd Street extension and there was some discussion that they had at a previous work session that I wasn't at about concern for the highway district funding those types of projects in urban renewal districts and there is some concern there that there is lost revenue from the district, because the property taxes are capped and so they are -- they are not realizing the full benefit of the property taxes there, so why should they spend money in an area that they don't get to see any of those benefits from. So, there is a little bit of that lost revenue type concern. They did -- they did say, though, that there was concern, though, that the little towns -- Meridian included in that statement -- they didn't see how our urban renewal agencies could pay for a project like this, so there is some recognition there that a three million dollar project -- they -- the urban renewal of our site just wouldn't be able to do it, although again -- and this was -- there was a pretty good discussion and I think probably five different points of view on this, but -- but at the end of the day they did direct their staff to go ahead move forward in design with projects that are in urban renewal areas. So, our 3rd Street project was approved for design in 2014. It has unfunded construction years, but they will go ahead and go through the design process there this next year. I think Garden City had one. Kuna had one. Boise Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 36 of 70 had two. So, it was a pretty good -- if they didn't fund things urban renewal areas they would have all been in Boise, because all of the other cities' requests were also in their urban renewal districts. So, Eagle's, Kuna's -- oh. Yeah. Does Kuna have an urban renewal district? Yeah. De Weerd: They have talked about it. Hood: Yeah. So, maybe there was one in Boise and -- or one in Kuna and the rest for Boise. But, anyways, everyone -- the majority of the projects -- half were in urban renewal areas. So, long story short, there again, they -- there is still some concern there, but they did direct their staff to go into -- into design. They may be looking for some cost share from urban renewal districts on some of those, you know, amenity type things. You know, if you want an extra wide sidewalk or trees, those types of things, but -- De Weerd: Well, Caleb, I think that probably sounds more affordable for our urban renewal district and what might be helpful is that they see what that increment is pertaining to what they would have gotten -- what that figure is. I can't imagine it's very big. Hood: Madam Mayor, there were some examples that Matt provided to them on -- on the -- it was very confusing, though, and Mike Brokaw, their specialist in this wasn't there to explain some of this, so I think there is some misconception and misunderstandings about that. Realizing there isn't some windfall at the end. You know, they have the base revenue from when -- the urban renewal district and, then, the 20 or 25 year horizon. It's not just a windfall all of a sudden. You can still only have a three percent increase in your budget, so even if you were to correct property taxes it just allows everyone else's to go down a little bit that increment. So, anyway, there was some confusion on that. I'm not going to take it upon myself to educate the commission, because I don't understand that fully myself, but Matt did have some things to try to show them -- if this wasn't in an urban renewal area here are the property taxes you would collect versus here it is, so -- and most of them are fairly small increments. But there is still -- I think some of it, quite honestly, was a philosophical stance on some of these districts and if they maybe should even exist and, then, two, should ACRD be doing projects if they are being short changed, if you will, in not -- not collecting the full revenues in those areas. But, again, at the end of the day they directed staff -- there was a majority of the commission that said, okay, we are comfortable with going into the design of these projects, so -- I'm going to move along, because I told you I was going to be brief. Meridian Road interchange real quick. This project should go out to bid before the end of the calendar year. I just wanted to let you know that construction over the Ten Mile Creek -- so, there is two locations there at Meridian Road and, then, I-84, will occur later this fall and into early part of the winter season and, then, the interchange construction will begin in the spring. So, full bore construction March, April type time frame. We do continue to work with ITD staff on the interagency agreement, some of the elements we have talked about before, the bare railing art, some of the coloring, landscaping, those types of things. And do I anticipate later on this month Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 37 of 70 bringing that interagency agreement back to the Council for review, discussion, potential approval. So, just a quick update on that one. And, then, finally, COMPASS has issued a call for projects. The Mayor received a letter from Tony Tisdale here about six weeks ago or so. Not to rehash this, because we talked about it now three, four, five times over -- over the past year. The TAP grant, the Rail With Trails you have authorized us with parks to go forward twice already this past year. One for the arterial roadway crossing grant, which we were successful in receiving and, then, second round to go for about a mile worth of construction of the Rail With Trail project. We were only successful in getting a little over half of that funded this last year in the call for projects and so talking with the transportation commission, the parks department, parks director, Councilman Zaremba, we have -- what we would request today is that you authorize us to go ahead and apply for the remaining portion of what we asked for about six months ago I think it was for the mile of construction. Again, we only got funded for, oh, 60 percent -- 575,000 dollars of the million that we asked for to do that first mile, including the crossing of the roadway there and go after that for construction in FY-19 and PD. So, this is a ways out and I know we have had discussions and there is some concerns about this project and so it wouldn't be spending money to construct anything, because we still have some -- some work to do with Union Pacific, Watco, Operation Lifesaver, getting all those kind of ducks in a row. But these types of projects you asked for the funding years in advance if you're going to be ready to ramp up for construction. So, that's what the request would be. I can go in to more detail, but it is, essentially, the remainder portion of what you all saw, so go ahead and make this request of COMPASS with a 20 percent local match. So, our portion was 200,000 of a million dollar request, 115 of that, again, we have made a soft commitment to in -- in fiscal year '18 and '19, so -- Madam Mayor, with that, that is my transportation update for this month. De Weerd: Thank you, Caleb. Council, any questions? Bird: I have none. Rountree: I have none. Bird: Thanks, Caleb. Legal Department: Three Party Agreement between the City of Meridian, the Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District (MHWSD), and Lee Centers for the Dissolution and Transfer of Assets and Liabilities from MHWSD to the City of Meridian. De Weerd: Thank you. Okay. Item 7-E is -- it says legal. Nary: Looks like me. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I apologize I wasn't here last week. You have had a presentation on this Meridian Heights agreement. We do have all of the signatures from all of the parties and now you can all answer the question -- if you were going to write a 75 page contract with three different parties that Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 38 of 70 also includes a category of the annexation you have never done before of this size, how many attorneys do you need to do that. It was seven. So, we have had seven different parties review this. De Weerd: Sounds like the basis of a joke. Nary: Well, Ithink --Ithink we --Ithink we have this agreement as well as we can to cover all of the contingencies that we have been discussing for a number of months. All the parties, again, have signed off on it, so now it's before you. There was one thing that came to my attention that was of concern and with the language that I -- maybe I just need to explain, but I was advised that in page 20, in Section 22-G, what it says is this agreement was drafted with the full participation of all parties. Accordingly, if there is any ambiguity in this agreement it should not be resolved against any particular party, but, rather, should be resolved by a fair reading of the -- of what the agreement was intended. In a legal dispute among -- in a contract if there is a dispute over the clarity or what a particular section of a contract means, rules of construction in the courts require that the courts look at it and construe that -- that particular clause or disagreement against the person who crafted the agreement, figuring that the person who crafts it can always craft it in their favor and so the intent of the court is to look at it and say even if I construed this against you what does this mean. The intent of this language was to say we have had a lot of different people craft this agreement. I didn't write every page of this. We were trying to avoid the circumstance that if there was a dispute that we weren't in a court trying to say, well, don't hold that provision against me, I didn't write that. That attorney wrote that piece, I wrote this one, and we try to fix and mix and match who wrote what. So, the intent was to say if we are in a dispute, judge, read it for what was intended, look at the context of the whole agreement, what were we trying to accomplish here and read it for what it says and don't try to hold any one person accountable like they did the entire thing. So, I think it actually helps us. Ithink it actually makes a better intent, especially because this is such a complicated agreement with a number of different moving parts to it, but I think it's -- I think we have covered the contingency we have discussed as the city. Ithink we have tried to make sure that all of the parties are comfortable with what their responsibilities and requirements are to do. I wish I could sit in front of you and tell you every time there is a hundred percent guarantee nothing is going to fail, but -- I wish I was that good and I'm not, but I do think we have covered all of the contingencies that we could have envisioned that could occur and I think all of the entities are ready to move forward and make their effort to get this completed. Our next task in front of us, if this is approved, is to make sure the people in the area of Meridian Heights and Kentucky Ridge understand how this agreement will actually benefit and the value they are actually getting out of this agreement and how this is going to be of benefit to them, as well as being of our community. Do you have any other questions? De Weerd: Thank you, Mr. Nary. Any questions for Bill? Bird: Madam Mayor? Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 39 of 70 De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Bill, I take it, then, that you're recommending that we authorize the Mayor to sign this and the Clerk to attest? Nary: Yes. Bird: Okay. De Weerd: Okay. Anything further? I'm sorry that we don't see Mr. Barry here. I did see -- Grant, do you have any comments? I'm sorry. Gordon. Would you like to come forward? Thank you for being here this evening. Hamilton: Well, Madam Mayor and Members of the City Council, as you described this has been a pretty long road and a lot of areas of concern. Three parties, seven lawyers -- Rountree: That explains it. Hamilton: Actually, an excellent agreement I think and really does cover all of the concerns of all of the parties and all of the -- all the peripheral issues that are out there. It seems like everything has been addressed and we approved it last Wednesday in a special meeting and I sincerely hope you also approve it. De Weerd: Thank you very much for being here. Council? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: As I recall, the record from last week would show that we approved it in concept with a couple of conditions and I don't know whether you want me to say it or whether it would be more appropriate for Mr. Nary to say those conditions have been met and satisfactorily so. Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, yes, all of the discussions from last week -- whatever changes were necessary were done. Mr. Baird would have the final copy that was signed by everybody that states the changes that Council had asked for that we could include. With seven attorneys you're fortunate it's only 75 pages long. Zaremba: Thank you. De Weerd: Okay. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 40 of 70 De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: I would move that the Mayor be authorized to sign the three party agreement between the City of Meridian, the Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District and the Centers for the dissolution and transfer of assets and liabilities for Meridian Heights Water and Sewer District to the City of Meridian. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 7-E. Any discussion? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Just a big thank you to Bill and Tom and to the rest of the staff. This was a major undertaking and they -- they put a lot of time and effort into it. So, thank you for your efforts, Bill. Nary: Thank you. You're welcome. De Weerd: Well -- and I will say that the work will continue with the district and in helping see what -- what their citizens decide they want to do in moving forward with the vote. Okay. Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. De Weerd: Mr. Hamilton, thanks again for being here this -- it was evening. It's no longer an afternoon meeting. F. Police Department: Public Safety Training Facility Design Update De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-F is under our Police Department. Leslie: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, I didn't understand a word Mr. Nary just said. I have been trying to figure it out still and comprehend what that's all about, but maybe tonight sometime I will catch up with that. I'm here to talk briefly about the training facility and where we are at and how we got where we are at and some guidance I need from you guys tonight. In listening to Tom's presentation a couple things hit home to me. One being staff needs training and seeing similarities in both my department and the fire department and those needs that we need in the future and also Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 -- Page 41 of 70 our ability to train together. For the past eight years the police department has been. -- had the vision of building a training facility. When we first started talking about the facility we were focused on building a shooting facility, because we saw open space for police shooting ranges going away. However, as our discussions with our city leaders, our peers, have progressed, we soon realized that a single purpose training facility did not make sense and our vision changed to building a training facility that would meet the public safety of our community now and into the future. In Meridian our emergency responders and Public Works employees have done a remarkable job at keeping our community safe. As we continue to grow and as our society continues to change, the Meridian Police Department, the Meridian Fire Department, and the Meridian Public Works Department realize that the need and importance of amulti-disciplinary training facility. If there is a large scale emergency in Meridian all three of these departments will need to work together and that means starting training together so we are ready. You are seeing more and more incidents that require interdisciplinary responses in order to keep everyone safe, whether it's a natural disaster, school shooting, or a hazardous material situation, we cannot expect one department to solve that problem alone. Recent conversations with ACHD we talked about training together for floods and had the floods recently. ACRD worked hand in hand with the sheriff's department. They are setting up meetings currently with us to be able to work during our wintertimes where we are working together on roadways that are slick and having to work through that. So, recently met with Tim Morgan of ACRD and we sat down and talked about training strategy where we can work together and participate in those multi-agency training. As we develop our EOP, emergency operations plan, with the fire department and other departments in the city it's obvious to us that working together with not just us, but the Public Works Department, the road department, the police department and fire department is essential. We currently don't train together at all. Limited basis between the fire and police department and bringing in the road department and those other departments is critical for us to be successful. We cannot operate in a vacuum. We have to work as a team and the team has to expand besides just police and fire. It needs to move into those other disciplines that we haven't necessarily thought about as an organization. Right now our population is close to 81,000. In 2015 that number is predicted to be more than 108,000. We are the fastest growing city in Idaho and we realize in order for Meridian to continue to be a great place to live, work, and play, public safety has to evolve into more and more collaborative effort. We need to invest in the city's emergency responders, so they can continue to provide the highest level of safety in Idaho and we think now is the perfect time to make that investment. We have been working with key members of the HSQA and the Ewing Company to start working on that plan and we are getting quite a ways into designing that and getting some possible cost estimations for you guys. One of the things that's came up during that process is that Hunter Lateral which separates our two properties. The current police department, talks about the dog park where it's at, and just west of the dog park there is a lateral. give you guys a map that kind of illustrates where it's at. I'm pretty sure you're all familiar with where that's at. No matter what direction this project goes we need to cover that lateral. It's empty currently. And that's the only time to do it, it's not just the best time, but the only time to do it is when it's empty. There is approximately 330 linear feet of lateral that needs to be tiled. The estimation on that work is around 80,000 Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 42 of 70 dollars. We are currently finishing up the design and cost estimation for all that specific to that lateral. What we are here tonight to ask for is permission to move forward on entering into an agreement with the Nampa-Meridian Irrigation District on tiling that lateral before the March 15th deadline. We have to have that work completed and out of there by the March 15th timeline where they can have that water back and available for their customers. So, that's what I'm here for tonight. De Weerd: And, Council, I will say that you will hear a full presentation in November. Finance right now is trying to put together where we are at with our -- our numbers and so -- Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Bird. Bird: Lieutenant, do you have any idea what the cost of that covering the -- Leslie: The covering of the irrigation -- Bird: Tiling the -- Leslie: Yeah. I have both here with me, Bill Garcia from Ewing -- right now our numbers are 80,000. We think we can do it for below that. But 80,000 being the top number on that. Bird: We do have that in the budget? Leslie: We do. Bird: Okay. I would be in favor of getting that done, because we are coming up on some weather and we need to get her done. So, if there is no more, I would make a motion that we proceed with the covering of the Hunter Lateral -- for tiling of the Hunter Lateral for an amount not to exceed 80,000 dollars. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Okay. Madam Clerk, will you call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. De Weerd: Thank you, Jamie -- or lieutenant. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 43 of 70 G. Legal ®epartment: Budget Amendment for Purchase of Real Property near City Flall for Future Parking and ®emolition of 15 VU. Broadway Avenue in the Amount of $373,336.00 De Weerd: Okay. Item 7-G is also under our -- is under our Legal Department. Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You have a budget amendment in your packet. This is in regard to the property transaction across the street. We -- I think it's been forwarded up to the Mayor's office, so I don't know if -- don't have what's in their packet. It doesn't have all the signatures on it, but it has been signed off by my Council liaison, myself, the Finance director and I think it's awaiting the Mayor's signature. De Weerd: It's -- it's already got that. Nary: Oh, great. De Weerd: Somewhere. Nary: Great. So, it is -- the transaction closing is next week. This includes the demolition of the house on the corner, as well as the environmental work that was completed. So, we just want to make sure the funds get transferred prior to the transaction date, which was next Wednesday, therefore, we didn't want to wait until next Tuesday night to do this budget amendment, therefore, cutting that timing a little tight, so -- Bird: Okay. Council, questions? Rountree: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Rountree. Rountree: Bill, does this amount include the clean up of the demolition site and the filling of that site or making that site less hazardous from the perched parking area to the south -- there is quite a -- Bird: Drop. Rountree: -- quite a drop there. Nary: I don't recall -- Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree, I know it's the demolition of the site and grading of the site. I don't know if -- I don't know specifically, I can find that out for you, if that sort of tapers that grading between those two, so there is not a drop off, is that what you're asking? Rountree: Yes. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 44 of 70 Nary: Yeah. I don't know that for certain, so I will have to verify. I know they are seeking informal bids right now, because it's below the threshold amount needed for the formal bid process, so I will verify that with Purchasing. Rountree: Okay. Just curious. At some point it needs to be done. Nary: Sure. Absolutely. De Weerd: Okay. Any other questions? Rountree: No. De Weerd: Okay. Do I have a motion? Zaremba: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba. Zaremba: I move we approve the budget amendment for purchase of real property near the City Hall for future parking and demolition of 15 West Broadway Avenue, totaling the amount of 373,336 dollars. Rountree: Second. De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Madam Clerk. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. H. Human Resources: Discussion of City Policy Regarding Use of Nicotine or Tobacco Products De Weerd: Next item, 7-H, is under our human resources. Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. In your packet is a proposed policy that we have been discussing both at the wellness team level, as well as the director level for a period of time. We have had a number of occasions over the last few years that are our wellness team has been seeking the -- a desire -- because of wellness concerns of becoming a tobacco free city and a nicotine free city and so we have discussed it last year during the Great American Smoke Out, that's an annual event that's sponsored by the American Cancer Society. It's usually in the fall every year. And the committee basically did ask if we would take that to the directors for Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 45 of 70 consideration and so I did and we have had a number of discussions with departments and the impacts of doing it. There is a lot of positive impacts both from an image standpoint and a health standpoint. There is a -- there is a lot of positive things that I think can be gained from being a tobacco free, nicotine free workforce. It is the wave of the future in the health arena as well. It's a very significant divider partly -- for a number of reasons. There is significant evidence that exists out there that the use of tobacco -- continued long term use of tobacco not only causes a serious health risk related to the tobacco use, but secondary risks as well. I mean the longer term healing. There is a variety of other ailments that are relatable to the long term use of nicotine and tobacco. So, it is -- it does appear from a lot of the research and a lot of information we are receiving -- not just from our vendor, like Blue Cross, but from the general population that this is something that workforces need to consider going forward. We recognize it has an impact on our employees and one of the ways you want to address for that -- one, we have put -- we have made all the departments aware we are doing this and that there -- this is something that's coming at some point and we need to be prepared for that and so they have made a lot of their employees understand that this is coming. Secondarily, we want to put some of our effort with our wellness dollars towards cessation classes. There are some very successful programs out there that have success rates that exceed 75 percent. We would like to offer those opportunities for our employees to, again, prepare them for this type of change. We think that this will, obviously, impact our workforce, but we feel the overall positive impacts outweigh the negative impacts in our workforce. So, we are bringing this forward for your consideration. We don't -- you know, what I told the departments is that my suggestion would be -- we were trying to figure out when would this be appropriate to implement and we wanted some time both for employees to either prepare themselves or to provide some cessation classes and we looked at sort of benchmark dates. Do we do this January 1st of 2014. Do we do it further than that. I don't know that we can get -- the holidays are really tough to do a lot training and things and it's a stressful time of the year for people and sometimes that's maybe not the best time to try to do a lot of different things of this nature. So, we were asking that if we were to implement this policy that we push the date out a little further, whether it be April 1st or June 1st or some -- or May 1st, somewhere a little further in the spring to give us an opportunity to make sure we can get the right classes in place and opportunities for employees to be educated about tobacco use and the long-term effects that it could have on them and, hopefully, we can, you know, get a few more of our employees, if not all of our employees through a cessation program, so that they can be tobacco free. But we do think this is an important step forward for the city as a whole. I'd stand for questions. De Weerd: Thank you, Bill. Any questions for Mr. Nary? Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Bill, how long are those classes? Are they eight weeks? Twelve weeks? The cessation classes. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 46 of 70 Nary: The one I'm thinking of I think is eight weeks. We did a demo of it and we didn't think it would probably be the most effective one, but I do believe it was eight weeks long. Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor and Bill, one thought is New Years people have a new resolution to get healthy, exercise and that usually last for a little while, but maybe starting it right after that and having -- if it's eight weeks, whatever -- shortly thereafter starting that and, then, implementing the new policy following that period of time. I don't know if that would be March 1 or April 1 or if you want to go into May, but -- Nary: I would think the New Years resolution seems to last about eight weeks, so, hopefully, we can sort of match that up and get people, you know, involved in that, if that's what they would like to do. De Weerd: Thank you. Any further questions? Nary: One other comment, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. You may have noticed, but I want to make sure the folks that may be listening to this, this includes not just tobacco products and it also includes electronic products that are similar in nature, but have a similar impact on people. So, this includes electronic cigarettes, the vaporizers, and electronic nicotine delivery systems. So, there are other ones out there that have similar concerns from a health standpoint, as well as an image standpoint, and so this does include those as well. So, it's not just for cigarettes only. De Weerd: Yes, nicotine and tobacco. Nary: Yes. De Weerd: Okay. Council? Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: Bill, I -- while nobody believes in this more than I do -- I don't know. I hate to completely -- one part of my mind says it's great, great, great and I think it is great, don't get me wrong -- Nary: I think you need to pull your mike a little closer so it's getting recorded. Bird: I wish nobody ever smoked or anything, but -- or chews or anything else. But we got some employees that work outside and stuff like that and as long as our buildings are smoke free and -- and I have a hard time -- I would -- I don't know. I want to see it go in there, but I -- I hate to tell our workforce that, you know, you have got to go buy a pair of car hops or you got to go do this year or you can't do that and, like I said, nobody Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 47 of 70 -- nobody has paid the price for smoking more than I have and I -- like I said, I wish nobody would ever touch it and the ones that haven't are very fortunate. But I have a hard time telling employees how they can live their lifestyle. As long as they aren't -- as long as we are smoke free and enclosed in our buildings and stuff like that, I have no problem with that. But when -- for instance, if we have a guy out there weed eating or something and he wants to smoke a cigarette, I guess the only one he's damaging is himself and I wish he wouldn't and I realize they are the biggest expense on our insurance bill. I do that. And I appreciate you guys doing this. I don't know how -- I just have a real problem dictating how a person lives his life. I wished he wouldn't, but, you know, my wife and kids wished I hadn't for 40 years, so -- Nary: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Nary. Nary: Yeah. Mr. Bird, one thing already -- employees that work in our park system cannot smoke in the park anyway. We are already prohibit that. Bird: I know that. Nary: So, they are already prohibited from smoking inside the park anyway. And we did recognize your concern and we did -- we did ponder a number of other ways to address this. We could -- there is nothing that prohibits the city or any employer from not hiring smokers. Ada County has not hired in the sheriff's office anybody who is a tobacco user for almost 30 years. Ada County as a whole has implemented that as a policy countywide. They will not hire employees or tobacco users -- that have used tobacco within the last year. We felt as an entity that that wasn't as far as we wanted to go. We felt during the work hours was an appropriate -- an appropriate level of restriction on our employees. Off work hours, on their own time, in their own homes, on their weekends, on their free time, they are free to do whatever they wish to do. We didn't feel that it was necessary to get to that length of restriction. But we felt during our work time when they are working for the city, that this was a reasonable restriction. There are employees who disagree. I'm not going to say this is a hundred percent, but there have been a number of employees in the various departments -- and some of the departments have done more extensive surveying of their own employees -- there is a significant amount of our employees that really want to do this and I'm not trying to say that just to sell it. They think these people who smoke or use tobacco products in the workplace intrude on them. Bird: And I agree. Nary: So, I mean there are -- there are, again, people who don't prefer it, there are people who are probably more adamantly in favor of it than I am. I do think it's a good policy. We tried to balance between the needs of the individual, as well as the needs of the city and we think we have struck that balance here. But I definitely understand your concern, Mr. Bird, and we have certainly heard that from some employees. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 48 of 70 Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: And, Bill, (think -- I think it's a great policy and (think -- I have read through it and it -- I mean it's very good. But I'm just weighing, you know, how -- how far -- how many rules do I want to put on employees or -- if I was the employee how would -- you know, if I'm out there working hard and lunchtime comes and I pull over in my truck and step outside and have a -- want a cigarette or something or -- I mean we have some employees that work 24 or 48 hour shifts. If they want to step off at night or something off the property and have a -- I mean -- Rountree: They can. De Weerd: Well, I think it's -- they shouldn't do it -- do we tell them they can't. I don't know. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? Bird: It's something I got to weigh. De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Mr. Nary, can you tell me the process forward for this? Would you be drafting up a resolution for adoption if that's the next steps? Nary: Exactly. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Hoaglun. So, this is a workshop discussion and, obviously, it's not an action item for today. If the direction is we would like time to consider it before we prepare a resolution, that's the normal process to implement a policy and, then, we distribute it citywide to all employees. There is not an urgency to do this and I will be honest with all of you, I think you're going to be facing this at some point, because of the changes in the medical environment out there. So, I think it's going to happen. We felt in the discussions both at the director level and the wellness team, that we wanted to be in front of that. We didn't want to wait until we were somewhat mandated to it by a financial impact. We felt it was a proper step to take anyway. But I understand the impact and the concern. So, we certainly don't have an urgency that it has to be this month or next month. I do think, as Council Member Hoaglun pointed out, January would be a very good time to get cessation classes up and going and active, so employees can participate. That's when people tend to want to do those types of things. I think that would be good to do. But the implementation of the policy or the effective date of it is certainly very flexible. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 49 of 70 Bird: I would recommend that we bring it forward, the resolution, and I think Councilman Hoaglun brought up a very good point, that January start the classes and stuff and implement this March 1st if passes as a resolution. De Weerd: Well, I -- and I think the directors -- we have been telling staff the beginning of the year, so -- to expect it. Bird: You mean implementing it the first of the year? De Weerd: Uh-huh. Bird: So, we need to get the resolution passed and date certain here this coming month. Nary: I can bring you a resolution either next week or the following week. Bird: That's gives me time to -- Rountree: I'm good with that. Madam Mayor, just a comment. The way I read this it would be a rare occasion when our existing policies and ordinances wouldn't accomplish this new stated policy. I mean our properties typically are smoke free. I assume our vehicles are smoke free and, if not, they should be and this will do that. If folks are having lunch in a restaurant somewhere they are free to go outside the restaurant and smoke by this policy. But if they are working on city property, as you point out, they are prohibited to smoke. So, I think it's -- you're either going to be really crafty or a really remote possibility that you're not going to fall under the purview of one of those existing ordinances and I think this is just a way to firm it up and -- and at some point in time when the acturials say if you have got smokers your insurance policies are going to go up 25 percent, we can say we have a policy against it and we are training our people and giving them an opportunity to stop smoking. So, I think it's probably a beneficial way to go. Bird: Madam Mayor? Rountree: I don't disagree with Mr. Bird's point, though. At what point do we stop -- but to me this is a medical issue, it's a cost issue to not only the city, but the employees ultimately with respect to healthcare and I think it's a legitimate area to -- to look at regulation. Bird: Madam Mayor? De Weerd: Mr. Bird. Bird: If I recall right, while in parks you can't smoke. There is areas in the parking lot that you're allowed to smoke; am I not right? Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 50 of 70 Rountree: Yes. Bird: So -- and, boy, I don't disagree with anything you say, Charlie. I -- but let's bring it back. I have got -- that would give me a week to think on it. De Weerd: Okay. We will bring that back and have it on our next week agenda. 1. Human Resources: Discussion Regarding City Policy 6.11 - Gifts and Gratuities De Weerd: Item 7-H is with Mr. Nary. Or 7-I. I'm sorry. 7-I. We go on to discuss that one again. Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor. What you have in the gifts and gratuities policy -- we found a -- kind of an unusual glitch in our policy. The state law, gifts and gratuities for public employees, is very clear and pretty specific and there are criminal penalties for that. Our policy goes a little bit further and it doesn't allow an employee to receive anything in excess of 50 dollars from anybody that's a current vendor of the city. The problem that we have is that occasionally employees will go to some random event that may or may not have anything to do with the city and they may not know anybody who the vendors of the city are and can win a prize that is completely random and yet under our policy, they would be prohibited from taking it. As an example, I went to a conference last week and one of the things they do in a lot of these things is they have door prizes for making sure people show up at different events. So, most of the vendors there were not vendors of the city, but one of them was and only because it happens to be for my department that I knew that, but not everybody knows those things, so when they were drawing that prize I know I couldn't receive it, because I would violate the policy, even though there is no influence that they are buying and there is certainly no benefit they are trying to get in relation to the city and so we felt that we had a recent situation that was very similar where, again, a very random drawing that our employee was chosen technically can't receive it, because it violates this and we felt it was appropriate to bring it to you and to see whether or not we should at least take out things that are -- that's what the exception that's listed below and I would actually suggest that it says noncash prizes, but statements these are cash, but, again, if it's a random drawing that has nothing to do with the person's employment and has no benefit that the vendor is receiving, is truly random or open to the public, we don't think there is an issue of influence or anything else that's inappropriate for an employee and, again, many times our employees wouldn't even know they are violating this policy, because they don't always know who a vendor is on a particular occasion. So, we have asked for you to consider that. If you're comfortable with that we can bring it forward in a resolution next week as well. De Weerd: Okay. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor? Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 51 of 70 De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun. Hoaglun: Madam Mayor and Bill, you addressed one of my questions I was going to have. It says noncash prizes. I mean if someone is at the Western Idaho Fair and they are picked to participate in one of those cash grab booths and it happens to be a construction company that does business with the city and was a city employee and they come out of that booth and they got 120 dollars, yeah, I think I would want to expand that to cash as well. I mean it doesn't happen very often, but I mean there was no relationship, there was no quid quo pro, there is nothing there that makes it that -- it's just one of those things. Nary: Yes. When we crafted it we were trying to be very cautious, but, again, at this very same conference one of the prizes from our vendor, Lexus, which is our legal research service that we use, their prize was a hundred dollars. So, again, I thought, well, I can't take -- actually take it, but, again, if all the other three things below about them being either random drawing, open to the public, all of them apply, I don't know that what the nature of the prize is really makes any difference. Hoaglun: And, really, when you look at the intent of this this is to prevent vendors coming to city employees, especially decision makers who can -- can be swayed by gifts or gratuities to favor them. In these situations we are trying to craft there is no attempt to favor or persuade or sway and I think as long as we work to meet that intent, then, I think we will be -- we will be fine. De Weerd: Okay. Nary: Okay. I will bring it back next week. J. Legal and Police Department: Active Code Enforcement Discussion De Weerd: Yes. Okay. I guess you can just continue on. Nary: Well, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the next item on there is Item J and this is really actually prompted by Council Member Zaremba's question and asked to have this discussion about code enforcement and how code enforcement is done and I don't want to speak for him, because I don't know if Council Member Zaremba wants me to articulate what it is. I think both Lieutenant Overton and I could help drive that discussion if that's what -- but I want to make sure we are answering your question or your concern that you had. Zaremba: Thank you. My question was initiated by a specific event, but I -- what I am looking for is somewhat of a discussion of -- we have quite a few ordinances that get enforced when there is a complaint and aren't enforced the rest of the time and I guess just a general discussion of the value of having such ordinances. I know many of them Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 52 of 70 are useful in allowing us to address complaints, the question is whether or not we ought to be addressing them all the time or not and the specific instance -- I don't know if the case was settled yet. There was a ticket given and I don't know what the resolution of that was, but the specific instance is a nonmovable object -- in this case a boat was in a driveway and apparently has been there for four years before the homeowner got a ticket for having it there and, yes, it is currently against the law to do that and the reason that there was a ticket was that there was a complaint in the neighborhood and code enforcement went out and looked. So, the discussion that I would like to have is -- I can see both sides. I can see the value of having such ordinances, because invariably citizens feel there are things that we ought to be able to do something about and things like this come up -- I can think of specifics -- a specific instance that maybe caused the rule that says you can't have nonmovable things parked in your driveway is probably a fire department issue. How do they respond to a fire in a garage if they can't move things out of the way. I don't know if that's the only reason it's there. But, then, the other side of the question is, well, if it's that serious of a problem why don't we have 500 code enforcement officers employed by the city who are out driving every street every day making sure that something doesn't sit there for four years before we -- we get it. So, the general question is a discussion on what is the value of these laws, how -- how oppressive do we want to be, is it satisfactory that we just respond to complaints, so that, in fact, we can do something if we need to. I'm not sure whether the gentleman who has this issue is here -- yes, he is. I have talked to him earlier today and he said he was going to come. He's done some research around to see what other cities are doing about this, but I -- my question, perhaps before he comes up, is -- and knowing that we don't want so much government that we can enforce all of these all the time, what is the value of having these rules -- and I would say an example I gave is our noise ordinances. The speedway and our parks department out at Kleiner where the band shell is we do monitor those, but all over the city we only respond to complaints and is that okay I guess is my question. De Weerd: Well, I will tell you what, Councilman Zaremba, if you guys want to give us a hundred more officers we could probably enforce every single code this city has. Zaremba: Well -- and I don't think anybody wants that much government or to pay for it. De Weerd: You did ask a question and I think it's an order of importance and I know our code enforcement has had to look at what their staffing allows and what -- what has risen to the top as the highest priority and where they need to be proactive because of a number of incidents. But we just talked about one of those ordinances was no smoking in parks. There is no way that we are going to be walking in the parks waiting for someone to light up or to snuff out a cigarette or whatever you call it. But when someone calls and complains -- same with noises, we can't drive down the street with our windows rolled down looking for violators. It is complaint driven and those are generally really a result of manpower and, again, the number of complaints that rise a certain issue to the top. Those we have tried to be proactive. Abandoned cars and weeds being probably the top ones. But manpower is a lot of the reason we are complaint driven. Also I think some of these are enforced by HOAs, subdivisions that Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 53 of 70 have HOAs and that those things have high value to them. They will enforce their own. But we have a number of our older subdivisions that don't have an HOA and, then, code enforcement is called in. So, I will turn this over to Lieutenant Overton and ask him to fill in the void. Overton: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba, I will take the first shot and acknowledge that in community development we have director Bruce Chatterton, as well as Bill Nary to speak on these points. We do -- I know we have discussed this in the past when we want our code enforcement officers -- we run a section that has five officers. We split them up in parts of the city. One of them has the downtown core section part time. He is also our downtown parking enforcement. So, he has a very small scope of area he works. We take the other four and we divide the remaining part of the city in half and we have them as a team. Now, when we address calls the first thing you have to understand about code enforcement is we are -- we are not -- we don't approach things as uniform police officers do. Uniform police officers usually address things -- first order of business is enforcement, because of the type of laws and rules that they enforce. When we address things in code enforcement it is compliance based with a side order of enforcement. That's the way I know to explain it. Enforcement happens at that point of execution or a ticket only when compliance is not reached and I do believe in the case that brought us here today compliance was reached. There was never a charge processed, there was never a ticket issued, which is probably 99 percent of all the cases that we work. When we do get cases in code enforcement we have quite a few of them that are complaint based and the best way would be to invite you to come spend a few days as a code enforcement officer. When they come in in the morning the amount of messages on our phones where they start off each day investigating different cases they have got or following up on the cases before, is one of the reasons so much is complaint based. We look at, first of all, what's life safety issues. Anything that's life safety is proactive and it's the first thing we go out after. Such things as weeds and if you haven't seen weeds in July sometimes we have had to deal with, they are obviously for fire and for us a life safety issue. They can also be an issue dealing with what you can and can't see on some roadways. We deal the same way with signs and we deal the same way same abandoned vehicles. But, then, we have a category that's a majority of the code enforcement issues that really don't fall into life safety as much as they do quality of life. That's the best way I know to categorize them and where you're dealing with quality of life issues that have been decided through Council, through -- either by -- or the development code, we are dealing with issues many times that overlap with CPTED principles, Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, where you do things in the safest way possible for a community. It may not be how everybody agrees it should be done, but overall it keeps a community looking the best, reduces a lot of the opportunities for crime. In the issue we are talking about here, but specifically where we are talking about vehicles parked not on the street, but off the street in their front area of their house, but not put behind a six foot fence, so they are out in front, the specific code says that there is only certain vehicles that can be there and there is certain ones that can't and if you're going to store those vehicles they have to be behind a six foot fence and that's the code that we have in code enforcement that we enforce and I believe that is the specific code that is being Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 54 of 70 addressed in this complaint tonight. No, we do not proactively at this time -- we never have. We just don't have the resources to go out and start looking for those because if we had to it would be really tough to decide which quality of life case we are going to investigate and go after. We find that one generates many more. For example, in this case you learn a little bit about his neighbors, but this call initially came in as a call about one neighbor and became a call about another neighbor and when we do get a call on a street, if it's one that we have not taken enforcement action on, it's not fair to go and address one neighbor and leave that street or leave that cul-de-sac or where ever that place is. We have to then go in and do the consistent and fair approach, which is if you have got to abide by this code, so do your neighbors and we have to draw a line on how far that is. I can't say I~ need you to do the whole subdivision or I'm going to lose that code enforcement officer for weeks, because we have tried that before, we have tried it where you have to do several streets. So, it really comes down to what's the most reasonable approach dealing with the problem that's a code violation in the fairest way possible. We give a lot of leeway on compliance to give people time to find alternative places to put vehicles, whether it's a boat, trailer, a car that's broke down and find time to move it. We are not -- you have got 24 hours or we are going to ticket you. We try to give them time, so that they are able to find a safe place to store that. Am I surprised by the fact that this may have been there for four years? No. We found a semi parked in the backyard of a house in downtown that had been there for seven years, even commuting, and until a neighbor actually called us no one knew the semi was in the backyard. He hid it beautifully behind the house when he got home. We finally got a call and it was the first time we had known that this existed and, of course, it was illegal and he moved it and he said I knew one day I would get caught and I would have to move it. So, it was a resolution to an issue, but it proved that we just don't see everything every day. Storage sheds. We can't actively go look in everybody's backyard, nor do we to see if the storage sheds are placed in the right position, not in the required setbacks. But we do get calls to them, we do get calls to the carports that are erected illegally and we do take action when those occur. There is a lot of those codes out there that are handled in just that manner. They are complaint driven. So, I would stand for any questions. Hoaglun: Council, Mayor Tammy had to go off to an event tonight that she was scheduled for, so any questions for Lieutenant Overton? Bird: I have none. Rountree: I have none. Zaremba: I have none. Hoaglun: Okay. Mr. Chatterton, any comments to lend to this discussion? Chatterton: Council Members, just to maybe echo a little bit of what Lieutenant Overton said. You have to strike abalance -- you know, in any type of enforcement you always look at the resources that are available and at priorities. We know that we are not Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 55 of 70 resourced properly to be proactive across the board, so i making these choices is very important. These choice lieutenant said, trying to be fair with the system and the important. Hoaglun: Thank you. Any questions for Bruce? Bird: I have none. Zaremba: Mr. Chairman? Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba. n picking and choosing and s are important and really, resources we have is very Zaremba: Since Mr. Kessler is here and he expressed to me that he's done some research on how other cities around handle it, would it be appropriate to ask him to speak for a few minutes? Hoaglun: Council members have any objection? Bird: Sure. You bet. Hoaglun: Mr. Kessler, could you come and for the -- for the record if you could just state your name and address and we will give you a few minutes. Kessler: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm here to represent myself as a citizen -- a great citizen of the City of Meridian and I thank you for the opportunity. My name is David Kessler. I live at 2096 North Sapphire Place, which happens to be a cul-de-sac off the road. I'm here to address the parking standard of regulation as it stands. I'm not here to disagree with everything you people have said and what you have come up with as far as a regulation, because I do, too, agree we need to keep our neighborhood clean, safe, and hazard free from anything that might impede on children, disaster, or anything of that nature. I'm here to tell you that I feel that this issue that you have as far as this regulation is -- it impedes on my privacy as a citizen, because I own my property. It's what I call private property. It's just like you. If you have a boat or something that you own and you have a limited income and you have no resources to store it in a facility that charges a considerable amount of money, where else can you put something that you own? I parked it in my driveway. It's out of the way. It doesn't cause any safety issues. I cover it. It's locked. No one can get into it. My neighbors that I have already addressed -- I was going to put a petition together, unfortunately, I didn't have the time. I have asked everyone on the block whether my boat had had an impact on their lives or whether they had actually felt it was important for me to remove it. No one had done so. So, I don't endanger others. The current regulation does not define whether it's dangerous or nonconformance, it defines the parking on an owner's property and I say it's private property. And I questioning the owner's right to what's right and what we have as property owner rights. I feel infringed upon as a citizen of Meridian. I think that the code itself is not well defined. I mean if we have a citizen who has got a lot of Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 56 of 70 garbage, safety issues, who is -- has got an infraction as far as hurting other people, children, oil, some kind of flammable issues, absolutely, I would also report those, because I feel it's important. But to have a boat with a cover sitting on a cul-de-sac in the way, I just don't see where the actual issue is. Further, private property should belong to the homeowner. As long as the property is kept up safe, clean, therefore, it should be the right of the homeowner to store their own property on the premises, including each one of you. Why should you be any different than me? We all live in Meridian. We are all upstanding citizens. We should have the right to do what we want to do on our property, providing that it's safe, it's not hazardous, and it doesn't impede on others. I refer to that criminal violation. Am I criminal? Do I fit the criminal process here as a criminal to store some private property on my own property? I don't think so. I really don't think so. We need to make sure that only clutter and dangerous items, objects, that can be harm -- that's going to harm others and create an eye sore are not permitted on the property and I do agree with that. I look around the neighbors, both in Meridian and Boise, I have photos to prove that boats, trailers, and other personal belongings stored on the property elsewhere in Meridian -- in Boise -- there are no regulations. I have looked on their website. I have information that has no regulation in terms of their storage right. People have stored things on the street, in their driveways, and some are pretty disastrous, I would admit, but for the most part they are respected. There is nothing there that really has any impact on danger. Hoaglun: Mr. Kessler, can I ask a question here? Kessler: Yes. Hoaglun: Because Isaw aphoto -- I was sent a photo when the complaint was filed and the boat was there and in the photo there was a car parked in front of the boat. Was that somebody who was -- Kessler: They reside with us. Hoaglun: Reside with you. And that car belonged on the sidewalk. Was that the -- is that what initiated the complaint? Kessler: No. The complaint that I -- the way I understand it -- and I have the complaint here -- Hoaglun: But the boat parking there took up space that that car would normally take and, therefore, it blocked the sidewalk, which -- Kessler: Oh, no. No. That car that was there was a visitor. It was not -- so, it was not permanently parked. The car that parks in front of the house has plenty of spaces and it's usually my car. I don't block the driveway. I don't park -- I don't block the sidewalk. Hoaglun: But the visitor to your house blocked the sidewalk. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 57 of 70 Kessler: They were there just temporarily. They were visiting. On the cul-de-sac there is limited parking. Hoaglun: Yeah. That's -- I just want to make sure I understood the photo, so -- okay. Kessler: So, you have seen the picture? Hoaglun: Yes. Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you. Kessler: All right. So, I don't disagree with some of the regulations. I find that they are very important to have. All I'm doing is asking you to address this code so it's a little more defined and we have a little more clarity on what you can and can't do. It's so broad based that it's very difficult to be able to understand the ramifications of what is legal and what's not. I mean I went out -- and I went out and I did all this research with the people around the neighborhood and none of them said that they had any problem with the boat, including my neighbor who had to remove his boat from his driveway that was sitting on the side and he was also annoyed about the whole thing, because he had to put his boat somewhere else. I don't know whether this goes too far or not. I mean it's up to you gentlemen to really decide that and to look at this particular code as to whether or not this is ethical, whether it's fair, and I'm sure that the clutter and danger of any -- any kind of a problem with the residents is going to make a big deal and the -- a serious situation and I'd like you to, please, consider revising this code to conform with a fair, equitable, and logical regulation for all homeowners, including yourself, so that we can be -- we can be honest, open citizens and not have to worry about other expenses. But I don't know how your feelings are about this. I don't know what your stance is. And if you take a look at the code, which I have read pretty thoroughly, I find this very broad based and it doesn't really define what could be a little more of -- I don't know how to say it. Could be a more -- more of a define premises for what a homeowner has a right to do and I thank you for your listening. I hope that you will take that into consideration. I do have pictures, if I can pass those around, if you would like to see them, from places in Boise. Hoaglun: Just give them to the city clerk and she can pass those down to us, Mr. Kessler. Council, any questions for Mr. Kessler while he's at the podium? Rountree: Mr. President? Hoaglun: Councilman Rountree. Rountree: Yes. You have indicated that there is ambiguity, there is difficulty in understanding the ordinance. In using some of your words, you have talked about clutter, you have talked about eye sores and safety and those kinds of things. How do we define those? Do we get 12 people in the room and they say, well, clutter to me is trash cans and old cars and motors and the next person says, well, it's a dilapidated van, but it's running, but it sits there for weeks and the next one is not you or your neighbor, but it's a boat and the next -- how do we pull those subjective terms and Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 58 of 70 create an ordinance that can be enforced and, in fact, govern, if you will, and mediate between neighbors? Kessler: That's a difficult question. Rountree: It a difficult question proposition and I think we have probably done the best we can with the ordinance that we have. But my suggestion is that we have our legal counsel. look at that ordinance with code enforcement and see if there aren't some ways to make it more clear and probably -- I don't know if it will resolve your issue, but at least maybe make it more clear if it's not clear at this point. That's really the only answer have for you at this point, because when you start dealing with these subjective -- they are certainly not ethereal ideas, but, you know, how have people perceived these things. Personally, I would be not pleased if my neighbor left his boat out and my recourse is to talk to them and if there is no reply there I talk to the homeowners association. Kessler: Councilman, I just have to ask you what would be the reasoning for your being upset about somebody keeping their boat on their private property, knowing that they own the property, it's on their lot, it's not impacting anything around the neighborhood, it doesn't impede on your privacy or -- Rountree: Because I'm the third person that I spoke about in trying to identify what eye sore is. Kessler: Okay. Rountree: I find it offensive that somebody spends three, four hundred thousand dollars for a home, spends ten, 15, 20 thousand dollars for landscaping and sticks a boat out in front of it that's covered up. To me that's -- if you have got pride in your property you're going to take care of your property. That's me personally. But I'm willing to work with trying to make this ordinance to address your concerns. Kessler: Thank you. Rountree: Okay? I'm not -- I'm not going to put my values on you, but I can tell you what my values are. Kessler: I understand. Rountree: Okay? Nary: Mr. President? Kessler: So, I respect that. Hoaglun: Mr. Nary. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 59 of 70 Nary: Yeah. Mr. President, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree -- and this might help. Maybe we can wrap this up. But, basically, the code section that was -- was being enforced by our code enforcement officer says types of vehicle, location of parking, only automobiles and motorcycles displaying license plates and current registration may be parked in the required street yard. You know, the street yard is the area in between the street and your house. May be parked in the required street yard. All other vehicles, including, but not limited to vehicles without current registration, vehicles without license plates, recreational vehicles, personal recreational items, boats, trailers and/or other vehicles shall only be parked in rear or side yards and shall be screened by a solid six foot fence. So, in my opinion it's not unambiguous. You can only park a car in the driveway. Everything else has to be screened and can either be in the rear of your property or the side of your property and it requires a screening. So, don't believe it's ambiguous. The issue on whether or not we would allow other items -- Ithink, Council Member Rountree, you have it exactly the problem. Mr. Kessler's boat is very nice, but not everybody else's is. Trying to define the difference between a nice boat and a not very nice boat or an old junky car or a newer older car is very difficult. So, the decision was made when the UDC was passed that we would allow cars only. So, motor homes, RVs, fifth wheels, boats, trailers, four wheelers, everything else was screened and on the side or the rear of the home. So, there is -- they can still park it on their property, it's just parking it in the driveway. That's all. Hoaglun: And when I saw the photo to me it wasn't the boat, to me I thought someone complained about the safety issue by the car that's parking on the sidewalk and I didn't know you were on a cul-de-sac. But the problem was is that this morning it was reported in the news about the lady in Middleton who had taken her kid for a walk, was pushing that stroller, a vehicle was parked across the sidewalk, she walked out around that sidewalk and was hit by the oncoming car, which means she got her stroller -- her stroller was pushed. Now, the problem is, well -- well, that's not a collector street, but it's okay to do that when you're in a cul-de-sac and I have lived in a cul-de-sac and I liked the cul-de-sac when my kids were small, because you didn't have to worry about -- Kessler: Yeah. Hoaglun: You didn't have the moving traffic. But we can't differentiate, well, it's okay here, but not there when you're saying -- or these types of things. Kessler: Well, yes, but the city doesn't provide limited -- the city provides limited parking on a cul-de-sac and you don't have room to park a car, where would you park the car? Hoaglun: And that's the situation when you go to a cul-de-sac. I have to determine have limited parking, because my neighbors are right there and that's one of the down sides, but -- Kessler: Yeah. It's a fine line. It really is a fine line. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 60 of 70 Hoaglun: Yeah. It really is. Kessler: My whole issue is private property. I mean I understand your point of view, councilmen. I really feel you have a right to express your views. But I also say you have the right of a homeowner in a private property that I spent 180,000 dollars for that I have a right to leave what I want on my property within -- as long as it doesn't impede, as long as it's not dangerous, as long as it doesn't have any -- I don't get any complaints and it was sitting there for four years and nobody -- nobody -- and nobody else. Somebody would go by, maybe, and have an argument with somebody about the boat, but -- Hoaglun: Mr. Kessler, it's an age old question. I mean people talk to me all the time about zoning. Why is the city zoned? It's a taking. I should be able to do with my property what I want and, I agree, I tend towards that perspective. But at the same time people forget that what they do on their property impacts somebody else's property values and that's where the taking becomes. Kessler: If they were immobile and I was cluttering or having a disastrous situation where it was dangerous to others I completely agree, as I said in my statement. But if this is a boat on a trailer that can be -- is moved when I need it and when I use it and -- I don't think it's an infraction. I just -- I'm hoping that you will look at this from a logical point of view and see if there is some kind of fine line that you can design in terms of -- if aboat can be parked on a property, as long as it's safe and covered. I -- all the pictures that you see here are from Boise. Boise is Boise. We are Meridian. The city is a larger city and it doesn't have those regulations. It just doesn't have those for that code. Hoaglun: And I did have one other question. Do you have a homeowner's association -- Kessler: No. Hoaglun: -- as part of your deal? So -- okay. Kessler: I don't. And if I had a homeowners association they probably would forbid me to have a boat. Hoaglun: Right. Kessler: But that's why I moved into the neighborhood I did, because I would not be in a homeowner situation. Hoaglun: Okay. Great. I appreciate the time you take to enlighten us. Kessler: Thank you for your time. I hope, gentlemen, you will reconsider and let me know the great results you have got. Thank you. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 61 of 70 Rountree: Bill, I have a question. We also have an ordinance with respect to parking and if the vehicles -- whether they are RVs or boats or whatever are moved with a certain period of time -- in other words, they are used on a timely manner, there is no prohibition. Am I correct? Nary: You are -- you are partially correct. Rountree: Okay. Nary: The one you're probably thinking of, Councilman Rountree, is parking along the street. There is a limitation on time. If they hooked to a vehicle or not hooked to a vehicle and those types of things. But the driveway, again, is -- was intended for cars. Again, I -- Kessler: Yes, that's what it's there for. Nary: Yeah. The person can certainly park it on their property. They just have to park it a different place. Bird: Either front or behind the front of the house. You can have it behind -- Hoaglun: And Ithink -- and I think, you know, the life safety issue that Lieutenant Overton brought up is a good -- I mean I think this is a good reason why we enforce it on a complaint and not just go out and look for these types of things and I know my neighbor, who is getting ready for hunting season and pulls his trailer out from his side yard and he had some issue, he was fixing some line or something -- he was out there for several days, because he had that thing -- trying to get it fixed. It didn't bother me at all, because I know he's getting ready to hunt, it's going to be gone, and when he gets back he's going to move it back in and he had a situation he -- you know, you try to be reasonable in these things and I know he violated the homeowners association, but no one -- no one complained and let him go and do his hunting. But, yeah, I wish there was an answer to everything, but -- Council, any further action? Rountree: I would ask Bill to verify that ordinance situation with respect to Boise. I would guess that there is an ordinance to that effect. A unified development code as well. Bird: I would be shocked if they don't. Kessler: Okay. Zaremba: Mr. President? Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 62 of 70 Zaremba: I was just going to say -- I appreciate the conversation and the comments that have been made by everybody and it is something to think about and I appreciate the discussion. Hoaglun: Thank you, Councilman. Rountree: I guess I do want to extend my appreciation to John and your folks for being mediators amongst neighbors who can't resolve their issues and sometimes it is difficult. In fact, it is difficult all the time, but -- and I don't envy them and I would never want to be one. Overton: President Hoaglun, Members of Council, Councilman Rountree, I was actually going to propose that the new code enforcement uniforms be black and white stripped, because it seems like we do a lot of refereeing out there. Rountree: Well, if you -- if you supply a whistle I might do that. Zaremba: And I would add that's greatly appreciated. It's -- as I say, often the call initiates by somebody saying somebody needs to do something about this and it's your staff that shows up and tries to make peace among neighbors, I -- that is very appreciated. K. Legal Department: Fees and Hardships Discussion Hoaglun: Well, Council, we will move onto Item 7-K, which is also an issue that kind of came about from our last Council meeting and in a Friday morning meeting of staff where we had a discussion about fees and hardship cases and what can be done, if anything, and do we have enough information when they come forward and claim financial hardship and whatnot. So, staff and Bill has taken the lead on this in taking a look at what options are out there, for Council when these things come forward. So, Bill, can you enlighten us further on this? Nary: Thank you. Mr. President, Members of the Council. I guess I will give the same disclaimer to not schedule Tom Barry and Caleb and myself on the same agenda. But this is actually a joint one with -- with the planning and community development. We -- we understood from the discussion last week that there -- these sometimes are left with a very difficult decision without a lot of guidance on how to even come to a decision very recently. So, I will start off and, then, turn it over to Caleb and Bruce, but we looked at two things. One, you have requests many times for fee waivers and we think in very limited circumstances that you probably need some guidance and guidelines as to what qualifies for a complete waiver of fees. You all know and certainly everybody listening needs to understand our fees are not something we come at randomly. There is a lot of work and exercise it goes through to make sure our fees are reasonable and fair and cover the cost most of the time for whatever the fee is there for. It's an average in most occasions. Some probably are a little less and some probably a little more, but we try to be pretty fair about how we come up with these fees. So, when we waive them, Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 63 of 70 essentially, we are absorbing the entire cost of it as a city and we think that that in general is not reasonable to the public and we think there are certain limited circumstances that we think it might make sense that we do provide some guidelines of when it's appropriate and the one common situation that comes up about a waiver is when you're dealing with a nonprofit type of organization and what types of fees could be waived in relation to them. We can't waive all fees, but maybe some fees are appropriate. So, that was one question that we discussed as a group. The second was is there another way. If we don't -- if we don't necessarily, as a city or as staff, think waiving fees entirely is appropriate, is there a different way to get the fees collected in a manner that's not going to be overly burdensome administratively and might allow some flexibility to the applicant, but not necessarily, again, waiving the complete cost. So, we looked at some way of paying the fees in an incremental way without stretching it out for an extended period of time or making it, again, an administrative nightmare and we didn't want to do that. But we were able to identify -- and I will turn this over here in a second to Caleb and Bruce, but at least in the -- to maybe to try this method. There are certain stopping points in some applications. There is the application filing that we think a fee of some sort needs to be paid. If there is a public hearing attached to that type of application, well, there is another stop point where if a fee can, then, be generated at that point, another portion of the fee, then, that might given the applicant about 30 to 45 days, depending on when the application is filed, before the hearing is held. So, it gives them a little bit of time in which to collect the rest of the fee or another portion and, then, there is the issuance of the actual permit. Sometimes there is another week or so of a finding to be issued, an actual document to be created for the issuance of a permit and that last one can be the final portion of the fees, so that they wouldn't receive it until they have paid -- now, they still have paid the whole thing, but it might have taken now maybe three months to pay it, rather than all at once. And the conditional use permits we have noticed since we have changed the ordinance a few years ago that's where we get a lot of the requests, because many of those conditional use permits are exactly like what you had last week, a single owner, a single property, it's not a large scale operation, it's not drive-thrus like you used to see years ago, it's a very very limited type. So, when we discussed it we thought maybe if we were to create this opportunity for just those right now, not every fee that we have, because Finance was really concerned about that, but to try to pilot that and allow these incremental payments, so that we are making sure we are still collecting the fee, but we are giving a little bit of leeway, but not too much. One thing, just in case you were thinking, because I know it came up in our discussion, was whether or not we could use sort of the billing system we use currently with utility billing of your water usage and right now if you don't pay your water bill we turn your water off. That's by ordinance. I don't recommend that, because secondarily you have a different problem. Water usage is governed by the property owner. Sometimes these are not the owners. So, now you need athree-party agreement, it becomes a little bit more cumbersome and a little bit more administrative to deal with and it doesn't fit our ordinance, so now you need a separate contract. Probably making a lot more admin at the time than you really intended. But, anyway, I will turn it over to Caleb and Bruce, if you're okay with it, to figure out how we can do it. But that was kind of the general nature of our discussion and try to maybe come up with something that might be helpful. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 64 of 70 Hoaglun: Bruce? Chatterton: And, Council Members, just to further what Mr. Nary was saying, it's one thing to defer fees, I think that makes a lot of sense in many cases to come up with a -- sort of a paying in increments or moving -- deferring the fees, but I wish that in this discussion we could sort of get past the W word, the waiver part, because that implies in my mind that government can just waive a magic wand and these fees are just about red tape. Caleb has a number of different tables here, some very stringent analysis of the planning fees, the amount of work that goes into them. Our hard costs associated with those things. Our staff time, of course, is our -- really our cost costs. We are paying salaries for folks to work on these -- on these -- on these applications. The concern I have about using even the word waiver is that somebody under the law -- and I'm not making Bill a legal argument here, but it's more of a philosophical one -- somebody should be paying these, because they are public costs. So, just -- we were talking earlier about Boise, just to compare a little bit. In Boise there is no waiver provision in their ordinance, but if someone says I can't pay this and I'm a worthy cause, I -- you know, I have a hardship, the city council can pay the fees on their behalf. The idea being that someone should pay the fee, because there is a fee schedule, it's not arbitrary, it's based upon the actual cost to provide the service. So, I think that -- you know, so we are saying when we talk more about deferring, making it more convenient, more possible for someone to pay it, that's great. If we are talking about perhaps the city finding it somewhere within the city's budget to pay those fees, that's even better. I know that there are some permitting agencies of cities and counties around the country set up a hardship fund. Fairly small, you know, say, I don't know, 10,000 dollars and on a first come, first serve basis, nonprofits could -- could apply for -- and demonstrate a hardship and until that fee -- until those -- that fund is gone each year and it would be available to pay those things. Of course, approved by -- by City Council. Nonprofit, of course, we would have to put more bookend -- bookends around it other than that. Of course, St. Luke's is a nonprofit and we know that they are certainly capable of paying -- paying fees and making improvements. So, we have in front of you some of the data. just think it's important that we don't say -- let's not wave a magic wand and just pretend that these aren't real costs. Hoaglun: Caleb, did you want to comment on this sheet, what we are looking at? Hood: Maybe just real briefly, Council. Thank you, Mr. President. So, this is -- at last week's discussion there was a question about our fee and soft costs and hard costs, so I'm not going to get into that too much, but just to kind of show, as Bruce mentioned, mean there is -- it's a formula for each of type application based on how many hearings you have, how many mailings go out, how much staff time, which different departments are involved and it is an average, as Bill -- Bill pointed out. It's -- that type of application generally takes us this long to process. So, I'm just going to speak just briefly on this optional payment plan. We could -- if you look at the -- it's the seventh column, the hearing fee column, those are, essentially, our out-of-pocket, up front, get an application to publication for our hearing costs. That includes primarily Dean's cost, so I just Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 65 of 70 wanted to -- he's not city staff, he's contract, and we pay him and he gets average -- it costs about 75 dollars for him to -- to transcribe a hearing. It's the clerk's cost and it's basically mailing and publication costs. If you look at a conditional use, that's the one that has a small dash -- I'm sorry the font is so small, but there is a lot of numbers here. That's a conditional use permit, so that was the one we talked about last -- last week. It's roughly a third of the costs for the overall CU, $391.71 is that initial cost. It's a little less, but it's roughly a third. So, that's why when we met earlier this week and talked about a payment plan, a third up front, a third right before your public hearing, and there is our hammer there to make sure we get something there, so if they are denied we are probably not going to see, you know, any more of that fee, we will just have to eat it. And, then, with a quick clarification on that third would actually be before occupancy. So, it does give them a little bit more time. It wouldn't be before we do the findings for that, because that usually is only a week or two. It would be before they open their business and they want occupancy. So, that -- that's not too administrative heavy, think we can track that with the Accella database we now have, if that's the direction we want to go. It does allow some time in there and now if they are really aggressive in their business line, it may only be a couple three months, but it's better than all up front. So, maybe for someone. So, I just wanted to provide you that background information. I apologize I didn't have this last week to look at and you can kind of see, okay, what are our up front costs and what -- how much time is everyone spending on these applications. So, now you have it. Hoaglun: Thank you, Caleb. Council, any questions for the three -- Bird: Mr. Chairman or Mr. President? Hoaglun: Councilman Bird. Bird: No. They answered the question I had regarding the cost and stuff. I -- I will sit down with Caleb and find out how he was -- what he's got in his labor cost. Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba. Zaremba: Thank you, Mr. President. I like the idea that Bruce alluded to, exploring alternatives. I -- I agree -- the reason behind the fee is -- is a good reason and as we see in the spreadsheet in front of us, they are not just picked out of the air, there is solid accounting behind why the fee is what it is for the different kinds of services and what the city has to provide and I also agree with the philosophy that we shouldn't just charge a little bit extra, so that we can waive a few of them here and there. But you mentioned that some cities have a fund that they do it with and I know MUBs was mentioned or water, sewers, billing system. If somebody truly has a hardship, we have a system where they can apply to get one -- one month a year paid for or something like that. At least a boost and we do contribute into a fund that is distributed that way. The parks department -- I think it's a voluntary contribution. I don't think it's actually a part of their budget, but people who would like to have their children in the summer camps can Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 66 of 70 apply for -- not a waiver of the fee, but a subsidy of the fee. I don't know exactly what you call it. Maybe Mike can answer this, but -- say again. Barton: Care Enough To Share. Hoaglun: Care Enough To Share. A scholarship based -- Zaremba: So, there is a little fund there that can help pay that fee and, again, the word waiver is not used and it would seem to me that if we could have a little bit of a fund somehow that when we thought somebody truly needed to have the help and I don't know how we would decide that and in the MUBs system we depend on an official outside agency to make that determination. In the parks department I think it's -- it's kind of -- maybe Mike can explain that better than I can, how the decision is made in the parks department. Hoaglun: Mike, do you have a short description of it? Barton: Mr. President, Councilman Zaremba, it's a -- there are funds that we generate through recycling and cartridges and donations and -- and people -- people apply to -- they think they have the -- they live in low to moderate income areas and it's -- Zaremba: Which is defined by -- Barton: And we are talking 30 dollars here -- I mean it -- three or four hundred dollar playground. Yeah. But it's -- for some people it's a huge help so they can enroll in classes and summer camps and people count on that as daycare during the summer and stuff, so -- Hoaglun: Mike, question. How do you -- how do you determine whether they qualify or not? What's that process; do you know? Barton: I'm not exactly sure. Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you. Because just to add on, that's -- I'm -- you know, Bruce, what you bring up is interesting, but one of the things I have always had a difficult time since being on Council and we have a financial hardship claim is we have no information whatsoever that there truly is a financial hardship. We don't require bank statements, we don't require anything. They just come up and say I can't afford that. Well, what do we base that on? You know, as a council member I try to take pride in that we make informed decisions and that was a tough one, because we are not informed to that -- that deal. So, that's the only down side of that is we'd have to have something to say, okay, they qualify, that there is a process -- and I'm sure some cities may have come up with that. Chatterton: Yes. And, President Hoaglun, I'm sure that they -- they struggled with that in these other communities as well. It's difficult to define really what's fair. That's why if Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 67 of 70 we -- again, this is just my opinion, but if we do something it's certainly along the lines of a deferral. The public -- the taxpayers are made whole at the end of the day. Perhaps the project can move ahead with a more convenient way of paying those fees. Nary: Mr. President? Hoaglun: Council -- or Mr. Nary. Nary: Thank you. So, Mr. President, I think what we are basically asking Council tonight is -- is two things. We would like your okay to bring back a proposal as to when waivers -- what guidelines are appropriate for a waiver and we do think -- I guess we will see when we discuss that -- we think that should be fairly limited. I mean we don't think that should be an open door and we don't want to put all of you on the dilemma of trying to wrestle through bank statements and credit applications and things like that. Bird: No. Nary: So, I think -- I don't think that's what we are trying to do. I think we trying to figure out what's afair -- and we can look at some other cities -- what's a fair system of guidelines that are appropriate to grant a complete waiver of the fee entirely. We are also suggesting that at least for a limited, you know, pilot -- and I hate to keep using that word too much, but a pilot on conditional use permits. We think we could allow this incremental payment and allow that process and we can put that up in written -- write up some guidelines for you that we can allow that and try that and we can try that for six months and see. Again, we don't get a lot of -- you don't see CU's any longer, unless they are tied to a larger application. Normally conditional uses now only go to the Planning and Zoning Commission, unless they are appealed. So, again, we don't get a lot of them, so we figure if we are going to try it -- I noticed on that form that Caleb provided there is seven fees that are in excess of a thousand dollars. Again, we weren't trying to open the door to all fees of all types, that we would have some deferral program. We thought we would try it with the conditional use permits that happen to dovetail with your conversation last week. We can try to put that in place and see if it is manageable administratively and it does work. We would want some -- some guideline, like, for example, before your public hearing if you haven't paid the next fee we might consider you can have one deferral, but that's it. We are not going to let you strike out for a year. You know, we want some finality to these things and we are trying to be flexible, but we don't want to necessarily throw the door open to everything. So, we want to finalize a couple of those little guidelines to make sure that, again, the public is made whole, but we are trying to find a way between those two things. So, we want to bring you back some guidelines and waivers and we want to I guess create some guidelines for this very limited modified payment plan. We don't want to appear to be lending credit. We don't want to appear to be in the bank business. We are really wanting the fees to get collected, we are just allowing a different method on how it's getting paid and in a fairly short window. You know, again, most of these CUs are from application to completion -- the majority of the time they are done in 60 days. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 68 of 70 Hoaglun: Okay. Zaremba: Mr. President? Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba. Zaremba: That sounds great to me. I think I would pick up on something else that Bruce said and not use the word waiver. If we can use a word like assistance or alternate method or alternate plan. In fact, the alternate plan in some truly hardship case may equate to a hundred percent waiver, but, I agree, let's steer clear of using that word and call it assistance or call it alternate payment or something. Hoaglun: I don't think lay away term would work either. Councilman Rountree. Rountree: Works for me. Just a couple points. Somebody out there is thinking, well, why don't you do away with some ordinances and some of the things you do and reduce the cost. The bottom line is many things we do are driven by state statute and we have to follow their zoning and subdivision requirements and all of those have -- you got to have hearings and you got to have legal notices and that all costs a lot of money. Ergo the schedule of fees ranging from a dollar to in excess of 1,200 dollars for some items. So, it's not just a matter of changing how we do business, I think we have changed our business and continue to change our business to make it more efficient and effective within the bounds of the statute that we have to live by. I'd just make that point. I like the idea of having some guidelines on what hardship is. I struggled last week with that and I still struggle with it, but I think back of some other instances where we have had daycare -- particularly daycare, they seem problematic, because people come in here and -- and say, well, this is a great thing and I'm doing a great community service, which they are, don't have a clue about a business plan, they don't know how -- or have any idea of what it's going to cost them to open their doors. In fact, we had one at one point in time that opened their doors, did advertising, built a sign and they weren't in a zone that would allow it. So, there is some education that needs to go on as well, but a third and a third and a third I think is fair. I sense that there is a more administrative fee in doing it that way, but I don't know if you want to quantify that and charge it as maybe an interest. I don't want to go there, but there is going to be -- there is going to be a slight more administrative oversight and bookkeeping that's going to be required if we do that. But, hopefully, there will be so few that it's a nondeal, so -- Hoaglun: So, it sounds like, Council, staff is directed to move forward with developing these options further and when we select one or maybe have both as options to us in the future -- future conditional use applications situations might be -- might be helpful. So, I appreciate, staff, your work on this. It was a conundrum for us and a difficull decision and something like this might help us immensely. So, thank you for working on that. Zaremba: Mr. President? Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 69 of 70 Hoaglun: Councilman Zaremba. Zaremba: That -- that included something that was said that occurred to me to ask a separate sideways question. Typical. In the case like we had last -- last week, this was a lady who wanted to open a daycare. She had moved into a new home and it occurs to me now she was probably renting that. When somebody applies for a CUP do we require the owner to sign off on that? Something in my mind says we do, but I just wanted to make sure. Chatterton: President Hoaglun, Council Member Zaremba, yes, we do require that the owner must sign the application or give an affidavit of interest that shows that they are okay with that. Because, you're right, change in the entitlement on someone else's property would be a -- a big deal. We could really get ourselves into trouble if we didn't require that. Zaremba: Great. Thank you. Hoaglun: Thank you, Bruce. We will move onto Item 8-A. Ordinances. Madam Clerk, this is the second reading of Ordinance No. 13-1579. This is the -- Rountree: Second and third. Hoaglun: -- second and third. Yeah. Thank you. Third reading of this ordinance. Madam Clerk, would you, please, read this ordinance by title only. Item 8: Ordinances A. Second and Third Reading of Ordinance IVo. 13-1579: Parks and Recreation Code Update Approved Holman: Thank you. City of Meridian Ordinance No. 13-1579, an ordinance repealing and replacing Title 13, Chapter 2, regarding Parks and Recreation regulations and providing an effective date. Hoaglun: You have heard this ordinance read by title only. Is there anyone who would like to hear the ordinance read in its entirety? Not seeing anyone -- Rountree: Mr. Chairman -- President? Hoaglun: Councilman Rountree. Rountree: I move that we approve Item 8-A, Ordinance 13-1579 with suspension of rules. Zaremba: Second. Meridian City County Workshop October 8, 2013 Page 70 of 70 Hoaglun: I have a motion and a second to approve Ordinance 13-1579. Madam Clerk, would you, please, call roll. Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea. Hoaglun: All ayes. Motion carries MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Item 9: Future Meeting Topics Hoaglun: Item 9, Future Meeting Topics. Council, anything you have? Bird: I have none. Hoaglun: I did -- as we heard tonight, we discussed briefly the -- from Lieutenant Leslie the public safety facility and talked about moving that to a November meeting time. talked to the Mayor briefly. We are looking at November 6 to have that -- have that discussion. So, get that on the agenda for that time. So, anything else? Bird: Move to adjourn. Rountree: Second. Hoaglun: All those in favor say aye. MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES. Hoaglun: We are adjourned. MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:47 P.M. (AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS) ~~~~ ~~ -~~ ~ l / (p / 13 MAYOR T E WEERD DATE APPROVED