HomeMy WebLinkAbout2013-12-10E IDIAN ~' CITY COUNCIL WORSHOP
MEETING AGENDA
City Council Chambers
33 East Broadway Avenue
Meridian, Idaho
Tuesday, December 10, 2013 at 3:00 PM
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)
4. Consent Agenda Approved (Pg 2-3)
A. Approve Minutes of November 12, 2013 City Council Workshop Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of November 19, 2013 City Council PreCouncil Meeting
C. Approve Minutes of November 19, 2013 City Council Meeting
D. Approve Minutes of November 26, 2013 City Council Meeting
E. Final Order for Approval: FP 13-041 Irvine by Northside Management
Located Near the Southeast Corner of W. Chinden Boulevard and N. Ten
Mile Road Request: Final Plat Consisting of 68 Single-family Residential
Building Lots and 4 Common Lots on Approximately 15.48 Acres in an R-8
Zoning District.
F. Pressure Irrigation Easement with Nampa Meridian Irrigation District for
Tradewinds Subdivision
G. Award of Bid and Agreement for "WWTP Administration and Lab Buildings
- Construction", Bid Package 3 Landscaping and Irrigation, to Total
Maintenance Solutions for aNot-To-Exceed Amount of $62,200.00
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, December 10, 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.
H. Police Department Public Safety Training Center Project Agreement
between Meridian Police Department and Nampa and Meridian Irrigation
District for Tiling of Irrigation Ditch
I. Police Department Public Safety Training Center Project Agreement
between City of Meridian and Marvin Everett for Temporary Construction
Right-of-Way Access for the Hunter Lateral Easement Project
J. Resolution No. 13-964: A Resolution Authorizing the City Clerk to Destroy
Certain Semi-Permanent Records of the Meridian Police Department
K. Resolution No. 13-965: Accepting the 2014 Initial Point Gallery Schedule
5. Items Moved From Consent Agenda None (Pg 3)
6. Department Reports
A. Economic Development: Fields District Consultant Presentation (Pg 3-10)
B. Information Services Department: Strategic Plan Update (Pg 10-20)
C. Parks and Recreation: Meridian Parks and Recreation Partnership Policy
(Pg 20-23)
D. Police Department: Budget Amendment for Awarded FY 2014 Traffic
Enforcement Mobilization Grant for the Not-to-Exceed Amount of
$45,100.00 Approved (Pg 23-24)
E. Police Department: Budget Amendment for Awarded FY2014 Alive at 25
Grant for the Not-to-Exceed Amount of $56,078.00 Approved (Pg 23-24)
F. Community Development: Transportation Update on Projects, Plans and
Programs -Includes Update and Discussion About Upcoming Ustick Road
Projects, Speed and Engineering Study Requests on State Highways, and
Other Transportation Projects. (Pg 24-35)
G. Public Works Department: 2013 Mutual Cooperation Agreement Between
the City of Meridian and United Water Inc. Approved (Pg 35-37)
H. Legal Department: Request to set Hearing on an Appeal of an Impact Fee
Administrator's Decision on an Impact Fee Individual Assessment Request
Scheduled for December 17, 2013 Agenda (Pg 37-39)
I. Human Resources and Legal: Social Media Policy and Social Media
Procedure (Pg 39-44)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, December 10, 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.
7. Future Meeting Topics None (Pg 44)
8. Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c)(f): (c) To Conduct
Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire an Interest in Real
Property, Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency, and (f) To Consider and
Advise Its Legal Representatives in Pending Litigation added (a) To consider
hiring a public officer, employee, staff member or individual agent, wherein the
respective qualities of individuals are to be evaluated in order to fill a particular
vacancy or need. This paragraph does not apply to filling a vacancy in an elective
office or deliberations about staffing needs in general
Into Executive Session at 5:18 p.m.
Out of Executive Session at 6:26 p.m. (Pg 44-45)
Added to the Agenda: Settlement and Mutual Release Agreement between City of
Meridian, Bittercreek Meadows Subdivision HOA and JLJ Enterprises -Approved
(Pg 45-46)
Adjourned at 6:28 p.m. (Pg 46-47)
Meridian City Council Meeting Agenda -Tuesday, December 10, 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 December 10, 2013
A meeting of the Meridian City Council was called to order at 3:02 p.m., Tuesday,
December 10, 2013, by Mayor Tammy de Weerd.
Members Present: Mayor Tammy de Weerd, Charlie Rountree, Brad Hoaglun, David
Zaremba, and Keith Bird.
Others Present: Bill Nary, Jaycee Holman, Bruce Chatterton, Caleb Hood, Jeff Lavey,
Mark Niemeyer, Warren Stewart, Brenda Sherwood, Steve Siddoway and Dean Willis.
Item 1: Roll-call Attendance:
Roll call.
X David Zaremba X Brad Hoaglun
X Charlie Rountree X Keith Bird
X Mayor Tammy de Weerd
De Weerd: Okay. I will go ahead and start to -- today's meeting. I'm used to saying
tonight's meeting. So, welcome. Thank you for joining us. For the record it is Tuesday,
December 10th. It's two minutes after 3:00. We will start with roll call attendance,
Madam Clerk.
Item 2: Pledge of Allegiance
De Weerd: Item No. 2 is the Pledge of Allegiance. If you will all rise and join us in the
pledge to our flag.
Item 3: Adoption of the Agenda
De Weerd: Item No. 3 is adoption of the agenda.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: A couple items to note on today's agenda. Under the Consent Agenda, 4-J is
Resolution No. 13-964. 4-K is Resolution No. 13-965. And with that, Madam Mayor, I
move approval of the adoption of the agenda.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adopt the agenda. All those in favor say
aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page2of47
Item 4: Consent Agenda
A. Approve Minutes of November 12, 2013 City Council Workshop
Meeting
B. Approve Minutes of November 19, 2013 City Council
PreCouncil Meeting
C. Approve Minutes of November 19, 2013 City Council Meeting
D. Approve Minutes of November 26, 2013 City Council Meeting
E. Final Order for Approval: FP 13-041 Irvine by Northside
Management Located Near the Southeast Corner of W.
Chinden Boulevard and N. Ten Mile Road Request: Final Plat
Consisting of 68 Single-family Residential Building Lots and 4
Common Lots on Approximately 15.48 Acres in an R-8 Zoning
District.
F. Pressure Irrigation Easement with Nampa Meridian Irrigation
District for Tradewinds Subdivision
G. Award of Bid and Agreement for "WWTP Administration and
Lab Buildings -Construction", Bid Package 3 Landscaping
and Irrigation, to Total Maintenance Solutions for aNot-To-
Exceed Amount of $62,200.00
H. Police Department Public Safety Training Center Project
Agreement between Meridian Police Department and Nampa
and Meridian Irrigation District for Tiling of Irrigation Ditch
Police Department Public Safety Training Center Project
Agreement between City of Meridian and Marvin Everett for
Temporary Construction Right-of-Way Access for the Hunter
Lateral Easement Project
J. Resolution No. 13-964: A Resolution Authorizing the City Clerk
to Destroy Certain Semi-Permanent Records of the Meridian
Police Department
K. Resolution No. 13-965: Accepting the 2014 Initial Point Gallery
Schedule
De Weerd: Item 4 is our Consent Agenda.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 3 of 47
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, Item 4-J, as I mentioned, is Resolution No. 13-964, 4-K
is Resolution No. 13-964. I move approval of the Consent Agenda and the Mayor to
sign and Clerk to attest.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the Consent Agenda. If there is
no discussion, Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Item 5: Items Moved From Consent Agenda
De Weerd: There were no items moved from the Consent Agenda.
Item 6: Department Reports
A. Economic Development: Fields District Consultant
Presentation
De Weerd: So, we will move right into Item 6, Department Reports, start with Economic
Development and I will turn this over to Bruce.
Chatterton: Madam Mayor, Council Members, we are very excited to present to you
today the preliminary findings of phase one of the Fields District study. Now, as you
know the Fields District study started off as an investigation to see if it's feasible to
develop in Meridian an agriculture research district or industry cluster. As our
consultant team, though, has delved into the data and talked to a whole bunch of
stakeholders -- you will see a sampling of them in a minute -- some very interesting
ideas and directions have emerged from this and perhaps in a surprising way. Now,
separately from this project we have spoken a couple of times about the need to
develop an economic development strategy for Meridian, because we find ourselves at
times lacking some of the incentives that we need to compete with other communities
and we expected to report back to you in the spring about that strategy. Well, we didn't
realize that the Fields District study would give us a leg up on that approach. It's really
directly related to developing a new strategy. Some of the information that the
consultants have uncovered. As we have discussed the consultant's preliminary
recommendations they are really preliminary directions and the Mayor got a -- got a
briefing yesterday -- we found that this actually informs and advances our overall
strategy. So, in a minute I'm going to introduce Sean Garretson. He's a principal with
Pegasus Planning and Development from Austin. Sean is going to review some of
those phase one findings with you and, again, I think you will find them interesting. We
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December 10, 2013
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don't need any action from you right at this time. We just wanted to brief you on the
work done so far and really set the stage for January when we will be asking you to see
the final recommendations of this phase one and for you to decide if you want to move
on to phase two. That is if you feel that there -- this is promising and you would want to
move on and no more along these lines. So, let me go ahead and introduce Sean.
De Weerd: Thank you, Bruce. Hi, Sean
Garretson: Hi, Mayor, Council. How are you?
De Weerd: Thanks for joining us. If you will, please, state your name for the record
Garretson: My name is Sean Garretson.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Garretson: Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to meet with you today and
review, as Bruce said, our preliminary findings. I have met -- or our team has met with
two of you during the stakeholder process, the Mayor and, then, Council Member Bird.
Thank you very much for spending the time with us. There is -- one of my colleagues
Julian Anderson is with me here today. Two of our colleagues with Point A Consulting
had to fly out today, but it's important for you to understand sort of our perspective that
we bring to this project. Our company Pegasus Planning and Development is an
economic development company, we do a lot of strategic planning, we do a lot of
market analysis, a lot of downtown revitalization and land planning. Point A Consulting,
are our commercialization and ag experts. So, for this study we really covered all the
bases for what we need for the original overall project scope, which was to determine,
as Bruce mentioned, what the feasibility was and a develop a plan for the Fields District
as an ag, bio science, sort of mixed use area in a six mile area. So, I think you -- the
Council and the staff smartly decided to -- instead of bite all the project in one, to start
off with phase one and determine at the end of it whether or not there is enough here to
move onto the next phase. So, we called it sort of the go, no go phase and it's really a
matter of looking at some of the hard facts, which are a lot of the data and the
economics, some of which you already know, reviewing your reports, previous plans,
and, then, a lot of the soft facts, which are doing interviews with many of the
stakeholders, our own consultant observations, site visits, and meetings with the staff.
Finally, we have also done preliminary case study analysis and that's really mostly
based on our work experiences with some of these projects. So, I'm going to review for
you what we have found so far. So, we understand the planning context. We
understand sort of what your Comprehensive Plan says about the Fields District area,
which is circled in red in both of these maps below. We understand the original intent of
the Fields District, which you have identified and we understand sort of what you have
already done with your other business enterprise areas before, Ten Mile interchange
and downtown. We definitely understand the purpose of your Comprehensive Plan and
the overall goal of that, specifically looking at diversifying your economy and
understanding some aspect of ag preservation. And this is in light of the region that
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you're in. We have worked all over the United States. As -- as Bruce mentioned, we
are from Austin, Texas, but we work all over the United States and we have rarely come
across communities and regions that are experiencing the sustained growth that you
had over the last ten to 15 years. This map illustrates the subdivisions in 1960 versus
2011 and I think this is very telling. That quote on the bottom is from one of the
stakeholders we met. Also very telling. Meridian of 1971 is not Meridian of 2013. And
some would argue that's a good thing. Some would argue that's a bad thing. But it is
what it is and this is how your community is growing. I think one of the more important
aspects to our analysis is what's going to happen at that intersection of Meridian -- or
Highway 16 and 20-26 and we will talk a little bit more about that. So, when we
approach this project we really look at it from three different perspectives, the economic
development side, the ag bio science side and, then, the land development and ag
preservation side and the Fields District, as you can see, that star in the middle, really is
at the intersection of all three of these and it is a fascinating project for us to be looking
at. Meridian is in a very good position from an economic development perspective.
Your population has grown substantially. You have had significant residential growth.
As you will see in just asecond -- in fact right there -- the population growth you know
throughout the region, 115 percent growth over the last ten years in Meridian. Annual
population growth of 12 percent. That is unbelievable. And that's coming from Austin,
Texas, where, you know, we are continually rated as the best economy in the United
States month after month, lots of great growth, but we don't come close to that sort of
annual growth. That's unbelievable. And so there is definitely challenges with that and
diversifying your economy so that you're not just going to be residential with some retail
and healthcare is -- is a smart decision on your part to move forward with this. From an
economic development perspective and a site selection perspective Ithink -- I think
Brenda, your economic developer, will tell you one of the key factors that site selectors
look at, depending upon what they are looking for and trying to place in your community,
is what percent of your population of your labor force has a bachelor's degree or higher
and what is the age of your demographic. So, you are a relatively young demographic,
you're 32 -- 32.5 is a very young age and that's -- that's a good working age number.
Your percentage of your labor force with a bachelor's degree, 33 percent, that is very
good and, you know -- you know, again, you had a -- have had a significant amount of
residential growth. What's important is that the people who are moving in here are
highly educated, young, motivated and a great demographic from which you can build
upon for more economic development. You know, Meridian, as Jilian pointed out in our
research, she educated me about how Meridian got its name and you really are in the
center of it all and I think it -- this map -- I know you can't see all the detail on it, but all of
those are assets that we have mapped out that are -- range from agricultural assets,
educational assets, food assets, medical technology assets. You are surrounded by all
this and you have some here. That is a very good thing from an economic development
perspective and lot of which to build upon. Now, one of the challenges is -- this table
shows, you know, the percent of farmland that's been lost. In Ada County 21 percent --
26 -- excuse me -- 22 percent and that's just from 1992 to 2007. You can bet from 2007
to 2013 there has been a lot more. So, you know, that's about 40,000 acres lost of
farmland just in Ada County. Now, you can see throughout the region there has been a
significant amount more -- this morning Jilian and I spent most of the morning just
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driving all over your county again and looking at all the farmland you have and all of the
commercial broker signs that are peppered across all that farmland. You all are shaking
your head. You know exactly what I'm talking about. So, this is the challenge and ag
preservation, we understand the state that -- that we are in. I come from Texas. Avery
strong property rights state. Ag preservation is a very difficult and challenging thing to
do. But we do think that it's not mutually exclusive to what we are talking about in terms
of developing an economy development driver in the Fields District that could leverage
your agricultural assets. So, one of the things that we did is we looked at -- and, again,
our colleagues at Point A Consulting really led this effort and they are excellent at it,
they really broke down the taxonomy of agriculture, farming to nonfarming. The farming
including animal and plant ag, nonfarming research commercialization, technology,
such as innovative farm implements. The Mayor heard yesterday one of my colleagues
talking about -- I forget exactly where it was, but he went through ause -- sort of like an
FHA event where they were utilizing technology and one of the businesses that they
have collaborated with has developed a robotics instrument that now goes in and clips
wine leaves off of wine trees, so it's never -- it doesn't have to be done by hand
anymore. So, that's the kind of thing that we are thinking about from an economic
development perspective of the opportunity that you guys can have to stimulate that
kind of business development here. So, what we did is -- if you look at this quadrant,
we mapped out all of those different assets, we rated Meridian with all of those different
taxonomy of ag and it's broken down a lot more than that, into -- let me get this pointer
out again. Whether or not the spectrum of rural to urban and less jobs to more jobs.
So, this quadrant right here really represents what we see as the best opportunity for
Meridian, where those are going to be opportunities that are going to be more in urban
areas and that are going to be providing more jobs and investment to you. So, we have
kind of categorized those into sort of -- this one right here, K through 12, higher
education, we think there is a huge opportunity -- and CORE I think has really set a
good precedent with this, with Renaissance, a developing and workforce program linked
to healthcare. We think there is a very good opportunity to do that and bring in Boise
State, Idaho State, the community college, and focus in on ag, some of that higher end
technology related to ag. This is the traditional sort of farming aspects that could be
actually more into agri-tourism and be more an urban area -- urban areas. This one is
the one that I think we are very excited about. That and the workforce one. Which is
not ag -- excuse me -- not a traditional research facility, but ag commercialization
research. I think that's a very good opportunity for you here. We have talked to a lot of
agri business companies here, we think there is a very good opportunity in terms of
moving forward and looking at that. So, to kind of summarize this -- I'm not going to go
through this bullet by bullet in the interest of time, but you can see we have broken it
down into the categories of economic development and ag bio science. It's a lot of good
assets that you guys have here. Some challenges I think. One of the things in
particular in the northwest that's going to limit some of this is lack rail in the northwest
Meridian area. But, you know, you do have Highway 16 and I think as Highway 16 is
thought further and built out that really presents and kind of specifies what kind of
economic development you're going to see in that area. From the ag bio science area
you also have a lot of great items or great opportunities and assets and a few
challenges as well. One of the things that's important to point out is -- you can see -- it's
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down over here -- is the Magic Valley competition and, Bruce, I don't know if you have
had an opportunity to share with the Council what you and Brenda learned from your
trip to Magic Valley or not.
Chatterton: Yeah. We haven't fully briefed them on that. I think we have talked a bit
about it in terms of our competitive advantage or lack thereof. Yeah.
Garretson: Right. And I might characterize that a little differently. Treasure Valley's
competitive advantage related to bio. You know, they are going to continue to be very
very successful in dairy and cattle and that's an area that we are recommending not be
a focus area for the Fields District. We think it should be more be focused on ag. I
think one of the things that you have also learned there is that from aregion -- from a
regional economic development perspective Magic Valley does very very well together.
Now, one of the reasons I think that happens is because you have one very large
community and a lot of smaller communities that are able to participate and cooperate.
It's a very different situation here. Regionally there is a lot of competition and
sometimes -- I'm a very competitive person, sometimes that can be good. So, we have
also interviewed a lot of stakeholders and you can see in red the folks that we have met
with. All the ones in black are the ones that we still would need to meet with if we are
able to go forward. We also visited a couple of key sites in the region. The ones you're
familiar with, the Caine Center and the Caldwell Food Tech Center and we learned a lot.
And I will say these are just notable quotes or quotable notes, however you want to put
it, from some of the interviews that we have had. You can kind of read through these as
I'm talking. I will say that in general there is definite interest among the stakeholders we
talked with of participating in this and seeing Meridian succeed in this. I think one of the
key drivers moving forward is -- is this project is seen as an initiative that is regional in
scope and benefit. Obviously, it will benefit Meridian being here, but I think you're going
to have a lot more opportunities to get more stakeholders involved. So, emerging
scenes from that research, there is definitely a need and an interest for more
collaborative research bringing in -- if you can think about it again, Boise State, Idaho
State, and some of the agri business folks. The state of Idaho has a specific interest in
international developments, specifically in Asia. I think there is a definite tie into that.
Thinking nutrapseuticals, for example. Opportunity for ag research and
commercialization. Interest in ag preservation, but everybody recognizes the challenge
there. There is definitely a need from an economic perspective for more product to sell
and to describe. I think that you have been very successful with retail and healthcare,
but I think, you know, Brenda would be the first one to tell you that I think there is --
there is a need for more product, whether or not at that site, et cetera. And, again, the
focus on regionalism. Picture, for example, if the Fields District was really focused on a
regional economic development driver, the ability to get Highway 16 funded, these
things would be much more successful. So, we also looked at -- I had mentioned earlier
some of the case studies and I'm going to not spend a whole lot of time on this, but we
have broken it down into these categories of education, workforce magnets and
initiative, university consortiums, ag oriented research parks, research institutes, state
initiatives, and research parks and you will see in a little while we really think these
three over here are the ones that are going to be the best focus for the Fields District.
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December 10, 2013
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So, you know, in each one of these we looked at a couple of different scenarios, again,
you already have -- with the Renaissance facility a really good -- a really good
precedent for this type of initiative. We have done a lot of work -- especially in
northwest Florida developing education, workforce and business collaboratives. I think
there is a lot more opportunity to bring in business collaboration with those types of
initiatives. University consortiums -- you have in Idaho a consortium that's already
created for the Center for Advanced Energy Studies, I think that's a good precedent. In
our conversations with Boise State, Idaho State, University of Idaho, there is interest.
We all know there is a lot of competition among those universities. Boise State is very
interested. We even met last night with some of their folks, they are interested in
participating. Ag oriented research parks. Several examples -- Treasure Coast in
Florida. Kansas City Bio Science. Bi-Ohio, all of those are really good examples and I
think good precedence for us to look at further in phase two. Research Institutes -- I
don't know, unless it's specifically focused on ag, if that's going to be a good fit here.
But these are three that I think are very good to look at. The Danforth Center, for
example, in St. Louis I think is a very good initiative and a good one to look at. And,
then, we also looked at research triangle park and that was one of the things mentioned
early on to look at and I want to just dispel that theory that it's -- it's too big of an
initiative and, really, the focus on just research is not that applicable. However, they
also have the North Carolina Bio Tech Center that is part of that and that's a component
of the research triangle that I think has a lot of applicability here. This item on the right,
the IGEM, that is in Idaho, a Global Entrepreneurial Mission. It's still kind of getting off
the ground, but I think it has a lot of applicability here. We talked to some folks there
and I think there is some interest. Again, we have looked at research parks all over the
country. One of our colleagues Steven Spaulding, he's an expert in this and has
worked on a lot of these. The one on the left, the research triangle park, we just think
it's that applicable. The one on the right, however, you know, it's Purdue Research
Park. They have four parks, one of them is research, two of them are business -- three
of them are business incubators. What's interesting, though, is if you look at this map
on the right over here, that's the state of Indiana and you can see each one of these
facilities, very similar in terms of how Idaho approaches their research. So, where we
are -- and I hope I'm doing good on time. I'm talking as fast as I can here. Hopefully
not too fast. But you can see on the bottom we have very preliminary kind of looked at
-- each one of these models, research parks, ag oriented, education, research,
university consortium, mixed model, workforce business research and we have given
you a preliminary rating, so you can see the higher the number the more applicability we
see here in Meridian. So, we really think that from a go perspective, again, that's what
this phase of the project was about, we think that there is three main initiatives that have
a lot of applicability and have a lot of opportunity to be successful in the Fields District in
Meridian. The workforce business collaborative, entrepreneurship focus, ag research
consortium, and from a place based perspective that can take on a lot of different
things. But, you know, those two circles that we have on those maps identify sort of
opportunity areas we see where this can go. One is more sort of up here at the corner
of 20-26 and 16 and the other one might be more of sort of an agri tourism based type
of a facility that's out in the Fields District as it is right now. So, with that said, where we
are at, we are going to be finalizing the reports and getting that to the city by December
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December 10, 2013
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20th. Hope to get their feedback of January 3rd -- by January 3rd. Bruce and Brenda
assure me they are not taking any vacation. So, we are happy about that. I'm joking.
All right. Good. And, then, finalizing that report by the 10th and, then, coming out and
giving you a final presentation on the 14th. So, what that phase two and phase three
looks like -- as Bruce mentioned -- and I think he kind of teed this up, we really do see
this as a strong component of an overall economic development strategy. We see there
being a definite focus with -- and compliment to your healthcare and your ag and we do
think that phase two and phase three should be very much focused on a feasibility of
the plan, but specific sites and specific scenarios. So, with that I wanted to just leave
you with this little slide, this little picture. Opportunity is missed by most people because
it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thought that was very applicable. That's a
quote by Thomas Edison and with that I would be happy to entertain any questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Sean. Council, any questions?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Sean, you mentioned a couple areas -- sectors. The ag commercial --
commercialization, Iwant to make sure I understand that. Is that a model similar to
what I'm familiar with the national lab where they do the research, develop a product,
and, then, find an entrepreneur who wants to market that product and put it into play?
Garretson: It's very similar to that and if I can just be a little bit more specific, what we
have been talking about -- what we talked about in our workshop yesterday with the
Mayor and Bruce and Brenda and Caleb was imagine sort of a phased process where
you might have as part of phase one more an agri business focus and workforce and
development. I think the workforce development initiative, collaboration with the
community college is still to be decided and discussed and Boise State, K through 12 of
your school district here and businesses with an incubator of sorts there is the phase
one. Phase two would be having additional parcels around that for spin offs and
commercialization moving into additional buildings.
De Weerd: Any other questions?
Bird: Very good report.
De Weerd: And there is a lot behind it, which you will get more of the meat in the report,
but -- and I greatly appreciated Sean sitting down with you and your team yesterday and
-- and hearing more of the meat behind your presentation and very excited to move
forward.
Garretson: All right. Well, thank you very much. Have a good holiday. Thank you.
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De Weerd: Thank you.
Bird: Thank you.
De Weerd: Bruce, anything you want to leave the Council with?
Chatterton: Well, we are just looking forward to seeing the finalized report and some
direction. I think It's going to be important as we -- as we move on into this, not to try to
get too focused on a facility -- again, it could be a strategy for promoting certain
industries and it could be shared with otherjurisdictions. In fact, as we go into this thing
we are going to be needing partners, so we certainly can't be parochial about it. So, we
don't want to focus in too much, you know, to be too myopic, too early on with this. But
there I think are some exciting directions and tendencies as you have seen and we are
looking forward to presenting that to you in January.
De Weerd: Thank you. And I hope that maybe, Sean, when you come back we can set
up additional opportunities to talk to different groups with -- with some of this as well.
So, that would be perfect. Okay?
Garretson: Thank you.
B. Information Services Department: Strategic Plan Update
De Weerd: Thank you very much. Okay. Item 6-B is our Information Services
Department. I will turn this over to Jaycee. So, our information services director needs
help --
Holman: Yes.
De Weerd: -- with information.
Holman: As you can see I learned from last time and I am not using the snap board, I'm
using a laptop. So, basically, I'm excited to be here today and do this presentation. I
have now had a year in this job and I feel I have enough experience that I can give an
informative presentation on clerks and IT and this whole department. It's been a great
year. A lot of learning. But, really, it's been a good experience for me so far. The title
of this presentation is a little bit misleading, as there is no adopted plan or strategic plan
for IT at this point. You heard in previous presentations that the city is going through
the process of writing and adopting acity-wide strategic plan. Our department operates
in a support capacity to the rest of the city for both the clerks and IT sides of the house,
so it makes sense to model our strategic plan after the city's strategic plan and we will
be moving forward in that direction over the next year. My approach to this presentation
was to have my staff put forward those items that they work on that they would most like
the Mayor and the City Council to see and be informed about. As a support department
we operate behind the scenes and by nature most of what we do does not get a lot of
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attention. The light usually shines brightest on us when a system is down or we are
experiencing some sort of outage. I want to take this opportunity to shine the light on all
of the ways that our departments provide support and, therefore, greater efficiencies to
other departments in our community as a whole. This presentation -- the beginning of it
is going to be on the clerk's office, but the heavy part of the presentation will probably
be on the IT side more, because as the clerk's office we work very closely with the
Mayor and Council you see day to day almost all aspects of our job, so I feel like the IT
section of it you don't get to see as much of. So, to begin with, this is what people think
our department looks like, I think, or a lot of people do. And this is, really in reality,
what we really look like. So, we are divided into three sections. Obviously, the City
Clerk's office, software engineering, and -- I'm sorry, I'm a little bit under the weather
today, so I have got a little bit of chowder head, which is not ideal when doing a
presentation like this, but -- and our infrastructure support group. So, I'd like to begin
with the clerk's office and just introduce you to each of the people in my department
there and some of the things that they do. This is our admin assistant one, Holly
Binkley. She's really communication central, not only our department, but City Hall -- let
me go back one. We handle all incoming calls through the City of Meridian's general
telephone line. We direct those calls to other departments and I get a monthly report
from Dave regarding how many are just coming into that main line and about -- we
average about 1,300 a month. See if I can get this to -- okay. Our office is often the
first suite that City Hall visitors stop in at looking for city services. We have great help
out front now with our volunteers, but they usually direct them to the City Clerk's office if
there is some sort of a question that they can't answer, they are really not sure where to
direct the general public to. We are responsible for City Hall meeting room
reservations. On average we manage 50 meetings a week, with one employee
dedicated to that task and that's just alot -- it's a lot of scheduling between Conference
Room A, Conference B, City Council Chambers, City Council conference room. It can
get quite hectic, but the good news is the rooms are being used for exactly what your
intent was for them. They have been a great amenity to our City Hall. They get used by
everything from developers for neighborhood meetings, homeowners associations for
annual meetings and city staff for training and updates, as well as a lot of our wellness
events that take place here now. One of the positions that got approved was passport
specialist. This is an assistant city clerk position and it's Sherry Finch, she handles this.
Let's see. As the only accepted facility in the City of Meridian this has been a very
welcome amenity to our City Hall. We offer this service not just to Meridian residents,
but to any resident in the area. We started accepting passport applications November
1st. The first two months that we did the passport acceptance process we weren't
scheduled out fully, did kind of a slow roll out of it. We have one full-time acceptance
agent and four part-time agents and between November 2012 and November 2013 we
processed over 2,240 applications, with a total of 56,175 in acceptance fees. We did
fully fund that position and that was our goal. Our passport process is a little different
than other areas around here -- other acceptance facilities around here in that it's
appointment only. We offer privacy and I believe very good customer service, even if
we do have people that are a little bit frustrated that walk in and, then, realize they have
to have an appointment, we are able to direct them to another facility out in Canyon
county that accept walk-up traffic. But as a whole I think that our customers really
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appreciate the service level that we give them here. Our assistant city clerk Nancy
Radford is over licensing and permitting. What I wanted to highlight that she's taken
charge of this is -- as you know the proposed IndyCar race that could happen in the
summer of 2015, she has done a lot of work putting together a monthly meeting to try to
help and plan for this with the promoter of this event and any other agencies that need
to be involved in it. This three day event could attract upwards of 250,000 spectators
and visitors to our city. If successful it could become an annual event. The monthly
meetings are to discuss the Grand Prix Association's progress and update on agency
concerns. Twelve agencies are collaborating, participating in the open forum meeting.
A total of 35 agency employee contacts are receiving meeting information and we are
keeping minutes at these meetings and the Grand Prix Association of Boise is
solidifying sponsors. They need to have three million dollars in sponsorship funds by
January for IndyCar to make the Meridian event possibly real. But that's really been a
big thing on her plate and I think she's done a great job of putting that together,
arranging it, communicating, getting everybody involved way ahead of the event before
the possibility of it happening. Machelle Hill is our deputy -- a deputy city clerk. She's
really our land use specialist. She processes and follows all new land use and property
developments from receipt of applications to planning and zoning to completion at City
Council. She performs all public noticing for public hearings, completing state legal
requirements and providing for just accurate public information. One of the things she
worked on that was a little bit different over the last couple of months was the Meridian
Heights Water and Sewer, the Victory South annexation. You're very familiar with that.
One such requirement of this was to prepare an annexation plan and a summary of that
plan, which our Community Development Department did. We helped to distribute it to
all of the properties that were subject to annexation. Requirements such as noticing
properties within 300 feet, as well the approximate 250 affected residents were notified
in accordance with state code. And sign noticing of the property, special legal noticing
in the paper and a public service announcement were done. And the goal of our office
was to inform the community and assist in the outreach efforts that were being
spearheaded by the Community Development Department just to make sure everyone
was informed. Our senior deputy city clerk is Jacy Jones. I call her All Things History.
She has really really stepped up with our Historic Preservation Commission and she
really is the heart of that commission. She helps them write grants. She has worked
extensively on the walking tour and walking tour brochures. Along with that special
project she's in charge of public records request. We did 172 of those this year. Online
searchable documents. She keeps that maintained, making sure many of our
documents are available to the public in an effort to be transparent with our records.
Historic records are also maintained within our office and we pay an active
administration roll for HPC and she believes that preserving Meridian's past and making
our history accessible is crucial to helping future generations understand our community
and she really believes that and it's a very active interest of hers and I know they really
really appreciate her and we certainly do also and that's a very small portion of what this
office does, but in order to not be here for four or five hours I'm trying to trim this down.
So, I will have to say to my IT staff they did an outstanding job putting together slides
and things everyone should be interested in and want to see. I had to trim a bunch out,
because it was going to be about a 150 slide presentation, so we trimmed it down, so
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I'm probably going to zip through that fairly fast. I'd like to call Dave up here right now.
I'm going to go through his part of the presentation and, then, allow for any questions if I
go too quickly through something if you have any follow-up questions. So, we will start
out with -- on Dave's side of the house, which is the network infrastructure -- I guess
that's the best way to describe it. Stephanie Beck -- this is one of the positions that was
approved in this budget year. She's our admin for IT. We have kept her very very busy
and she's a welcome addition to the team. She spearheaded donations, organization
and inventorying items, preparing them for donations. She reached out to local
nonprofits and we donated over 350 items to the Meridian Food Bank, the Boys and
Girls Club and Computers For Kids. So, it was nice to see those computers go to good
homes, to good organizations, that needed them. Stephanie also is our purchasing and
organization queen. She sustains a thorough purchasing record for us. She's very very
organized. Maintains our IT prepaid account and makes sure that is balanced to zero --
I'm pretty sure daily now. So, maintaining the IT prepaid account. Internal invoices are
created once the purchase has been made. Departments are properly invoiced for the
technology purchases and she keeps that account balanced to zero. So, we really
appreciate that. She's converted paper filing to digital -- the digital storage of quotes,
purchase orders, internal invoices and licenses have been improved, making it easier to
locate records with very little delay. And storage of tangible items. She's worked a lot
on that in both the basement and a staging room. It's been streamlined and everything
is clearly labeled and has its place. So, she is very organized, which we love. Next
employee that I would like to talk about is Krystal Goodman. She's our support
technician. The most important part of Krystal's job is she maintains a wonderful sense
of humor with all those phone calls that she gets.
De Weerd: She would have to.
Holman: She does. She does basically IT 101, which is for all new employees. She
coordinates with HR with new employees and teaches them everything they need to
know coming -- or what she thinks everybody needs to know to start out. They also
receive a copy of the presentation. She teaches them how to contact the help desk.
How to submit a case in case management. Maintaining your network drive and other
network drives and everything about e-mail, attaching, size limits, e-mail archives, are
retention policy and web application. She also has created an IT blog, which if you look
right under where it says strong password success -- this is actually on our site and it's
very funny. How to choose a new password without wanting to hit your head on your
keyboard. So, she -- she does a lot of easy how-to manuals for people to use. Some of
the more recent topics have been reserving IT equipment, contacting IT for support,
how to choose a new password without wanting to beat your head on your keyboard,
and Outlook tips. She even puts big stickers on laptops that -- I actually checked out a
laptop, which I haven't ever really done before to take home and work on this
presentation this weekend and I pulled it out Sunday afternoon and was firing it up and
my boyfriend walked by and said, hey, did you log into your network before you left with
that laptop and I go, no, why and he goes, well, because it's pretty much going to be a
paperweight and that's what the sticker said, if you don't log in before you leave this is
just a paperweight. So, I didn't get to work on my presentation and that was pretty
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funny, because I never pulled the laptop out and looked at it before I went home. So,
she puts those notes for people like me, apparently, so -- next person is our computer
specialist, Jamie Beehn. Some of the things that he has worked on is a CAD upgrade,
which is computer-aided dispatch. This is an example of how we are working with other
agencies in the valley. He assisted Ada County in the selection process. He assisted in
the RFP and participated in on-site evaluations, collaborated with multiple agencies on
selection, piloted the multi-IT management on patrol and fire vehicles and multi-IT
communication interface between the county and vehicles for the new CAD system and
he upgraded all MVTs to communicate on 4G, LTE, and preparation for the new CAD.
So, Jamie's position -- he is a computer specialist and that's another position that was
approved in the budget year to basically have another Jamie and have redundancy in
that position. So, that person is -- his name is Eli and he will be starting at the end of
this month. So, we are very excited to get him on board. Jamie also is in charge of
computer replacements, which that will be nice I think. He will be happy to spread that
between two employees. He did 43 desktop replacements, 25 laptops, 11 VMTs and
miscellaneous iPads, printers, plotters, projectors, anything else that might come up.
He might have answered an iPhone question or two. So, infrastructure. Dave's second
in commanded is our systems administrator Chad Neal. Chad is in charge of -- or
oversees our SAN -- I have learned all sorts of acronyms this last year. SAN is our
Storage Area Network. This storage architecture is highly resilient and allows for
sharing between servers, increased performance and capacity for long-term needs of
the city and this one -- there was a couple ones I had to e-mail Dave, I'm like what is
SNAPS. What is -- as I was looking at the presentation the other night. We centralized
our file services. It means ease of management, better recoverability, and resource
savings due to deduplicate -- duplication of files and SNAPS, which allow for quick and
easy restore to a point in time, which are copies of data on file sharing. Currently they
run every hour during business hours and we keep two weeks worth of these. Now,
now I know what that is.
De Weerd: And you will all be tested on this presentation after --
Holman: Exactly.
Rountree: For what?
De Weerd: For basic understanding.
Holman: Yeah. So, basically, it's really complex and my whole point in this is to show
that they are all very very different disciplines that we do in IT. So, we will just totally
confuse you with a lot of information. So, I'm hoping to -- just trying to point out a few
things to you. Data protection, what is it, how do we protect our data and why is it
important. We have all seen something like this before. Do you remember this sinking
feeling of knowing something's gone and you're pretty sure you don't have it saved
anywhere else. You remember to call IT and hopefully you can get it restored. Data
backups include all data that is used in every department for every work flow. Files
range from small Word documents up to full servers. We can recover or restore any city
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data anytime at almost the point of time that the error occurred. We backup all the city's
data every night using Enterprise software and we store these files at City Hall and we
also make a copy that goes to the police department. We also make an almost realtime
copy of all data as it changes throughout the day. All city data is highly secured in four
different locations and made available using the city's network, which is also redundant.
Data protection improvements. All network devices, switches, routers, firewalls and
wireless are being captured nightly. Replication allows us to insure low RTO and RPO.
RTO is recovery time objective, which is the time it takes to bring services up in the
event of a major service disruption. RPO is recovery point objective, the time between
the outage and the last backup. Basically the amount of data lost. In this case the last
30 minutes. The RPO can be as low as two to three minutes, but 30 minutes is the
max. So, we are thinking about -- I guess a good example would be all of our officers in
the field using the system if something were to happen, just the constant data that's
changing there or in utility billing, they are constantly entering information all day. You
can have it as low as two to three minutes of information lost. That's fairly impressive.
This is Dave, our infrastructure support manager. Virtualization efforts. With
virtualization we are able to centralize management by creating 90 virtual resources or
servers from one physical resource or server. This reduces the amount of time on
administration and reduces staffing needs. Hardware is used to its full potential, rather
than buying very powerful -- powerful servers that get underutilized. It streamlines our
recoverability and allows us to bring servers up from a major outage very quickly and it
allows IT to meet hardware needs for all departments without needing to purchase a lot
of hardware. The city's current need is about ten servers. Without virtualization the
number would be closer to 70 servers. So, fiber. You have heard lots about that in the
last six, eight months. Providing a data communication medium that's robust, scalable,
reliable and redundant. It allows for city efficiencies, like the fire department being able
to do part of their training on site and still provide needed coverage or Public Works to
make improvements to SCADA to allow for better control of analytics that help drive
infrastructure planning. At this time, Dave, do you want to give them a quick update just
where we are at in the fiber?
Tiede: We have met with Syringa Networks, which is the provider that will be putting
the fiber in here a few weeks back. They are working on a new charge permit from
ACHD to get some of the right of way usage things resolved, so that they can cross
over across the street in areas. Otherwise, they have actually started digging on
Stradford. Started digging to start lying conduit. So, we are moving forward.
De Weerd: Cool.
Tiede: We are still on track for a July time frame for the whole project to be complete,
but if weather concerns arise, then, that may be extended until September. But it
should be by the end of the fiscal year.
De Weerd: Thank you, Dave.
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December 10, 2013
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Holman: Okay. City asset tracking. This is actually used on both sides of our house in
that it was written by the engineering department and we use it on Dave's side quite a
bit for tracking hardware and replacements. It's better tracking for all of our IT-related
assets throughout the city and improved data for replacements. We are able to track
licensing for use on ownership and compliance. It also helps improve visibility into what
the city owns and where we may have licenses available for use. Possible transfer
between departments. We also use this to keep track of maintenance and subscription
agreements and it insures we can have support when we need it and helps to avoid
costly reinstatement charges. The service desk. Over 4,500 dollars -- 4,500 dollars --
over 4,500 cases this year -- correct? Okay. Last year approximately 3,000 help desk
calls. Over 200 purchasing requests and over 300 POs and 200 internal invoices. And
this is just a visual representation of all the systems that we provide support to. I said
throw it all on one big screen and make it look pretty and it looks good. I like it. This is
what our infrastructure looks like. This is all of our infrastructure, not the end user
computers, but everything that is in place that we maintain. I thought it was really
important to see that, because it's not just a server room upstairs at City Hall and one at
PD and one -- it's a lot that we maintain and keep -- keep going. At this point are there
any questions on infrastructure to Dave before he gets to sit down?
De Weerd: No.
Holman: Okay. All right. Mike. Okay. This is our software engineering side of the
house. Our software engineering manager is Mike Tanner. He continues to maintain
and add to the incident tracking system or ITS which he wrote for our Police
Department. A major accomplishment this year was to facilitate data sharing between
and across agencies within the valley. Up until recently this didn't happen much
between agencies. The data that did get shared was from a text file on an unreliable
source. We now have a shared network called the 10.199 Network, which -- that's very
descriptive -- between all three agencies, which is Boise police, City of Meridian and
Ada County Sheriff's Office. This gives us access to real time data versus static or aged
data from a text file. Because of the network we are now able to run realtime searches
against all three agencies' incident tracking databases. We can now search for names,
addresses, and phone numbers from three different data sources. If the person's not in
our database they are likely to be in Boise city's or Ada County's. This has been so
successful that now even Ada County Dispatch is using it. What you're seeing on the
slide is an actual screen from ITS that was written and created by Mike. So, it's very
easy to look at, easy to use I think. This next slide is automated crime mapping.
Instead of having a crime analyst create a crime map manually using athird-party
software, which is very time intensive, this pulls data realtime from incident tracking and
auto populates a GIS map to show what has been going on in our city realtime. This
can be utilized by patrol in their morning briefings to see what happened the previous
shift and this also allows command staff to look for patterns and trends and where
problem areas might be. If you were to click on an icon on the map it would allow you to
drill down into that crime and see more details. I can't demonstrative that as I don't
have access to that, because I'm not a police officer, but I know Jamie Leslie is here
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December 10, 2013
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today in support of our presentation and he wanted to come up and just give you an
idea of how great this is for them and how they are going to be able to use it, so --
Leslie: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Council. Currently briefing is done with a Word
document and we actually type information to share amongst the teams as they go out
in the field. Automated crime mapping is really the information we used to go and find a
crime analyst and go, hey, how many burglaries did we have last night. How many
vehicle burglaries and where were they at. This is realtime data coming in from our ITS
system. Taken to the next step, because we are already connected with Ada County
and Boise city and all of the reports -- if you think about police reports when they come
into the system the very first place they come into is to the officer, so our data is
collected by the officer and entered into our system and it's instantly available to those
other agencies. All the other systems that we have ever used have always been further
down the food chain, so it could be a couple days before that information was into the
data system. So, with ITS and the mapping system and that person search, that
information is available to the officers almost as fast as a report can be taken. Same
with our e-citation we are doing in the field in our SI part. So, all the information is now
realtime and when you take -- when you sit down and talk about the crimes that have
occurred over the last 24 hours as you're briefing your team, you will be able to have a
visual of that and show those locations on the map. It gives the officers the feel of
where it's at, where the ones across the street were at. You don't always make that
connection between a burglary that occurred across Fairview from the neighborhood
you just took the report, but when you see it on the map before you came out you know
that, hey, there is two or three that just occurred in that general vicinity and you start
making that connection to those crimes immediately versus after an analyst makes that
for you. It also frees up that time for that analyst to go further into projecting where we
need to be with our resources, where they need to go, and reassign our officers to the
right places. So, it allows our officers to be more flexible and respond to the crimes as
they occur and gives our support staff the opportunity to, then, take that to the next
level. I can't speak highly enough of the IT department and what they have done for our
department. They feel like they are part of our department versus being a separate
department. It's not like an IT department, it's like another finger of the police
department and where we are going with that. The ITS system was started with a vision
of a place to store audio files is now being used by three agencies and other agencies
across the state are calling us wanting to use it in different aspects of their job, speaks a
tremendous amount about the people in the unit -- not just my -- not just myself or -- the
whole unit, because when Mike is helping us do things everybody else is taking up that
slack and they are doing everything they can do to make sure that their normal jobs are
getting done. So, big kudos to those guys and gals in that unit, they do a good job for
us. Any questions about that aspect I can answer for you guys?
Bird: No. Explained it well.
Holman: Thanks, Jamie. I figured he would say it a lot better than I could. Incident
tracking to RMS interface is another piece of this ITS system. All reports generated by
our police department have to be put in to the New Worlds Records management
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December 10, 2013
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system called the RMS. Before we created this interface the average time it took to
type a report into New World System probably took about 20 minutes. It now takes
about 30 seconds to import using this application. This is a big efficiency gain for the
police records division. Nick Phares is our -- another software engineer with our
department. Stacy said she would like him to be her personal representative in the IT
department and we have declined that, so -- she would like to use one hundred percent
of his time. His big accomplishment this year is something we are very proud of -- is the
new PERSI Iris application. PERCI implemented a new pension administration system,
which requires more detail in reporting from outside entities. Not only did we have to
change how we reported detail to them, PERCI was also changing how they accepted
and tested the data. Nick was the first to be ready to test PERSI's new system. He was
actually ready before they were and Meridian was the first in Idaho out of I believe it
was 700 plus agencies to have a successful import. So, we were the pioneers on this
one. He also helped develop a Public Works training application. Just wanted to
provide you kind of a picture of what it looks like, but we created this so they could track
all the different training for their employees across their different divisions. He created a
pretreatment application for wastewater. We received an application from the city of
Boise to track their pretreatment data, but it didn't really meet our needs, so we took the
time and created exactly what our department needed. Randy Elliott and Steve Manik
have been very happy with this application. It, in essence, keeps track of pretreatment
inspections and lets them know when the inspections are due. This is Somer. She is
our part-time software engineer, otherwise known as Somer Accella I guess. She
helped to get Accella citizen's access up and running. She's responsible for making
those reports work. She fixed a problem with Accella citizen access payment failing.
Accella support couldn't even figure it out, but Somer did. She runs customer support
on the fly for users to answer questions from the end user. This is an example of what
Accella looks like and this is an example of a report and she does all types of reports.
Daily, weekly and monthly financial reports. They work like checks and balances to
each other, so it's easy to spot problems. Other examples of reports include invoices,
receipts, licenses, letters, and tracking, GIS. Apparently there was an option to pick the
best picture of yourself and not the one that was on your badge and no one told me, so
this is the picture that Doug submitted of himself. So, Doug's worked really hard on
integration of Hansen, with Ada County Assessor addresses. It enables the assignment
of the nearest address to each water or sewer asset. It helps them find the asset. If
they know where to start they can at least get close to it and eliminate maintenance of
redundant addresses. Integration and vital valve software with Hansen MGIS. It
enables you to see water valve maintenance activities on a map. It eliminates
redundant hand entry of valve characteristics and maintenance into the Hansen system
and the characteristics are collected by Public Works staff on their mobile devices and
maintenance information is captures by mobile devices automatically and the custom
atomization synchronizes with Hansen MGIS. Customize mapping applications. It's a
screen shot of our MEAD editor which was also something that was created in house.
It's called Meridian Enterprise Addressing Data that we won an AIC award for last year
and it was created to track city wide addresses and make them consistent and eliminate
duplicates across the city. What we have been able to accomplish this year is that by
using a different map control we were able to get away from using a map that requires a
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December 10, 2013
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special license from a software called ESRI and those licenses are about 2,500 dollars
a year. So, basically, it's a single source address throughout the city. So, for example,
instead of having -- you can have many variations of 4029 East Tahiti. It can be east
written out, it can be Tahiti East, it can be Tahiti Drive -- it really makes consistency
amongst our addresses. This is Matt Tenold. He's our GIS specialist. He has worked a
lot with our fire department in the last few months. He works closely with Chris Amenn
and others in that department. He had to manually add labels for better readability on
fire map books, which means he manually placed all of the labels for every address in
the city by hand. These are printed maps that they use in the field. And big map
application was created that will run on an officer's mobile terminal to display
emergency locations for both fire and police. This is an electronic map. And response
times. He worked with Chief Amenn using our computer added dispatch. We are using
computer added dispatch and RMS, which is our Records Management System, call
data to verify GIS predicted response times to real world response times to help create
new response areas. This will make analysis and predictions much more accurate and I
don't know if you have anything you can add to that, Mark.
Niemeyer: Yeah. Mayor, Members of Council -- and I alluded to this in my presentation
not too long ago. This is the type of data we have been wanting for a long time and
without IT essentially donating that time to us -- they spent countless hours working on
this -- we would not have this data. We didn't have the ability in house to do it.
Certainly with their expertise and knowledge it's now possible and this is going to be
huge not only today, but moving into the future as we look at future stations, station
locations, call volumes, even our public education as we try and target elderly fall
victims, pulling data such as that -- that's just an example. So, I can't thank IT enough
for what they have been able to accomplish.
Holman: I think Matt's really enjoying working with the fire department quite a lot, too,
so it's mutually beneficial. This is -- it's called fishbone analysis of the addresses. It's a
little bit hard to see. At least my slide is smaller. Yours might be a little bit bigger, but
fishbone analysis of addresses, they are looking for addresses either on the wrong side
of the street, a road center line address issue, or addresses in the wrong location. This
example shows the wrong address ranges stored in the road centerline file, which
comes from Ada County. This can cause address locating issues if an address point is
not there. Fishbone helps us identify addressing errors and suggests changes needed
to resolve them and you can see all those buildings. Their addresses we are listing --
basically showing up on a map in the middle of that road and he's going through and
actually putting the addressing on the correct location. Accella support and project
management. That is Rob Sosnowski. He will be with us for three more days. We are
busy trying to pull every bit of knowledge out of his head before he moves onto a great
job opportunity for him. Basically Rob's updated -- the Accella GIS has been configured
and deployed. It allows the user to retrieve information about and perform functionality
on particular permits. Applications or code enforcement cases. In this case the search
returned eight records, two of which have the parcels displayed on the screen. A list of
available functionality is provided for one of the permits and the address and parcel
number are also listed for the permit. In this slide parcels associated with permits have
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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been displayed on the map and routes optimized by distance or time can also be added
to the map. And, then, graphics is the fun stuff. This is Dakota Seal. He is our IT
intern and the Mayor's is quite familiar with his work, so this is just a few examples of
things that Dakota has created for us. And, then, this was all the other things in
software engineering that I didn't even talk about. So, there is a lot. So, what I hoped to
do today is just give you a small bite of all of the different ways that we support the
different departments and I think I have probably shown pretty well how much we do for
Public Works, police, fire, I mean we do a lot in our integrated -- really everything almost
every department does. So, at this point are there any questions? I know it was a lot of
information, but I was trying to do it in under 40 minutes, so any questions?
De Weerd: Thank you, Jaycee. Any questions from Council?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: No.
Bird: Very good report.
Holman: Thank you.
De Weerd: Well, I would invite you at any point to attend one of their staff meetings.
The comradery, the innovation, the exchange of ideas is extremely impressive and --
and the dedication this team shows is -- is just awesome. So, I want to thank you all.
Thank you, Jaycee.
Holman: Thank you.
C. Parks and Recreation: Meridian Parks and Recreation
Partnership Policy
De Weerd: Okay. 6-C is under our Parks and Recreation Department.
Siddoway: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. Just have a brief
discussion with you today as part of our workshop to talk about a new proposed
administrative policy for us to have within the department regarding partnerships. As
you know, a lot of times, you know, good ideas or bad ideas walk in the door and
present themselves to us in the form of an idea for a partnership and we wanted for
some time a process to vet these ideas and determine their viability good or bad. That
sets their fundability, what funding comes with them, things like that. We have been
developing this -- this policy with the legal department. I want to thank Emily Kane in
particular for her work. We have also been -- have taken this information through the --
the Parks and Recreation Commission through the summer and fall and they have
recommended it onto the City Council for your consideration. Everyone should have
received in their packets a copy of about three and a half pages of brief -- a draft of the
administrative policy and I just wanted to quickly just hit highlights of that. So, there is
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four main sections that -- the first one is the proposer's information. It basically asks the
question who are you. Asks for their contact information. What their -- if they are a
corporation or a 501(c) (3) or who they are, what their group's mission is, their
experiences with fundraising if such is required for the partnership. The second section
is the concept plan for this partnership. Basically asking the question what do you want
to do with us. Ask them for a summary of that. Any drawings that they would have. An
analysis of the suitability. A description of who is being served with this partnership and
a description of the benefit that they would see coming out of it. The third section is the
business plan and, basically, asks the question how. You know, how do you plan to do
this. Ask for things like phasing, timelines, any marketing strategies if necessary. The
project management aspects. Any long term maintenance and defines what the city's
role is in this proposed partnership. Finally, the cost aspect of it and asking how much
will it cost. The funding requirements and looking for everything from materials, to
labor, to maintenance, to insurance or other items. Any available funds that bring to the
table. Basically the show me the money aspect of this and any future funding sources
they foresee and a plan for any fundraising that is needed and the city funds that would
be necessary for that as well. And, then, finally it asks for them to acknowledge the
public records law that anything they submit to us is subject to that. It gives a timeline
for us to review what they submit and follow up and get back with them within 50 days.
It says that, you know, for particularly larger complex projects that may be multiple
years, that we have the option of setting benchmarks and saying, okay, we are going to
set a benchmark say for fund, for example, and we need to raise this much by this date
and that they would need a partnership agreement at the end of this. So, some of the
discussion with commission was, you know, it's very hard to write a one size fits all
partnership policy, because you get a very large one, you get some small ones. They
talked about whether to try and write different sized versions of this, what they decided
on and recommended was to go for this full one and, then, just allow the flexibility at the
department level and, you know, that they can just respond if something is not
applicable as such. We feel like this at least gives us a tool in our tool belt to help us
vet some partnerships that walk in the door be better equipped to bring information to
you on any proposed partnerships that may or may not need an agreement. We do not
need formal approval today and, basically, here in the workshop setting to bring it
forward in its draft form and solicit comments, feedback. If you like we can bring it back
on another meeting with a resolution, but at this point I will just stop and ask for any
comments or questions.
De Weerd: Thank you, Steve. Council, any questions?
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Steve, it looks like -- I think I know the answer to this, but this is for those
individuals who are wanting to enter into an agreement with the city for construction
expansion, improvement of amenities in existing and future parks. It does not get into
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December 10, 2013
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things like Ribfest and those events, that follows that -- it's own process that you already
have in place; correct?
Siddoway: This is correct. This is not meant for events. This is meant for, you know,
capital projects or partnerships that would bill facilities within our parks in some kind of a
partnership fashion.
Hoaglun: Thanks.
De Weerd: Any other questions? Okay.
Bird: It's something we need. Have been wanting for years.
Siddoway: Yeah. I know there has been a desire for something like this, so I guess I
would just ask if you would like it to come back in the form of a resolution or if you
have --
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve, I'd -- I'd like -- and I know Bill or if Ted could help you -- get a copy of the
optimist Boise city plan and just look that over and see if we have covered a lot of the
highlights in that and -- to me that's probably one of the finest public-private nonprofit
partnerships that's ever been involved, so -- that I have been involved with. But it's just
something to look at and see if there is something that we have got covered -- that we
have got everything covered like they had, which was -- in my book was very perfect.
Siddoway: Right. And this was written to -- to cover a large one like that, but if a small
one comes in, for example, tomorrow night the library district is coming to talk to us
about a proposed partnership -- it's a very small one -- for what they call Little Free
Libraries, but they -- I have already handed them a copy of this policy in draft form and
said, hey, test drive this for us, don't let it scare you, because I know it asks for big
things like business plans and your partnership is quite small -- if it's small go ahead
and tell us if -- you know, if it's not applicable go ahead and say so, but help us vet the
questions, get us the information we need. So, they are helping to test drive that for us
and we are going to be talking to them tomorrow night.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Steve, I think you hit upon it at the start. Not everyone is going to be the same.
You can't have the boilerplate -- you can have a boilerplate substance, but you got to --
each one has got to be done as -- as an individual deal. So, I think you're on the right
direction myself.
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December 10, 2013
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Siddoway: Okay. Any other comments?
Rountree: Move it forward.
Siddoway: Thank you.
D. Police Department: Budget Amendment for Awarded FY 2014
Traffic Enforcement Mobilization Grant for the Not-to-Exceed
Amount of $45,100.00
E. Police Department: Budget Amendment for Awarded FY2014
Alive at 25 Grant for the Not-to-Exceed Amount of $56,078.00
De Weerd: Okay. Item 6-D is under police department. Hi, sergeant.
Gonzales: Hi, Mayor. Hi, Council. Today I'm here to ask for spending authority under a
grant that we receive -- every year the amount changes, but it's all in reference to the
amount of work that we work towards different mobilizations from the Idaho
Transportation Department Office of Highway Safety. In this we have grants with both
overtime and equipment funding of 45,100 dollars -- if I can --
De Weerd: Sergeant Gonzales, you may as well cover the next one and I'll ask for any
questions.
Gonzales: Okay. The next one also is a renewing grant, which is the Alive At 25
program. This will cover the cost to pay our instructors for the Alive At 25 program.
Also with that is some additional funding to assist us in continuing to develop the youth
safety coalition that was started -- or the funding started last year and we were moving
forward on that and we believe Sue will be launching that in a public event as well.
De Weerd: Thank you. Council, any questions on either of these two items?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: No, I have none.
De Weerd: Okay.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I do have a motion.
De Weerd: That would be appreciated.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 24 of 47
Bird: I move that we approve the budget amendment for the FY-2014 traffic
enforcement grant, not to exceed 45,100 dollars.
Hoaglun: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve the budget amendment request
on Item 6-D. Any questions or comments from Council? Madam Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move that we approve the budget amendment for FY-2014 Alive At 25 grant, not
to exceed 56,078 dollars.
Hoaglun: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve Item 6-E. Madam Clerk, will you
call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Sergeant Gonzales, I do want to appreciate -- or express our appreciation
for everything you're doing on -- in this area. I know you take to heart the safety
programs in particular for our teen drivers and it's greatly appreciated.
Gonzales: Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to work on Alive
At 25 and other programs as well.
Bird: Thank you.
F. Community Development: Transportation Update on Projects,
Plans and Programs -Includes Update and Discussion About
Upcoming Ustick Road Projects, Speed and Engineering Study
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 25 of 47
Requests on State Highways, and Other Transportation
Projects.
De Weerd: Thank you. Item 6-F is under our Community Development Department. I
will turn this over to Caleb.
Hood: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I'm before you again to talk
about transportation projects that have been happening or about to happen here within
our community. You all should have a copy of a memo in your packet. I'm going to
maybe work backwards, since Sergeant Gonzales is here and just start by kind of,
Madam Mayor, echoing your sentiment there, appreciate Sergeant Gonzales' presence
and participation with the Meridian Transportation Commission over the past several
months. There has been a couple of different issues and he has taken time out of his
days off -- this happened to be those Mondays were his days off, but he had spent a
couple of hours with us discussing a couple of projects. One of them is in that memo
that I -- I started my presentation off with. During the November 4th Transportation
Commission meeting the -- the Transportation Commission did discuss some speed
limit safety concerns on both Eagle Road and Meridian Road -- sections of those state
highways. ITD was also represented at that November 4th meeting. After those
discussions the commission did direct staff to draft an official letter to send to ITD
asking them to do a speed engineering study on those segments of roadways. I just
wanted to give you a heads up that the commission isn't taking any action, but they did
ask ITD to do some more analysis of what's going on there with the median, particularly
in those sections of Eagle Road. Is it appropriate to drop the speed limit, maybe, in
certain sections, particularly the areas of Fairview to the interstate. In particular, again,
that's one of the areas that police have spoke before about being, you know, higher
crime, higher accident kind of areas and so that's something, again, that Sergeant
Gonzales kind of brought to our attention. The commission agreed and asked ITD to
look into that a little bit more. Same with a section of Meridian Road just south of I-84 to
about Victory Road and look at that -- there is -- so, there are currently some speed limit
changes, an access with Calderwood Drive there and just seeing if that is appropriate --
what we have currently for speed limits and the way that those roadways are designed.
So, that is one in the memo that I wanted to call to your attention. If after ITD does their
analysis, presents to transportation, if they recommend any changes to those roadways
that recommendation is what it is and it will be brought to the Council for consideration
and a final action requesting that those speed limits be changed or medians be modified
or whatever may come about from that. But, again, I just wanted to give you a heads
up. It's a fairly new action. It's the first one that that commission has taken to really
evaluate some existing conditions in our community, so I just wanted to give you a
heads up and give you a copy of that -- of that letter that the Mayor -- that I worked with
the Mayor's office on in getting the transportation chair to sign and send over to -- to
ITD. Really I just have a couple of other things in the memo to highlight for you. There
are -- on page two there is a lot of pedestrian projects that are happening in Meridian
these days or about to happen. There is notice to proceed on four of them. Even since
this memo went out the fourth one listed on page two, the Pine, North Haven to Rotan,
that's basically West of Meridian High, there is a section there that doesn't have
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December 10, 2013
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sidewalk. That is actually advanced to January. So, the notice to proceed on that was
May. ACHD is looking at doing that here just after the first of the year, so -- but I
wanted to just -- I don't typically put those in my memo, but -- but I thought I may as well
provide you that information, since I have it, so -- the other thing I wanted to spend a
little bit of time with has to do Ustick Road. We have talked before about Ustick Road
being a priority corridor, not only for the city, but also ACHD. It's one of those key
corridors that they have made a level of commitment and effort to while improving
through Ada County and so I wanted just to give you an update that that is -- it's real hot
right now. The first section kind of really is -- is Meridian. Well, I should say there is a
section Duane Drive to Campton and Eagle-Ustick intersection have been improved in
the recent past. The next leg is kind of working from east to west. The Leslie Drive,
which is, essentially, the stoplight behind Kohl's -- or west of Kohl's back to the Locust
Grove intersection, will be going into construction also after the first of the year.
Tomorrow on ACHD's commission agenda they are set to approve the construction
contract for C&A Paving to do that work. It also includes some improvements to that --
the intersection of Ustick and Locust Grove. So, that will be starting -- the proceed on
that is January 13th. So, I know that we are probably going to get some -- some
comments. Construction never ends here. Some growing pains. But the Ustick
corridor will be under construction here over the next several years and this is just the
next in a long line of projects there. So, that's more of a notice, heads up that that will
be under construction over the next several months, again, starting just after the first of
the year. And, then, what I wanted to spend a little bit more time getting to a little bit
more detail on are some projects that are in design and even some of them moving into
right of way along the Ustick corridor. So, there are three projects that are, again, in
right-of-way design phases right now. The -- and I'm going to continue that theme of
working east to west. So, I just left, basically, the Ustick-Locust Grove intersection.
That's going to be under construction again complete here in the next -- in the next year.
The next mile -- it's, actually, about three-quarters of a mile, because if you take the
intersections out on both ends, the segment of Ustick Road between Meridian and
Locust Grove is about three-quarters of a mile. The reason that I want to talk to you
about that mile and, then, the other mile and a half, roughly, between is -- at this stage
of the game this is when ACHD likes for us to submit a cost share application for the
nontransportation components. So, elements of a roadway project that they say they
can't or won't do with a roadway project, because that's not their charge, so things
historically that we have asked for, again, the detached sidewalks, planter areas and get
the detached sidewalks, that's the big one we typically ask for. Tonight -- today what I'd
also like to discuss with you is a little bit on lighting and, then, some of the landscapes
as well. I'm going to talk first a little bit about sidewalks and planters. We are also
going to be with your -- a nod of the head. I don't need an official action, motion today,
but sewer and water will also be addressed in the cost share permit. What's gone on
historically is Community Development staff will submit a cost share application,
meanwhile, Public Works staff is working with ACHD on some of the utilities and there is
a separate interagency agreement and a cost share permit. What we would really like
to get towards is one master agreement, agency to agency, and not have, you know,
project managers and Public Works not knowing what Community Development is
asking for or Parks and vice-versa. So, we are really trying to work with ACHD to,
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December 10, 2013
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again, have one master agreement for these projects. So, just kind of running through
these pretty quickly, but I'm going to talk about four -- or, excuse me, about sidewalk
and planter areas and, again, kind of with a nod of the head. We have previous
direction on -- and policy and we get it through development, detached sidewalks and
landscape buffers as subdivisions come in. The first three-quarters of a mile the
roadway widening project -- the projects you see that are in color are city zoned
subdivisions and they -- all those projects, with the one exception of the one on the
corner here, all do have detached sidewalks that are existing and for the most part, with
some slight changes to some curb ramps, can be retained with ACHD's roadway
widening projects. What I'm here to, again, propose to you that we ask ACHD to do is
as they get further in design, these properties that have not yet developed, ask them to
design in detached sidewalk. There are a couple of exceptions to that request. There
are a couple of homes in here and driveways -- this map doesn't do a real good job of
showing how close some of those homes get to the future top back of curb. But there
may be some instances in here where you attach the sidewalk, just to allow some
separation and you don't make it a situation where ACHD has to buy the whole property
to detach a sidewalk. So, we have done some calculations there for this segment of
roadway. There is also this existing home here where it gets pretty tight to detach a
sidewalk, so that would have a section of attached sidewalk as well. But there are
about 3,300 linear feet of frontage on both sides of the roadway in this project, if you
include all those that -- the aerials, basically, you can see here areas. For those areas
where detached sidewalk is feasible what we would, essentially, ask is, again, ACHD to
acquire the right of way to detach that. And this is to improve those six foot planter
areas for the detached sidewalk, so you're looking at about 5,000 dollars in construction
costs to the city to improve those six foot wide planter areas with -- with a washed rock
and that would be delivered and installed. I'm not asking you right now to -- for an
enhancement for that. These projects are scheduled for construction in '17 and '18, so
we are three or four years out yet before actually putting in that enhancement request,
but before we get too far down that road, this is the request and, then, ACHD will kick us
back a permit and, then, we sign that permit basically saying, yeah, when you get to that
project that's what we will commit to do. So, I don't want to make any assumptions on
past policy on this, I just want to give you a heads up that based on that previous
direction that's what the impact would be to this roadway segment -- roadway project.
So, I will pause real quickly before moving to the intersections to see if there is any --
any comments on that request of ACHD at this time.
De Weerd: Thank you, Caleb. Council, any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes.
Rountree: Caleb, why -- why would we be asked to participate to replace what's there,
particularly in those subdivisions that currently exist where there is sufficient width to
improve the road, leave the sidewalk in place or maybe if you have to move it in spots,
but we still have that -- I think in every one of those there is a detached sidewalk and
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December 10, 2013
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there is areas already maintained by the homeowners associations between the
sidewalk and the existing roadway and if ACHD needs part of that it seems to me that
it's their responsibility to replace in kind what's there and if the homeowners want a
detached sidewalk, along with the city, they need to -- they need to replace it as part of
the right of way, because I don't think they own any of that right of way, it's bare for
future expansion. They are going to have to negotiate with each HOA out there for what
they may or may not want.
Hood: Madam Mayor, Councilman Rountree, I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear, but,
yes, in fact, we have done a pretty good job -- that we, as agencies working together
with developers and the HOAs to get those -- the existing sidewalks about there,
installed in a location where they can be maintained. Like I said, the only thing that
really has to be retrofitted -- there are a couple of curb ramps that will need to be rebuilt,
because the ADA standards have changed. But for the most part the existing detached
sidewalks that are out there in those color coded subdivisions can be retained at a cost
savings to the taxpayer and ACHD as they build these projects. So, I'm sorry if I didn't
make myself clear. The request would be these areas where you have got county and
there aren't any sidewalks. But, again, a vast majority of the existing sidewalk out there
can be retained as part of the project going forward. It would be to keep that flavor or
that detached sidewalk for these county properties that haven't yet come in and
annexed. We don't want them to look different than the rest of town, we'd like them to
also have a detached sidewalk. The issue becomes what will happen with the planter
area. ACHD says we don't want to have anything to do with the planter area. It's not
necessarily detaching the sidewalk, they are okay with that, it's who, then, is going to
improve to some level that area between the curb and the sidewalk and since there isn't
an HOA and the homeowners haven't said, boy, we want this, the city has said, okay,
that's something we are willing to -- as an interim condition put rock down when they do
redevelop. The homeowner would be responsible for pulling out that rock and putting in
green like the other subdivisions, so it matches and is consistent. So, I'm sorry if I
didn't, you know, clarify that, but, yeah, all the existing sidewalk out here -- I think for the
most part there is some bits and pieces that have to be reconstructed, can be retained
and we are not responsible for any of that.
Rountree: Okay.
De Weerd: Anything further? Any other comments? Questions?
Bird: I have none.
Hood: So, I'm going to move, then, to the intersection project. This one you can see it's
a little offset. There is a little bit more construction going on on the west leg of this
intersection project and the east leg, but, again, this will match in with the project we just
talked about. This project is a little bit different. You can see all the color here. So, not
a lot of county zoned properties and there is a lot of existing sidewalk with this project.
However, it is kind of a mixed bag with what ACHD is able to build with attached versus
detached sidewalk. You have some homes here in this subdivision that are pretty close
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December 10, 2013
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to the intersection and it makes it nearly impossible to detach a sidewalk in the
backyards of these people's homes. So, again, similar to our last discussion. This may
be -- this is in the city, but you won't have a detached sidewalk here, because, again,
just some of these structures and fence lines and all that are really close, so -- and for
that matter you do bring the sidewalk close to the curb at crossings, so there is a
transition at some point in time. For this leg it actually occurs back in here. You attach
the sidewalks, so you can get pedestrians to the curb, so they can -- they can cross the
roadway. So, small sections of attached sidewalk are part of this project. This kind of
got cropped off a little bit further. The south leg actually goes down a little bit further
down in here, but there is a mixed bag. With this project I'm not proposing that we -- we
apply for any cost share from it. We have, essentially, what we need with -- again, with
some retrofitting, some -- some fixing up, but there will be some inconsistencies, if you
will, in detached and attached sidewalk, but there is some existing constraints on this
site, again, particularly on -- on the southeast corner that make it difficult for us to
request detached sidewalk without seeing too much of an impact on some of the
existing homeowners there. But I just wanted to let you know that this project is moving
forward to -- this one is actually 95 percent, so this one is a little bit further ahead than --
than the other two roadway projects. I will also point out that part of this project is
putting in some curb ramps to -- sorry, got the wrong driveway. There was a Northwest
3rd Street, so a pedestrian hybrid beacon signal can be installed in the future to get
folks to the park if they are not able to cross here. So, those folks in like this subdivision
-- again, that got crossed a little bit, but there is going to -- in the future there will be
connectivity between this subdivision and the Waterbury -- Woodbury Subdivision a little
bit further to the -- to the south, excuse me. But this one I -- I am not proposing, again,
that we have really any cost share. You have got everything in the city and you will
have the -- those property owners owning and maintaining the landscape buffer areas
where they do this, so -- I don't know if you have any -- any comments on that one, I just
-- again, more of a -- kind of a status update for you all, at least with detached sidewalk.
I'm going to circle back and we will talk about lighting in just a minute, but --
De Weerd: Well, Caleb, any site issues as -- on that southeast corner of Meridian and
Ustick? Because that -- like you said, that is a tight -- that's going to be tight with the --
to minimize the impact on the -- the neighbors that there is not a lot of site triangle as it
is.
Hood: I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here a little bit. I believe that this home has to
go away.
De Weerd: Oh. Okay.
Hood: I just don't think you can fit everything that needs to happen. But, really, it was
to minimize the backyards of these homes. You don't want to have to buy the whole
block. So, yeah, Madam Mayor, Ithink -- I think that one just is going to have to make
this project go forward. It think ACHD is going to have to acquire that lot. So, that -- I
think that would address your concern --
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December 10, 2013
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De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Hood: -- because it is tight today.
De Weerd: Yeah.
Hood: So, this is a --
De Weerd: Any questions on this section? Okay.
Hood: I'm going to move to the third -- the third project, the other leg here. So, again,
we are up near Linder. Again, the Ustick-Linder intersection was recently improved.
You can see some of that here with the aerial, too, the existing sidewalk and, then, the
limits of that project and, then, the new project that would be tied back in with what we
just talked about. So, this project -- a little bit of a similar story. It's a concept level
design right now, so I don't have 75 percent plans just yet on this one, but what we have
talked about is a team. They are -- ACRD has heard the city and our request to detach
the sidewalk. So, again, for county parcels that, again, you can see that aren't in a
color, ACHD is proposing to go past that sidewalk -- subject to us requesting that
officially with this cost share application. So, I will propose that we request that for this
one. That cost will be about 2,000 dollars to improve that six foot wide planter area, so
we can get the detached sidewalk -- and that's delivered and installed. In today's
dollars. I don't know what that may cost in a couple few years when we actually ask for
it, but somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 today to include that. I don't think three
is really anything else to point out with this one. It's -- it's pretty standard and, again,
you can kind of see what is city limits today, where we have existing sidewalks. A little
more difficult when I put the zoning over the top of it. It's a little misleading in that this
parcel hasn't developed yet and so you don't have the detached sidewalk that even
some of these other projects that have developed in the city, but that you see. When it's
annexed we can -- we can -- the city requires that property owner to maintain those
planter areas. So, I think that's all that I had talking about sidewalk. I want to talk a little
bit -- unless there is any questions on that one or direction on that project. Talk a
couple minutes about lighting -- roadway lighting.
De Weerd: Okay.
Hood: Pause. Pause. Pause. Okay. Nothing. So, I want to point out it's a little bit --
before our transition, Steve is here, I have worked with -- with Mike Barton and Jay
Gibbons a little bit on the dollar amounts and the planter areas, so you know that I didn't
do that, but they helped in getting some of those numbers for -- for planter areas. Now,
transitioning to lighting, Austin Peterson is also here. I'm also going to kind of take a
pause a little bit if there is anymore detailed questions I'm going to call on his expertise
in this matter, but -- so, I have been doing this now for several years and it's just starting
to click for me based on a previous Council discussion we had just a couple few weeks
ago on a development that was going through the process. I know ACHD's policy about
when they do these capital projects, putting in lighting at intersections. So, ACRD will --
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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typically with a project put a light near a roadway, a roadway intersection. But they don't
light roadways the way that our specifications require it, that we require of developers.
What we are -- so these road projects are no different. We will not be getting any
roadway lighting unless a few things. So, this is Ustick specific, but it's also a little bit of
policy -- our internal policy about roadway lighting. It seems to be important to the city.
It's something, again, that we require with new development, that a developer install to
our -- our specifications when they develop a project. Some of what I am -- some of the
feedback I'm starting to hear is -- an example we have a city park, yet we are not putting
roadway lighting in front of a city park the way we would require a developer to when
they develop a piece of property to put roadway lighting in. So, I don't want to call it a
double standard, but there is some of that level of, hey, why isn't the city holding
themselves to this standard. So, that's maybe one -- one piece of this with our cost
share application do we want to ask -- or tell ACHD, hey, we'd like to come along side
you and when you build this project we are going to put in lighting in front of our park.
To kind of follow that same train of thought a little bit, there are other options or levels
that we could explore having a -- further the discussion with ACHD, if it's the right thing
for them to do to light roadway projects part of that discussion, but just talking with
Austin and some others, it -- it seems to me -- just my opinion here -- it is certainly
within their purview to put in lights. Now, they interpret their charge a little bit differently,
but you have AASTHO and some other standards that say it's just good practice as you
build a roadway to put roadway lighting in, because that may be something the Council
wants to have a dialogue with ACHD's commission about. These are questions -- not
necessarily trying to convince you one way or the other, but just options, because I want
to call -- I call this out, because you will have -- Ustick will be a continual mish mash of
-- you will have old standards, you will have no lights on county properties, you will have
new standards with new subdivisions, so it will be light, dark, light, light, dark, nothing --
so, some consistency. And that's really the reason I'm bringing it up in this vein, with
the Ustick projects, is are we okay the same as, you know, business as usual or do we
want to have a discussion and talk about lighting and maybe it even is the city stepping
and saying -- I know they are going to kill me and Todd was part of one of these --
maybe it's just something out of the General Fund, if the city says, you know, ACHD
does not want to do it and we are going to set aside a million bucks a year and we are
going to improve -- you know, as ACHD does this we want to -- mile by mile we want to
have lights. It's that important. Or not putting it right now head to head with fire or
police or any of that, but just want to get out there that, again, this is starting to --alight
is starting to go off in my head, pardon the pun, that we aren't getting -- we aren't getting
roadway lighting with these and it is an opportunity -- there is a project going in there
and it's -- it's not happening. So, we bring it to your attention again, to let you know we
have heard you previously and we are working under that policy, but the implications of
that policy are you don't get roadway lighting, except at intersections. So, we could -- if
you're interested in having those discussions with ACHD or talk about maybe forming
LIDs or CIDs or maybe collecting impacting fees, instead of having developers put in
lights, we put it in a pot and do it corridor by corridor, mile by mile or other options. So,
that's, essentially, why I wanted to bring up lighting. We aren't currently proposing to
apply for lighting with these three roadway -- these three projects at ACHD, but I did
want to disclose to you that we are applying for roadway lighting with these three
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projects and with that, Madam Mayor, I think that's everything -- All Things
Transportation and if you want to talk about these projects anymore, again, myself or
Austin or Steve are here, so --
De Weerd: Council? I think Caleb did ask a question regarding lighting and I think,
Caleb, it's definitely a discussion that we need to have with Ada County Highway
District. This Council has been setting aside money every year for safety lighting and
there is no doubt that -- that that safety lighting is intended to make an area safer by --
by lighting it. What -- what the standard should be -- I know we have -- we have asked
the question on the standard that is being applied now, is it too much -- I don't think
anyone has said that it's not appropriate, so -- but it is a discussion that needs to be had
with Ada County Highway District, but before we do that we probably need to have the
discussion on how much is -- keeps an area safe.
Rountree: I agree, Madam Mayor, it's something we need to discuss. I'm not sure
that the standard that we have is necessarily appropriate and I very much agree with
Caleb's point about the park. You know, if we are going to have a standard, we need to
step up.
De Weerd: We need to do it.
Rountree: And if we don't, then, we shouldn't expect anybody else to.
De Weerd: Absolutely.
Rountree: So --
De Weerd: Okay.
Rountree: I think it's a subject we need to pay particular attention to and it's interesting
to drive around town and see how it is handled on these major corridors.
De Weerd: Well -- and where you see lighting --
Rountree: Yes.
De Weerd: -- how much a difference it really makes. It's -- it's important. Mr. Bird.
Bird: I was going to say, basically, what Councilman Rountree did, but I think lighting is
very very important on any of our sidewalk where we want people to walk and stuff and I
don't know why we have set one standard for ourselves and another one for the
developers, so that's something we got to take a long hard look at and make sure that
we get on base with it, but I agree with you, we -- we need to make sure that the
walkways are safe.
De Weerd: Thank you.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 33 of 47
Hoaglun: And Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Just to say that -- you know, next month you will have three new Council
Members who probably need to be brought up to speed on this and they might have
some insight on what they would like to do, so something to keep moving forward.
Hood: Madam Mayor, if I can just repeat back a little bit and maybe start even
backwards with Council Hoaglun's last comments. So, again, we are going apply and
ACHD will say, yep, that sounds great, we want to partner with you and your response,
well, for designing and installing those elements. If at that time that that new Council
doesn't want to sign that agreement, we are not -- we are not committing anything today
to doing anything. It's when we bring that cost share permit back and we sign it and
say, yep, we agree to your terms, ACHD, then, we are committing to designing,
installing whatever elements we agree to do there. So, point well taken. We will have
that discussion kind of a little bit broader terms. I was talking with Warren -- and I'm
sorry I didn't do it previously -- he is working on -- or he and the staff are working on --
and limagine Austin played some role in that -- the current standard -- the spacing
standard, really, I think is the -- is some of the issues and he will be bringing that back to
you later this fiscal year. So, that is something that -- that is known and we will discuss
what is appropriate. Madam Mayor, just to repeat a little bit, it's been some time since
we had a joint meeting with ACHD. Is that -- do you think -- is that something I should
work with, you know, Peggy or C.J. on getting -- and Bruce and staff to get a joint
meeting set up? Is that -- this level you would like to have that discussion or -- okay.
So, I will work with -- with ACHD to have -- it's been awhile and there maybe some
other topics, too, we can work into something once we can finally get that calendared.
And, then, I think I would be remiss to -- just kind of on -- if I didn't mention the
appreciation we do have for that safety lighting that was mentioned, the 50,000 dollars
annually that is set aside that -- where we can retrofit some areas. But it just doesn't go
very far. I mean we are appreciative of it, but it just doesn't -- wouldn't be able to do this
with that, so -- and, then, in that permit we will ask to -- to come alongside ACHD in
lighting Settlers Park, so I don't know if that's something that Austin could do that
lighting and design plan or have to consult that out or not, but we will at least put ACHD
on notice that we would like to have lighting included with -- with the intersection project,
so -- am I missing anything there?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: That safety lighting really really works, Caleb. I happen to live on 8th Street
where we have -- where we just put it in thanks to -- I think Mayor pushed on that pretty
hard, along with me, but it -- it has been a real blessing, especially now for these kids
that have to walk to school along there to have some lighting and have nice -- and, of
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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course, the sidewalks come at the same time, which -- and if that -- if that's the standard
distance between light it works perfect, Warren. I don't know what they are, but it lights
that whole two block area up just beautiful. Those kids don't walk in the dark anyplace
and I certainly appreciate it.
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council.
De Weerd: Warren.
Stewart: I do want to just kind of maybe chime in a little bit on what Caleb said. There
is -- there is kind of two separate issues and he touched on the fact that, you know, we
are in the process of developing a design standards manual for the city that not only
covers lighting, because, obviously, there is an existing design standards manual, but
1 we are going to cover, essentially, the full gamut of things that we have in the Public
Works Department. That's going to take some time. As a part of that we are going to
reevaluate the lighting standards that we currently have and we are also going to go out
and do a -- you know, essentially a public comment and public involvement effort to try
and get comments and feedback on that entire policy including the new -- or a possible
revised lighting standard. But there is also kind of a separate issue here and that is the
funding, because we can develop the standard and we can develop it and maybe it
changes and maybe it doesn't, but in any case we still have an issue here with how are
we going to fund projects like this. We either got to -- we have got to find some sort of a
solution with ACRD or another alternative. I think one of the things that Caleb and I had
talked about a few weeks ago is, basically, do you or would you like us to do some
research on some alternatives and come back to you with some alternatives for funding
these projects to give you an opportunity to look at those different things and determine
if any of them have merit and that you would like to move forward with and I think that's
one of the things that as Public Works we are interested in if you -- if you're supportive
of that in essentially coming back to you with some alternative options. Maybe that's not
now, maybe that's down the road, but, anyway, I just want to kind of get your feedback
on that if -- if it's appropriate.
De Weerd: Any comments from Council?
Rountree: I'm okay with that. I mean we got to figure out how to pay for it.
De Weerd: We thought you had the magic answer for that one, Warren.
Zaremba: And, Madam Mayor, I would just
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: -- I would add while -- while you're going through that and consider some of
the more modern lighting technology, the things that use low electricity that may cost a
little bit more to install in the first place, but take a stab at figuring out lifetime costs of
some of those things and I think we should consider new kinds of lighting as well.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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Stewart: Madam Mayor, Councilman Zaremba, I appreciate that very much and Austin
just finished a best case analysis on LED lighting. We had originally not allowed LED
lighting as apart of our -- our lighting standard simple because at the time that was an
emerging technology and the lifecycle costs didn't pan out. But since it's, you know,
being developed more and more you -- like most of those things, the cost of those
fixtures is going down and their life and their reliability is going up. So, I think that that's
likely to occur in the next revision of the lighting standards.
Zaremba: Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Any other comment, Council?
Bird: I have none.
G. Public Works Department: 2013 Mutual Cooperation
Agreement Between the City of Meridian and United Water Inc.
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you, Caleb. Thank you, Warren. Item 6-G is under the Public
Works Department.
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, back in the early 2000 era the United
Water Idaho submitted a reasonably anticipated future needs application or what they
referred to as an I-Map to the Department of Water Resources to, essentially, acquire or
set aside water needs for themselves looking at a 50 year design horizon. At that time
the City of Meridian protested that application. There was an interim agreement that
was developed between the City of Meridian and United Water Idaho that would,
essentially, remove us as a protestant from that I-Map proceeding, but before that was
all solidified and done, the department essentially put all of the applications on hold until
after the SRBA process was done. That's the Snake River Basin Adjudication. Now
that that Snake River basin adjudication is completed United Water has revised and
refilled their essentially reasonably anticipated or I-Map request with the adjustments
that the SRBA required. So, it was necessary for us to revisit the agreement that we
had with United Water and insure that we had an agreement that was going to protect
the City of Meridian's interest, because, honestly, the reasonably anticipated future
needs application that's available to municipalities is something that the City of Meridian
as the Public Works Department, that we are also interested in doing at some point in
the future. We would like to see how successful or not United Water's application is
before we make -- or take that step, but we are interested in coming up with some sort
of an agreement with them and we have been working over the past 18 months with our
attorney and theirs, as well as meeting with their management, as well as our
management to, essentially, hammer out some sort of agreement that protects the city's
water right interests and allows us to remove ourselves as a protestant to their --
essentially their proceeding to an intervener, which would still give us the opportunity to
make comment and so forth and be involved in the process, but not necessarily as a
protestant in that. We believe we have come up with a very good agreement with
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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United Water, one that protects the city's interest and, essentially, that's what is before
you at this time. So, I will stand for any questions that you may have on that.
De Weerd: Thank you. Is there any questions?
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: Warren, this does protect our area still, doesn't it? I mean I -- we are just talking
about water rights, not water area.
Stewart: That's correct. Essentially what this agreement does -- well, there is several
things it does. But one of the things that this does is it says if United Water drills a well
within a mile of the -- or within a mile of our impact area --
Bird: Impact area. Yeah.
Stewart: -- they have to notify us, one, and, essentially, they have to demonstrate that
they are not going to impact our -- any of our wells.
Bird: Our wells.
Stewart: Yes.
Bird: And we still have -- if we feel that it is not right -- that we are not being told right
we still can protest; right? Or does this thing take -- take us away from doing that?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Bird, no, you still have
the right to protest.
Bird: That's what I thought.
Stewart: If you believe that it's going to have an impact.
Bird: Okay. Thank you, Warren.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything else?
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just the point that you made a few minutes ago about if they want to drill a
well within a mile of our impact area -- if we have an objection to that is that based on
our future need to maybe drill a well in that area or is that only based on our existing
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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wells if we -- if we want to tell them, no, that's too close to a planned well, can we do
that?
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Councilman Zaremba, I don't know
that it actually addresses a future well. It would certainly address all of our existing
wells. The fortunate thing that we have going on here is most of the area between the
borders of United Water and the City of Meridian is fairly well developed and I don't see
that there is going to be a lot of that happening. I would have to go back and look at the
details of the agreement. I apologize, Kyle could probably answer that off the top of his
head. I failed to mention that he has been probably the most integral person involved
here and I appreciate his work and his effort in this regard, but I don't know that it
addresses -- it certainly allows us, like I said, the opportunity to -- to have that
conversation that required to let us ahead of time. We are given the opportunity to,
essentially, get involved in that process before they even submit their application to the
Department of Water Resources. That's part of -- part of the agreement. So, we would
have the opportunity to have those conversations with them and work -- work on, you
know, solutions before we have to even get involved as a protestant. I don't know if that
answers your question entirely, but --
Zaremba: Pretty much.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything further.
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: What happens if we don't do this agreement?
Stewart: If we do not do this agreement it's really not clear. Our attorneys have advised
us that they believe that the existing agreement that we have with United Water that
was -- that was done prior to the -- essentially United Water putting this on the shelf,
may still be enforceable and requirements and things that are in that agreement are
there to protect us might still be enforceable. However, there is question on that. I
know that the attorneys for United Water feel that it might not be enforceable, simple
because some of the terms of -- that were the basis, essentially, for that agreement no
longer exist. So, without going to a court of law to determine whether or not those
things are enforceable or not, it may be difficult to say if that old agreement is
enforceable. We could still file aprotest -- or become a protestant in the proceeding
and protest it from that perspective and try and oppose it, but we would certainly -- I
would say it's likely that they would return the favor if we ever tried to file a reasonably
anticipated future needs application ourself.
H. Legal Department: Request to set Hearing on an Appeal of an
Impact Fee Administrator's Decision on an Impact Fee
Individual Assessment Request
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 38 of 47
De Weerd: Anything further? Okay. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Nary
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. The next item is just to
request to set a hearing on appeal. You will see in your packet there is a -- has been
objection to a fee that was determined -- or a fee determination for impact fees. The
applicant has requested a hearing appeal that is pursuant to our city code -- would
come before you. He's requested the appeal be heard next week. That satisfies any
noticing requirements, because it doesn't have to be noticed in the newspaper. So, it's
up to you. You can set it to a different date if you wish, but he's requested that. All we
need tonight is an action -- is simply a motion to set the date of when you would like the
hearing held and, then, we will move forward with that.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Mr. Nary, good question. You're looking ahead on December 17th, we have
an action item. It's a consolidated public hearing on the update to the development
impact fee capital improvement plan and emergency impact fee ordinance and we will
hear this report and whatnot, but, yet, actually, the Council won't take place, if we
decide to do something, until January. It can actually be taken on that. I'm just -- I'm
just seeing where -- where this comes in -- we could hear it, but we may not necessarily
take action on the 17th; is that correct?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, the new -- the potential changes to the
ordinance would take place in the future. This is based on the current ordinance. So,
there is no conflict. But I just got back today, informed that we had a noticing issue on
that, so I think we are going to be moving that past the 17th into January, so you won't
hear it on the 17th anyway.
Hoaglun: So, the consolidated public hearing, Madam Mayor, would be moved to -- into
January. We would hear this. That is on the future and -- okay. That makes sense.
Understand. Thank you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: If we don't have anymore discussion, I will make a motion that we set this hearing
on the appeal of the impact fee administrator's decision to December 17th, 2013.
Hoaglun: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to put this over onto our agenda next week.
All those in favor say aye. All ayes.
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
Page 39 of 47
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Human Resources and Legal: Social Media Policy and Social
Media Procedure
De Weerd: Okay. Thank you. 6-I is under our Human Resources and Legal regarding
their social media policies.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you. Madam Mayor, one housekeeping thing. There was an agreement
there with United Water that was part of Item G and, Warren, I didn't know if that's
something that needed to be approved today and so if you want to take that back up or
is that something -- I don't know the timing or whether a week would matter, but if you
wanted it approved today we need to just take that backup.
Stewart: Madam Mayor, Members of the Councilman -- Council. Excuse me. We were
hoping that it would -- the approval for that, so that it would happen today, so that the
Mayor could sign it. Certainly if there was a need for further information, then, we could
respond to that, but it's up to you.
Rountree: Madam Mayor, if that's what we are going to do I just want a response from
Bill that it's been thoroughly vetted and we are better off today if we approve it than we
are currently with our existing agreement and we aren't creating yet another vehicle that
we can get more litigation from.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree --
De Weerd: I can't wait to hear this answer.
Nary: You know, there are lawyers for a reason.
Rountree: What are those?
Nary: We actually had outside Council -- a water rights attorney actually helped in the
crafting of that. We also reviewed it. It is -- it is exactly as Warren explained. We had
an interim agreement. This essentially replaces that. It is, probably a much safer
document to move forward with than relying on the interim agreement when the
circumstances have changed. So, I don't see any conflict or concern from the city's
perspective.
Rountree: Thank you, Bill. Madam Mayor?
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: I would, then, move that we approve the cooperative agreement between the
city and United Water and authorize the Mayor to sign and the clerk to attest.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second. Any discussion from Council? Madam
Clerk.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried. Thank you.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Okay. Mr. Nary.
Nary: Thank you, Madam Mayor, Members of the Council. I told Patty I would start off
on this policy. This policy we worked on for awhile at the director level. This is a policy
in your packet that you will see -- it's actually two. There is a policy and, then, there is a
procedure and the purpose of it is to address social media and how that is handled in
the city on -- at sites that are set up for the city's use or the city's purpose, so we have
consistencies and also matches what the law is -- the law is involved greatly in this
area, but I wanted to make sure we were consistent. So, the policy basically says if
you're going to set up a city page of some sort, whether it's a blog, whether it's a
website, whether it's a Facebook page, there is a process to follow to do that. It goes
through the Mayor's office, through our communications manager, make sure the
content is consistent, make sure the look is consistent. Other than that I mean you
have a private page and you tie that to the city, we have the right to tell you you need to
take the city off of that. We are not going to have -- if something -- people certainly can
do their own thing privately, whether it's a blog or a Facebook or whatever, but if it
brings it back into the city, they use their position of the city, then, we have the right to
tell them to take that down and they are subject to discipline if they don't -- to remove at
least the city's references out of. The procedure is just clearly that, it's just a process to
go through on setting that up when it's needed. We felt in looking at the way the law
has been progressing in this area, courts look very strongly at your operational policy of
how that is implemented and how that's enforced in determining whether or not it's a
free speech issue, whether or not it's something that you can discipline an employee
over if it's related to work. So, we have spent a long time working on this, Emily and
Andrea from my staff have spent a lot of time researching this area of the law and we
have put -- we have vetted through the directors -- in fact, some thought we had already
passed it. But we are just now at the stage that you folks can review it. Again, if it goes
into place, then, HR is the entity that enforces policy or at least interprets the policy for
the various departments, but it's ready to move forward. If you're comfortable with it we
can bring it back with a resolution. If you'd like a little time to digest it, it's a little long,
Meridian City Council
December 10, 2013
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I'd say it's five --five or six pages. We could bring it back at any point in time you wish,
so --
De Weerd: Any questions?
Rountree: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Rountree.
Rountree: Bill, this is a pretty new area I think for just about everybody. Is this policy
derived from a policy that exists someplace else or is this all something new or -- I
guess I'm just looking are we consistent with what the universe of folks are doing with
social media?
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Rountree, lawyers
rarely invent anything anymore. It's somebody else to some degree. But, yes, through
the research what we have tried to do is call out what's the best that we could find,
again, that isn't involving area, but we think we have really got the best of what exists
out there in relation to what the court cases say. So, it's -- as it is in most cases, it
should be fairly intuitive to most people, but it isn't. If you want to set up a city -- city
website or a city blog or a city safe social media page, you probably need the city's
permission to do it. So, we wanted to make it clear that you need the city's permission
to do this and everything has to go through the city. So, yeah, this is from the research
that was done by our folks. We think this is kind of the best that will exist today.
Rountree: Thank you.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: I would just add that it -- there is some history at least building up in
businesses that they have established the right to say if -- if you're using social media
on our paid time, using our bought equipment, we can give you a policy about that that
excludes personal stuff and I don't see any reason why that legally shouldn't be able to
translate into a government entity as well. Those things are true of us and I would add
the part that in our case they should be warned that anything they do is public record as
well.
Bird: And I think that is -- excuse me. Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: And I think already is an accepted practice that if you -- if you're on a city
computer or whatever and transmit something, that it is public record, so --
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Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, that's actually in two different policies.
Bird: Yeah.
Nary: It relates to folks use of the Internet, as well as a-mail and our public records
policy. So, Mr. Bird is correct, I mean we certainly tried to make it as clear as we can.
Does everybody remember it every day? No, I have read a lot of a-mails that I wish
they hadn't written, so certainly not everybody remembers that that box is yours, but it
happens.
De Weerd: Anything further from Council?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: Question about site administration. I know we have the communications
manager and that that's accommodated through an approval process and information
exchange, but are we looking to see that -- say if Mark decides he wants to set up a
Facebook for the Fire Department that he assign somebody in the fire department to
administer that and does the administration of the site have some kind of an oversight,
because just because they start out going down the right path, can it go askew without
some oversight, some input from say the communications manager or the Mayor's office
or -- who is going to monitor this once it's approved?
De Weerd: Certainly the departments need to monitor their own pages, but the
communications manager will have some oversight to see that it's updated and will be
responsive those departments. It's impossible for one person to be on the lookout for
everything each of the departments do, but we will want to make sure that whoever is
assigned in each of the departments that have a page, when that person is gone
someone is, then, assigned to keep an eye out on it. Otherwise, those questions do go
unanswered and it -- as Chief Lavey might tell you, that we found out on -- on the police
department site how an unmonitored site can kind of go astray. So, I think she can also
answer any questions next month when she has her communications plan presented to
you and some of these questions will be appropriate at that point to ask, if she doesn't
already cover it.
Rountree: I notice in paragraph G here that it pretty well also outlines itself. Thank you
De Weerd: Uh-huh.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: Question for Bill or Patty. The terms of use statement that's the very last
page, it looks like that's posted somewhere on the particular social media site. Is that
something they have to open, too? Is that on the front page somewhere? I mean it's a
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very lengthy statement, covers a lot of ground. But I was just kind of curious as to
where that shows up.
Nary: Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council Member Hoaglun, that one I
don't know the specifics as that's going to be like a box you have to click, you know, like
the terms of use, like we have for our webpage. I would anticipate it would be
something like that. You know, we all know -- we click those every day. We don't read
them all the time, but they do exist. That would be my guess. Part of the reason we felt
also this was important is because as a public entity a little bit of rules are slightly
different for us than it would be for a private entity, so we wanted to make sure the
employees knew that if you're going to be on of the monitors of these sites that, again,
we can't take down every disparaging comment, we can't take down everything that
people don't like and only keep in the things we like and so I wanted to make sure they
understood what the law requires, but Idon't -- I'm sorry, I don't know the specifics if
that's going to be basically a way to register to, then, put your -- to be able to post
comments or you can -- you know, I don't know if the intent was to use -- like how it
states in there that now where you can use a Facebook log in and do it that way, so
you're identifiable -- I'm sorry, I don't know the specific of that, but that is the intent is to
make sure people understand what can be posted and what we could take down.
Hoaglun: And, Madam Mayor, Bill, I guess my -- the end result is it's defensible, we
have got terms, and if someone violates it they can't claim, well, I didn't know, I didn't
see that, then we are still covered.
Nary: Yes, sir.
Hoaglun: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Anything else on this item? And I guess in terms of when to bring it
back --
Nary: Would you like it back next week, Council? Do you want a couple of weeks? We
can bring it back the first meeting in January with a resolution. Whatever you're most
comfortable with. If you want a little more time to read it, that's up to you.
Bird: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I don't know about the rest of the Councilmen, but I would have no problem
bringing it back. I have had the opportunity over the weekend to read through this and
-- and as Bill stated, this was, basically, put together with the help of the directors, as I
understood, so I -- I don't see any problems, unless one of the other councilmen do, I --
I have no problem bringing it back in a resolution next week.
Zaremba: That works for me. I don't see anything that needs to be once over.
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Rountree: Next week.
De Weerd: Okay.
Nary: We will do that. Thank you.
Item 7: Future Meeting Topics
De Weerd: Okay. Council, any items to consider under Future Meeting Topics?
Bird: I have none.
Rountree: I have none.
Item 8: Executive Session Per Idaho State Code 67-2345 (1)(c)(f): (c) To
Conduct Deliberations Concerning Labor Negotiations or to Acquire
an Interest in Real Property, Which is Not Owned by a Public Agency,
and (f) To Consider and Advise Its Legal Representatives in Pending
Litigation added (a) To consider hiring a public officer, employee,
staff member or individual agent, wherein the respective qualities of
individuals are to be evaluated in order to fill a particular vacancy or
need. This paragraph does not apply to filling a vacancy in an
elective office or deliberations about staffing needs in general
De Weerd: If not I will move to Item 8 under Executive Session.
Nary: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Yes, Mr. Nary.
Nary: As part of that would Council also include letter (a) for discussion items.
Bird: Yes. Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Bird.
Bird: I move we go into Executive Session as per Idaho State Code 67-2345(1)(a),
(1)(c) and (1)(f.)
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn into Executive Session. Madam
Clerk, will you, please, call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
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De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
(EXECUTIVE SESSION: 5:18 p.m. to 6:26 p.m.)
De Weerd: Do I have a motion to come out of Executive Session?
Rountree: So moved.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: All those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Added to the Agenda: Settlement and Mutual Release Agreement between
City of Meridian, Bittercreek Meadows Subdivision HOA and JLJ
Enterprises
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: We would like to amend tonight's agenda to add onto this a settlement and
mutual release agreement that was brought forth by outside counsel tonight and this
agreement is between the City of Meridian, Bittercreek Meadows Subdivision
Homeowners Association and include JLJ Enterprises. So, I would move that we add
this settlement and mutual release agreement to tonight's agenda.
Rountree: Second.
De Weerd: Okay. I have a motion and a second to add this item for the agenda. All
those in favor say aye. All ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
Hoaglun: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Hoaglun.
Hoaglun: I move that we authorize the Mayor to sign and the Clerk to attest to this
settlement and mutual release agreement and send it to the parties as indicated.
Rountree: Second.
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De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to approve this agreement.
Zaremba: Madam Mayor?
De Weerd: Mr. Zaremba.
Zaremba: Just a question about the order of signatures. Do we want them to sign it
first or --
Bird: Yes. They have.
Zaremba: -- have they already?
Nary: Madam -- excuse me. Madam Mayor, Members of the Council, Council
Member Zaremba, all the different parties are signing it separately from one another, so
one party has already signed today. We are the defendant, not the plaintiff, so the
plaintiff gets it last, but it won't be finalized in the document until every single party has
signed it.
Zaremba: Okay. Thank you.
De Weerd: Okay. Madam Clerk, will you please, call roll.
Roll Call: Bird, yea; Rountree, yea; Zaremba, yea; Hoaglun, yea.
De Weerd: All ayes. Motion carried.
MOTION CARRIED: ALL AYES.
De Weerd: Council, we are at the end of our agenda, I would entertain a motion to
adjourn.
Rountree: I move we adjourn.
Bird: Second.
De Weerd: I have a motion and a second to adjourn. All those in favor say aye. All
ayes. Motion carries.
MOTION CARRIES: ALL AYES.
MEETING ADJOURNED AT 6:28 P.M.
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(AUDIO RECORDING ON FILE OF THESE PROCEEDINGS)
~ '~ ~ /C,
DATE APPROVED